The Complete Works of

GUY DE MAUPASSANT
VOLUME 7 OF 16

The Complete Short Stories

Parts Edition
By Delphi Classics, 2013
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‘The Complete Short Stories’

Guy de Maupassant: Parts Edition (in 16 parts)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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ISBN: 978 1 78877 691 2

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 Guy de Maupassant: Parts Edition

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 GUY DE MAUPASSANT

IN 16 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Novels
1, A Life
2, Bel-Ami
3, Mont Oriol
4, Pierre and Jean
5, Strong as Death
6, Notre Coeur
The Short Stories
7, The Complete Short Stories
The Plays
8, A Tale of Old Times
9, Musotte
10, A Comedy of Marriage
The Poetry
11, Des Vers
The Travel Books
12, Au Soleil
13, Sur L’eau
14, La Vie Errante
The Criticism
15, The Criticism
The Biography
16, Recollections of Guy de Maupassant by His Valet by François Tassart
www.delphiclassics.com
 The Complete Short Stories
Maupassant: The Master of the Short Story
As Maupassant embarked on his literary career, Gustave Flaubert, the famous
author of Madame Bovary, took the younger man under his protection and
acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism
and later in literature. At Flaubert’s home, Maupassant met Émile Zola and
the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the proponents of the
realist and naturalist schools.
In 1878 Maupassant was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction
and became a contributing editor to several leading newspapers such as Le
Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois and l’Écho de Paris, while devoting his spare
time to the composition of short stories. After two years he published what is
now considered his first masterpiece, Boule de Suif, which enjoyed instant
success. Flaubert at once announced it as being “a masterpiece that will
endure”. The tale is set during the Franco-Prussian War and follows a group
of French residents of Rouen, recently occupied by the Prussian army. The
ten travellers decide, for various reasons, to leave Rouen and flee to Le
Havre in a stagecoach. Boule de Suif (which can be translated as ‘suet
dumpling’ or ‘ball of fat’) is the nickname of a prostitute whose real name is
Elisabeth Rousset. She is travelling in the carriage with the strict Democrat
Cornudet; a shop-owning couple from the petty bourgeoisie, M. and Mme.
Loiseau; a wealthy upper-bourgeoisie factory-owner and his wife, M. and
Mme. Carré-Lamadon, the Comte and Comtesse of Bréville and two nuns.
Therefore the carriage represents a reflection of French society. The main
theme of the short story focuses on the French resistance to the German
occupiers throughout the war. During the first half of the story, the narrator
explains the background of each of the occupants, with particular emphasis
on the petty bourgeois Democrat, Cornudet, who is said to have devised all
manner of defences for Rouen. The overriding theme is that while the
occupants talk a great deal about resisting the invaders, they are ultimately
running away in a cowardly fashion rather than staying in the town.
Following the success of Boule de Suif, a string of similar stories
followed, as demand for tales by the popular newcomer were high, with
stories such as Deux Amis, Mother Savage and Mademoiselle Fifi winning
further acclaim. Maupassant’s literary career was launched.
The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of the author’s
career. Now famous due to his first short story, he worked methodically and
produced two or sometimes four volumes annually, whilst his practical
business sense made him wealthy. In 1881 he published his first volume of
short stories under the title of La Maison Tellier, which reached its twelfth
edition within two years. His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write
more stories, and Maupassant continued to produce them efficiently and
frequently. At this time he wrote what many consider to be his greatest novel,
Pierre et Jean. But it would be as a master of the short story that posterity
would remember Guy de Maupassant.
Many of Maupassant’s tales feature Parisian society women, prostitutes
and the small-minded bourgeoisie, as well as the isolated villages of rural
Normandy that the author knew as a child. Maupassant's stories are
characterised by their economy of style and their efficient and often
surprising dénouements, as exemplified in the famous The Diamond
Necklace. His stories are also often darkly humorous, focusing in depth on
the relationships between men and women, brothers and sisters, and between
masters and servants. Through these relationships, Maupassant explores the
dualistic nature of the human character, probing the nobility and generosity of
his fellow men, whilst repeatedly laying bare humanity with deft wit and
disturbing honesty.
Maupassant, early in his career
Gustave Flaubert, Maupassant’s great friend and mentor
An early front illustration for Maupassant’s ‘break-through’ short story ‘Boule de Suif ’
 LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL
ORDER

BOULE DE SUIF
JADIS, OR, THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
THE DISPENSER OF HOLY WATER
SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS
SIMON’S PAPA
SUICIDES
ON THE RIVER
LIEUTENANT LARE’S MARRIAGE
TWO FRIENDS
THE LANCER’S WIFE
THE PRISONERS
TWO LITTLE SOLDIERS
FATHER MILON
A COUP D’ETAT
THE HORRIBLE
MADAME PARISSE
MADEMOISELLE FIFI
A DUEL
THE MAISON TELLIER
IN THE SPRING
A FAMILY
THE COLONEL’S IDEAS
MOTHER SAUVAGE
EPIPHANY
THE MUSTACHE
MADAME BAPTISTE
THE QUESTION OF LATIN
A MEETING
THE BLIND MAN
INDISCRETION
THE CAKE
CHÂLI
A FAMILY AFFAIR
BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER’S CORPSE
THE SMILE OF SCHOPENHAUER
MISS HARRIET
LITTLE LOUISE ROQUE
THE CASE OF LOUISE ROQUE
THE DONKEY
MOIRON
A PARRICIDE
BERTHA
THE PATRON
THE DOOR
A SALE
THE IMPOLITE SEX
A WEDDING GIFT
FEAR
THE RELIC
THE MORIBUND
THE GAMEKEEPER
THE STORY OF A FARM GIRL
THE WRECK
THEODULE SABOT’S CONFESSION
THE WRONG HOUSE
THE DIAMOND NECKLACE
THE MARQUIS DE FUMEROL
THE TRIP OF LE HORLA
FAREWELL!
THE WOLF
THE INN
MONSIEUR PARENT
QUEEN HORTENSE
MADEMOISELLE PEARL
THE THIEF
CLAIR DE LUNE
WAITER, A “BOCK”
FORGIVENESS
A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
THAT COSTLY RIDE
USELESS BEAUTY
THE FATHER
MY UNCLE SOSTHENES
THE BARONESS
MOTHER AND SON
THE HAND
A TRESS OF HAIR
THE HEAD OF HAIR
THE CRIPPLE
A STROLL
ALEXANDRE
THE LOG
JULIE ROMAIN
THE RONDOLI SISTERS
THE FALSE GEMS
FASCINATION
YVETTE SAMORIS
A VENDETTA
MY TWENTY-FIVE DAYS
THE TERROR
LEGEND OF MONT ST. MICHEL
A NEW YEAR’S GIFT
FRIEND PATIENCE
ABANDONED
DENIS
MY WIFE
THE UNKNOWN
THE APPARITION
CLOCHETTE
THE KISS
THE LEGION OF HONOR
THE TEST
FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
THE ORPHAN
THE BEGGAR
THE RABBIT
HIS AVENGER
MY UNCLE JULES
THE MODEL
A VAGABOND
THE FISHING HOLE
THE SPASM
THE MANNERISM
IN THE WOOD
MARTINE
ALL OVER
THE PARROT
THE DROWNED MAN
THE PIECE OF STRING
TOINE
MADAME HUSSON’S “ROSIER”
THE ADOPTED SON
COWARD
OLD MONGILET
MOONLIGHT
THE FIRST SNOWFALL
A RECOLLECTION
OUR LETTERS
FRIEND JOSEPH
THE EFFEMINATES
YVETTE
NIGHT. A NIGHTMARE
A NIGHT IN PARIS (A NIGHTMARE)
THE HORLA
OLD AMABLE
THE CHRISTENING
THE FARMER’S WIFE
THE DEVIL
THE SNIPE
THE WILL
WALTER SCHNAFFS’ ADVENTURE
AT SEA
MINUET
THE SON
THAT PIG OF A MORIN
SAINT ANTHONY
SAINT-ANTOINE
LASTING LOVE
PIERROT
A NORMANDY JOKE
AM I INSANE?
IS HE MAD?
FATHER MATTHEW
THE UMBRELLA
BELHOMME’S BEAST
DISCOVERY
THE ACCURSED BREAD
THE DOWRY
HAUTOT SENIOR AND HAUTOT JUNIOR (1889)
THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
THE MASK
THE PENGUINS’ ROCK
AN ARTIFICE
DREAMS
THE CHILD
A COUNTRY EXCURSION
ROSE
ROSALIE PRUDENT
REGRET
A SISTER’S CONFESSION
COCO
DEAD WOMAN’S SECRET
A HUMBLE DRAMA
MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE
THE CORSICAN BANDIT
THE GRAVE
OLD JUDAS
THE LITTLE CASK
BOITELLE
A WIDOW
THE ENGLISHMAN OF ETRETAT
MAGNETISM
A FATHER’S CONFESSION
A MOTHER OF MONSTERS
AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
A PORTRAIT
THE DRUNKARD
THE WARDROBE
THE MOUNTAIN POOL
A CREMATION
MISTI
MADAME HERMET
THE MAGIC COUCH
NO QUARTER
OLD MILON
A LIVELY FRIEND
HE?
A PHILOSOPHER
ALWAYS LOCK THE DOOR!
WHAT WAS REALLY THE MATTER WITH ANDREW
GROWING OLD
MY LANDLADY
LOVE. THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN’S BOOK
SAVED
THE SIGNAL
UGLY
WOMAN’S WILES
FLY
THE MAD WOMAN
THE WOODEN SHOES
A COCK CROWED
JULOT’S OPINION
MADEMOISELLE
THE MOUNTEBANKS
THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE
THE MAN WITH THE DOGS
THE CLOWN
BABETTE
SYMPATHY
THE DEBT
AN ARTIST
MAMMA STIRLING
LILIE LALA
THE BANDMASTER’S SISTER
FALSE ALARM
WIFE AND MISTRESS
MAD
AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS
THE NEW SENSATION
THE VIATICUM
THE RELICS
A RUPTURE
A USEFUL HOUSE
THE ACCENT
GHOSTS
CRASH
AN HONEST IDEAL
STABLE PERFUME
THE ILL-OMENED GROOM
AN EXOTIC PRINCE
VIRTUE IN THE BALLET
IN HIS SWEETHEART’S LIVERY
DELILA
A MESALLIANCE
A NIGHT IN WHITECHAPEL
COUNTESS SATAN
KIND GIRLS
PROFITABLE BUSINESS
VIOLATED
JEROBOAM
MARGOT’S TAPERS
CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT
MOHAMMED FRIPOULI
THE CONFESSION
WAS IT A DREAM?
THE DEAD GIRL
THE LAST STEP
ONE EVENING
THE HERMAPHRODITE
MARROCA
THE ASSIGNATION
AN ADVENTURE
THE DOUBLE PINS
UNDER THE YOKE
THE READ ONE AND THE OTHER
THE UPSTART
THE CARTER’S WENCH
THE MARQUIS
THE BED
AN ADVENTURE IN PARIS
HAPPINESS
THE OLD MAID
THE AWAKENING
THE JENNET
RUST
THE SUBSTITUTE
THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
ALLOUMA
THE ODALISQUE OF SENICHOU
A GOOD MATCH
A FASHIONABLE WOMAN
THE CARNIVAL OF LOVE
A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES
THE WHITE LADY
CAUGHT
CHRISTMAS EVE
WORDS OF LOVE
A DIVORCE CASE
WHO KNOWS?
PAUL’S MISTRESS
THE TWENTY-FIVE FRANCS OF THE MOTHER-SUPERIOR
THE VENUS OF BRANIZA
LA MORILLONNE
THE PORT
THE HERMIT
THE ORDERLY
DUCHOUX
RELICS OF THE PAST
THE PEDDLER
THE OLIVE GROVE
A WARNING NOTE
AFTER
TIMBUCTOO
TOMBSTONES
 BOULE DE SUIF

For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed

through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined
forces. The men wore long, dirty beards and tattered uniforms; they advanced
in listless fashion, without a flag, without a leader. All seemed exhausted,
worn out, incapable of thought or resolve, marching onward merely by force
of habit, and dropping to the ground with fatigue the moment they halted. One
saw, in particular, many enlisted men, peaceful citizens, men who lived
quietly on their income, bending beneath the weight of their rifles; and little
active volunteers, easily frightened but full of enthusiasm, as eager to attack
as they were ready to take to flight; and amid these, a sprinkling of red-
breeched soldiers, the pitiful remnant of a division cut down in a great battle;
somber artillerymen, side by side with nondescript foot-soldiers; and, here
and there, the gleaming helmet of a heavy-footed dragoon who had difficulty
in keeping up with the quicker pace of the soldiers of the line. Legions of
irregulars with high-sounding names “Avengers of Defeat,” “Citizens of the
Tomb,” “Brethren in Death” — passed in their turn, looking like banditti.
Their leaders, former drapers or grain merchants, or tallow or soap
chandlers — warriors by force of circumstances, officers by reason of their
mustachios or their money — covered with weapons, flannel and gold lace,
spoke in an impressive manner, discussed plans of campaign, and behaved as
though they alone bore the fortunes of dying France on their braggart
shoulders; though, in truth, they frequently were afraid of their own men —
scoundrels often brave beyond measure, but pillagers and debauchees.
Rumor had it that the Prussians were about to enter Rouen.
The members of the National Guard, who for the past two months had
been reconnoitering with the utmost caution in the neighboring woods,
occasionally shooting their own sentinels, and making ready for fight
whenever a rabbit rustled in the undergrowth, had now returned to their
homes. Their arms, their uniforms, all the death-dealing paraphernalia with
which they had terrified all the milestones along the highroad for eight miles
round, had suddenly and marvellously disappeared.
 The last of the French soldiers had just crossed the Seine on their way to
Pont-Audemer, through Saint-Sever and Bourg-Achard, and in their rear the
vanquished general, powerless to do aught with the forlorn remnants of his
army, himself dismayed at the final overthrow of a nation accustomed to
victory and disastrously beaten despite its legendary bravery, walked
between two orderlies.
Then a profound calm, a shuddering, silent dread, settled on the city. Many
a round-paunched citizen, emasculated by years devoted to business,
anxiously awaited the conquerors, trembling lest his roasting-jacks or kitchen
knives should be looked upon as weapons.
Life seemed to have stopped short; the shops were shut, the streets
deserted. Now and then an inhabitant, awed by the silence, glided swiftly by
in the shadow of the walls. The anguish of suspense made men even desire
the arrival of the enemy.
In the afternoon of the day following the departure of the French troops, a
number of uhlans, coming no one knew whence, passed rapidly through the
town. A little later on, a black mass descended St. Catherine’s Hill, while
two other invading bodies appeared respectively on the Darnetal and the
Boisguillaume roads. The advance guards of the three corps arrived at
precisely the same moment at the Square of the Hotel de Ville, and the
German army poured through all the adjacent streets, its battalions making the
pavement ring with their firm, measured tread.
Orders shouted in an unknown, guttural tongue rose to the windows of the
seemingly dead, deserted houses; while behind the fast-closed shutters eager
eyes peered forth at the victors-masters now of the city, its fortunes, and its
lives, by “right of war.” The inhabitants, in their darkened rooms, were
possessed by that terror which follows in the wake of cataclysms, of deadly
upheavals of the earth, against which all human skill and strength are vain.
For the same thing happens whenever the established order of things is upset,
when security no longer exists, when all those rights usually protected by the
law of man or of Nature are at the mercy of unreasoning, savage force. The
earthquake crushing a whole nation under falling roofs; the flood let loose,
and engulfing in its swirling depths the corpses of drowned peasants, along
with dead oxen and beams torn from shattered houses; or the army, covered
with glory, murdering those who defend themselves, making prisoners of the
rest, pillaging in the name of the Sword, and giving thanks to God to the
thunder of cannon — all these are appalling scourges, which destroy all
belief in eternal justice, all that confidence we have been taught to feel in the
protection of Heaven and the reason of man.
Small detachments of soldiers knocked at each door, and then disappeared
within the houses; for the vanquished saw they would have to be civil to their
conquerors.
At the end of a short time, once the first terror had subsided, calm was
again restored. In many houses the Prussian officer ate at the same table with
the family. He was often well-bred, and, out of politeness, expressed
sympathy with France and repugnance at being compelled to take part in the
war. This sentiment was received with gratitude; besides, his protection
might be needful some day or other. By the exercise of tact the number of men
quartered in one’s house might be reduced; and why should one provoke the
hostility of a person on whom one’s whole welfare depended? Such conduct
would savor less of bravery than of fool-hardiness. And foolhardiness is no
longer a failing of the citizens of Rouen as it was in the days when their city
earned renown by its heroic defenses. Last of all-final argument based on the
national politeness — the folk of Rouen said to one another that it was only
right to be civil in one’s own house, provided there was no public exhibition
of familiarity with the foreigner. Out of doors, therefore, citizen and soldier
did not know each other; but in the house both chatted freely, and each
evening the German remained a little longer warming himself at the
hospitable hearth.
Even the town itself resumed by degrees its ordinary aspect. The French
seldom walked abroad, but the streets swarmed with Prussian soldiers.
Moreover, the officers of the Blue Hussars, who arrogantly dragged their
instruments of death along the pavements, seemed to hold the simple
townsmen in but little more contempt than did the French cavalry officers
who had drunk at the same cafes the year before.
But there was something in the air, a something strange and subtle, an
intolerable foreign atmosphere like a penetrating odor — the odor of
invasion. It permeated dwellings and places of public resort, changed the
taste of food, made one imagine one’s self in far-distant lands, amid
dangerous, barbaric tribes.
The conquerors exacted money, much money. The inhabitants paid what
was asked; they were rich. But, the wealthier a Norman tradesman becomes,
the more he suffers at having to part with anything that belongs to him, at
having to see any portion of his substance pass into the hands of another.
 Nevertheless, within six or seven miles of the town, along the course of
the river as it flows onward to Croisset, Dieppedalle and Biessart, boat-men
and fishermen often hauled to the surface of the water the body of a German,
bloated in his uniform, killed by a blow from knife or club, his head crushed
by a stone, or perchance pushed from some bridge into the stream below. The
mud of the river-bed swallowed up these obscure acts of vengeance —
savage, yet legitimate; these unrecorded deeds of bravery; these silent attacks
fraught with greater danger than battles fought in broad day, and surrounded,
moreover, with no halo of romance. For hatred of the foreigner ever arms a
few intrepid souls, ready to die for an idea.
At last, as the invaders, though subjecting the town to the strictest
discipline, had not committed any of the deeds of horror with which they had
been credited while on their triumphal march, the people grew bolder, and
the necessities of business again animated the breasts of the local merchants.
Some of these had important commercial interests at Havre — occupied at
present by the French army — and wished to attempt to reach that port by
overland route to Dieppe, taking the boat from there.
Through the influence of the German officers whose acquaintance they had
made, they obtained a permit to leave town from the general in command.
A large four-horse coach having, therefore, been engaged for the journey,
and ten passengers having given in their names to the proprietor, they decided
to start on a certain Tuesday morning before daybreak, to avoid attracting a
crowd.
The ground had been frozen hard for some time-past, and about three
o’clock on Monday afternoon — large black clouds from the north shed their
burden of snow uninterruptedly all through that evening and night.
At half-past four in the morning the travellers met in the courtyard of the
Hotel de Normandie, where they were to take their seats in the coach.
They were still half asleep, and shivering with cold under their wraps.
They could see one another but indistinctly in the darkness, and the mountain
of heavy winter wraps in which each was swathed made them look like a
gathering of obese priests in their long cassocks. But two men recognized
each other, a third accosted them, and the three began to talk. “I am bringing
my wife,” said one. “So am I.” “And I, too.” The first speaker added: “We
shall not return to Rouen, and if the Prussians approach Havre we will cross
to England.” All three, it turned out, had made the same plans, being of
similar disposition and temperament.
 Still the horses were not harnessed. A small lantern carried by a stable-
boy emerged now and then from one dark doorway to disappear immediately
in another. The stamping of horses’ hoofs, deadened by the dung and straw of
the stable, was heard from time to time, and from inside the building issued a
man’s voice, talking to the animals and swearing at them. A faint tinkle of
bells showed that the harness was being got ready; this tinkle soon developed
into a continuous jingling, louder or softer according to the movements of the
horse, sometimes stopping altogether, then breaking out in a sudden peal
accompanied by a pawing of the ground by an iron-shod hoof.
The door suddenly closed. All noise ceased.
The frozen townsmen were silent; they remained motionless, stiff with
cold.
A thick curtain of glistening white flakes fell ceaselessly to the ground; it
obliterated all outlines, enveloped all objects in an icy mantle of foam;
nothing was to be heard throughout the length and breadth of the silent,
winter-bound city save the vague, nameless rustle of falling snow — a
sensation rather than a sound — the gentle mingling of light atoms which
seemed to fill all space, to cover the whole world.
The man reappeared with his lantern, leading by a rope a melancholy-
looking horse, evidently being led out against his inclination. The hostler
placed him beside the pole, fastened the traces, and spent some time in
walking round him to make sure that the harness was all right; for he could
use only one hand, the other being engaged in holding the lantern. As he was
about to fetch the second horse he noticed the motionless group of travellers,
already white with snow, and said to them: “Why don’t you get inside the
coach? You’d be under shelter, at least.”
This did not seem to have occurred to them, and they at once took his
advice. The three men seated their wives at the far end of the coach, then got
in themselves; lastly the other vague, snow-shrouded forms clambered to the
remaining places without a word.
The floor was covered with straw, into which the feet sank. The ladies at
the far end, having brought with them little copper foot-warmers heated by
means of a kind of chemical fuel, proceeded to light these, and spent some
time in expatiating in low tones on their advantages, saying over and over
again things which they had all known for a long time.
At last, six horses instead of four having been harnessed to the diligence,
on account of the heavy roads, a voice outside asked: “Is every one there?”
To which a voice from the interior replied: “Yes,” and they set out.
The vehicle moved slowly, slowly, at a snail’s pace; the wheels sank into
the snow; the entire body of the coach creaked and groaned; the horses
slipped, puffed, steamed, and the coachman’s long whip cracked incessantly,
flying hither and thither, coiling up, then flinging out its length like a slender
serpent, as it lashed some rounded flank, which instantly grew tense as it
strained in further effort.
But the day grew apace. Those light flakes which one traveller, a native of
Rouen, had compared to a rain of cotton fell no longer. A murky light filtered
through dark, heavy clouds, which made the country more dazzlingly white by
contrast, a whiteness broken sometimes by a row of tall trees spangled with
hoarfrost, or by a cottage roof hooded in snow.
Within the coach the passengers eyed one another curiously in the dim
light of dawn.
Right at the back, in the best seats of all, Monsieur and Madame Loiseau,
wholesale wine merchants of the Rue Grand-Pont, slumbered opposite each
other. Formerly clerk to a merchant who had failed in business, Loiseau had
bought his master’s interest, and made a fortune for himself. He sold very
bad wine at a very low price to the retail-dealers in the country, and had the
reputation, among his friends and acquaintances, of being a shrewd rascal a
true Norman, full of quips and wiles. So well established was his character
as a cheat that, in the mouths of the citizens of Rouen, the very name of
Loiseau became a byword for sharp practice.
Above and beyond this, Loiseau was noted for his practical jokes of every
description — his tricks, good or ill-natured; and no one could mention his
name without adding at once: “He’s an extraordinary man — Loiseau.” He
was undersized and potbellied, had a florid face with grayish whiskers.
His wife-tall, strong, determined, with a loud voice and decided manner
— represented the spirit of order and arithmetic in the business house which
Loiseau enlivened by his jovial activity.
Beside them, dignified in bearing, belonging to a superior caste, sat
Monsieur Carre-Lamadon, a man of considerable importance, a king in the
cotton trade, proprietor of three spinning-mills, officer of the Legion of
Honor, and member of the General Council. During the whole time the
Empire was in the ascendancy he remained the chief of the well-disposed
Opposition, merely in order to command a higher value for his devotion
when he should rally to the cause which he meanwhile opposed with
“courteous weapons,” to use his own expression.
Madame Carre-Lamadon, much younger than her husband, was the
consolation of all the officers of good family quartered at Rouen. Pretty,
slender, graceful, she sat opposite her husband, curled up in her furs, and
gazing mournfully at the sorry interior of the coach.
Her neighbors, the Comte and Comtesse Hubert de Breville, bore one of
the noblest and most ancient names in Normandy. The count, a nobleman
advanced in years and of aristocratic bearing, strove to enhance by every
artifice of the toilet, his natural resemblance to King Henry IV, who,
according to a legend of which the family were inordinately proud, had been
the favored lover of a De Breville lady, and father of her child — the frail
one’s husband having, in recognition of this fact, been made a count and
governor of a province.
A colleague of Monsieur Carre-Lamadon in the General Council, Count
Hubert represented the Orleanist party in his department. The story of his
marriage with the daughter of a small shipowner at Nantes had always
remained more or less of a mystery. But as the countess had an air of
unmistakable breeding, entertained faultlessly, and was even supposed to
have been loved by a son of Louis-Philippe, the nobility vied with one
another in doing her honor, and her drawing-room remained the most select
in the whole countryside — the only one which retained the old spirit of
gallantry, and to which access was not easy.
The fortune of the Brevilles, all in real estate, amounted, it was said, to
five hundred thousand francs a year.
These six people occupied the farther end of the coach, and represented
Society — with an income — the strong, established society of good people
with religion and principle.
It happened by chance that all the women were seated on the same side;
and the countess had, moreover, as neighbors two nuns, who spent the time in
fingering their long rosaries and murmuring paternosters and aves. One of
them was old, and so deeply pitted with smallpox that she looked for all the
world as if she had received a charge of shot full in the face. The other, of
sickly appearance, had a pretty but wasted countenance, and a narrow,
consumptive chest, sapped by that devouring faith which is the making of
martyrs and visionaries.
A man and woman, sitting opposite the two nuns, attracted all eyes.
 The man — a well-known character — was Cornudet, the democrat, the
terror of all respectable people. For the past twenty years his big red beard
had been on terms of intimate acquaintance with the tankards of all the
republican cafes. With the help of his comrades and brethren he had
dissipated a respectable fortune left him by his father, an old-established
confectioner, and he now impatiently awaited the Republic, that he might at
last be rewarded with the post he had earned by his revolutionary orgies. On
the fourth of September — possibly as the result of a practical joke — he
was led to believe that he had been appointed prefect; but when he attempted
to take up the duties of the position the clerks in charge of the office refused
to recognize his authority, and he was compelled in consequence to retire. A
good sort of fellow in other respects, inoffensive and obliging, he had thrown
himself zealously into the work of making an organized defence of the town.
He had had pits dug in the level country, young forest trees felled, and traps
set on all the roads; then at the approach of the enemy, thoroughly satisfied
with his preparations, he had hastily returned to the town. He thought he
might now do more good at Havre, where new intrenchments would soon be
necessary.
The woman, who belonged to the courtesan class, was celebrated for an
embonpoint unusual for her age, which had earned for her the sobriquet of
“Boule de Suif” (Tallow Ball). Short and round, fat as a pig, with puffy
fingers constricted at the joints, looking like rows of short sausages; with a
shiny, tightly-stretched skin and an enormous bust filling out the bodice of her
dress, she was yet attractive and much sought after, owing to her fresh and
pleasing appearance. Her face was like a crimson apple, a peony-bud just
bursting into bloom; she had two magnificent dark eyes, fringed with thick,
heavy lashes, which cast a shadow into their depths; her mouth was small,
ripe, kissable, and was furnished with the tiniest of white teeth.
As soon as she was recognized the respectable matrons of the party began
to whisper among themselves, and the words “hussy” and “public scandal”
were uttered so loudly that Boule de Suif raised her head. She forthwith cast
such a challenging, bold look at her neighbors that a sudden silence fell on
the company, and all lowered their eyes, with the exception of Loiseau, who
watched her with evident interest.
But conversation was soon resumed among the three ladies, whom the
presence of this girl had suddenly drawn together in the bonds of friendship
— one might almost say in those of intimacy. They decided that they ought to
combine, as it were, in their dignity as wives in face of this shameless hussy;
for legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.
The three men, also, brought together by a certain conservative instinct
awakened by the presence of Cornudet, spoke of money matters in a tone
expressive of contempt for the poor. Count Hubert related the losses he had
sustained at the hands of the Prussians, spoke of the cattle which had been
stolen from him, the crops which had been ruined, with the easy manner of a
nobleman who was also a tenfold millionaire, and whom such reverses
would scarcely inconvenience for a single year. Monsieur Carre-Lamadon, a
man of wide experience in the cotton industry, had taken care to send six
hundred thousand francs to England as provision against the rainy day he was
always anticipating. As for Loiseau, he had managed to sell to the French
commissariat department all the wines he had in stock, so that the state now
owed him a considerable sum, which he hoped to receive at Havre.
And all three eyed one another in friendly, well-disposed fashion.
Although of varying social status, they were united in the brotherhood of
money — in that vast freemasonry made up of those who possess, who can
jingle gold wherever they choose to put their hands into their breeches’
pockets.
The coach went along so slowly that at ten o’clock in the morning it had
not covered twelve miles. Three times the men of the party got out and
climbed the hills on foot. The passengers were becoming uneasy, for they had
counted on lunching at Totes, and it seemed now as if they would hardly
arrive there before nightfall. Every one was eagerly looking out for an inn by
the roadside, when, suddenly, the coach foundered in a snowdrift, and it took
two hours to extricate it.
As appetites increased, their spirits fell; no inn, no wine shop could be
discovered, the approach of the Prussians and the transit of the starving
French troops having frightened away all business.
The men sought food in the farmhouses beside the road, but could not find
so much as a crust of bread; for the suspicious peasant invariably hid his
stores for fear of being pillaged by the soldiers, who, being entirely without
food, would take violent possession of everything they found.
About one o’clock Loiseau announced that he positively had a big hollow
in his stomach. They had all been suffering in the same way for some time,
and the increasing gnawings of hunger had put an end to all conversation.
 Now and then some one yawned, another followed his example, and each
in turn, according to his character, breeding and social position, yawned
either quietly or noisily, placing his hand before the gaping void whence
issued breath condensed into vapor.
Several times Boule de Suif stooped, as if searching for something under
her petticoats. She would hesitate a moment, look at her neighbors, and then
quietly sit upright again. All faces were pale and drawn. Loiseau declared he
would give a thousand francs for a knuckle of ham. His wife made an
involuntary and quickly checked gesture of protest. It always hurt her to hear
of money being squandered, and she could not even understand jokes on such
a subject.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t feel well,” said the count. “Why did I not
think of bringing provisions?” Each one reproached himself in similar
fashion.
Cornudet, however, had a bottle of rum, which he offered to his neighbors.
They all coldly refused except Loiseau, who took a sip, and returned the
bottle with thanks, saying: “That’s good stuff; it warms one up, and cheats the
appetite.” The alcohol put him in good humor, and he proposed they should
do as the sailors did in the song: eat the fattest of the passengers. This
indirect allusion to Boule de Suif shocked the respectable members of the
party. No one replied; only Cornudet smiled. The two good sisters had
ceased to mumble their rosary, and, with hands enfolded in their wide
sleeves, sat motionless, their eyes steadfastly cast down, doubtless offering
up as a sacrifice to Heaven the suffering it had sent them.
At last, at three o’clock, as they were in the midst of an apparently
limitless plain, with not a single village in sight, Boule de Suif stooped
quickly, and drew from underneath the seat a large basket covered with a
white napkin.
From this she extracted first of all a small earthenware plate and a silver
drinking cup, then an enormous dish containing two whole chickens cut into
joints and imbedded in jelly. The basket was seen to contain other good
things: pies, fruit, dainties of all sorts-provisions, in fine, for a three days’
journey, rendering their owner independent of wayside inns. The necks of
four bottles protruded from among the food. She took a chicken wing, and
began to eat it daintily, together with one of those rolls called in Normandy
“Regence.”
 All looks were directed toward her. An odor of food filled the air,
causing nostrils to dilate, mouths to water, and jaws to contract painfully. The
scorn of the ladies for this disreputable female grew positively ferocious;
they would have liked to kill her, or throw, her and her drinking cup, her
basket, and her provisions, out of the coach into the snow of the road below.
But Loiseau’s gaze was fixed greedily on the dish of chicken. He said:
“Well, well, this lady had more forethought than the rest of us. Some
people think of everything.”
She looked up at him.
“Would you like some, sir? It is hard to go on fasting all day.”
He bowed.
“Upon my soul, I can’t refuse; I cannot hold out another minute. All is fair
in war time, is it not, madame?” And, casting a glance on those around, he
added:
“At times like this it is very pleasant to meet with obliging people.”
He spread a newspaper over his knees to avoid soiling his trousers, and,
with a pocketknife he always carried, helped himself to a chicken leg coated
with jelly, which he thereupon proceeded to devour.
Then Boule le Suif, in low, humble tones, invited the nuns to partake of
her repast. They both accepted the offer unhesitatingly, and after a few
stammered words of thanks began to eat quickly, without raising their eyes.
Neither did Cornudet refuse his neighbor’s offer, and, in combination with
the nuns, a sort of table was formed by opening out the newspaper over the
four pairs of knees.
Mouths kept opening and shutting, ferociously masticating and devouring
the food. Loiseau, in his corner, was hard at work, and in low tones urged his
wife to follow his example. She held out for a long time, but overstrained
Nature gave way at last. Her husband, assuming his politest manner, asked
their “charming companion” if he might be allowed to offer Madame Loiseau
a small helping.
“Why, certainly, sir,” she replied, with an amiable smile, holding out the
dish.
When the first bottle of claret was opened some embarrassment was
caused by the fact that there was only one drinking cup, but this was passed
from one to another, after being wiped. Cornudet alone, doubtless in a spirit
of gallantry, raised to his own lips that part of the rim which was still moist
from those of his fair neighbor.
 Then, surrounded by people who were eating, and well-nigh suffocated by
the odor of food, the Comte and Comtesse de Breville and Monsieur and
Madame Carre-Lamadon endured that hateful form of torture which has
perpetuated the name of Tantalus. All at once the manufacturer’s young wife
heaved a sigh which made every one turn and look at her; she was white as
the snow without; her eyes closed, her head fell forward; she had fainted.
Her husband, beside himself, implored the help of his neighbors. No one
seemed to know what to do until the elder of the two nuns, raising the
patient’s head, placed Boule de Suif’s drinking cup to her lips, and made her
swallow a few drops of wine. The pretty invalid moved, opened her eyes,
smiled, and declared in a feeble voice that she was all right again. But, to
prevent a recurrence of the catastrophe, the nun made her drink a cupful of
claret, adding: “It’s just hunger — that’s what is wrong with you.”
Then Boule de Suif, blushing and embarrassed, stammered, looking at the
four passengers who were still fasting:
“‘Mon Dieu’, if I might offer these ladies and gentlemen — — “
She stopped short, fearing a snub. But Loiseau continued:
“Hang it all, in such a case as this we are all brothers and sisters and
ought to assist each other. Come, come, ladies, don’t stand on ceremony, for
goodness’ sake! Do we even know whether we shall find a house in which to
pass the night? At our present rate of going we sha’n’t be at Totes till midday
to-morrow.”
They hesitated, no one daring to be the first to accept. But the count settled
the question. He turned toward the abashed girl, and in his most distinguished
manner said:
“We accept gratefully, madame.”
As usual, it was only the first step that cost. This Rubicon once crossed,
they set to work with a will. The basket was emptied. It still contained a pate
de foie gras, a lark pie, a piece of smoked tongue, Crassane pears, Pont-
Leveque gingerbread, fancy cakes, and a cup full of pickled gherkins and
onions — Boule de Suif, like all women, being very fond of indigestible
things.
They could not eat this girl’s provisions without speaking to her. So they
began to talk, stiffly at first; then, as she seemed by no means forward, with
greater freedom. Mesdames de Breville and Carre-Lamadon, who were
accomplished women of the world, were gracious and tactful. The countess
especially displayed that amiable condescension characteristic of great
ladies whom no contact with baser mortals can sully, and was absolutely
charming. But the sturdy Madame Loiseau, who had the soul of a gendarme,
continued morose, speaking little and eating much.
Conversation naturally turned on the war. Terrible stories were told about
the Prussians, deeds of bravery were recounted of the French; and all these
people who were fleeing themselves were ready to pay homage to the
courage of their compatriots. Personal experiences soon followed, and Bottle
le Suif related with genuine emotion, and with that warmth of language not
uncommon in women of her class and temperament, how it came about that
she had left Rouen.
“I thought at first that I should be able to stay,” she said. “My house was
well stocked with provisions, and it seemed better to put up with feeding a
few soldiers than to banish myself goodness knows where. But when I saw
these Prussians it was too much for me! My blood boiled with rage; I wept
the whole day for very shame. Oh, if only I had been a man! I looked at them
from my window — the fat swine, with their pointed helmets! — and my
maid held my hands to keep me from throwing my furniture down on them.
Then some of them were quartered on me; I flew at the throat of the first one
who entered. They are just as easy to strangle as other men! And I’d have
been the death of that one if I hadn’t been dragged away from him by my hair.
I had to hide after that. And as soon as I could get an opportunity I left the
place, and here I am.”
She was warmly congratulated. She rose in the estimation of her
companions, who had not been so brave; and Cornudet listened to her with
the approving and benevolent smile of an apostle, the smile a priest might
wear in listening to a devotee praising God; for long-bearded democrats of
his type have a monopoly of patriotism, just as priests have a monopoly of
religion. He held forth in turn, with dogmatic self-assurance, in the style of
the proclamations daily pasted on the walls of the town, winding up with a
specimen of stump oratory in which he reviled “that besotted fool of a Louis-
Napoleon.”
But Boule de Suif was indignant, for she was an ardent Bonapartist. She
turned as red as a cherry, and stammered in her wrath: “I’d just like to have
seen you in his place — you and your sort! There would have been a nice
mix-up. Oh, yes! It was you who betrayed that man. It would be impossible to
live in France if we were governed by such rascals as you!”
 Cornudet, unmoved by this tirade, still smiled a superior, contemptuous
smile; and one felt that high words were impending, when the count
interposed, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in calming the exasperated
woman, saying that all sincere opinions ought to be respected. But the
countess and the manufacturer’s wife, imbued with the unreasoning hatred of
the upper classes for the Republic, and instinct, moreover, with the affection
felt by all women for the pomp and circumstance of despotic government,
were drawn, in spite of themselves, toward this dignified young woman,
whose opinions coincided so closely with their own.
The basket was empty. The ten people had finished its contents without
difficulty amid general regret that it did not hold more. Conversation went on
a little longer, though it flagged somewhat after the passengers had finished
eating.
Night fell, the darkness grew deeper and deeper, and the cold made Boule
de Suif shiver, in spite of her plumpness. So Madame de Breville offered her
her foot-warmer, the fuel of which had been several times renewed since the
morning, and she accepted the offer at once, for her feet were icy cold.
Mesdames Carre-Lamadon and Loiseau gave theirs to the nuns.
The driver lighted his lanterns. They cast a bright gleam on a cloud of
vapor which hovered over the sweating flanks of the horses, and on the
roadside snow, which seemed to unroll as they went along in the changing
light of the lamps.
All was now indistinguishable in the coach; but suddenly a movement
occurred in the corner occupied by Boule de Suif and Cornudet; and Loiseau,
peering into the gloom, fancied he saw the big, bearded democrat move
hastily to one side, as if he had received a well-directed, though noiseless,
blow in the dark.
Tiny lights glimmered ahead. It was Totes. The coach had been on the
road eleven hours, which, with the three hours allotted the horses in four
periods for feeding and breathing, made fourteen. It entered the town, and
stopped before the Hotel du Commerce.
The coach door opened; a well-known noise made all the travellers start;
it was the clanging of a scabbard, on the pavement; then a voice called out
something in German.
Although the coach had come to a standstill, no one got out; it looked as if
they were afraid of being murdered the moment they left their seats.
Thereupon the driver appeared, holding in his hand one of his lanterns, which
cast a sudden glow on the interior of the coach, lighting up the double row of
startled faces, mouths agape, and eyes wide open in surprise and terror.
Beside the driver stood in the full light a German officer, a tall young man,
fair and slender, tightly encased in his uniform like a woman in her corset,
his flat shiny cap, tilted to one side of his head, making him look like an
English hotel runner. His exaggerated mustache, long and straight and
tapering to a point at either end in a single blond hair that could hardly be
seen, seemed to weigh down the corners of his mouth and give a droop to his
lips.
In Alsatian French he requested the travellers to alight, saying stiffly:
“Kindly get down, ladies and gentlemen.”
The two nuns were the first to obey, manifesting the docility of holy
women accustomed to submission on every occasion. Next appeared the
count and countess, followed by the manufacturer and his wife, after whom
came Loiseau, pushing his larger and better half before him.
“Good-day, sir,” he said to the officer as he put his foot to the ground,
acting on an impulse born of prudence rather than of politeness. The other,
insolent like all in authority, merely stared without replying.
Boule de Suif and Cornudet, though near the door, were the last to alight,
grave and dignified before the enemy. The stout girl tried to control herself
and appear calm; the democrat stroked his long russet beard with a somewhat
trembling hand. Both strove to maintain their dignity, knowing well that at
such a time each individual is always looked upon as more or less typical of
his nation; and, also, resenting the complaisant attitude of their companions,
Boule de Suif tried to wear a bolder front than her neighbors, the virtuous
women, while he, feeling that it was incumbent on him to set a good example,
kept up the attitude of resistance which he had first assumed when he
undertook to mine the high roads round Rouen.
They entered the spacious kitchen of the inn, and the German, having
demanded the passports signed by the general in command, in which were
mentioned the name, description and profession of each traveller, inspected
them all minutely, comparing their appearance with the written particulars.
Then he said brusquely: “All right,” and turned on his heel.
They breathed freely, All were still hungry; so supper was ordered. Half
an hour was required for its preparation, and while two servants were
apparently engaged in getting it ready the travellers went to look at their
rooms. These all opened off a long corridor, at the end of which was a glazed
door with a number on it.
They were just about to take their seats at table when the innkeeper
appeared in person. He was a former horse dealer — a large, asthmatic
individual, always wheezing, coughing, and clearing his throat. Follenvie
was his patronymic.
He called:
“Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset?”
Boule de Suif started, and turned round.
“That is my name.”
“Mademoiselle, the Prussian officer wishes to speak to you immediately.”
“To me?”
“Yes; if you are Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset.”
She hesitated, reflected a moment, and then declared roundly:
“That may be; but I’m not going.”
They moved restlessly around her; every one wondered and speculated as
to the cause of this order. The count approached:
“You are wrong, madame, for your refusal may bring trouble not only on
yourself but also on all your companions. It never pays to resist those in
authority. Your compliance with this request cannot possibly be fraught with
any danger; it has probably been made because some formality or other was
forgotten.”
All added their voices to that of the count; Boule de Suif was begged,
urged, lectured, and at last convinced; every one was afraid of the
complications which might result from headstrong action on her part. She
said finally:
“I am doing it for your sakes, remember that!”
The countess took her hand.
“And we are grateful to you.”
She left the room. All waited for her return before commencing the meal.
Each was distressed that he or she had not been sent for rather than this
impulsive, quick-tempered girl, and each mentally rehearsed platitudes in
case of being summoned also.
But at the end of ten minutes she reappeared breathing hard, crimson with
indignation.
“Oh! the scoundrel! the scoundrel!” she stammered.
 All were anxious to know what had happened; but she declined to
enlighten them, and when the count pressed the point, she silenced him with
much dignity, saying:
“No; the matter has nothing to do with you, and I cannot speak of it.”
Then they took their places round a high soup tureen, from which issued
an odor of cabbage. In spite of this coincidence, the supper was cheerful. The
cider was good; the Loiseaus and the nuns drank it from motives of economy.
The others ordered wine; Cornudet demanded beer. He had his own fashion
of uncorking the bottle and making the beer foam, gazing at it as he inclined
his glass and then raised it to a position between the lamp and his eye that he
might judge of its color. When he drank, his great beard, which matched the
color of his favorite beverage, seemed to tremble with affection; his eyes
positively squinted in the endeavor not to lose sight of the beloved glass, and
he looked for all the world as if he were fulfilling the only function for which
he was born. He seemed to have established in his mind an affinity between
the two great passions of his life — pale ale and revolution — and assuredly
he could not taste the one without dreaming of the other.
Monsieur and Madame Follenvie dined at the end of the table. The man,
wheezing like a broken-down locomotive, was too short-winded to talk when
he was eating. But the wife was not silent a moment; she told how the
Prussians had impressed her on their arrival, what they did, what they said;
execrating them in the first place because they cost her money, and in the
second because she had two sons in the army. She addressed herself
principally to the countess, flattered at the opportunity of talking to a lady of
quality.
Then she lowered her voice, and began to broach delicate subjects. Her
husband interrupted her from time to time, saying:
“You would do well to hold your tongue, Madame Follenvie.”
But she took no notice of him, and went on:
“Yes, madame, these Germans do nothing but eat potatoes and pork, and
then pork and potatoes. And don’t imagine for a moment that they are clean!
No, indeed! And if only you saw them drilling for hours, indeed for days,
together; they all collect in a field, then they do nothing but march backward
and forward, and wheel this way and that. If only they would cultivate the
land, or remain at home and work on their high roads! Really, madame, these
soldiers are of no earthly use! Poor people have to feed and keep them, only
in order that they may learn how to kill! True, I am only an old woman with
no education, but when I see them wearing themselves out marching about
from morning till night, I say to myself: When there are people who make
discoveries that are of use to people, why should others take so much trouble
to do harm? Really, now, isn’t it a terrible thing to kill people, whether they
are Prussians, or English, or Poles, or French? If we revenge ourselves on
any one who injures us we do wrong, and are punished for it; but when our
sons are shot down like partridges, that is all right, and decorations are given
to the man who kills the most. No, indeed, I shall never be able to understand
it.”
Cornudet raised his voice:
“War is a barbarous proceeding when we attack a peaceful neighbor, but
it is a sacred duty when undertaken in defence of one’s country.”
The old woman looked down:
“Yes; it’s another matter when one acts in self-defence; but would it not be
better to kill all the kings, seeing that they make war just to amuse
themselves?”
Cornudet’s eyes kindled.
“Bravo, citizens!” he said.
Monsieur Carre-Lamadon was reflecting profoundly. Although an ardent
admirer of great generals, the peasant woman’s sturdy common sense made
him reflect on the wealth which might accrue to a country by the employment
of so many idle hands now maintained at a great expense, of so much
unproductive force, if they were employed in those great industrial
enterprises which it will take centuries to complete.
But Loiseau, leaving his seat, went over to the innkeeper and began
chatting in a low voice. The big man chuckled, coughed, sputtered; his
enormous carcass shook with merriment at the pleasantries of the other; and
he ended by buying six casks of claret from Loiseau to be delivered in
spring, after the departure of the Prussians.
The moment supper was over every one went to bed, worn out with
fatigue.
But Loiseau, who had been making his observations on the sly, sent his
wife to bed, and amused himself by placing first his ear, and then his eye, to
the bedroom keyhole, in order to discover what he called “the mysteries of
the corridor.”
At the end of about an hour he heard a rustling, peeped out quickly, and
caught sight of Boule de Suif, looking more rotund than ever in a dressing-
gown of blue cashmere trimmed with white lace. She held a candle in her
hand, and directed her steps to the numbered door at the end of the corridor.
But one of the side doors was partly opened, and when, at the end of a few
minutes, she returned, Cornudet, in his shirt-sleeves, followed her. They
spoke in low tones, then stopped short. Boule de Suif seemed to be stoutly
denying him admission to her room. Unfortunately, Loiseau could not at first
hear what they said; but toward the end of the conversation they raised their
voices, and he caught a few words. Cornudet was loudly insistent.
“How silly you are! What does it matter to you?” he said.
She seemed indignant, and replied:
“No, my good man, there are times when one does not do that sort of thing;
besides, in this place it would be shameful.”
Apparently he did not understand, and asked the reason. Then she lost her
temper and her caution, and, raising her voice still higher, said:
“Why? Can’t you understand why? When there are Prussians in the house!
Perhaps even in the very next room!”
He was silent. The patriotic shame of this wanton, who would not suffer
herself to be caressed in the neighborhood of the enemy, must have roused his
dormant dignity, for after bestowing on her a simple kiss he crept softly back
to his room. Loiseau, much edified, capered round the bedroom before taking
his place beside his slumbering spouse.
Then silence reigned throughout the house. But soon there arose from
some remote part — it might easily have been either cellar or attic — a
stertorous, monotonous, regular snoring, a dull, prolonged rumbling, varied
by tremors like those of a boiler under pressure of steam. Monsieur
Follenvie had gone to sleep.
As they had decided on starting at eight o’clock the next morning, every
one was in the kitchen at that hour; but the coach, its roof covered with snow,
stood by itself in the middle of the yard, without either horses or driver. They
sought the latter in the stables, coach-houses and barns — but in vain. So the
men of the party resolved to scour the country for him, and sallied forth. They
found them selves in the square, with the church at the farther side, and to
right and left low-roofed houses where there were some Prussian soldiers.
The first soldier they saw was peeling potatoes. The second, farther on, was
washing out a barber’s shop. An other, bearded to the eyes, was fondling a
crying infant, and dandling it on his knees to quiet it; and the stout peasant
women, whose men-folk were for the most part at the war, were, by means of
signs, telling their obedient conquerors what work they were to do: chop
wood, prepare soup, grind coffee; one of them even was doing the washing
for his hostess, an infirm old grandmother.
The count, astonished at what he saw, questioned the beadle who was
coming out of the presbytery. The old man answered:
“Oh, those men are not at all a bad sort; they are not Prussians, I am told;
they come from somewhere farther off, I don’t exactly know where. And they
have all left wives and children behind them; they are not fond of war either,
you may be sure! I am sure they are mourning for the men where they come
from, just as we do here; and the war causes them just as much unhappiness
as it does us. As a matter of fact, things are not so very bad here just now,
because the soldiers do no harm, and work just as if they were in their own
homes. You see, sir, poor folk always help one another; it is the great ones of
this world who make war.”
Cornudet indignant at the friendly understanding established between
conquerors and conquered, withdrew, preferring to shut himself up in the inn.
“They are repeopling the country,” jested Loiseau.
“They are undoing the harm they have done,” said Monsieur Carre-
Lamadon gravely.
But they could not find the coach driver. At last he was discovered in the
village cafe, fraternizing cordially with the officer’s orderly.
“Were you not told to harness the horses at eight o’clock?” demanded the
count.
“Oh, yes; but I’ve had different orders since.”
“What orders?”
“Not to harness at all.”
“Who gave you such orders?”
“Why, the Prussian officer.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Go and ask him. I am forbidden to harness the horses, so I
don’t harness them — that’s all.”
“Did he tell you so himself?”
“No, sir; the innkeeper gave me the order from him.”
“When?”
“Last evening, just as I was going to bed.”
The three men returned in a very uneasy frame of mind.
 They asked for Monsieur Follenvie, but the servant replied that on account
of his asthma he never got up before ten o’clock. They were strictly
forbidden to rouse him earlier, except in case of fire.
They wished to see the officer, but that also was impossible, although he
lodged in the inn. Monsieur Follenvie alone was authorized to interview him
on civil matters. So they waited. The women returned to their rooms, and
occupied themselves with trivial matters.
Cornudet settled down beside the tall kitchen fireplace, before a blazing
fire. He had a small table and a jug of beer placed beside him, and he
smoked his pipe — a pipe which enjoyed among democrats a consideration
almost equal to his own, as though it had served its country in serving
Cornudet. It was a fine meerschaum, admirably colored to a black the shade
of its owner’s teeth, but sweet-smelling, gracefully curved, at home in its
master’s hand, and completing his physiognomy. And Cornudet sat
motionless, his eyes fixed now on the dancing flames, now on the froth which
crowned his beer; and after each draught he passed his long, thin fingers with
an air of satisfaction through his long, greasy hair, as he sucked the foam from
his mustache.
Loiseau, under pretence of stretching his legs, went out to see if he could
sell wine to the country dealers. The count and the manufacturer began to talk
politics. They forecast the future of France. One believed in the Orleans
dynasty, the other in an unknown savior — a hero who should rise up in the
last extremity: a Du Guesclin, perhaps a Joan of Arc? or another Napoleon
the First? Ah! if only the Prince Imperial were not so young! Cornudet,
listening to them, smiled like a man who holds the keys of destiny in his
hands. His pipe perfumed the whole kitchen.
As the clock struck ten, Monsieur Follenvie appeared. He was
immediately surrounded and questioned, but could only repeat, three or four
times in succession, and without variation, the words:
“The officer said to me, just like this: ‘Monsieur Follenvie, you will
forbid them to harness up the coach for those travellers to-morrow. They are
not to start without an order from me. You hear? That is sufficient.’”
Then they asked to see the officer. The count sent him his card, on which
Monsieur Carre-Lamadon also inscribed his name and titles. The Prussian
sent word that the two men would be admitted to see him after his luncheon
— that is to say, about one o’clock.
 The ladies reappeared, and they all ate a little, in spite of their anxiety.
Boule de Suif appeared ill and very much worried.
They were finishing their coffee when the orderly came to fetch the
gentlemen.
Loiseau joined the other two; but when they tried to get Cornudet to
accompany them, by way of adding greater solemnity to the occasion, he
declared proudly that he would never have anything to do with the Germans,
and, resuming his seat in the chimney corner, he called for another jug of
beer.
The three men went upstairs, and were ushered into the best room in the
inn, where the officer received them lolling at his ease in an armchair, his
feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a long porcelain pipe, and enveloped in a
gorgeous dressing-gown, doubtless stolen from the deserted dwelling of
some citizen destitute of taste in dress. He neither rose, greeted them, nor
even glanced in their direction. He afforded a fine example of that insolence
of bearing which seems natural to the victorious soldier.
After the lapse of a few moments he said in his halting French:
“What do you want?”
“We wish to start on our journey,” said the count.
“No.”
“May I ask the reason of your refusal?”
“Because I don’t choose.”
“I would respectfully call your attention, monsieur, to the fact that your
general in command gave us a permit to proceed to Dieppe; and I do not think
we have done anything to deserve this harshness at your hands.”
“I don’t choose — that’s all. You may go.”
They bowed, and retired.
The afternoon was wretched. They could not understand the caprice of
this German, and the strangest ideas came into their heads. They all
congregated in the kitchen, and talked the subject to death, imagining all
kinds of unlikely things. Perhaps they were to be kept as hostages — but for
what reason? or to be extradited as prisoners of war? or possibly they were
to be held for ransom? They were panic-stricken at this last supposition. The
richest among them were the most alarmed, seeing themselves forced to
empty bags of gold into the insolent soldier’s hands in order to buy back their
lives. They racked their brains for plausible lies whereby they might conceal
the fact that they were rich, and pass themselves off as poor — very poor.
Loiseau took off his watch chain, and put it in his pocket. The approach of
night increased their apprehension. The lamp was lighted, and as it wanted
yet two hours to dinner Madame Loiseau proposed a game of trente et un. It
would distract their thoughts. The rest agreed, and Cornudet himself joined
the party, first putting out his pipe for politeness’ sake.
The count shuffled the cards — dealt — and Boule de Suif had thirty-one
to start with; soon the interest of the game assuaged the anxiety of the players.
But Cornudet noticed that Loiseau and his wife were in league to cheat.
They were about to sit down to dinner when Monsieur Follenvie
appeared, and in his grating voice announced:
“The Prussian officer sends to ask Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset if she
has changed her mind yet.”
Boule de Suif stood still, pale as death. Then, suddenly turning crimson
with anger, she gasped out:
“Kindly tell that scoundrel, that cur, that carrion of a Prussian, that I will
never consent — you understand? — never, never, never!”
The fat innkeeper left the room. Then Boule de Suif was surrounded,
questioned, entreated on all sides to reveal the mystery of her visit to the
officer. She refused at first; but her wrath soon got the better of her.
“What does he want? He wants to make me his mistress!” she cried.
No one was shocked at the word, so great was the general indignation.
Cornudet broke his jug as he banged it down on the table. A loud outcry
arose against this base soldier. All were furious. They drew together in
common resistance against the foe, as if some part of the sacrifice exacted of
Boule de Suif had been demanded of each. The count declared, with supreme
disgust, that those people behaved like ancient barbarians. The women,
above all, manifested a lively and tender sympathy for Boule de Suif. The
nuns, who appeared only at meals, cast down their eyes, and said nothing.
They dined, however, as soon as the first indignant outburst had subsided;
but they spoke little and thought much.
The ladies went to bed early; and the men, having lighted their pipes,
proposed a game of ecarte, in which Monsieur Follenvie was invited to join,
the travellers hoping to question him skillfully as to the best means of
vanquishing the officer’s obduracy. But he thought of nothing but his cards,
would listen to nothing, reply to nothing, and repeated, time after time:
“Attend to the game, gentlemen! attend to the game!” So absorbed was his
attention that he even forgot to expectorate. The consequence was that his
chest gave forth rumbling sounds like those of an organ. His wheezing lungs
struck every note of the asthmatic scale, from deep, hollow tones to a shrill,
hoarse piping resembling that of a young cock trying to crow.
He refused to go to bed when his wife, overcome with sleep, came to
fetch him. So she went off alone, for she was an early bird, always up with
the sun; while he was addicted to late hours, ever ready to spend the night
with friends. He merely said: “Put my egg-nogg by the fire,” and went on
with the game. When the other men saw that nothing was to be got out of him
they declared it was time to retire, and each sought his bed.
They rose fairly early the next morning, with a vague hope of being
allowed to start, a greater desire than ever to do so, and a terror at having to
spend another day in this wretched little inn.
Alas! the horses remained in the stable, the driver was invisible. They
spent their time, for want of something better to do, in wandering round the
coach.
Luncheon was a gloomy affair; and there was a general coolness toward
Boule de Suif, for night, which brings counsel, had somewhat modified the
judgment of her companions. In the cold light of the morning they almost bore
a grudge against the girl for not having secretly sought out the Prussian, that
the rest of the party might receive a joyful surprise when they awoke. What
more simple?
Besides, who would have been the wiser? She might have saved
appearances by telling the officer that she had taken pity on their distress.
Such a step would be of so little consequence to her.
But no one as yet confessed to such thoughts.
In the afternoon, seeing that they were all bored to death, the count
proposed a walk in the neighborhood of the village. Each one wrapped
himself up well, and the little party set out, leaving behind only Cornudet,
who preferred to sit over the fire, and the two nuns, who were in the habit of
spending their day in the church or at the presbytery.
The cold, which grew more intense each day, almost froze the noses and
ears of the pedestrians, their feet began to pain them so that each step was a
penance, and when they reached the open country it looked so mournful and
depressing in its limitless mantle of white that they all hastily retraced their
steps, with bodies benumbed and hearts heavy.
The four women walked in front, and the three men followed a little in
their rear.
 Loiseau, who saw perfectly well how matters stood, asked suddenly “if
that trollop were going to keep them waiting much longer in this Godforsaken
spot.” The count, always courteous, replied that they could not exact so
painful a sacrifice from any woman, and that the first move must come from
herself. Monsieur Carre-Lamadon remarked that if the French, as they talked
of doing, made a counter attack by way of Dieppe, their encounter with the
enemy must inevitably take place at Totes. This reflection made the other two
anxious.
“Supposing we escape on foot?” said Loiseau.
The count shrugged his shoulders.
“How can you think of such a thing, in this snow? And with our wives?
Besides, we should be pursued at once, overtaken in ten minutes, and brought
back as prisoners at the mercy of the soldiery.”
This was true enough; they were silent.
The ladies talked of dress, but a certain constraint seemed to prevail
among them.
Suddenly, at the end of the street, the officer appeared. His tall, wasp-like,
uniformed figure was outlined against the snow which bounded the horizon,
and he walked, knees apart, with that motion peculiar to soldiers, who are
always anxious not to soil their carefully polished boots.
He bowed as he passed the ladies, then glanced scornfully at the men,
who had sufficient dignity not to raise their hats, though Loiseau made a
movement to do so.
Boule de Suif flushed crimson to the ears, and the three married women
felt unutterably humiliated at being met thus by the soldier in company with
the girl whom he had treated with such scant ceremony.
Then they began to talk about him, his figure, and his face. Madame Carre-
Lamadon, who had known many officers and judged them as a connoisseur,
thought him not at all bad-looking; she even regretted that he was not a
Frenchman, because in that case he would have made a very handsome
hussar, with whom all the women would assuredly have fallen in love.
When they were once more within doors they did not know what to do
with themselves. Sharp words even were exchanged apropos of the merest
trifles. The silent dinner was quickly over, and each one went to bed early in
the hope of sleeping, and thus killing time.
They came down next morning with tired faces and irritable tempers; the
women scarcely spoke to Boule de Suif.
 A church bell summoned the faithful to a baptism. Boule de Suif had a
child being brought up by peasants at Yvetot. She did not see him once a year,
and never thought of him; but the idea of the child who was about to be
baptized induced a sudden wave of tenderness for her own, and she insisted
on being present at the ceremony.
As soon as she had gone out, the rest of the company looked at one another
and then drew their chairs together; for they realized that they must decide on
some course of action. Loiseau had an inspiration: he proposed that they
should ask the officer to detain Boule de Suif only, and to let the rest depart
on their way.
Monsieur Follenvie was intrusted with this commission, but he returned to
them almost immediately. The German, who knew human nature, had shown
him the door. He intended to keep all the travellers until his condition had
been complied with.
Whereupon Madame Loiseau’s vulgar temperament broke bounds.
“We’re not going to die of old age here!” she cried. “Since it’s that
vixen’s trade to behave so with men I don’t see that she has any right to
refuse one more than another. I may as well tell you she took any lovers she
could get at Rouen — even coachmen! Yes, indeed, madame — the coachman
at the prefecture! I know it for a fact, for he buys his wine of us. And now
that it is a question of getting us out of a difficulty she puts on virtuous airs,
the drab! For my part, I think this officer has behaved very well. Why, there
were three others of us, any one of whom he would undoubtedly have
preferred. But no, he contents himself with the girl who is common property.
He respects married women. Just think. He is master here. He had only to
say: ‘I wish it!’ and he might have taken us by force, with the help of his
soldiers.”
The two other women shuddered; the eyes of pretty Madame Carre-
Lamadon glistened, and she grew pale, as if the officer were indeed in the act
of laying violent hands on her.
The men, who had been discussing the subject among themselves, drew
near. Loiseau, in a state of furious resentment, was for delivering up “that
miserable woman,” bound hand and foot, into the enemy’s power. But the
count, descended from three generations of ambassadors, and endowed,
moreover, with the lineaments of a diplomat, was in favor of more tactful
measures.
“We must persuade her,” he said.
 Then they laid their plans.
The women drew together; they lowered their voices, and the discussion
became general, each giving his or her opinion. But the conversation was not
in the least coarse. The ladies, in particular, were adepts at delicate phrases
and charming subtleties of expression to describe the most improper things.
A stranger would have understood none of their allusions, so guarded was
the language they employed. But, seeing that the thin veneer of modesty with
which every woman of the world is furnished goes but a very little way
below the surface, they began rather to enjoy this unedifying episode, and at
bottom were hugely delighted — feeling themselves in their element,
furthering the schemes of lawless love with the gusto of a gourmand cook
who prepares supper for another.
Their gaiety returned of itself, so amusing at last did the whole business
seem to them. The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so
tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in
turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the
thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in
the minds of all: “Since it’s the girl’s trade, why should she refuse this man
more than another?” Dainty Madame Carre-Lamadon seemed to think even
that in Boule de Suif’s place she would be less inclined to refuse him than
another.
The blockade was as carefully arranged as if they were investing a
fortress. Each agreed on the role which he or she was to play, the arguments
to be used, the maneuvers to be executed. They decided on the plan of
campaign, the stratagems they were to employ, and the surprise attacks which
were to reduce this human citadel and force it to receive the enemy within its
walls.
But Cornudet remained apart from the rest, taking no share in the plot.
So absorbed was the attention of all that Boule de Suif’s entrance was
almost unnoticed. But the count whispered a gentle “Hush!” which made the
others look up. She was there. They suddenly stopped talking, and a vague
embarrassment prevented them for a few moments from addressing her. But
the countess, more practiced than the others in the wiles of the drawing-
room, asked her:
“Was the baptism interesting?”
The girl, still under the stress of emotion, told what she had seen and
heard, described the faces, the attitudes of those present, and even the
appearance of the church. She concluded with the words:
“It does one good to pray sometimes.”
Until lunch time the ladies contented themselves with being pleasant to
her, so as to increase her confidence and make her amenable to their advice.
As soon as they took their seats at table the attack began. First they opened
a vague conversation on the subject of self-sacrifice. Ancient examples were
quoted: Judith and Holofernes; then, irrationally enough, Lucrece and Sextus;
Cleopatra and the hostile generals whom she reduced to abject slavery by a
surrender of her charms. Next was recounted an extraordinary story, born of
the imagination of these ignorant millionaires, which told how the matrons of
Rome seduced Hannibal, his lieutenants, and all his mercenaries at Capua.
They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have
arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field
of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic
caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to
vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect
heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to
excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth
was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself
to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.
The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de
Suif also was silent.
During the whole afternoon she was left to her reflections. But instead of
calling her “madame” as they had done hitherto, her companions addressed
her simply as “mademoiselle,” without exactly knowing why, but as if
desirous of making her descend a step in the esteem she had won, and forcing
her to realize her degraded position.
Just as soup was served, Monsieur Follenvie reappeared, repeating his
phrase of the evening before:
“The Prussian officer sends to ask if Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset has
changed her mind.”
Boule de Suif answered briefly:
“No, monsieur.”
But at dinner the coalition weakened. Loiseau made three unfortunate
remarks. Each was cudgeling his brains for further examples of self-
sacrifice, and could find none, when the countess, possibly without ulterior
motive, and moved simply by a vague desire to do homage to religion, began
to question the elder of the two nuns on the most striking facts in the lives of
the saints. Now, it fell out that many of these had committed acts which
would be crimes in our eyes, but the Church readily pardons such deeds
when they are accomplished for the glory of God or the good of mankind.
This was a powerful argument, and the countess made the most of it. Then,
whether by reason of a tacit understanding, a thinly veiled act of
complaisance such as those who wear the ecclesiastical habit excel in, or
whether merely as the result of sheer stupidity — a stupidity admirably
adapted to further their designs — the old nun rendered formidable aid to the
conspirator. They had thought her timid; she proved herself bold, talkative,
bigoted. She was not troubled by the ins and outs of casuistry; her doctrines
were as iron bars; her faith knew no doubt; her conscience no scruples. She
looked on Abraham’s sacrifice as natural enough, for she herself would not
have hesitated to kill both father and mother if she had received a divine
order to that effect; and nothing, in her opinion, could displease our Lord,
provided the motive were praiseworthy. The countess, putting to good use the
consecrated authority of her unexpected ally, led her on to make a lengthy and
edifying paraphrase of that axiom enunciated by a certain school of
moralists: “The end justifies the means.”
“Then, sister,” she asked, “you think God accepts all methods, and
pardons the act when the motive is pure?”
“Undoubtedly, madame. An action reprehensible in itself often derives
merit from the thought which inspires it.”
And in this wise they talked on, fathoming the wishes of God, predicting
His judgments, describing Him as interested in matters which assuredly
concern Him but little.
All was said with the utmost care and discretion, but every word uttered
by the holy woman in her nun’s garb weakened the indignant resistance of the
courtesan. Then the conversation drifted somewhat, and the nun began to talk
of the convents of her order, of her Superior, of herself, and of her fragile
little neighbor, Sister St. Nicephore. They had been sent for from Havre to
nurse the hundreds of soldiers who were in hospitals, stricken with smallpox.
She described these wretched invalids and their malady. And, while they
themselves were detained on their way by the caprices of the Prussian
officer, scores of Frenchmen might be dying, whom they would otherwise
have saved! For the nursing of soldiers was the old nun’s specialty; she had
been in the Crimea, in Italy, in Austria; and as she told the story of her
campaigns she revealed herself as one of those holy sisters of the fife and
drum who seem designed by nature to follow camps, to snatch the wounded
from amid the strife of battle, and to quell with a word, more effectually than
any general, the rough and insubordinate troopers — a masterful woman, her
seamed and pitted face itself an image of the devastations of war.
No one spoke when she had finished for fear of spoiling the excellent
effect of her words.
As soon as the meal was over the travellers retired to their rooms,
whence they emerged the following day at a late hour of the morning.
Luncheon passed off quietly. The seed sown the preceding evening was
being given time to germinate and bring forth fruit.
In the afternoon the countess proposed a walk; then the count, as had been
arranged beforehand, took Boule de Suif’s arm, and walked with her at some
distance behind the rest.
He began talking to her in that familiar, paternal, slightly contemptuous
tone which men of his class adopt in speaking to women like her, calling her
“my dear child,” and talking down to her from the height of his exalted social
position and stainless reputation. He came straight to the point.
“So you prefer to leave us here, exposed like yourself to all the violence
which would follow on a repulse of the Prussian troops, rather than consent
to surrender yourself, as you have done so many times in your life?”
The girl did not reply.
He tried kindness, argument, sentiment. He still bore himself as count,
even while adopting, when desirable, an attitude of gallantry, and making
pretty — nay, even tender — speeches. He exalted the service she would
render them, spoke of their gratitude; then, suddenly, using the familiar
“thou”:
“And you know, my dear, he could boast then of having made a conquest
of a pretty girl such as he won’t often find in his own country.”
Boule de Suif did not answer, and joined the rest of the party.
As soon as they returned she went to her room, and was seen no more.
The general anxiety was at its height. What would she do? If she still
resisted, how awkward for them all!
The dinner hour struck; they waited for her in vain. At last Monsieur
Follenvie entered, announcing that Mademoiselle Rousset was not well, and
that they might sit down to table. They all pricked up their ears. The count
drew near the innkeeper, and whispered:
“Is it all right?”
“Yes.”
Out of regard for propriety he said nothing to his companions, but merely
nodded slightly toward them. A great sigh of relief went up from all breasts;
every face was lighted up with joy.
“By Gad!” shouted Loiseau, “I’ll stand champagne all round if there’s any
to be found in this place.” And great was Madame Loiseau’s dismay when
the proprietor came back with four bottles in his hands. They had all
suddenly become talkative and merry; a lively joy filled all hearts. The count
seemed to perceive for the first time that Madame Carre-Lamadon was
charming; the manufacturer paid compliments to the countess. The
conversation was animated, sprightly, witty, and, although many of the jokes
were in the worst possible taste, all the company were amused by them, and
none offended — indignation being dependent, like other emotions, on
surroundings. And the mental atmosphere had gradually become filled with
gross imaginings and unclean thoughts.
At dessert even the women indulged in discreetly worded allusions. Their
glances were full of meaning; they had drunk much. The count, who even in
his moments of relaxation preserved a dignified demeanor, hit on a much-
appreciated comparison of the condition of things with the termination of a
winter spent in the icy solitude of the North Pole and the joy of shipwrecked
mariners who at last perceive a southward track opening out before their
eyes.
Loiseau, fairly in his element, rose to his feet, holding aloft a glass of
champagne.
“I drink to our deliverance!” he shouted.
All stood up, and greeted the toast with acclamation. Even the two good
sisters yielded to the solicitations of the ladies, and consented to moisten
their lips with the foaming wine, which they had never before tasted. They
declared it was like effervescent lemonade, but with a pleasanter flavor.
“It is a pity,” said Loiseau, “that we have no piano; we might have had a
quadrille.”
Cornudet had not spoken a word or made a movement; he seemed plunged
in serious thought, and now and then tugged furiously at his great beard, as if
trying to add still further to its length. At last, toward midnight, when they
were about to separate, Loiseau, whose gait was far from steady, suddenly
slapped him on the back, saying thickly:
“You’re not jolly to-night; why are you so silent, old man?”
Cornudet threw back his head, cast one swift and scornful glance over the
assemblage, and answered:
“I tell you all, you have done an infamous thing!”
He rose, reached the door, and repeating: “Infamous!” disappeared.
A chill fell on all. Loiseau himself looked foolish and disconcerted for a
moment, but soon recovered his aplomb, and, writhing with laughter,
exclaimed:
“Really, you are all too green for anything!”
Pressed for an explanation, he related the “mysteries of the corridor,”
whereat his listeners were hugely amused. The ladies could hardly contain
their delight. The count and Monsieur Carre-Lamadon laughed till they cried.
They could scarcely believe their ears.
“What! you are sure? He wanted — — “
“I tell you I saw it with my own eyes.”
“And she refused?”
“Because the Prussian was in the next room!”
“Surely you are mistaken?”
“I swear I’m telling you the truth.”
The count was choking with laughter. The manufacturer held his sides.
Loiseau continued:
“So you may well imagine he doesn’t think this evening’s business at all
amusing.”
And all three began to laugh again, choking, coughing, almost ill with
merriment.
Then they separated. But Madame Loiseau, who was nothing if not
spiteful, remarked to her husband as they were on the way to bed that “that
stuck-up little minx of a Carre-Lamadon had laughed on the wrong side of her
mouth all the evening.”
“You know,” she said, “when women run after uniforms it’s all the same
to them whether the men who wear them are French or Prussian. It’s perfectly
sickening!”
The next morning the snow showed dazzling white tinder a clear winter
sun. The coach, ready at last, waited before the door; while a flock of white
pigeons, with pink eyes spotted in the centres with black, puffed out their
white feathers and walked sedately between the legs of the six horses,
picking at the steaming manure.
The driver, wrapped in his sheepskin coat, was smoking a pipe on the
box, and all the passengers, radiant with delight at their approaching
departure, were putting up provisions for the remainder of the journey.
They were waiting only for Boule de Suif. At last she appeared.
She seemed rather shamefaced and embarrassed, and advanced with timid
step toward her companions, who with one accord turned aside as if they had
not seen her. The count, with much dignity, took his wife by the arm, and
removed her from the unclean contact.
The girl stood still, stupefied with astonishment; then, plucking up
courage, accosted the manufacturer’s wife with a humble “Good-morning,
madame,” to which the other replied merely with a slight and insolent nod,
accompanied by a look of outraged virtue. Every one suddenly appeared
extremely busy, and kept as far from Boule de Suif as if her skirts had been
infected with some deadly disease. Then they hurried to the coach, followed
by the despised courtesan, who, arriving last of all, silently took the place
she had occupied during the first part of the journey.
The rest seemed neither to see nor to know her — all save Madame
Loiseau, who, glancing contemptuously in her direction, remarked, half
aloud, to her husband:
“What a mercy I am not sitting beside that creature!”
The lumbering vehicle started on its way, and the journey began afresh.
At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She
felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to
the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.
But the countess, turning toward Madame Carre-Lamadon, soon broke the
painful silence:
“I think you know Madame d’Etrelles?”
“Yes; she is a friend of mine.”
“Such a charming woman!”
“Delightful! Exceptionally talented, and an artist to the finger tips. She
sings marvellously and draws to perfection.”
The manufacturer was chatting with the count, and amid the clatter of the
window-panes a word of their conversation was now and then
distinguishable: “Shares — maturity — premium — time-limit.”
 Loiseau, who had abstracted from the inn the timeworn pack of cards,
thick with the grease of five years’ contact with half-wiped-off tables, started
a game of bezique with his wife.
The good sisters, taking up simultaneously the long rosaries hanging from
their waists, made the sign of the cross, and began to mutter in unison
interminable prayers, their lips moving ever more and more swiftly, as if they
sought which should outdistance the other in the race of orisons; from time to
time they kissed a medal, and crossed themselves anew, then resumed their
rapid and unintelligible murmur.
Cornudet sat still, lost in thought.
Ah the end of three hours Loiseau gathered up the cards, and remarked that
he was hungry.
His wife thereupon produced a parcel tied with string, from which she
extracted a piece of cold veal. This she cut into neat, thin slices, and both
began to eat.
“We may as well do the same,” said the countess. The rest agreed, and she
unpacked the provisions which had been prepared for herself, the count, and
the Carre-Lamadons. In one of those oval dishes, the lids of which are
decorated with an earthenware hare, by way of showing that a game pie lies
within, was a succulent delicacy consisting of the brown flesh of the game
larded with streaks of bacon and flavored with other meats chopped fine. A
solid wedge of Gruyere cheese, which had been wrapped in a newspaper,
bore the imprint: “Items of News,” on its rich, oily surface.
The two good sisters brought to light a hunk of sausage smelling strongly
of garlic; and Cornudet, plunging both hands at once into the capacious
pockets of his loose overcoat, produced from one four hard-boiled eggs and
from the other a crust of bread. He removed the shells, threw them into the
straw beneath his feet, and began to devour the eggs, letting morsels of the
bright yellow yolk fall in his mighty beard, where they looked like stars.
Boule de Suif, in the haste and confusion of her departure, had not thought
of anything, and, stifling with rage, she watched all these people placidly
eating. At first, ill-suppressed wrath shook her whole person, and she opened
her lips to shriek the truth at them, to overwhelm them with a volley of
insults; but she could not utter a word, so choked was she with indignation.
No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up
in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then
rejected her as a thing useless and unclean. Then she remembered her big
basket full of the good things they had so greedily devoured: the two chickens
coated in jelly, the pies, the pears, the four bottles of claret; and her fury
broke forth like a cord that is overstrained, and she was on the verge of tears.
She made terrible efforts at self-control, drew herself up, swallowed the
sobs which choked her; but the tears rose nevertheless, shone at the brink of
her eyelids, and soon two heavy drops coursed slowly down her cheeks.
Others followed more quickly, like water filtering from a rock, and fell, one
after another, on her rounded bosom. She sat upright, with a fixed expression,
her face pale and rigid, hoping desperately that no one saw her give way.
But the countess noticed that she was weeping, and with a sign drew her
husband’s attention to the fact. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “Well,
what of it? It’s not my fault.” Madame Loiseau chuckled triumphantly, and
murmured:
“She’s weeping for shame.”
The two nuns had betaken themselves once more to their prayers, first
wrapping the remainder of their sausage in paper:
Then Cornudet, who was digesting his eggs, stretched his long legs under
the opposite seat, threw himself back, folded his arms, smiled like a man
who had just thought of a good joke, and began to whistle the Marseillaise.
The faces of his neighbors clouded; the popular air evidently did not find
favor with them; they grew nervous and irritable, and seemed ready to howl
as a dog does at the sound of a barrel-organ. Cornudet saw the discomfort he
was creating, and whistled the louder; sometimes he even hummed the
words:
Amour sacre de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens, nos bras vengeurs,
Liberte, liberte cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
The coach progressed more swiftly, the snow being harder now; and all
the way to Dieppe, during the long, dreary hours of the journey, first in the
gathering dusk, then in the thick darkness, raising his voice above the
rumbling of the vehicle, Cornudet continued with fierce obstinacy his
vengeful and monotonous whistling, forcing his weary and exasperated-
hearers to follow the song from end to end, to recall every word of every
line, as each was repeated over and over again with untiring persistency.
And Boule de Suif still wept, and sometimes a sob she could not restrain
was heard in the darkness between two verses of the song.
 JADIS, OR, THE LOVE OF LONG AGO

The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded knoll in the midst of tall
trees with dark-green foliage; the park extended to a great distance, in one
direction to the edge of the forest, in another to the distant country. A few
yards from the front of the house was a huge stone basin with marble ladies
taking a bath; other, basins were seen at intervals down to the foot of the
slope, and a stream of water fell in cascades from one basin to another.
From the manor house, which preserved the grace of a superannuated
coquette, down to the grottos incrusted with shell-work, where slumbered the
loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had retained the
physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak still of ancient
customs, of the manners of long ago, of former gallantries, and of the elegant
trivialities so dear to our grandmothers.
In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with
shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in hoop-skirts, and
gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman, who seemed dead as soon as
she ceased to move, was almost lying down in a large easy-chair, at each
side of which hung a thin, mummy-like hand.
Her dim eyes were gazing dreamily toward the distant horizon as if they
sought to follow through the park the visions of her youth. Through the open
window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the odor of grass
and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks flutter around her
wrinkled forehead and old memories float through her brain.
Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging
in braids down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a
pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she was dreaming,
while her agile fingers flew over her work.
But the old lady turned round her head, and said:
“Berthe, read me something out of the newspapers, that I may still know
sometimes what is going on in the world.”
The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.
 “There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; shall I pass that
over?”
“Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead in
France, that they no longer talk about abductions or adventures as they did
formerly?”
The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.
“Here is one,” she said. “It is entitled ‘A Love Drama!’”
The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. “Read that for me,” she said.
And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol throwing. A wife, in
order to avenge herself on her husband’s mistress, had burned her face and
eyes. She had left the Court of Assizes acquitted, declared to be innocent,
amid the applause of the crowd.
The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:
“This is horrible — why, it is perfectly horrible!
“See whether you can find anything else to read to me, darling.”
Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of
criminal cases, she read:
“‘Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led
astray by a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart
proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is maimed for
life. The jury, all men of moral character, condoning the illicit love of the
murderess, honorably acquitted her.’”
This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a trembling
voice, she said:
“Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has
given you love, the only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry
the only distraction of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with it
vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud into a flagon of Spanish
wine.”
Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother’s indignation.
“But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was
married, and her husband deceived her.”
The grandmother gave a start.
“What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
today?”
Berthe replied:
“But marriage is sacred, grandmamma.”
 The grandmother’s heart, which had its birth in the great age of gallantry,
gave a sudden leap.
“It is love that is sacred,” she said. “Listen, child, to an old woman who
has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long experience of men
and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to found a
family, and we form families in order to constitute society. Society cannot
dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each family is a link in that
chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek metals of the same order.
When we marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must
combine fortunes, unite similar races and aim at the common interest, which
is riches and children. We marry only once my child, because the world
requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one lifetime because
nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is law, and love is an instinct
which impels us, sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a devious
path. The world has made laws to combat our instincts — it was necessary to
make them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist
them too much, because they come from God; while the laws only come from
men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible, darling,
as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it
is.”
Berthe opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She murmured:
“Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once.”
The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven, as if again to
invoke the defunct god of gallantries. She exclaimed indignantly:
“You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every corner of
existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion. People have written
poetry telling you that people have died of love. In my time poetry was
written to teach men to love every woman. And we! when we liked a
gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when a fresh caprice came into
our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid of the last Lover — unless we
kept both of them.”
The old woman smiled a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery twinkled in
her gray eye, the intellectual, skeptical roguery of those people who did not
believe that they were made of the same clay as the rest, and who lived as
masters for whom common beliefs were not intended.
 The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:
“So, then, women have no honor?”
The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of
Voltaire’s irony, she had also a little of Jean Jacques’s glowing philosophy:
“No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even boasted of it?
But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies in France, had lived
without a lover, she would have had the entire court laughing at her. Those
who wished to live differently had only to enter a convent. And you imagine,
perhaps, that your husbands will love but you alone, all their lives. As if,
indeed, this could be the case. I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in
order that society should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you
understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how
you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like
a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”
The young girl caught the old woman’s trembling hands in her own.
“Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!”
And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to bestow
on her a great passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance with the
dream of modern poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on the forehead,
quite imbued still with that charming, healthy reason with which gallant
philosophers tinctured the thought of the eighteenth century, murmured:
“Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you will
be very unhappy.”
 THE DISPENSER OF HOLY WATER

We lived formerly in a little house beside the high road outside the village.
He had set up in business as a wheelwright, after marrying the daughter of a
farmer of the neighborhood, and as they were both industrious, they managed
to save up a nice little fortune. But they had no children, and this caused them
great sorrow. Finally a son was born, whom they named Jean. They both
loved and petted him, enfolding him with their affection, and were unwilling
to let him be out of their sight.
When he was five years old some mountebanks passed through the country
and set up their tent in the town hall square.
Jean, who had seen them pass by, made his escape from the house, and
after his father had made a long search for him, he found him among the
learned goats and trick dogs, uttering shouts of laughter and sitting on the
knees of an old clown.
Three days later, just as they were sitting down to dinner, the wheelwright
and his wife noticed that their son was not in the house. They looked for him
in the garden, and as they did not find him, his father went out into the road
and shouted at the top of his voice, “Jean!”
Night came on. A brown vapor arose making distant objects look still
farther away and giving them a dismal, weird appearance. Three tall pines,
close at hand, seemed to be weeping. Still there was no reply, but the air
appeared to be full of indistinct sighing. The father listened for some time,
thinking he heard a sound first in one direction, then in another, and, almost
beside himself, he ran, out into the night, calling incessantly “Jean! Jean!”
He ran along thus until daybreak, filling the, darkness with his shouts,
terrifying stray animals, torn by a terrible anguish and fearing that he was
losing his mind. His wife, seated on the stone step of their home, sobbed until
morning.
They did not find their son. They both aged rapidly in their inconsolable
sorrow. Finally they sold their house and set out to search together.
They inquired of the shepherds on the hillsides, of the tradesmen passing
by, of the peasants in the villages and of the authorities in the towns. But their
boy had been lost a long time and no one knew anything about him. He had
probably forgotten his own name by this time and also the name of his
village, and his parents wept in silence, having lost hope.
Before long their money came to an end, and they worked out by the day in
the farms and inns, doing the most menial work, eating what was left from the
tables, sleeping on the ground and suffering from cold. Then as they became
enfeebled by hard work no one would employ them any longer, and they were
forced to beg along the high roads. They accosted passers-by in an entreating
voice and with sad, discouraged faces; they begged a morsel of bread from
the harvesters who were dining around a tree in the fields at noon, and they
ate in silence seated on the edge of a ditch. An innkeeper to whom they told
their story said to them one day:
“I know some one who had lost their daughter, and they found her in
Paris.”
They at once set out for Paris.
When they entered the great city they were bewildered by its size and by
the crowds that they saw. But they knew that Jean must be in the midst of all
these people, though they did not know how to set about looking for him.
Then they feared that they might not recognize him, for he was only five years
old when they last saw him.
They visited every place, went through all the streets, stopping whenever
they saw a group of people, hoping for some providential meeting, some
extraordinary luck, some compassionate fate.
They frequently walked at haphazard straight ahead, leaning one against
the other, looking so sad and poverty-stricken that people would give them
alms without their asking.
They spent every Sunday at the doors of the churches, watching the
crowds entering and leaving, trying to distinguish among the faces one that
might be familiar. Several times they thought they recognized him, but always
found they had made a mistake.
In the vestibule of one of the churches which they visited the most
frequently there was an old dispenser of holy Water who had become their
friend. He also had a very sad history, and their sympathy for him had
established a bond of close friendship between them. It ended by them all
three living together in a poor lodging on the top floor of a large house
situated at some distance, quite on the outskirts of the city, and the
wheelwright would sometimes take his new friend’s place at the church when
the latter was ill.
Winter came, a very severe winter. The poor holy water sprinkler died
and the parish priest appointed the wheelwright, whose misfortunes had
come to his knowledge, to replace him. He went every morning and sat in the
same place, on the same chair, wearing away the old stone pillar by
continually leaning against it. He would gaze steadily at every man who
entered the church and looked forward to Sunday with as much impatience as
a schoolboy, for on that day the church was filled with people from morning
till night.
He became very old, growing weaker each day from the dampness of the
church, and his hope oozed away gradually.
He now knew by sight all the people who came to the services; he knew
their hours, their manners, could distinguish their step on the stone pavement.
His interests had become so contracted that the entrance of a stranger in
the church was for him a great event. One day two ladies came in; one was
old, the other young — a mother and daughter probably. Behind them came a
man who was following them. He bowed to them as they came out, and after
offering them some holy water, he took the arm of the elder lady.
“That must be the fiance of the younger one,” thought the wheelwright.
And until evening he kept trying to recall where he had formerly seen a young
man who resembled this one. But the one he was thinking of must be an old
man by this time, for it seemed as if he had known him down home in his
youth.
The same man frequently came again to walk home with the ladies, and
this vague, distant, familiar resemblance which he could not place worried
the old man so much that he made his wife come with him to see if she could
help his impaired memory.
One evening as it was growing dusk the three strangers entered together.
When they had passed the old man said:
“Well, do you know him?”
His wife anxiously tried to ransack her memory. Suddenly she said in a
low tone:
“Yes — yes — but he is darker, taller, stouter and is dressed like a
gentleman, but, father, all the same, it is your face when you were young!”
The old man started violently.
 It was true. He looked like himself and also like his brother who was
dead, and like his father, whom he remembered while he was yet young. The
old couple were so affected that they could not speak. The three persons
came out and were about to leave the church.
The man touched his finger to the holy water sprinkler. Then the old man,
whose hand was trembling so that he was fairly sprinkling the ground with
holy water, exclaimed:
“Jean!”
The young man stopped and looked at him.
He repeated in a lower tone:
“Jean!”
The two women looked at them without understanding.
He then said for the third time, sobbing as he did so:
“Jean!”
The man stooped down, with his face close to the old man’s, and as a
memory of his childhood dawned on him he replied:
“Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne!”
He had forgotten everything, his father’s surname and the name of his
native place, but he always remembered those two words that he had so often
repeated: “Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne.”
He sank to the floor, his face on the old man’s knees, and he wept, kissing
now his father and then his mother, while they were almost breathless from
intense joy.
The two ladies also wept, understanding as they did that some great
happiness had come to pass.
Then they all went to the young man’s house and he told them his history.
The circus people had carried him off. For three years he traveled with them
in various countries. Then the troupe disbanded, and one day an old lady in a
chateau had paid to have him stay with her because she liked his appearance.
As he was intelligent, he was sent to school, then to college, and the old lady
having no children, had left him all her money. He, for his part, had tried to
find his parents, but as he could remember only the two names, “Papa Pierre,
Mamma Jeanne,” he had been unable to do so. Now he was about to be
married, and he introduced his fiancee, who was very good and very pretty.
When the two old people had told their story in their turn he kissed them
once more. They sat up very late that night, not daring to retire lest the
happiness they had so long sought should escape them again while they were
asleep.
But misfortune had lost its hold on them and they were happy for the rest
of their lives.
 SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS

PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXCURSION

M. Patissot, born in Paris, after having failed in his examinations at the
College Henri IV., like many others, had entered the government service
through the influence of one of his aunts, who kept a tobacco store where the
head of one of the departments bought his provisions.
He advanced very slowly, and would, perhaps, have died a fourth-class
clerk without the aid of a kindly Providence, which sometimes watches over
our destiny. He is today fifty-two years old, and it is only at this age that he is
beginning to explore, as a tourist, all that part of France which lies between
the fortifications and the provinces.
The story of his advance might be useful to many employees, just as the
tale of his excursions may be of value to many Parisians who will take them
as a model for their own outings, and will thus, through his example, avoid
certain mishaps which occurred to him.
In 1854 he only enjoyed a salary of 1,800 francs. Through a peculiar trait
of his character he was unpopular with all his superiors, who let him
languish in the eternal and hopeless expectation of the clerk’s ideal, an
increase of salary. Nevertheless he worked; but he did not know how to make
himself appreciated. He had too much self-respect, he claimed. His self-
respect consisted in never bowing to his superiors in a low and servile
manner, as did, according to him, certain of his colleagues, whom he would
not mention. He added that his frankness embarrassed many people, for, like
all the rest, he protested against injustice and the favoritism shown to persons
entirely foreign to the bureaucracy. But his indignant voice never passed
beyond the little cage where he worked.
First as a government clerk, then as a Frenchman and finally as a man who
believed in order he would adhere to whatever government was established,
having an unbounded reverence for authority, except for that of his chiefs.
Each time that he got the chance he would place himself where he could
see the emperor pass, in order to have the honor of taking his hat off to him;
and he would go away puffed up with pride at having bowed to the head of
the state.
From his habit of observing the sovereign he did as many others do; he
imitated the way he trimmed his beard or arranged his hair, the cut of his
clothes, his walk, his mannerisms. Indeed, how many men in each country
seemed to be the living images of the head of the government! Perhaps he
vaguely resembled Napoleon III., but his hair was black; therefore he dyed it,
and then the likeness was complete; and when he met another gentleman in
the street also imitating the imperial countenance he was jealous and looked
at him disdainfully. This need of imitation soon became his hobby, and,
having heard an usher at the Tuilleries imitate the voice of the emperor, he
also acquired the same intonations and studied slowness.
He thus became so much like his model that they might easily have been
mistaken for each other, and certain high dignitaries were heard to remark
that they found it unseemly and even vulgar; the matter was mentioned to the
prime minister, who ordered that the employee should appear before him. But
at the sight of him he began to laugh and repeated two or three times: “That’s
funny, really funny!” This was repeated, and the following day Patissot’s
immediate superior recommended that his subordinate receive an increase of
salary of three hundred francs. He received it immediately.
From that time on his promotions came regularly, thanks to his ape-like
faculty of imitation. The presentiment that some high honor might come to him
some day caused his chiefs to speak to him with deference.
When the Republic was proclaimed it was a disaster for him. He felt lost,
done for, and, losing his head, he stopped dyeing his hair, shaved his face
clean and had his hair cut short, thus acquiring a paternal and benevolent
expression which could not compromise him in any way.
Then his chiefs took revenge for the long time during which he had
imposed upon them, and, having all turned Republican through an instinct of
self preservation, they cut down his salary and delayed his promotion. He,
too, changed his opinions. But the Republic not being a palpable and living
person whom one can resemble, and the presidents succeeding each other
with rapidity, he found himself plunged in the greatest embarrassment, in
terrible distress, and, after an unsuccessful imitation of his last ideal, M.
Thiers, he felt a check put on all his attempts at imitation. He needed a new
manifestation of his personality. He searched for a long time; then, one
morning, he arrived at the office wearing a new hat which had on the side a
small red, white and blue rosette. His colleagues were astounded; they
laughed all that day, the next day, all the week, all the month. But the
seriousness of his demeanor at last disconcerted them, and once more his
superiors became anxious. What mystery could be hidden under this sign?
Was it a simple manifestation of patriotism, or an affirmation of his
allegiance to the Republic, or perhaps the badge of some powerful
association? But to wear it so persistently he must surely have some
powerful and hidden protection. It would be well to be on one’s guard,
especially as he received all pleasantries with unruffled calmness. After that
he was treated with respect, and his sham courage saved him; he was
appointed head clerk on the first of January, 1880. His whole life had been
spent indoors. He hated noise and bustle, and because of this love of rest and
quiet he had remained a bachelor. He spent his Sundays reading tales of
adventure and ruling guide lines which he afterward offered to his
colleagues. In his whole existence he had only taken three vacations of a
week each, when he was changing his quarters. But sometimes, on a holiday,
he would leave by an excursion train for Dieppe or Havre in order to elevate
his mind by the inspiring sight of the sea.
He was full of that common sense which borders on stupidity. For a long
time he had been living quietly, with economy, temperate through prudence,
chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a terrible
apprehension. One evening in the street he suddenly felt an attack of dizziness
which made him fear a stroke of apoplexy. He hastened to a physician and for
five francs obtained the following prescription:
M. X-, fifty-five years old, bachelor, clerk. Full-blooded,
danger of apoplexy. Cold-water applications, moderate nourishment,
plenty of exercise. MONTELLIER, M.D.
Patissot was greatly distressed, and for a whole month, in his office, he
kept a wet towel wrapped around his head like a turban while the water
continually dripped on his work, which he would have to do over again.
Every once in a while he would read the prescription over, probably in the
hope of finding some hidden meaning, of penetrating into the secret thought of
the physician, and also of discovering some forms of exercise which, might
perhaps make him immune from apoplexy.
Then he consulted his friends, showing them the fateful paper. One
advised boxing. He immediately hunted up an instructor, and, on the first day,
he received a punch in the nose which immediately took away all his
ambition in this direction. Single-stick made him gasp for breath, and he
grew so stiff from fencing that for two days and two nights he could not get
sleep. Then a bright idea struck him. It was to walk, every Sunday, to some
suburb of Paris and even to certain places in the capital which he did not
know.
For a whole week his mind was occupied with thoughts of the equipment
which you need for these excursions; and on Sunday, the 30th of May, he
began his preparations. After reading all the extraordinary advertisements
which poor, blind and halt beggars distribute on the street corners, he began
to visit the stores with the intention of looking about him only and of buying
later on. First of all, he visited a so-called American shoe store, where
heavy travelling shoes were shown him. The clerk brought out a kind of
ironclad contrivance, studded with spikes like a harrow, which he claimed to
be made from Rocky Mountain bison skin. He was so carried away with
them that he would willingly have bought two pair, but one was sufficient. He
carried them away under his arm, which soon became numb from the weight.
He next invested in a pair of corduroy trousers, such as carpenters wear, and
a pair of oiled canvas leggings. Then he needed a knapsack for his
provisions, a telescope so as to recognize villages perched on the slope of
distant hills, and finally, a government survey map to enable him to find his
way about without asking the peasants toiling in the fields. Lastly, in order
more comfortably to stand the heat, he decided to purchase a light alpaca
jacket offered by the famous firm of Raminau, according to their
advertisement, for the modest sum of six francs and fifty centimes. He went to
this store and was welcomed by a distinguished-looking young man with a
marvellous head of hair, nails as pink as those of a lady and a pleasant smile.
He showed him the garment. It did not correspond with the glowing style of
the advertisement. Then Patissot hesitatingly asked, “Well, monsieur, will it
wear well?” The young man turned his eyes away in well-feigned
embarrassment, like an honest man who does not wish to deceive a customer,
and, lowering his eyes, he said in a hesitating manner: “Dear me, monsieur,
you understand that for six francs fifty we cannot turn out an article like this
for instance.” And he showed him a much finer jacket than the first one.
Patissot examined it and asked the price. “Twelve francs fifty.” It was very
tempting, but before deciding, he once more questioned the big young man,
who was observing him attentively. “And — is that good? Do you guarantee
it?” “Oh! certainly, monsieur, it is quite goad! But, of course, you must not get
it wet! Yes, it’s really quite good, but you understand that there are goods and
goods. It’s excellent for the price. Twelve francs fifty, just think. Why, that’s
nothing at all. Naturally a twenty-five-franc coat is much better. For twenty-
five francs you get a superior quality, as strong as linen, and which wears
even better. If it gets wet a little ironing will fix it right up. The color never
fades, and it does not turn red in the sunlight. It is the warmest and lightest
material out.” He unfolded his wares, holding them up, shaking them,
crumpling and stretching them in order to show the excellent quality of the
cloth. He talked on convincingly, dispelling all hesitation by words and
gesture. Patissot was convinced; he bought the coat. The pleasant salesman,
still talking, tied up the bundle and continued praising the value of the
purchase. When it was paid for he was suddenly silent. He bowed with a
superior air, and, holding the door open, he watched his customer disappear,
both arms filled with bundles and vainly trying to reach his hat to bow.
M. Patissot returned home and carefully studied the map. He wished to try
on his shoes, which were more like skates than shoes, owing to the spikes.
He slipped and fell, promising himself to be more careful in the future. Then
he spread out all his purchases on a chair and looked at them for a long time.
He went to sleep with this thought: “Isn’t it strange that I didn’t think before
of taking an excursion to the country?”
During the whole week Patissot worked without ambition. He was
dreaming of the outing which he had planned for the following Sunday, and
he was seized by a sudden longing for the country, a desire of growing tender
over nature, this thirst for rustic scenes which overwhelms the Parisians in
spring time.
Only one person gave him any attention; it was a silent old copying clerk
named Boivin, nicknamed Boileau. He himself lived in the country and had a
little garden which he cultivated carefully; his needs were small, and he was
perfectly happy, so they said. Patissot was now able to understand his tastes
and the similarity of their ideals made them immediately fast friends. Old
man Boivin said to him:
“Do I like fishing, monsieur? Why, it’s the delight of my life!”
Then Patissot questioned him with deep interest. Boivin named all the fish
who frolicked under this dirty water — and Patissot thought he could see
them. Boivin told about the different hooks, baits, spots and times suitable for
each kind. And Patissot felt himself more like a fisherman than Boivin
himself. They decided that the following Sunday they would meet for the
opening of the season for the edification of Patissot, who was delighted to
have found such an experienced instructor.
FISHING EXCURSION
The day before the one when he was, for the first time in his life, to throw
a hook into a river, Monsieur Patissot bought, for eighty centimes, “How to
Become a Perfect Fisherman.” In this work he learned many useful things, but
he was especially impressed by the style, and he retained the following
passage:
“In a word, if you wish, without books, without rules, to fish successfully,
to the left or to the right, up or down stream, in the masterly manner that halts
at no difficulty, then fish before, during and after a storm, when the clouds
break and the sky is streaked with lightning, when the earth shakes with the
grumbling thunder; it is then that, either through hunger or terror, all the fish
forget their habits in a turbulent flight.
“In this confusion follow or neglect all favorable signs, and just go on
fishing; you will march to victory!”
In order to catch fish of all sizes, he bought three well-perfected poles,
made to be used as a cane in the city, which, on the river, could be
transformed into a fishing rod by a simple jerk. He bought some number
fifteen hooks for gudgeon, number twelve for bream, and with his number
seven he expected to fill his basket with carp. He bought no earth worms
because he was sure of finding them everywhere; but he laid in a provision
of sand worms. He had a jar full of them, and in the evening he watched them
with interest. The hideous creatures swarmed in their bath of bran as they do
in putrid meat. Patissot wished to practice baiting his hook. He took up one
with disgust, but he had hardly placed the curved steel point against it when
it split open. Twenty times he repeated this without success, and he might
have continued all night had he not feared to exhaust his supply of vermin.
He left by the first train. The station was full of people equipped with
fishing lines. Some, like Patissot’s, looked like simple bamboo canes; others,
in one piece, pointed their slender ends to the skies. They looked like a forest
of slender sticks, which mingled and clashed like swords or swayed like
masts over an ocean of broad-brimmed straw hats.
When the train started fishing rods could be seen sticking out of all the
windows and doors, giving to the train the appearance of a huge, bristly
caterpillar winding through the fields.
 Everybody got off at Courbevoie and rushed for the stage for Bezons. A
crowd of fishermen crowded on top of the coach, holding their rods in their
hands, giving the vehicle the appearance of a porcupine.
All along the road men were travelling in the same direction as though on
a pilgrimage to an unknown Jerusalem. They were carrying those long,
slender sticks resembling those carried by the faithful returning from
Palestine. A tin box on a strap was fastened to their backs. They were in a
hurry.
At Bezons the river appeared. People were lined along bath banks, men in
frock coats, others in duck suits, others in blouses, women, children and even
young girls of marriageable age; all were fishing.
Patissot started for the dam where his friend Boivin was waiting for him.
The latter greeted him rather coolly. He had just made the acquaintance of a
big, fat man of about fifty, who seemed very strong and whose skin was
tanned. All three hired a big boat and lay off almost under the fall of the dam,
where the fish are most plentiful.
Boivin was immediately ready. He baited his line and threw it out, and
then sat motionless, watching the little float with extraordinary concentration.
From time to time he would jerk his line out of the water and cast it farther
out. The fat gentleman threw out his well-baited hooks, put his line down
beside him, filled his pipe, lit it, crossed his arms, and, without another
glance at the cork, he watched the water flow by. Patissot once more began
trying to stick sand worms on his hooks. After about five minutes of this
occupation he called to Boivin; “Monsieur Boivin, would you be so kind as
to help me put these creatures on my hook? Try as I will, I can’t seem to
succeed.” Boivin raised his head: “Please don’t disturb me, Monsieur
Patissot; we are not here for pleasure!” However, he baited the line, which
Patissot then threw out, carefully imitating all the motions of his friend.
The boat was tossing wildly, shaken by the waves, and spun round like a
top by the current, although anchored at both ends. Patissot, absorbed in the
sport, felt a vague kind of uneasiness; he was uncomfortably heavy and
somewhat dizzy.
They caught nothing. Little Boivin, very nervous, was gesticulating and
shaking his head in despair. Patissot was as sad as though some disaster had
overtaken him. The fat gentleman alone, still motionless, was quietly smoking
without paying any attention to his line. At last Patissot, disgusted, turned
toward him and said in a mournful voice:
 “They are not biting, are they?”
He quietly replied:
“Of course not!”
Patissot surprised, looked at him.
“Do you ever catch many?”
“Never!”
“What! Never?”
The fat man, still smoking like a factory chimney, let out the following
words, which completely upset his neighbor:
“It would bother me a lot if they did bite. I don’t come here to fish; I come
because I’m very comfortable here; I get shaken up as though I were at sea. If
I take a line along, it’s only to do as others do.”
Monsieur Patissot, on the other hand, did not feel at all well. His
discomfort, at first vague, kept increasing, and finally took on a definite form.
He felt, indeed, as though he were being tossed by the sea, and he was
suffering from seasickness. After the first attack had calmed down, he
proposed leaving, but Boivin grew so furious that they almost came to blows.
The fat man, moved by pity, rowed the boat back, and, as soon as Patissot
had recovered from his seasickness, they bethought themselves of luncheon.
Two restaurants presented themselves. One of them, very small, looked
like a beer garden, and was patronized by the poorer fishermen. The other
one, which bore the imposing name of “Linden Cottage,” looked like a
middle-class residence and was frequented by the aristocracy of the rod. The
two owners, born enemies, watched each other with hatred across a large
field, which separated them, and where the white house of the dam keeper
and of the inspector of the life-saving department stood out against the green
grass. Moreover, these two officials disagreed, one of them upholding the
beer garden and the other one defending the Elms, and the internal feuds
which arose in these three houses reproduced the whole history of mankind.
Boivin, who knew the beer garden, wished to go there, exclaiming: “The
food is very good, and it isn’t expensive; you’ll see. Anyhow, Monsieur
Patissot, you needn’t expect to get me tipsy the way you did last Sunday. My
wife was furious, you know; and she has sworn never to forgive you!”
The fat gentleman declared that he would only eat at the Elms, because it
was an excellent place and the cooking was as good as in the best restaurants
in Paris.
 “Do as you wish,” declared Boivin; “I am going where I am accustomed
to go.” He left. Patissot, displeased at his friend’s actions, followed the fat
gentleman.
They ate together, exchanged ideas, discussed opinions and found that they
were made for each other.
After the meal everyone started to fish again, but the two new friends left
together. Following along the banks, they stopped near the railroad bridge
and, still talking, they threw their lines in the water. The fish still refused to
bite, but Patissot was now making the best of it.
A family was approaching. The father, whose whiskers stamped him as a
judge, was holding an extraordinarily long rod; three boys of different sizes
were carrying poles of different lengths, according to age; and the mother,
who was very stout, gracefully manoeuvred a charming rod with a ribbon
tied to the handle. The father bowed and asked:
“Is this spot good, gentlemen?” Patissot was going to speak, when his
friend answered: “Fine!” The whole family smiled and settled down beside
the fishermen. The Patissot was seized with a wild desire to catch a fish, just
one, any kind, any size, in order to win the consideration of these people; so
he began to handle his rod as he had seen Boivin do in the morning. He
would let the cork follow the current to the end of the line, jerk the hooks out
of the water, make them describe a large circle in the air and throw them out
again a little higher up. He had even, as he thought, caught the knack of doing
this movement gracefully. He had just jerked his line out rapidly when he felt
it caught in something behind him. He tugged, and a scream burst from behind
him. He perceived, caught on one of his hooks, and describing in the air a
curve like a meteor, a magnificent hat which he placed right in the middle of
the river.
He turned around, bewildered, dropping his pole, which followed the hat
down the stream, while the fat gentleman, his new friend, lay on his back and
roared with laughter. The lady, hatless and astounded, choked with anger; her
husband was outraged and demanded the price of the hat, and Patissot paid
about three times its value.
Then the family departed in a very dignified manner.
Patissot took another rod, and, until nightfall, he gave baths to sand
worms. His neighbor was sleeping peacefully on the grass. Toward seven in
the evening he awoke.
“Let’s go away from here!” he said.
 Then Patissot withdrew his line, gave a cry and sat down hard from
astonishment. At the end of the string was a tiny little fish. When they looked
at him more closely they found that he had been hooked through the stomach;
the hook had caught him as it was being drawn out of the water.
Patissot was filled with a boundless, triumphant joy; he wished to have
the fish fried for himself alone.
During the dinner the friends grew still more intimate. He learned that the
fat gentleman lived at Argenteuil and had been sailing boats for thirty years
without losing interest in the sport. He accepted to take luncheon with him the
following Sunday and to take a sail in his friend’s clipper, Plongeon. He
became so interested in the conversation that he forgot all about his catch. He
did not remember it until after the coffee, and he demanded that it be brought
him. It was alone in the middle of a platter, and looked like a yellow, twisted
match, But he ate it with pride and relish, and at night, on the omnibus, he
told his neighbors that he had caught fourteen pounds of fish during the day.
TWO CELEBRITIES
Monsieur Patissot had promised his friend, the boating man, that he would
spend the following Sunday with him. An unforeseen occurrence changed his
plan. One evening, on the boulevard, he met one of his cousins whom he saw
but very seldom. He was a pleasant journalist, well received in all classes of
society, who offered to show Patissot many interesting things.
“What are you going to do next Sunday?”
“I’m going boating at Argenteuil.”
“Come on! Boating is an awful bore; there is no variety to it. Listen — I’ll
take you along with me. I’ll introduce you to two celebrities. We will visit
the homes of two artists.”
“But I have been ordered to go to the country!”
“That’s just where we’ll go. On the way we’ll call on Meissonier, at his
place in Poissy; then we’ll walk over to Medan, where Zola lives. I have
been commissioned to obtain his next novel for our newspaper.”
Patissot, wild with joy, accepted the invitation. He even bought a new
frock coat, as his own was too much worn to make a good appearance. He
was terribly afraid of saying something foolish either to the artist or to the
man of letters, as do people who speak of an art which they have never
professed.
He mentioned his fears to his cousin, who laughed and answered:
“Pshaw! Just pay them compliments, nothing but compliments, always
compliments; in that way, if you say anything foolish it will be overlooked.
Do you know Meissonier’s paintings?”
“I should say I do.”
“Have you read the Rougon-Macquart series?”
“From first to last.”
“That’s enough. Mention a painting from time to time, speak of a novel
here and there and add:
“‘Superb! Extraordinary! Delightful technique! Wonderfully powerful!’ In
that way you can always get along. I know that those two are very blase
about everything, but admiration always pleases an artist.”
Sunday morning they left for Poissy.
Just a few steps from the station, at the end of the church square, they
found Meissonier’s property. After passing through a low door, painted red,
which led into a beautiful alley of vines, the journalist stopped and, turning
toward his companion, asked:
“What is your idea of Meissonier?”
Patissot hesitated. At last he decided: “A little man, well groomed, clean
shaven, a soldierly appearance.” The other smiled: “All right, come along.”
A quaint building in the form of a chalet appeared to the left; and to the right
side, almost opposite, was the main house. It was a strange-looking building,
where there was a mixture of everything, a mingling of Gothic fortress,
manor, villa, hut, residence, cathedral, mosque, pyramid, a, weird
combination of Eastern and Western architecture. The style was complicated
enough to set a classical architect crazy, and yet there was something
whimsical and pretty about it. It had been invented and built under the
direction of the artist.
They went in; a collection of trunks encumbered a little parlor. A little
man appeared, dressed in a jumper. The striking thing about him was his
beard. He bowed to the journalist, and said: “My dear sir, I hope that you
will excuse me; I only returned yesterday, and everything is all upset here.
Please be seated.” The other refused, excusing himself: “My dear master, I
only dropped in to pay my respects while passing by.” Patissot, very much
embarrassed, was bowing at every word of his friend’s, as though moving
automatically, and he murmured, stammering: “What a su — su — superb
property!” The artist, flattered, smiled, and suggested visiting it.
He led them first to a little pavilion of feudal aspect, where his former
studio was. Then they crossed a parlor, a dining-room, a vestibule full of
beautiful works of art, of beautiful Beauvais, Gobelin and Flanders
tapestries. But the strange external luxury of ornamentation became, inside, a
revel of immense stairways. A magnificent grand stairway, a secret stairway
in one tower, a servants’ stairway in another, stairways everywhere!
Patissot, by chance, opened a door and stepped back astonished. It was a
veritable temple, this place of which respectable people only mention the
name in English, an original and charming sanctuary in exquisite taste, fitted
up like a pagoda, and the decoration of which must certainly have caused a
great effort.
They next visited the park, which was complex, varied, with winding
paths and full of old trees. But the journalist insisted on leaving; and, with
many thanks, he took leave of the master: As they left they met a gardener;
Patissot asked him: “Has Monsieur Meissonier owned this place for a long
time?” The man answered: “Oh, monsieur! that needs explaining. I guess he
bought the grounds in 1846. But, as for the house! he has already torn down
and rebuilt that five or six times. It must have cost him at least two millions!”
As Patissot left he was seized with an immense respect for this man, not on
account of his success, glory or talent, but for putting so much money into a
whim, because the bourgeois deprive themselves of all pleasure in order to
hoard money.
After crossing Poissy, they struck out on foot along the road to Medan.
The road first followed the Seine, which is dotted with charming islands at
this place. Then they went up a hill and crossed the pretty village of
Villaines, went down a little; and finally reached the neighborhood inhabited
by the author of the Rougon-Macquart series.
A pretty old church with two towers appeared on the left. They walked
along a short distance, and a passing farmer directed them to the writer’s
dwelling.
Before entering, they examined the house. A large building, square and
new, very high, seemed, as in the fable of the mountain and the mouse, to
have given birth to a tiny little white house, which nestled near it. This little
house was the original dwelling, and had been built by the former owner. The
tower had been erected by Zola.
They rang the bell. An enormous dog, a cross between a Saint Bernard
and a Newfoundland, began to howl so terribly that Patissot felt a vague
desire to retrace his steps. But a servant ran forward, calmed “Bertrand,”
opened the door, and took the journalist’s card in order to carry it to his
master.
“I hope that he will receive us!” murmured Patissot. “It would be too bad
if we had come all this distance not to see him.”
His companion smiled and answered: “Never fear, I have a plan for
getting in.”
But the servant, who had returned, simply asked them to follow him.
They entered the new building, and Patissot, who was quite enthusiastic,
was panting as he climbed a stairway of ancient style which led to the second
story.
At the same time he was trying to picture to himself this man whose
glorious name echoes at present in all corners of the earth, amid the
exasperated hatred of some, the real or feigned indignation of society, the
envious scorn of several of his colleagues, the respect of a mass of readers,
and the frenzied admiration of a great number. He expected to see a kind of
bearded giant, of awe-inspiring aspect, with a thundering voice and an
appearance little prepossessing at first.
The door opened on a room of uncommonly large dimensions, broad and
high, lighted by an enormous window looking out over the valley. Old
tapestries covered the walls; on the left, a monumental fireplace, flanked by
two stone men, could have burned a century-old oak in one day. An immense
table littered with books, papers and magazines stood in the middle of this
apartment so vast and grand that it first engrossed the eye, and the attention
was only afterward drawn to the man, stretched out when they entered on an
Oriental divan where twenty persons could have slept. He took a few steps
toward them, bowed, motioned to two seats, and turned back to his divan,
where he sat with one leg drawn under him. A book lay open beside him, and
in his right hand he held an ivory paper-cutter, the end of which he observed
from time to time with one eye, closing the other with the persistency of a
near-sighted person.
While the journalist explained the purpose of the visit, and the writer
listened to him without yet answering, at times staring at him fixedly,
Patissot, more and more embarrassed, was observing this celebrity.
Hardly forty, he was of medium height, fairly stout, and with a good-
natured look. His head (very similar to those found in many Italian paintings
of the sixteenth century), without being beautiful in the plastic sense of the
word, gave an impression of great strength of character, power and
intelligence. Short hair stood up straight on the high, well-developed
forehead. A straight nose stopped short, as if cut off suddenly above the
upper lip which was covered with a black mustache; over the whole chin
was a closely-cropped beard. The dark, often ironical look was piercing,
one felt that behind it there was a mind always actively at work observing
people, interpreting words, analyzing gestures, uncovering the heart. This
strong, round head was appropriate to his name, quick and short, with the
bounding resonance of the two vowels.
When the journalist had fully explained his proposition, the writer
answered him that he did not wish to make any definite arrangement, that he
would, however, think the matter over, that his plans were not yet sufficiently
defined. Then he stopped. It was a dismissal, and the two men, a little
confused, arose. A desire seized Patissot; he wished this well-known person
to say something to him, anything, some word which he could repeat to his
colleagues; and, growing bold, he stammered: “Oh, monsieur! If you knew
how I appreciate your works!” The other bowed, but answered nothing.
Patissot became very bold and continued: “It is a great honor for me to speak
to you to-day.” The writer once more bowed, but with a stiff and impatient
look. Patissot noticed it, and, completely losing his head, he added as he
retreated: “What a su — su — superb property!”
Then, in the heart of the man of letters, the landowner awoke, and,
smiling, he opened the window to show them the immense stretch of view.
An endless horizon broadened out on all sides, giving a view of Triel, Pisse-
Fontaine, Chanteloup, all the heights of Hautrie, and the Seine as far as the
eye could see. The two visitors, delighted, congratulated him, and the house
was opened to them. They saw everything, down to the dainty kitchen, whose
walls and even ceilings were covered with porcelain tiles ornamented with
blue designs, which excited the wonder of the farmers.
“How did you happen to buy this place?” asked the journalist.
The novelist explained that, while looking for a cottage to hire for the
summer, he had found the little house, which was for sale for several
thousand francs, a song, almost nothing. He immediately bought it.
“But everything that you have added must have cost you a good deal!”
The writer smiled, and answered: “Yes, quite a little.”
The two men left. The journalist, taking Patissot by the arm, was
philosophizing in a low voice:
 “Every general has his Waterloo,” he said; “every Balzac has his Jardies,
and every artist living in the country feels like a landed proprietor.”
They took the train at the station of Villaines, and, on the way home,
Patissot loudly mentioned the names of the famous painter and of the great
novelist as though they were his friends. He even allowed people to think
that he had taken luncheon with one and dinner with the other.
BEFORE THE CELEBRATION
The celebration is approaching and preliminary quivers are already
running through the streets, just as the ripples disturb the water preparatory to
a storm. The shops, draped with flags, display a variety of gay-colored
bunting materials, and the dry-goods people deceive one about the three
colors as grocers do about the weight of candles. Little by little, hearts warm
up to the matter; people speak about it in the street after dinner; ideas are
exchanged:
“What a celebration it will be, my friend; what a celebration!”
“Have you heard the news? All the rulers are coming incognito, as
bourgeois, in order to see it.”
“I hear that the Emperor of Russia has arrived; he expects to go about
everywhere with the Prince of Wales.”
“It certainly will be a fine celebration!”
It is going to a celebration; what Monsieur Patissot, Parisian bourgeois,
calls a celebration; one of these nameless tumults which, for fifteen hours,
roll from one end of the city to the other, every ugly specimen togged out in
its finest, a mob of perspiring bodies, where side by side are tossed about the
stout gossip bedecked in red, white and blue ribbons, grown fat behind her
counter and panting from lack of breath, the rickety clerk with his wife and
brat in tow, the laborer carrying his youngster astride his neck, the
bewildered provincial with his foolish, dazed expression, the groom, barely
shaved and still spreading the perfume of the stable. And the foreigners
dressed like monkeys, English women like giraffes, the water-carrier,
cleaned up for the occasion, and the innumerable phalanx of little bourgeois,
inoffensive little people, amused at everything. All this crowding and
pressing, the sweat and dust, and the turmoil, all these eddies of human flesh,
trampling of corns beneath the feet of your neighbors, this city all topsy-turvy,
these vile odors, these frantic efforts toward nothing, the breath of millions of
people, all redolent of garlic, give to Monsieur Patissot all the joy which it is
possible for his heart to hold.
 After reading the proclamation of the mayor on the walls of his district he
had made his preparations.
This bit of prose said:
I wish to call your attention particularly to the part of
individuals in this celebration. Decorate your homes, illuminate
your windows. Get together, open up a subscription in order to give
to your houses and to your street a more brilliant and more artistic
appearance than the neighboring houses and streets.
Then Monsieur Patissot tried to imagine how he could give to his home an
artistic appearance.
One serious obstacle stood in the way. His only window looked out on a
courtyard, a narrow, dark shaft, where only the rats could have seen his three
Japanese lanterns.
He needed a public opening. He found it. On the first floor of his house
lived a rich man, a nobleman and a royalist, whose coachman, also a
reactionary, occupied a garret-room on the sixth floor, facing the street.
Monsieur Patissot supposed that by paying (every conscience can be bought)
he could obtain the use of the room for the day. He proposed five francs to
this citizen of the whip for the use of his room from noon till midnight. The
offer was immediately accepted.
Then he began to busy himself with the decorations. Three flags, four
lanterns, was that enough to give to this box an artistic appearance — to
express all the noble feelings of his soul? No; assuredly not! But,
notwithstanding diligent search and nightly meditation, Monsieur Patissot
could think of nothing else. He consulted his neighbors, who were surprised
at the question; he questioned his colleagues — every one had bought
lanterns and flags, some adding, for the occasion, red, white and blue
bunting.
Then he began to rack his brains for some original idea. He frequented the
cafes, questioning the patrons; they lacked imagination. Then one morning he
went out on top of an omnibus. A respectable-looking gentleman was
smoking a cigar beside him, a little farther away a laborer was smoking his
pipe upside down, near the driver two rough fellows were joking, and clerks
of every description were going to business for three cents.
Before the stores stacks of flags were resplendent under the rising sun.
Patissot turned to his neighbor.
 “It is going to be a fine celebration,” he said. The gentleman looked at him
sideways and answered in a haughty manner:
“That makes no difference to me!”
“You are not going to take part in it?” asked the surprised clerk. The other
shook his head disdainfully and declared:
“They make me tired with their celebrations! Whose celebration is it? The
government’s? I do not recognize this government, monsieur!”
But Patissot, as government employee, took on his superior manner, and
answered in a stern voice:
“Monsieur, the Republic is the government.”
His neighbor was not in the least disturbed, and, pushing his hands down
in his pockets, he exclaimed:
“Well, and what then? It makes no difference to me. Whether it’s for the
Republic or something else, I don’t care! What I want, monsieur, is to know
my government. I saw Charles X. and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Louis-
Philippe and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Napoleon and adhered to him;
but I have never seen the Republic.”
Patissot, still serious, answered:
“The Republic, monsieur, is represented by its president!”
The other grumbled:
“Well, them, show him to me!”
Patissot shrugged his shoulders.
“Every one can see him; he’s not shut up in a closet!”
Suddenly the fat man grew angry.
“Excuse me, monsieur, he cannot be seen. I have personally tried more
than a hundred times, monsieur. I have posted myself near the Elysee; he did
not come out. A passer-by informed me that he was playing billiards in the
cafe opposite; I went to the cafe opposite; he was not there. I had been
promised that he would go to Melun for the convention; I went to Melun, I
did not see him. At last I became weary. I did not even see Monsieur
Gambetta, and I do not know a single deputy.”
He was, growing excited:
“A government, monsieur, is made to be seen; that’s what it’s there for,
and for nothing else. One must be able to know that on such and such a day at
such an hour the government will pass through such and such a street. Then
one goes there and is satisfied.”
Patissot, now calm, was enjoying his arguments.
 “It is true,” he said, “that it is agreeable to know the people by whom one
is governed.”
The gentleman continued more gently:
“Do you know how I would manage the celebration? Well, monsieur, I
would have a procession of gilded cars, like the chariots used at the
crowning of kings; in them I would parade all the members of the
government, from the president to the deputies, throughout Paris all day long.
In that manner, at least, every one would know by sight the personnel of the
state.”
But one of the toughs near the coachman turned around, exclaiming:
“And the fatted ox, where would you put him?”
A laugh ran round the two benches. Patissot understood the objection, and
murmured:
“It might not perhaps be very dignified.”
The gentleman thought the matter over and admitted it.
“Then,” he said, “I would place them in view some place, so that every
one could see them without going out of his way; on the Triumphal Arch at
the Place de l’Etoile, for instance; and I would have the whole population
pass before them. That would be very imposing.”
Once more the tough turned round and said:
“You’d have to take telescopes to see their faces.”
The gentleman did not answer; he continued:
“It’s just like the presentation of the flags! There ought, to be some pretext,
a mimic war ought to be organized, and the banners would be awarded to the
troops as a reward. I had an idea about which I wrote to the minister; but he
has not deigned to answer me. As the taking of the Bastille has been chosen
for the date of the national celebration, a reproduction of this event might be
made; there would be a pasteboard Bastille, fixed up by a scene-painter and
concealing within its walls the whole Column of July. Then, monsieur, the
troop would attack. That would be a magnificent spectacle as well as a
lesson, to see the army itself overthrow the ramparts of tyranny. Then this
Bastille would be set fire to and from the midst of the flames would appear
the Column with the genius of Liberty, symbol of a new order and of the
freedom of the people.”
This time every one was listening to him and finding his idea excellent.
An old gentleman exclaimed:
 “That is a great idea, monsieur, which does you honor. It is to be regretted
that the government did not adopt it.”
A young man declared that actors ought to recite the “Iambes” of Barbier
through the streets in order to teach the people art and liberty simultaneously.
These propositions excited general enthusiasm. Each one wished to have
his word; all were wrought up. From a passing hand-organ a few strains of
the Marseillaise were heard; the laborer started the song, and everybody
joined in, roaring the chorus. The exalted nature of the song and its wild
rhythm fired the driver, who lashed his horses to a gallop. Monsieur Patissot
was bawling at the top of his lungs, and the passengers inside, frightened,
were wondering what hurricane had struck them.
At last they stopped, and Monsieur Patissot, judging his neighbor to be a
man of initiative, consulted him about the preparations which he expected to
make:
“Lanterns and flags are all right,”’ said Patissot; “but I prefer something
better.”
The other thought for a long time, but found nothing. Then, in despair, the
clerk bought three flags and four lanterns.
AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE
Many poets think that nature is incomplete without women, and hence,
doubtless, come all the flowery comparisons which, in their songs, make our
natural companion in turn a rose, a violet, a tulip, or something of that order.
The need of tenderness which seizes us at dusk, when the evening mist begins
to roll in from the hills, and when all the perfumes of the earth intoxicate us,
is but imperfectly satisfied by lyric invocations. Monsieur Patissot, like all
others, was seized with a wild desire for tenderness, for sweet kisses
exchanged along a path where sunshine steals in at times, for the pressure of
a pair of small hands, for a supple waist bending under his embrace.
He began to look at love as an unbounded pleasure, and, in his hours of
reverie, he thanked the Great Unknown for having put so much charm into the
caresses of human beings. But he needed a companion, and he did not know
where to find one. On the advice of a friend, he went to the Folies-Bergere.
There he saw a complete assortment. He was greatly perplexed to choose
between them, for the desires of his heart were chiefly composed of poetic
impulses, and poetry did not seem to be the strong point of these young ladies
with penciled eyebrows who smiled at him in such a disturbing manner,
showing the enamel of their false teeth. At last his choice fell on a young
beginner who seemed poor and timid and whose sad look seemed to
announce a nature easily influenced-by poetry.
He made an appointment with her for the following day at nine o’clock at
the Saint-Lazare station. She did not come, but she was kind enough to send a
friend in her stead.
She was a tall, red-haired girl, patriotically dressed in three colors, and
covered by an immense tunnel hat, of which her head occupied the centre.
Monsieur Patissot, a little disappointed, nevertheless accepted this substitute.
They left for Maisons-Laffite, where regattas and a grand Venetian festival
had been announced.
As soon as they were in the car, which was already occupied by two
gentlemen who wore the red ribbon and three ladies who must at least have
been duchesses, they were so dignified, the big red-haired girl, who
answered the name of Octavie, announced to Patissot, in a screeching voice,
that she was a fine girl fond of a good time and loving the country because
there she could pick flowers and eat fried fish. She laughed with a shrillness
which almost shattered the windows, familiarly calling her companion “My
big darling.”
Shame overwhelmed Patissot, who as a government employee, had to
observe a certain amount of decorum. But Octavie stopped talking, glancing
at her neighbors, seized with the overpowering desire which haunts all
women of a certain class to make the acquaintance of respectable women.
After about five minutes she thought she had found an opening, and, drawing
from her pocket a Gil-Blas, she politely offered it to one of the amazed
ladies, who declined, shaking her head. Then the big, red-haired girl began
saying things with a double meaning, speaking of women who are stuck up
without being any better than the others; sometimes she would let out a vulgar
word which acted like a bomb exploding amid the icy dignity of the
passengers.
At last they arrived. Patissot immediately wished to gain the shady nooks
of the park, hoping that the melancholy of the forest would quiet the ruffled
temper of his companion. But an entirely different effect resulted. As soon as
she was amid the leaves and grass she began to sing at the top of her lungs
snatches from operas which had stuck in her frivolous mind, warbling and
trilling, passing from “Robert le Diable” to the “Muette,” lingering
especially on a sentimental love-song, whose last verses she sang in a voice
as piercing as a gimlet.
 Then suddenly she grew hungry. Patissot, who was still awaiting the
hoped-for tenderness, tried in vain to retain her. Then she grew angry,
exclaiming:
“I am not here for a dull time, am I?”
He had to take her to the Petit-Havre restaurant, which was near the place
where the regatta was to be held.
She ordered an endless luncheon, a succession of dishes substantial
enough to feed a regiment. Then, unable to wait, she called for relishes. A
box of sardines was brought; she started in on it as though she intended to
swallow the box itself. But when she had eaten two or three of the little oily
fish she declared that she was no longer hungry and that she wished to see the
preparations for the race.
Patissot, in despair and in his turn seized with hunger, absolutely refused
to move. She started off alone, promising to return in time for the dessert. He
began to eat in lonely silence, not knowing how to lead this rebellious nature
to the realization of his dreams.
As she did not return he set out in search of her. She had found some
friends, a troop of boatmen, in scanty garb, sunburned to the tips of their ears,
and gesticulating, who were loudly arranging the details of the race in front
of the house of Fourmaise, the builder.
Two respectable-looking gentlemen, probably the judges, were listening
attentively. As soon as she saw Patissot, Octavie, who was leaning on the
tanned arm of a strapping fellow who probably had more muscle than brains,
whispered a few words in his ears. He answered:
“That’s an agreement.”
She returned to the clerk full of joy, her eyes sparkling, almost caressing.
“Let’s go for a row,” said she.
Pleased to see her so charming, he gave in to this new whim and procured
a boat. But she obstinately refused to go to the races, notwithstanding
Patissot’s wishes.
“I had rather be alone with you, darling.”
His heart thrilled. At last!
He took off his coat and began to row madly.
An old dilapidated mill, whose worm-eaten wheels hung over the water,
stood with its two arches across a little arm of the river. Slowly they passed
beneath it, and, when they were on the other side, they noticed before them a
delightful little stretch of river, shaded by great trees which formed an arch
over their heads. The little stream flowed along, winding first to the right and
then to the left, continually revealing new scenes, broad fields on one side
and on the other side a hill covered with cottages. They passed before a
bathing establishment almost entirely hidden by the foliage, a charming
country spot where gentlemen in clean gloves and beribboned ladies
displayed all the ridiculous awkwardness of elegant people in the country.
She cried joyously:
“Later on we will take a dip there.”
Farther on, in a kind of bay, she wished to stop, coaxing:
“Come here, honey, right close to me.”
She put her arm around his neck and, leaning her head on his shoulder, she
murmured:
“How nice it is! How delightful it is on the water!”
Patissot was reveling in happiness. He was thinking of those foolish
boatmen who, without ever feeling the penetrating charm of the river banks
and the delicate grace of the reeds, row along out of breath, perspiring and
tired out, from the tavern where they take luncheon to the tavern where they
take dinner.
He was so comfortable that he fell asleep. When he awoke, he was alone.
He called, but no one answered. Anxious, he climbed up on the side of the
river, fearing that some accident might have happened.
Then, in the distance, coming in his direction, he saw a long, slender gig
which four oarsmen as black as negroes were driving through the water like
an arrow. It came nearer, skimming over the water; a woman was holding the
tiller. Heavens! It looked — it was she! In order to regulate the rhythm of the
stroke, she was singing in her shrill voice a boating song, which she
interrupted for a minute as she got in front of Patissot. Then, throwing him a
kiss, she cried:
“You big goose!”
A DINNER AND SOME OPINIONS
On the occasion of the national celebration Monsieur Antoine Perdrix,
chief of Monsieur Patissot’s department, was made a knight of the Legion of
Honor. He had been in service for thirty years under preceding governments,
and for ten years under the present one. His employees, although grumbling a
little at being thus rewarded in the person of their chief, thought it wise,
nevertheless, to offer him a cross studded with paste diamonds. The new
knight, in turn, not wishing to be outdone, invited them all to dinner for the
following Sunday, at his place at Asnieres.
The house, decorated with Moorish ornaments, looked like a cafe concert,
but its location gave it value, as the railroad cut through the whole garden,
passing within a hundred and fifty feet of the porch. On the regulation plot of
grass stood a basin of Roman cement, containing goldfish and a stream of
water the size of that which comes from a syringe, which occasionally made
microscopic rainbows at which the guests marvelled.
The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation of Monsieur
Perdrix, who would sometimes get up at five o’clock in the morning in order
to fill the tank. Then, in his shirt sleeves, his big stomach almost bursting
from his trousers, he would pump wildly, so that on returning from the office
he could have the satisfaction of letting the fountain play and of imagining
that it was cooling off the garden.
On the night of the official dinner all the guests, one after the other, went
into ecstasies over the surroundings, and each time they heard a train in the
distance, Monsieur Perdrix would announce to them its destination: Saint-
Germain, Le Havre, Cherbourg, or Dieppe, and they would playfully wave to
the passengers leaning from the windows.
The whole office force was there. First came Monsieur Capitaine, the
assistant chief; Monsieur Patissot, chief clerk; then Messieurs de
Sombreterre and Vallin, elegant young employees who only came to the
office when they had to; lastly Monsieur Rade, known throughout the ministry
for the absurd doctrines which he upheld, and the copying clerk, Monsieur
Boivin.
Monsieur Rade passed for a character. Some called him a dreamer or an
idealist, others a revolutionary; every one agreed that he was very clumsy.
Old, thin and small, with bright eyes and long, white hair, he had all his life
professed a profound contempt for administrative work. A book rummager
and a great reader, with a nature continually in revolt against everything, a
seeker of truth and a despiser of popular prejudices, he had a clear and
paradoxical manner of expressing his opinions which closed the mouths of
self-satisfied fools and of those that were discontented without knowing why.
People said: “That old fool of a Rade,” or else: “That harebrained Rade”;
and the slowness, of his promotion seemed to indicate the reason, according
to commonplace minds. His freedom of speech often made — his colleagues
tremble; they asked themselves with terror how he had been able to keep his
place as long as he had. As soon as they had seated themselves, Monsieur
Perdrix thanked his “collaborators” in a neat little speech, promising them
his protection, the more valuable as his power grew, and he ended with a
stirring peroration in which he thanked and glorified a government so liberal
and just that it knows how to seek out the worthy from among the humble.
Monsieur Capitaine, the assistant chief, answered in the name of the
office, congratulated, greeted, exalted, sang the praises of all; frantic
applause greeted these two bits of eloquence. After that they settled down
seriously to the business of eating.
Everything went well up to the dessert; lack of conversation went
unnoticed. But after the coffee a discussion arose, and Monsieur Rade let
himself loose and soon began to overstep the bounds of discretion.
They naturally discussed love, and a breath of chivalry intoxicated this
room full of bureaucrats; they praised and exalted the superior beauty of
woman, the delicacy of her soul, her aptitude for exquisite things, the
correctness of her judgment, and the refinement of her sentiments. Monsieur
Rade began to protest, energetically refusing to credit the so-called “fair”
sex with all the qualities they ascribed to it; then, amidst the general
indignation, he quoted some authors:
“Schopenhauer, gentlemen, Schopenhauer, the great philosopher, revered
by all Germany, says: ‘Man’s intelligence must have been terribly deadened
by love in order to call this sex with the small waist, narrow shoulders, large
hips and crooked legs, the fair sex. All its beauty lies in the instinct of love.
Instead of calling it the fair, it would have been better to call it the
unaesthetic sex. Women have neither the appreciation nor the knowledge of
music, any more than they have of poetry or of the plastic arts; with them it is
merely an apelike imitation, pure pretence, affectation cultivated from their
desire to please.’”
“The man who said that is an idiot,” exclaimed Monsieur de Sombreterre.
Monsieur Rade smilingly continued:
“And how about Rousseau, gentlemen? Here is his opinion: ‘Women, as a
rule, love no art, are skilled in none, and have no talent.’”
Monsieur de Sombreterre disdainfully shrugged his shoulders:
“Then Rousseau is as much of a fool as the other, that’s all.”
Monsieur Rade, still smiling, went on:
“And this is what Lord Byron said, who, nevertheless, loved women:
‘They should be well fed and well dressed, but not allowed to mingle with
society. They should also be taught religion, but they should ignore poetry
and politics, only being allowed to read religious works or cook-books.’”
Monsieur Rade continued:
“You see, gentlemen, all of them study painting and music. But not a single
one of them has ever painted a remarkable picture or composed a great
opera! Why, gentlemen? Because they are the ‘sexes sequior’, the secondary
sex in every sense of the word, made to be kept apart, in the background.”
Monsieur Patissot was growing angry, and exclaimed:
“And how about Madame Sand, monsieur?”
“She is the one exception, monsieur, the one exception. I will quote to you
another passage from another great philosopher, this one an Englishman,
Herbert Spencer. Here is what he says: ‘Each sex is capable, under the
influence of abnormal stimulation, of manifesting faculties ordinarily
reserved for the other one. Thus, for instance, in extreme cases a special
excitement may cause the breasts of men to give milk; children deprived of
their mothers have often thus been saved in time of famine. Nevertheless, we
do not place this faculty of giving milk among the male attributes. It is the
same with female intelligence, which, in certain cases, will give superior
products, but which is not to be considered in an estimate of the feminine
nature as a social factor.’”
All Monsieur Patissot’s chivalric instincts were wounded and he
declared:
“You are not a Frenchman, monsieur. French gallantry is a form of
patriotism.”
Monsieur Rade retorted:
“I have very little patriotism, monsieur, as little as I can get along with.”
A coolness settled over the company, but he continued quietly:
“Do you admit with me that war is a barbarous thing; that this custom of
killing off people constitutes a condition of savagery; that it is odious, when
life is the only real good, to see governments, whose duty is to protect the
lives of their subjects, persistently looking for means of destruction? Am I
not right? Well, if war is a terrible thing, what about patriotism, which is the
idea at the base of it? When a murderer kills he has a fixed idea; it is to steal.
When a good man sticks his bayonet through another good man, father of a
family, or, perhaps, a great artist, what idea is he following out?”
Everybody was shocked.
“When one has such thoughts, one should not express them in public.”
 M. Patissot continued:
“There are, however, monsieur, principles which all good people
recognize.”
M. Rade asked: “Which ones?”
Then very solemnly, M. Patissot pronounced: “Morality, monsieur.”
M. Rade was beaming; he exclaimed:
“Just let me give you one example, gentlemen, one little example. What is
your opinion of the gentlemen with the silk caps who thrive along the
boulevard’s on the delightful traffic which you know, and who make a living
out of it?”
A look of disgust ran round the table:
“Well, gentlemen! only a century ago, when an elegant gentleman, very
ticklish about his honor, had for — friend — a beautiful and rich lady, it was
considered perfectly proper to live at her expense and even to squander her
whole fortune. This game was considered delightful. This only goes to show
that the principles of morality are by no means settled — and that— “
M. Perdrix, visibly embarrassed, stopped him:
“M. Rade, you are sapping the very foundations of society. One must
always have principles. Thus, in politics, here is M. de Sombreterre, who is
a Legitimist; M. Vallin, an Orleanist; M. Patissot and myself, Republicans;
we all have very different principles, and yet we agree very well because we
have them.”
But M. Rade exclaimed:
“I also have principles, gentlemen, very distinct ones.”
M. Patissot raised his head and coldly asked:
“It would please me greatly to know them, monsieur.”
M. Rade did not need to be coaxed.
“Here they are, monsieur:
“First principle — Government by one person is a monstrosity.
“Second principle — Restricted suffrage is an injustice.
“Third principle — Universal suffrage is idiotic.
“To deliver up millions of men, superior minds, scientists, even geniuses,
to the caprice and will of a being who, in an instant of gaiety, madness,
intoxication or love, would not hesitate to sacrifice everything for his exalted
fancy, would spend the wealth of the country amassed by others with
difficulty, would have thousands of men slaughtered on the battle-fields, all
this appears to me — a simple logician — a monstrous aberration.
 “But, admitting that a country must govern itself, to exclude, on some
always debatable pretext, a part of the citizens from the administration of
affairs is such an injustice that it seems to me unworthy of a further
discussion.
“There remains universal suffrage. I suppose that you will agree with me
that geniuses are a rarity. Let us be liberal and say that there are at present
five in France. Now, let us add, perhaps, two hundred men with a decided
talent, one thousand others possessing various talents, and ten thousand
superior intellects. This is a staff of eleven thousand two hundred and five
minds. After that you have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude
of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense
majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.
“In order to be fair I admit that logically universal suffrage seems to me
the only admissible principle, but it is impracticable. Here are the reasons
why:
“To make all the living forces of the country cooperate in the government,
to represent all the interests, to take into account all the rights, is an ideal
dream, but hardly practicable, because the only force which can be measured
is that very one which should be neglected, the stupid strength of numbers,
According to your method, unintelligent numbers equal genius, knowledge,
learning, wealth and industry. When you are able to give to a member of the
Institute ten thousand votes to a ragman’s one, one hundred votes for a great
land-owner as against his farmer’s ten, then you will have approached an
equilibrium of forces and obtained a national representation which will
really represent the strength of the nation. But I challenge you to do it.
“Here are my conclusions:
“Formerly, when a man was a failure at every other profession he turned
photographer; now he has himself elected a deputy. A government thus
composed will always be sadly lacking, incapable of evil as well as of
good. On the other hand, a despot, if he be stupid, can do a lot of harm, and,
if he be intelligent (a thing which is very scarce), he may do good.
“I cannot decide between these two forms of government; I declare myself
to be an anarchist, that is to say, a partisan of that power which is the most
unassuming, the least felt, the most liberal, in the broadest sense of the word,
and revolutionary at the same time; by that I mean the everlasting enemy of
this same power, which can in no way be anything but defective. That’s all!”
 Cries of indignation rose about the table, and all, whether Legitimist,
Orleanist or Republican through force of circumstances, grew red with anger.
M. Patissot especially was choking with rage, and, turning toward M. Rade,
he cried:
“Then, monsieur, you believe in nothing?”
The other answered quietly:
“You’re absolutely correct, monsieur.”
The anger felt by all the guests prevented M. Rade from continuing, and
M. Perdrix, as chief, closed the discussion.
“Enough, gentlemen! We each have our opinion, and we have no intention
of changing it.”
All agreed with the wise words. But M. Rade, never satisfied, wished to
have the last word.
“I have, however, one moral,” said he. “It is simple and always
applicable. One sentence embraces the whole thought; here it is: ‘Never do
unto another that which you would not have him do unto you.’ I defy you to
pick any flaw in it, while I will undertake to demolish your most sacred
principles with three arguments.”
This time there was no answer. But as they were going home at night, by
couples, each one was saying to his companion: “Really, M. Rade goes much
too far. His mind must surely be unbalanced. He ought to be appointed
assistant chief at the Charenton Asylum.”
 SIMON’S PAPA

Noon had just struck. The school door opened and the youngsters darted out,
jostling each other in their haste to get out quickly. But instead of promptly
dispersing and going home to dinner as usual, they stopped a few paces off,
broke up into knots, and began whispering.
The fact was that, that morning, Simon, the son of La Blanchotte, had, for
the first time, attended school.
They had all of them in their families heard talk of La Blanchotte; and,
although in public she was welcome enough, the mothers among themselves
treated her with a somewhat disdainful compassion, which the children had
imitated without in the least knowing why.
As for Simon himself, they did not know him, for he never went out, and
did not run about with them in the streets of the village, or along the banks of
the river. And they did not care for him; so it was with a certain delight,
mingled with considerable astonishment, that they met and repeated to each
other what had been said by a lad of fourteen or fifteen who appeared to
know all about it, so sagaciously did he wink. “You know — Simon — well,
he has no papa.”
Just then La Blanchotte’s son appeared in the doorway of the school.
He was seven or eight years old, rather pale, very neat, with a timid and
almost awkward manner.
He was starting home to his mother’s house when the groups of his
schoolmates, whispering and watching him with the mischievous and
heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty trick, gradually closed in
around him and ended by surrounding him altogether. There he stood in their
midst, surprised and embarrassed, not understanding what they were going to
do with him. But the lad who had brought the news, puffed up with the
success he had met with already, demanded:
“What is your name, you?”
He answered: “Simon.”
“Simon what?” retorted the other.
The child, altogether bewildered, repeated: “Simon.”
 The lad shouted at him: “One is named Simon something — that is not a
name — Simon indeed.”
The child, on the brink of tears, replied for the third time:
“My name is Simon.”
The urchins began to laugh. The triumphant tormentor cried: “You can see
plainly that he has no papa.”
A deep silence ensued. The children were dumfounded by this
extraordinary, impossible, monstrous thing — a boy who had not a papa; they
looked upon him as a phenomenon, an unnatural being, and they felt that
hitherto inexplicable contempt of their mothers for La Blanchotte growing
upon them. As for Simon, he had leaned against a tree to avoid falling, and he
remained as if prostrated by an irreparable disaster. He sought to explain, but
could think of nothing-to say to refute this horrible charge that he had no
papa. At last he shouted at them quite recklessly: “Yes, I have one.”
“Where is he?” demanded the boy.
Simon was silent, he did not know. The children roared, tremendously
excited; and those country boys, little more than animals, experienced that
cruel craving which prompts the fowls of a farmyard to destroy one of their
number as soon as it is wounded. Simon suddenly espied a little neighbor, the
son of a widow, whom he had seen, as he himself was to be seen, always
alone with his mother.
“And no more have you,” he said; “no more have you a papa.”
“Yes,” replied the other, “I have one.”
“Where is he?” rejoined Simon.
“He is dead,” declared the brat, with superb dignity; “he is in the
cemetery, is my papa.”
A murmur of approval rose among the little wretches as if this fact of
possessing a papa dead in a cemetery had caused their comrade to grow big
enough to crush the other one who had no papa at all. And these boys, whose
fathers were for the most part bad men, drunkards, thieves, and who beat
their wives, jostled each other to press closer and closer, as though they, the
legitimate ones, would smother by their pressure one who was illegitimate.
The boy who chanced to be next Simon suddenly put his tongue out at him
with a mocking air and shouted at him:
“No papa! No papa!”
Simon seized him by the hair with both hands and set to work to disable
his legs with kicks, while he bit his cheek ferociously. A tremendous struggle
ensued between the two combatants, and Simon found himself beaten, torn,
bruised, rolled on the ground in the midst of the ring of applauding
schoolboys. As he arose, mechanically brushing with his hand his little
blouse all covered with dust, some one shouted at him:
“Go and tell your papa.”
Then he felt a great sinking at his heart. They were stronger than he was,
they had beaten him, and he had no answer to give them, for he knew well
that it was true that he had no papa. Full of pride, he attempted for some
moments to struggle against the tears which were choking him. He had a
feeling of suffocation, and then without any sound he commenced to weep,
with great shaking sobs. A ferocious joy broke out among his enemies, and,
with one accord, just like savages in their fearful festivals, they took each
other by the hand and danced round him in a circle, repeating as a refrain:
“No papa! No papa!”
But suddenly Simon ceased sobbing. He became ferocious. There were
stones under his feet; he picked them up and with all his strength hurled them
at his tormentors. Two or three were struck and rushed off yelling, and so
formidable did he appear that the rest became panic-stricken. Cowards, as
the mob always is in presence of an exasperated man, they broke up and fled.
Left alone, the little fellow without a father set off running toward the fields,
for a recollection had been awakened in him which determined his soul to a
great resolve. He made up his mind to drown himself in the river.
He remembered, in fact, that eight days before, a poor devil who begged
for his livelihood had thrown himself into the water because he had no more
money. Simon had been there when they fished him out again; and the
wretched man, who usually seemed to him so miserable, and ugly, had then
struck him as being so peaceful with his pale cheeks, his long drenched
beard, and his open eyes full of calm. The bystanders had said:
“He is dead.”
And some one had said:
“He is quite happy now.”
And Simon wished to drown himself also, because he had no father, just
like the wretched being who had no money.
He reached the water and watched it flowing. Some fish were sporting
briskly in the clear stream and occasionally made a little bound and caught
the flies flying on the surface. He stopped crying in order to watch them, for
their maneuvers interested him greatly. But, at intervals, as in a tempest
intervals of calm alternate suddenly with tremendous gusts of wind, which
snap off the trees and then lose themselves in the horizon, this thought would
return to him with intense pain:
“I am going to drown myself because I have no papa.”
It was very warm, fine weather. The pleasant sunshine warmed the grass.
The water shone like a mirror. And Simon enjoyed some minutes of
happiness, of that languor which follows weeping, and felt inclined to fall
asleep there upon the grass in the warm sunshine.
A little green frog leaped from under his feet. He endeavored to catch it. It
escaped him. He followed it and lost it three times in succession. At last he
caught it by one of its hind legs and began to laugh as he saw the efforts the
creature made to escape. It gathered itself up on its hind legs and then with a
violent spring suddenly stretched them out as stiff as two bars; while it beat
the air with its front legs as though they were hands, its round eyes staring in
their circle of yellow. It reminded him of a toy made of straight slips of wood
nailed zigzag one on the other; which by a similar movement regulated the
movements of the little soldiers fastened thereon. Then he thought of his
home, and then of his mother, and, overcome by sorrow, he again began to
weep. A shiver passed over him. He knelt down and said his prayers as
before going to bed. But he was unable to finish them, for tumultuous, violent
sobs shook his whole frame. He no longer thought, he no longer saw anything
around him, and was wholly absorbed in crying.
Suddenly a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder, and a rough voice
asked him:
“What is it that causes you so much grief, my little man?”
Simon turned round. A tall workman with a beard and black curly hair
was staring at him good-naturedly. He answered with his eyes and throat full
of tears:
“They beat me — because — I — I have no — papa — no papa.”
“What!” said the man, smiling; “why, everybody has one.”
The child answered painfully amid his spasms of grief:
“But I — I — I have none.”
Then the workman became serious. He had recognized La Blanchotte’s
son, and, although himself a new arrival in the neighborhood, he had a vague
idea of her history.
“Well,” said he, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me home to
your mother. They will give you — a papa.”
 And so they started on the way, the big fellow holding the little fellow by
the hand, and the man smiled, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte,
who was, it was said, one of the prettiest girls of the countryside, and,
perhaps, he was saying to himself, at the bottom of his heart, that a lass who
had erred might very well err again.
They arrived in front of a very neat little white house.
“There it is,” exclaimed the child, and he cried, “Mamma!”
A woman appeared, and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he saw
at once that there was no fooling to be done with the tall pale girl who stood
austerely at her door as though to defend from one man the threshold of that
house where she had already been betrayed by another. Intimidated, his cap
in his hand, he stammered out:
“See, madame, I have brought you back your little boy who had lost
himself near the river.”
But Simon flung his arms about his mother’s neck and told her, as he again
began to cry:
“No, mamma, I wished to drown myself, because the others had beaten me
— had beaten me — because I have no papa.”
A burning redness covered the young woman’s cheeks; and, hurt to the
quick, she embraced her child passionately, while the tears coursed down her
face. The man, much moved, stood there, not knowing how to get away.
But Simon suddenly ran to him and said:
“Will you be my papa?”
A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame,
leaned herself against the wall, both her hands upon her heart. The child,
seeing that no answer was made him, replied:
“If you will not, I shall go back and drown myself.”
The workman took the matter as a jest and answered, laughing:
“Why, yes, certainly I will.”
“What is your name,” went on the child, “so that I may tell the others when
they wish to know your name?”
“Philip,” answered the man:
Simon was silent a moment so that he might get the name well into his
head; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, as he said:
“Well, then, Philip, you are my papa.”
The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both
cheeks, and then walked away very quickly with great strides. When the
child returned to school next day he was received with a spiteful laugh, and
at the end of school, when the lads were on the point of recommencing,
Simon threw these words at their heads as he would have done a stone: “He
is named Philip, my papa.”
Yells of delight burst out from all sides.
“Philip who? Philip what? What on earth is Philip? Where did you pick
up your Philip?”
Simon answered nothing; and, immovable in his faith, he defied them with
his eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them. The school master
came to his rescue and he returned home to his mother.
During three months, the tall workman, Philip, frequently passed by La
Blanchotte’s house, and sometimes he made bold to speak to her when he
saw her sewing near the window. She answered him civilly, always sedately,
never joking with him, nor permitting him to enter her house.
Notwithstanding, being, like all men, a bit of a coxcomb, he imagined that she
was often rosier than usual when she chatted with him.
But a lost reputation is so difficult to regain and always remains so fragile
that, in spite of the shy reserve of La Blanchotte, they already gossiped in the
neighborhood.
As for Simon he loved his new papa very much, and walked with him
nearly every evening when the day’s work was done. He went regularly to
school, and mixed with great dignity with his schoolfellows without ever
answering them back.
One day, however, the lad who had first attacked him said to him:
“You have lied. You have not a papa named Philip.”
“Why do you say that?” demanded Simon, much disturbed.
The youth rubbed his hands. He replied:
“Because if you had one he would be your mamma’s husband.”
Simon was confused by the truth of this reasoning; nevertheless, he
retorted:
“He is my papa, all the same.”
“That can very well be,” exclaimed the urchin with a sneer, “but that is
not being your papa altogether.”
La Blanchotte’s little one bowed his head and went off dreaming in the
direction of the forge belonging to old Loizon, where Philip worked. This
forge was as though buried beneath trees. It was very dark there; the red
glare of a formidable furnace alone lit up with great flashes five blacksmiths;
who hammered upon their anvils with a terrible din. They were standing
enveloped in flame, like demons, their eyes fixed on the red-hot iron they
were pounding; and their dull ideas rose and fell with their hammers.
Simon entered without being noticed, and went quietly to pluck his friend
by the sleeve. The latter turned round. All at once the work came to a
standstill, and all the men looked on, very attentive. Then, in the midst of this
unaccustomed silence, rose the slender pipe of Simon:
“Say, Philip, the Michaude boy told me just now that you were not
altogether my papa.”
“Why not?” asked the blacksmith,
The child replied with all innocence:
“Because you are not my mamma’s husband.”
No one laughed. Philip remained standing, leaning his forehead upon the
back of his great hands, which supported the handle of his hammer standing
upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched him, and
Simon, a tiny mite among these giants, anxiously waited. Suddenly, one of the
smiths, answering to the sentiment of all, said to Philip:
“La Blanchotte is a good, honest girl, and upright and steady in spite of
her misfortune, and would make a worthy wife for an honest man.”
“That is true,” remarked the three others.
The smith continued:
“Is it the girl’s fault if she went wrong? She had been promised marriage;
and I know more than one who is much respected to-day, and who sinned
every bit as much.”
“That is true,” responded the three men in chorus.
He resumed:
“How hard she has toiled, poor thing, to bring up her child all alone, and
how she has wept all these years she has never gone out except to church,
God only knows.”
“This is also true,” said the others.
Then nothing was heard but the bellows which fanned the fire of the
furnace. Philip hastily bent himself down to Simon:
“Go and tell your mother that I am coming to speak to her this evening.”
Then he pushed the child out by the shoulders. He returned to his work, and
with a single blow the five hammers again fell upon their anvils. Thus they
wrought the iron until nightfall, strong, powerful, happy, like contented
hammers. But just as the great bell of a cathedral resounds upon feast days
above the jingling of the other bells, so Philip’s hammer, sounding above the
rest, clanged second after second with a deafening uproar. And he stood amid
the flying sparks plying his trade vigorously.
The sky was full of stars as he knocked at La Blanchotte’s door. He had on
his Sunday blouse, a clean shirt, and his beard was trimmed. The young
woman showed herself upon the threshold, and said in a grieved tone:
“It is ill to come thus when night has fallen, Mr. Philip.”
He wished to answer, but stammered and stood confused before her.
She resumed:
“You understand, do you not, that it will not do for me to be talked about
again.”
“What does that matter to me, if you will be my wife!”
No voice replied to him, but he believed that he heard in the shadow of
the room the sound of a falling body. He entered quickly; and Simon, who
had gone to bed, distinguished the sound of a kiss and some words that his
mother murmured softly. Then, all at once, he found himself lifted up by the
hands of his friend, who, holding him at the length of his herculean arms,
exclaimed:
“You will tell them, your schoolmates, that your papa is Philip Remy, the
blacksmith, and that he will pull the ears of all who do you any harm.”
On the morrow, when the school was full and lessons were about to begin,
little Simon stood up, quite pale with trembling lips:
“My papa,” said he in a clear voice, “is Philip Remy, the blacksmith, and
he has promised to pull the ears of all who does me any harm.”
This time no one laughed, for he was very well known, was Philip Remy,
the blacksmith, and was a papa of whom any one in the world would have
been proud.
 SUICIDES

To Georges Legrand.

Hardly a day goes by without our reading a news item like the following in
some newspaper:
“On Wednesday night the people living in No. 40 Rue de —— , were
awakened by two successive shots. The explosions seemed to come from the
apartment occupied by M. X —— . The door was broken in and the man was
found bathed in his blood, still holding in one hand the revolver with which
he had taken his life.
“M. X —— was fifty-seven years of age, enjoying a comfortable income,
and had everything necessary to make him happy. No cause can be found for
his action.”
What terrible grief, what unknown suffering, hidden despair, secret
wounds drive these presumably happy persons to suicide? We search, we
imagine tragedies of love, we suspect financial troubles, and, as we never
find anything definite, we apply to these deaths the word “mystery.”
A letter found on the desk of one of these “suicides without cause,” and
written during his last night, beside his loaded revolver, has come into our
hands. We deem it rather interesting. It reveals none of those great
catastrophes which we always expect to find behind these acts of despair;
but it shows us the slow succession of the little vexations of life, the
disintegration of a lonely existence, whose dreams have disappeared; it gives
the reason for these tragic ends, which only nervous and high-strung people
can understand.
Here it is:
“It is midnight. When I have finished this letter I shall kill myself. Why? I
shall attempt to give the reasons, not for those who may read these lines, but
for myself, to kindle my waning courage, to impress upon myself the fatal
necessity of this act which can, at best, be only deferred.
“I was brought up by simple-minded parents who were unquestioning
believers. And I believed as they did.
 “My dream lasted a long time. The last veil has just been torn from my
eyes.
“During the last few years a strange change has been taking place within
me. All the events of Life, which formerly had to me the glow of a beautiful
sunset, are now fading away. The true meaning of things has appeared to me
in its brutal reality; and the true reason for love has bred in me disgust even
for this poetic sentiment: ‘We are the eternal toys of foolish and charming
illusions, which are always being renewed.’
“On growing older, I had become partly reconciled to the awful mystery
of life, to the uselessness of effort; when the emptiness of everything
appeared to me in a new light, this evening, after dinner.
“Formerly, I was happy! Everything pleased me: the passing women, the
appearance of the streets, the place where I lived; and I even took an interest
in the cut of my clothes. But the repetition of the same sights has had the
result of filling my heart with weariness and disgust, just as one would feel
were one to go every night to the same theatre.
“For the last thirty years I have been rising at the same hour; and, at the
same restaurant, for thirty years, I have been eating at the same hours the
same dishes brought me by different waiters.
“I have tried travel. The loneliness which one feels in strange places
terrified me. I felt so alone, so small on the earth that I quickly started on my
homeward journey.
“But here the unchanging expression of my furniture, which has stood for
thirty years in the same place, the smell of my apartments (for, with time,
each dwelling takes on a particular odor) each night, these and other things
disgust me and make me sick of living thus.
“Everything repeats itself endlessly. The way in which I put my key in the
lock, the place where I always find my matches, the first object which meets
my eye when I enter the room, make me feel like jumping out of the window
and putting an end to those monotonous events from which we can never
escape.
“Each day, when I shave, I feel an inordinate desire to cut my throat; and
my face, which I see in the little mirror, always the same, with soap on my
cheeks, has several times made me weak from sadness.
“Now I even hate to be with people whom I used to meet with pleasure; I
know them so well, I can tell just what they are going to say and what I am
going to answer. Each brain is like a circus, where the same horse keeps
circling around eternally. We must circle round always, around the same
ideas, the same joys, the same pleasures, the same habits, the same beliefs,
the same sensations of disgust.
“The fog was terrible this evening. It enfolded the boulevard, where the
street lights were dimmed and looked like smoking candles. A heavier
weight than usual oppressed me. Perhaps my digestion was bad.
“For good digestion is everything in life. It gives the inspiration to the
artist, amorous desires to young people, clear ideas to thinkers, the joy of life
to everybody, and it also allows one to eat heartily (which is one of the
greatest pleasures). A sick stomach induces scepticism unbelief, nightmares
and the desire for death. I have often noticed this fact. Perhaps I would not
kill myself, if my digestion had been good this evening.
“When I sat down in the arm-chair where I have been sitting every day for
thirty years, I glanced around me, and just then I was seized by such a terrible
distress that I thought I must go mad.
“I tried to think of what I could do to run away from myself. Every
occupation struck me as being worse even than inaction. Then I bethought me
of putting my papers in order.
“For a long time I have been thinking of clearing out my drawers; for, for
the last thirty years, I have been throwing my letters and bills pell-mell into
the same desk, and this confusion has often caused me considerable trouble.
But I feel such moral and physical laziness at the sole idea of putting anything
in order that I have never had the courage to begin this tedious business.
“I therefore opened my desk, intending to choose among my old papers
and destroy the majority of them.
“At first I was bewildered by this array of documents, yellowed by age,
then I chose one.
“Oh! if you cherish life, never disturb the burial place of old letters!
“And if, perchance, you should, take the contents by the handful, close
your eyes that you may not read a word, so that you may not recognize some
forgotten handwriting which may plunge you suddenly into a sea of
memories; carry these papers to the fire; and when they are in ashes, crush
them to an invisible powder, or otherwise you are lost — just as I have been
lost for an hour.
“The first letters which I read did not interest me greatly. They were
recent, and came from living men whom I still meet quite often, and whose
presence does not move me to any great extent. But all at once one envelope
made me start. My name was traced on it in a large, bold handwriting; and
suddenly tears came to my eyes. That letter was from my dearest friend, the
companion of my youth, the confidant of my hopes; and he appeared before
me so clearly, with his pleasant smile and his hand outstretched, that a cold
shiver ran down my back. Yes, yes, the dead come back, for I saw him! Our
memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those
who no longer exist.
“With trembling hand and dimmed eyes I reread everything that he told
me, and in my poor sobbing heart I felt a wound so painful that I began to
groan as a man whose bones are slowly being crushed.
“Then I travelled over my whole life, just as one travels along a river. I
recognized people, so long forgotten that I no longer knew their names. Their
faces alone lived in me. In my mother’s letters I saw again the old servants,
the shape of our house and the little insignificant odds and ends which cling
to our minds.
“Yes, I suddenly saw again all my mother’s old gowns, the different styles
which she adopted and the several ways in which she dressed her hair. She
haunted me especially in a silk dress, trimmed with old lace; and I
remembered something she said one day when she was wearing this dress.
She said: ‘Robert, my child, if you do not stand up straight you will be
round-shouldered all your life.’
“Then, opening another drawer, I found myself face to face with memories
of tender passions: a dancing-pump, a torn handkerchief, even a garter, locks
of hair and dried flowers. Then the sweet romances of my life, whose living
heroines are now white-haired, plunged me into the deep melancholy of
things. Oh, the young brows where blond locks curl, the caress of the hands,
the glance which speaks, the hearts which beat, that smile which promises the
lips, those lips which promise the embrace! And the first kiss-that endless
kiss which makes you close your eyes, which drowns all thought in the
immeasurable joy of approaching possession!
“Taking these old pledges of former love in both my hands, I covered
them with furious caresses, and in my soul, torn by these memories, I saw
them each again at the hour of surrender; and I suffered a torture more cruel
than all the tortures invented in all the fables about hell.
“One last letter remained. It was written by me and dictated fifty years
ago by my writing teacher. Here it is:
“‘MY DEAR LITTLE MAMMA:
 “‘I am seven years old to-day. It is the age of reason. I take
advantage of it to thank you for having brought me into this world.

“‘Your little son, who loves you

“‘ROBERT.’
“It is all over. I had gone back to the beginning, and suddenly I turned my
glance on what remained to me of life. I saw hideous and lonely old age, and
approaching infirmities, and everything over and gone. And nobody near me!
“My revolver is here, on the table. I am loading it . . . . Never reread your
old letters!”
And that is how many men come to kill themselves; and we search in vain
to discover some great sorrow in their lives.
 ON THE RIVER

I rented a little country house last summer on the banks of the Seine, several
leagues from Paris, and went out there to sleep every evening. After a few
days I made the acquaintance of one of my neighbors, a man between thirty
and forty, who certainly was the most curious specimen I ever met. He was
an old boating man, and crazy about boating. He was always beside the
water, on the water, or in the water. He must have been born in a boat, and he
will certainly die in a boat at the last.
One evening as we were walking along the banks of the Seine I asked him
to tell me some stories about his life on the water. The good man at once
became animated, his whole expression changed, he became eloquent, almost
poetical. There was in his heart one great passion, an absorbing, irresistible
passion-the river.
Ah, he said to me, how many memories I have, connected with that river
that you see flowing beside us! You people who live in streets know nothing
about the river. But listen to a fisherman as he mentions the word. To him it is
a mysterious thing, profound, unknown, a land of mirages and
phantasmagoria, where one sees by night things that do not exist, hears
sounds that one does not recognize, trembles without knowing why, as in
passing through a cemetery — and it is, in fact, the most sinister of
cemeteries, one in which one has no tomb.
The land seems limited to the river boatman, and on dark nights, when
there is no moon, the river seems limitless. A sailor has not the same feeling
for the sea. It is often remorseless and cruel, it is true; but it shrieks, it roars,
it is honest, the great sea; while the river is silent and perfidious. It does not
speak, it flows along without a sound; and this eternal motion of flowing
water is more terrible to me than the high waves of the ocean.
Dreamers maintain that the sea hides in its bosom vast tracts of blue
where those who are drowned roam among the big fishes, amid strange
forests and crystal grottoes. The river has only black depths where one rots
in the slime. It is beautiful, however, when it sparkles in the light of the rising
sun and gently laps its banks covered with whispering reeds.
 The poet says, speaking of the ocean,
“O waves, what mournful tragedies ye know
— Deep waves, the dread of kneeling mothers’ hearts!
Ye tell them to each other as ye roll
On flowing tide, and this it is that gives
The sad despairing tones unto your voice
As on ye roll at eve by mounting tide.”
Well, I think that the stories whispered by the slender reeds, with their
little soft voices, must be more sinister than the lugubrious tragedies told by
the roaring of the waves.
But as you have asked for some of my recollections, I will tell you of a
singular adventure that happened to me ten years ago.
I was living, as I am now, in Mother Lafon’s house, and one of my closest
friends, Louis Bernet who has now given up boating, his low shoes and his
bare neck, to go into the Supreme Court, was living in the village of C., two
leagues further down the river. We dined together every day, sometimes at his
house, sometimes at mine.
One evening as I was coming home along and was pretty tired, rowing
with difficulty my big boat, a twelve-footer, which I always took out at night,
I stopped a few moments to draw breath near the reed-covered point yonder,
about two hundred metres from the railway bridge.
It was a magnificent night, the moon shone brightly, the river gleamed, the
air was calm and soft. This peacefulness tempted me. I thought to myself that
it would be pleasant to smoke a pipe in this spot. I took up my anchor and
cast it into the river.
The boat floated downstream with the current, to the end of the chain, and
then stopped, and I seated myself in the stern on my sheepskin and made
myself as comfortable as possible. There was not a sound to be heard, except
that I occasionally thought I could perceive an almost imperceptible lapping
of the water against the bank, and I noticed taller groups of reeds which
assumed strange shapes and seemed, at times, to move.
The river was perfectly calm, but I felt myself affected by the unusual
silence that surrounded me. All the creatures, frogs and toads, those nocturnal
singers of the marsh, were silent.
Suddenly a frog croaked to my right, and close beside me. I shuddered. It
ceased, and I heard nothing more, and resolved to smoke, to soothe my mind.
But, although I was a noted colorer of pipes, I could not smoke; at the second
draw I was nauseated, and gave up trying. I began to sing. The sound of my
voice was distressing to me. So I lay still, but presently the slight motion of
the boat disturbed me. It seemed to me as if she were making huge lurches,
from bank to bank of the river, touching each bank alternately. Then I felt as
though an invisible force, or being, were drawing her to the surface of the
water and lifting her out, to let her fall again. I was tossed about as in a
tempest. I heard noises around me. I sprang to my feet with a single bound.
The water was glistening, all was calm.
I saw that my nerves were somewhat shaky, and I resolved to leave the
spot. I pulled the anchor chain, the boat began to move; then I felt a
resistance. I pulled harder, the anchor did not come up; it had caught on
something at the bottom of the river and I could not raise it. I began pulling
again, but all in vain. Then, with my oars, I turned the boat with its head up
stream to change the position of the anchor. It was no use, it was still caught.
I flew into a rage and shook the chain furiously. Nothing budged. I sat down,
disheartened, and began to reflect on my situation. I could not dream of
breaking this chain, or detaching it from the boat, for it was massive and was
riveted at the bows to a piece of wood as thick as my arm. However, as the
weather was so fine I thought that it probably would not be long before some
fisherman came to my aid. My ill-luck had quieted me. I sat down and was
able, at length, to smoke my pipe. I had a bottle of rum; I drank two or three
glasses, and was able to laugh at the situation. It was very warm; so that, if
need be, I could sleep out under the stars without any great harm.
All at once there was a little knock at the side of the boat. I gave a start,
and a cold sweat broke out all over me. The noise was, doubtless, caused by
some piece of wood borne along by the current, but that was enough, and I
again became a prey to a strange nervous agitation. I seized the chain and
tensed my muscles in a desperate effort. The anchor held firm. I sat down
again, exhausted.
The river had slowly become enveloped in a thick white fog which lay
close to the water, so that when I stood up I could see neither the river, nor
my feet, nor my boat; but could perceive only the tops of the reeds, and
farther off in the distance the plain, lying white in the moonlight, with big
black patches rising up from it towards the sky, which were formed by
groups of Italian poplars. I was as if buried to the waist in a cloud of cotton
of singular whiteness, and all sorts of strange fancies came into my mind. I
thought that someone was trying to climb into my boat which I could no
longer distinguish, and that the river, hidden by the thick fog, was full of
strange creatures which were swimming all around me. I felt horribly
uncomfortable, my forehead felt as if it had a tight band round it, my heart
beat so that it almost suffocated me, and, almost beside myself, I thought of
swimming away from the place. But then, again, the very idea made me
tremble with fear. I saw myself, lost, going by guesswork in this heavy fog,
struggling about amid the grasses and reeds which I could not escape, my
breath rattling with fear, neither seeing the bank, nor finding my boat; and it
seemed as if I would feel myself dragged down by the feet to the bottom of
these black waters.
In fact, as I should have had to ascend the stream at least five hundred
metres before finding a spot free from grasses and rushes where I could land,
there were nine chances to one that I could not find my way in the fog and that
I should drown, no matter how well I could swim.
I tried to reason with myself. My will made me resolve not to be afraid,
but there was something in me besides my will, and that other thing was
afraid. I asked myself what there was to be afraid of. My brave “ego”
ridiculed my coward “ego,” and never did I realize, as on that day, the
existence in us of two rival personalities, one desiring a thing, the other
resisting, and each winning the day in turn.
This stupid, inexplicable fear increased, and became terror. I remained
motionless, my eyes staring, my ears on the stretch with expectation. Of
what? I did not know, but it must be something terrible. I believe if it had
occurred to a fish to jump out of the water, as often happens, nothing more
would have been required to make me fall over, stiff and unconscious.
However, by a violent effort I succeeded in becoming almost rational
again. I took up my bottle of rum and took several pulls. Then an idea came
to me, and I began to shout with all my might towards all the points of the
compass in succession. When my throat was absolutely paralyzed I listened.
A dog was howling, at a great distance.
I drank some more rum and stretched myself out at the bottom of the boat. I
remained there about an hour, perhaps two, not sleeping, my eyes wide open,
with nightmares all about me. I did not dare to rise, and yet I intensely longed
to do so. I delayed it from moment to moment. I said to myself: “Come, get
up!” and I was afraid to move. At last I raised myself with infinite caution as
though my life depended on the slightest sound that I might make; and looked
over the edge of the boat. I was dazzled by the most marvellous, the most
astonishing sight that it is possible to see. It was one of those phantasmagoria
of fairyland, one of those sights described by travellers on their return from
distant lands, whom we listen to without believing.
The fog which, two hours before, had floated on the water, had gradually
cleared off and massed on the banks, leaving the river absolutely clear; while
it formed on either bank an uninterrupted wall six or seven metres high,
which shone in the moonlight with the dazzling brilliance of snow. One saw
nothing but the river gleaming with light between these two white mountains;
and high above my head sailed the great full moon, in the midst of a bluish,
milky sky.
All the creatures in the water were awake. The frogs croaked furiously,
while every few moments I heard, first to the right and then to the left, the
abrupt, monotonous and mournful metallic note of the bullfrogs. Strange to
say, I was no longer afraid. I was in the midst of such an unusual landscape
that the most remarkable things would not have astonished me.
How long this lasted I do not know, for I ended by falling asleep. When I
opened my eyes the moon had gone down and the sky was full of clouds. The
water lapped mournfully, the wind was blowing, it was pitch dark. I drank
the rest of the rum, then listened, while I trembled, to the rustling of the reeds
and the foreboding sound of the river. I tried to see, but could not distinguish
my boat, nor even my hands, which I held up close to my eyes.
Little by little, however, the blackness became less intense. All at once I
thought I noticed a shadow gliding past, quite near me. I shouted, a voice
replied; it was a fisherman. I called him; he came near and I told him of my
ill-luck. He rowed his boat alongside of mine and, together, we pulled at the
anchor chain. The anchor did not move. Day came, gloomy gray, rainy and
cold, one of those days that bring one sorrows and misfortunes. I saw another
boat. We hailed it. The man on board of her joined his efforts to ours, and
gradually the anchor yielded. It rose, but slowly, slowly, loaded down by a
considerable weight. At length we perceived a black mass and we drew it on
board. It was the corpse of an old women with a big stone round her neck.
 LIEUTENANT LARE’S MARRIAGE

Since the beginning of the campaign Lieutenant Lare had taken two cannon
from the Prussians. His general had said: “Thank you, lieutenant,” and had
given him the cross of honor.
As he was as cautious as he was brave, wary, inventive, wily and
resourceful, he was entrusted with a hundred soldiers and he organized a
company of scouts who saved the army on several occasions during a retreat.
But the invading army entered by every frontier like a surging sea. Great
waves of men arrived one after the other, scattering all around them a scum
of freebooters. General Carrel’s brigade, separated from its division,
retreated continually, fighting each day, but remaining almost intact, thanks to
the vigilance and agility of Lieutenant Lare, who seemed to be everywhere at
the same moment, baffling all the enemy’s cunning, frustrating their plans,
misleading their Uhlans and killing their vanguards.
One morning the general sent for him.
“Lieutenant,” said he, “here is a dispatch from General de Lacere, who
will be destroyed if we do not go to his aid by sunrise to-morrow. He is at
Blainville, eight leagues from here. You will start at nightfall with three
hundred men, whom you will echelon along the road. I will follow you two
hours later. Study the road carefully; I fear we may meet a division of the
enemy.”
It had been freezing hard for a week. At two o’clock it began to snow, and
by night the ground was covered and heavy white swirls concealed objects
hard by.
At six o’clock the detachment set out.
Two men walked alone as scouts about three yards ahead. Then came a
platoon of ten men commanded by the lieutenant himself. The rest followed
them in two long columns. To the right and left of the little band, at a distance
of about three hundred feet on either side, some soldiers marched in pairs.
The snow, which was still falling, covered them with a white powder in
the darkness, and as it did not melt on their uniforms, they were hardly
distinguishable in the night amid the dead whiteness of the landscape.
 From time to time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable,
nameless flutter of falling snow — a sensation rather than a sound, a vague,
ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the troop
resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom standing in the
snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It was the echelons
who were to lead the army.
The scouts slackened their pace. Something was ahead of them.
“Turn to the right,” said the lieutenant; “it is the Ronfi wood; the chateau
is more to the left.”
Presently the command “Halt” was passed along. The detachment stopped
and waited for the lieutenant, who, accompanied by only ten men, had
undertaken a reconnoitering expedition to the chateau.
They advanced, creeping under the trees. Suddenly they all remained
motionless. Around them was a dead silence. Then, quite near them, a little
clear, musical young voice was heard amid the stillness of the wood.
“Father, we shall get lost in the snow. We shall never reach Blainville.”
A deeper voice replied:
“Never fear, little daughter; I know the country as well as I know my
pocket.”
The lieutenant said a few words and four men moved away silently, like
shadows.
All at once a woman’s shrill cry was heard through the darkness. Two
prisoners were brought back, an old man and a young girl. The lieutenant
questioned them, still in a low tone:
“Your name?”
“Pierre Bernard.”
“Your profession?”
“Butler to Comte de Ronfi.”
“Is this your daughter?”
‘Yes!’
“What does she do?”
“She is laundress at the chateau.”
“Where are you going?”
“We are making our escape.”
“Why?”
“Twelve Uhlans passed by this evening. They shot three keepers and
hanged the gardener. I was alarmed on account of the little one.”
 “Whither are you bound?”
“To Blainville.”
“Why?”
“Because there is a French army there.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Perfectly.”
“Well then, follow us.”
They rejoined the column and resumed their march across country. The
old man walked in silence beside the lieutenant, his daughter walking at his
side. All at once she stopped.
“Father,” she said, “I am so tired I cannot go any farther.”
And she sat down. She was shaking with cold and seemed about to lose
consciousness. Her father wanted to carry her, but he was too old and too
weak.
“Lieutenant,” said he, sobbing, “we shall only impede your march. France
before all. Leave us here.”
The officer had given a command. Some men had started off. They came
back with branches they had cut, and in a minute a litter was ready. The
whole detachment had joined them by this time.
“Here is a woman dying of cold,” said the lieutenant. “Who will give his
cape to cover her?”
Two hundred capes were taken off. The young girl was wrapped up in
these warm soldiers’ capes, gently laid in the litter, and then four’ hardy
shoulders lifted her up, and like an Eastern queen borne by her slaves she
was placed in the center of the detachment of soldiers, who resumed their
march with more energy, more courage, more cheerfulness, animated by the
presence of a woman, that sovereign inspiration that has stirred the old
French blood to so many deeds of valor.
At the end of an hour they halted again and every one lay down in the
snow. Over yonder on the level country a big, dark shadow was moving. It
looked like some weird monster stretching itself out like a serpent, then
suddenly coiling itself into a mass, darting forth again, then back, and then
forward again without ceasing. Some whispered orders were passed around
among the soldiers, and an occasional little, dry, metallic click was heard.
The moving object suddenly came nearer, and twelve Uhlans were seen
approaching at a gallop, one behind the other, having lost their way in the
darkness. A brilliant flash suddenly revealed to them two hundred mete lying
on the ground before them. A rapid fire was heard, which died away in the
snowy silence, and all the twelve fell to the ground, their horses with them.
After a long rest the march was resumed. The old man whom they had
captured acted as guide.
Presently a voice far off in the distance cried out: “Who goes there?”
Another voice nearer by gave the countersign.
They made another halt; some conferences took place. It had stopped
snowing. A cold wind was driving the clouds, and innumerable stars were
sparkling in the sky behind them, gradually paling in the rosy light of dawn.
A staff officer came forward to receive the detachment. But when he
asked who was being carried in the litter, the form stirred; two little hands
moved aside the big blue army capes and, rosy as the dawn, with two eyes
that were brighter than the stars that had just faded from sight, and a smile as
radiant as the morn, a dainty face appeared.
“It is I, monsieur.”
The soldiers, wild with delight, clapped their hands and bore the young
girl in triumph into the midst of the camp, that was just getting to arms.
Presently General Carrel arrived on the scene. At nine o’clock the Prussians
made an attack. They beat a retreat at noon.
That evening, as Lieutenant Lare, overcome by fatigue, was sleeping on a
bundle of straw, he was sent for by the general. He found the commanding
officer in his tent, chatting with the old man whom they had come across
during the night. As soon as he entered the tent the general took his hand, and
addressing the stranger, said:
“My dear comte, this is the young man of whom you were telling me just
now; he is one of my best officers.”
He smiled, lowered his tone, and added:
“The best.”
Then, turning to the astonished lieutenant, he presented “Comte de Ronfi-
Quedissac.”
The old man took both his hands, saying:
“My dear lieutenant, you have saved my daughter’s life. I have only one
way of thanking you. You may come in a few months to tell me — if you like
her.”
One year later, on the very same day, Captain Lare and Miss Louise-
Hortense-Genevieve de Ronfi-Quedissac were married in the church of St.
Thomas Aquinas.
 She brought a dowry of six thousand francs, and was said to be the
prettiest bride that had been seen that year.
 TWO FRIENDS

Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs
and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything
they could get.
As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession and idler for the nonce,
was strolling along the boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in
his trousers pockets and stomach empty, he suddenly came face to face with
an acquaintance — Monsieur Sauvage, a fishing chum.
Before the war broke out Morissot had been in the habit, every Sunday
morning, of setting forth with a bamboo rod in his hand and a tin box on his
back. He took the Argenteuil train, got out at Colombes, and walked thence to
the Ile Marante. The moment he arrived at this place of his dreams he began
fishing, and fished till nightfall.
Every Sunday he met in this very spot Monsieur Sauvage, a stout, jolly,
little man, a draper in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, and also an ardent
fisherman. They often spent half the day side by side, rod in hand and feet
dangling over the water, and a warm friendship had sprung up between the
two.
Some days they did not speak; at other times they chatted; but they
understood each other perfectly without the aid of words, having similar
tastes and feelings.
In the spring, about ten o’clock in the morning, when the early sun caused
a light mist to float on the water and gently warmed the backs of the two
enthusiastic anglers, Morissot would occasionally remark to his neighbor:
“My, but it’s pleasant here.”
To which the other would reply:
“I can’t imagine anything better!”
And these few words sufficed to make them understand and appreciate
each other.
In the autumn, toward the close of day, when the setting sun shed a blood-
red glow over the western sky, and the reflection of the crimson clouds
tinged the whole river with red, brought a glow to the faces of the two
friends, and gilded the trees, whose leaves were already turning at the first
chill touch of winter, Monsieur Sauvage would sometimes smile at Morissot,
and say:
“What a glorious spectacle!”
And Morissot would answer, without taking his eyes from his float:
“This is much better than the boulevard, isn’t it?”
As soon as they recognized each other they shook hands cordially,
affected at the thought of meeting under such changed circumstances.
Monsieur Sauvage, with a sigh, murmured:
“These are sad times!”
Morissot shook his head mournfully.
“And such weather! This is the first fine day of the year.”
The sky was, in fact, of a bright, cloudless blue.
They walked along, side by side, reflective and sad.
“And to think of the fishing!” said Morissot. “What good times we used to
have!”
“When shall we be able to fish again?” asked Monsieur Sauvage.
They entered a small cafe and took an absinthe together, then resumed
their walk along the pavement.
Morissot stopped suddenly.
“Shall we have another absinthe?” he said.
“If you like,” agreed Monsieur Sauvage.
And they entered another wine shop.
They were quite unsteady when they came out, owing to the effect of the
alcohol on their empty stomachs. It was a fine, mild day, and a gentle breeze
fanned their faces.
The fresh air completed the effect of the alcohol on Monsieur Sauvage. He
stopped suddenly, saying:
“Suppose we go there?”
“Where?”
“Fishing.”
“But where?”
“Why, to the old place. The French outposts are close to Colombes. I
know Colonel Dumoulin, and we shall easily get leave to pass.”
Morissot trembled with desire.
“Very well. I agree.”
And they separated, to fetch their rods and lines.
 An hour later they were walking side by side on the-highroad. Presently
they reached the villa occupied by the colonel. He smiled at their request,
and granted it. They resumed their walk, furnished with a password.
Soon they left the outposts behind them, made their way through deserted
Colombes, and found themselves on the outskirts of the small vineyards
which border the Seine. It was about eleven o’clock.
Before them lay the village of Argenteuil, apparently lifeless. The heights
of Orgement and Sannois dominated the landscape. The great plain, extending
as far as Nanterre, was empty, quite empty-a waste of dun-colored soil and
bare cherry trees.
Monsieur Sauvage, pointing to the heights, murmured:
“The Prussians are up yonder!”
And the sight of the deserted country filled the two friends with vague
misgivings.
The Prussians! They had never seen them as yet, but they had felt their
presence in the neighborhood of Paris for months past — ruining France,
pillaging, massacring, starving them. And a kind of superstitious terror
mingled with the hatred they already felt toward this unknown, victorious
nation.
“Suppose we were to meet any of them?” said Morissot.
“We’d offer them some fish,” replied Monsieur Sauvage, with that
Parisian light-heartedness which nothing can wholly quench.
Still, they hesitated to show themselves in the open country, overawed by
the utter silence which reigned around them.
At last Monsieur Sauvage said boldly:
“Come, we’ll make a start; only let us be careful!”
And they made their way through one of the vineyards, bent double,
creeping along beneath the cover afforded by the vines, with eye and ear
alert.
A strip of bare ground remained to be crossed before they could gain the
river bank. They ran across this, and, as soon as they were at the water’s
edge, concealed themselves among the dry reeds.
Morissot placed his ear to the ground, to ascertain, if possible, whether
footsteps were coming their way. He heard nothing. They seemed to be
utterly alone.
Their confidence was restored, and they began to fish.
 Before them the deserted Ile Marante hid them from the farther shore. The
little restaurant was closed, and looked as if it had been deserted for years.
Monsieur Sauvage caught the first gudgeon, Monsieur Morissot the
second, and almost every moment one or other raised his line with a little,
glittering, silvery fish wriggling at the end; they were having excellent sport.
They slipped their catch gently into a close-meshed bag lying at their feet;
they were filled with joy — the joy of once more indulging in a pastime of
which they had long been deprived.
The sun poured its rays on their backs; they no longer heard anything or
thought of anything. They ignored the rest of the world; they were fishing.
But suddenly a rumbling sound, which seemed to come from the bowels of
the earth, shook the ground beneath them: the cannon were resuming their
thunder.
Morissot turned his head and could see toward the left, beyond the banks
of the river, the formidable outline of Mont-Valerien, from whose summit
arose a white puff of smoke.
The next instant a second puff followed the first, and in a few moments a
fresh detonation made the earth tremble.
Others followed, and minute by minute the mountain gave forth its deadly
breath and a white puff of smoke, which rose slowly into the peaceful heaven
and floated above the summit of the cliff.
Monsieur Sauvage shrugged his shoulders.
“They are at it again!” he said.
Morissot, who was anxiously watching his float bobbing up and down,
was suddenly seized with the angry impatience of a peaceful man toward the
madmen who were firing thus, and remarked indignantly:
“What fools they are to kill one another like that!”
“They’re worse than animals,” replied Monsieur Sauvage.
And Morissot, who had just caught a bleak, declared:
“And to think that it will be just the same so long as there are
governments!”
“The Republic would not have declared war,” interposed Monsieur
Sauvage.
Morissot interrupted him:
“Under a king we have foreign wars; under a republic we have civil war.”
And the two began placidly discussing political problems with the sound
common sense of peaceful, matter-of-fact citizens — agreeing on one point:
that they would never be free. And Mont-Valerien thundered ceaselessly,
demolishing the houses of the French with its cannon balls, grinding lives of
men to powder, destroying many a dream, many a cherished hope, many a
prospective happiness; ruthlessly causing endless woe and suffering in the
hearts of wives, of daughters, of mothers, in other lands.
“Such is life!” declared Monsieur Sauvage.
“Say, rather, such is death!” replied Morissot, laughing.
But they suddenly trembled with alarm at the sound of footsteps behind
them, and, turning round, they perceived close at hand four tall, bearded men,
dressed after the manner of livery servants and wearing flat caps on their
heads. They were covering the two anglers with their rifles.
The rods slipped from their owners’ grasp and floated away down the
river.
In the space of a few seconds they were seized, bound, thrown into a boat,
and taken across to the Ile Marante.
And behind the house they had thought deserted were about a score of
German soldiers.
A shaggy-looking giant, who was bestriding a chair and smoking a long
clay pipe, addressed them in excellent French with the words:
“Well, gentlemen, have you had good luck with your fishing?”
Then a soldier deposited at the officer’s feet the bag full of fish, which he
had taken care to bring away. The Prussian smiled.
“Not bad, I see. But we have something else to talk about. Listen to me,
and don’t be alarmed:
“You must know that, in my eyes, you are two spies sent to reconnoitre me
and my movements. Naturally, I capture you and I shoot you. You pretended
to be fishing, the better to disguise your real errand. You have fallen into my
hands, and must take the consequences. Such is war.
“But as you came here through the outposts you must have a password for
your return. Tell me that password and I will let you go.”
The two friends, pale as death, stood silently side by side, a slight
fluttering of the hands alone betraying their emotion.
“No one will ever know,” continued the officer. “You will return
peacefully to your homes, and the secret will disappear with you. If you
refuse, it means death-instant death. Choose!”
They stood motionless, and did not open their lips.
 The Prussian, perfectly calm, went on, with hand outstretched toward the
river:
“Just think that in five minutes you will be at the bottom of that water. In
five minutes! You have relations, I presume?”
Mont-Valerien still thundered.
The two fishermen remained silent. The German turned and gave an order
in his own language. Then he moved his chair a little way off, that he might
not be so near the prisoners, and a dozen men stepped forward, rifle in hand,
and took up a position, twenty paces off.
“I give you one minute,” said the officer; “not a second longer.”
Then he rose quickly, went over to the two Frenchmen, took Morissot by
the arm, led him a short distance off, and said in a low voice:
“Quick! the password! Your friend will know nothing. I will pretend to
relent.”
Morissot answered not a word.
Then the Prussian took Monsieur Sauvage aside in like manner, and made
him the same proposal.
Monsieur Sauvage made no reply.
Again they stood side by side.
The officer issued his orders; the soldiers raised their rifles.
Then by chance Morissot’s eyes fell on the bag full of gudgeon lying in the
grass a few feet from him.
A ray of sunlight made the still quivering fish glisten like silver. And
Morissot’s heart sank. Despite his efforts at self-control his eyes filled with
tears.
“Good-by, Monsieur Sauvage,” he faltered.
“Good-by, Monsieur Morissot,” replied Sauvage.
They shook hands, trembling from head to foot with a dread beyond their
mastery.
The officer cried:
“Fire!”
The twelve shots were as one.
Monsieur Sauvage fell forward instantaneously. Morissot, being the taller,
swayed slightly and fell across his friend with face turned skyward and
blood oozing from a rent in the breast of his coat.
The German issued fresh orders.
 His men dispersed, and presently returned with ropes and large stones,
which they attached to the feet of the two friends; then they carried them to
the river bank.
Mont-Valerien, its summit now enshrouded in smoke, still continued to
thunder.
Two soldiers took Morissot by the head and the feet; two others did the
same with Sauvage. The bodies, swung lustily by strong hands, were cast to a
distance, and, describing a curve, fell feet foremost into the stream.
The water splashed high, foamed, eddied, then grew calm; tiny waves
lapped the shore.
A few streaks of blood flecked the surface of the river.
The officer, calm throughout, remarked, with grim humor:
“It’s the fishes’ turn now!”
Then he retraced his way to the house.
Suddenly he caught sight of the net full of gudgeons, lying forgotten in the
grass. He picked it up, examined it, smiled, and called:
“Wilhelm!”
A white-aproned soldier responded to the summons, and the Prussian,
tossing him the catch of the two murdered men, said:
“Have these fish fried for me at once, while they are still alive; they’ll
make a tasty dish.”
Then he resumed his pipe.
 THE LANCER’S WIFE

It was after Bourbaki’s defeat in the east of France. The army, broken up,
decimated, and worn out, had been obliged to retreat into Switzerland after
that terrible campaign, and it was only its short duration that saved a hundred
and fifty thousand men from certain death. Hunger, the terrible cold, forced
marches in the snow without boots, over bad mountain roads, had caused us
‘francs-tireurs’, especially, the greatest suffering, for we were without tents,
and almost without food, always in the van when we were marching toward
Belfort, and in the rear when returning by the Jura. Of our little band that had
numbered twelve hundred men on the first of January, there remained only
twenty-two pale, thin, ragged wretches, when we at length succeeded in
reaching Swiss territory.
There we were safe, and could rest. Everybody knows what sympathy
was shown to the unfortunate French army, and how well it was cared for.
We all gained fresh life, and those who had been rich and happy before the
war declared that they had never experienced a greater feeling of comfort
than they did then. Just think. We actually had something to eat every day, and
could sleep every night.
Meanwhile, the war continued in the east of France, which had been
excluded from the armistice. Besancon still kept the enemy in check, and the
latter had their revenge by ravaging Franche Comte. Sometimes we heard that
they had approached quite close to the frontier, and we saw Swiss troops,
who were to form a line of observation between us and them, set out on their
march.
That pained us in the end, and, as we regained health and strength, the
longing to fight took possession of us. It was disgraceful and irritating to
know that within two or three leagues of us the Germans were victorious and
insolent, to feel that we were protected by our captivity, and to feel that on
that account we were powerless against them.
 One day our captain took five or six of us aside, and spoke to us about it,
long and furiously. He was a fine fellow, that captain. He had been a
sublieutenant in the Zouaves, was tall and thin and as hard as steel, and
during the whole campaign he had cut out their work for the Germans. He
fretted in inactivity, and could not accustom himself to the idea of being a
prisoner and of doing nothing.
“Confound it!” he said to us, “does it not pain you to know that there is a
number of uhlans within two hours of us? Does it not almost drive you mad to
know that those beggarly wretches are walking about as masters in our
mountains, when six determined men might kill a whole spitful any day? I
cannot endure it any longer, and I must go there.”
“But how can you manage it, captain?”
“How? It is not very difficult! Just as if we had not done a thing or two
within the last six months, and got out of woods that were guarded by very
different men from the Swiss. The day that you wish to cross over into
France, I will undertake to get you there.”
“That may be; but what shall we do in France without any arms?”
“Without arms? We will get them over yonder, by Jove!”
“You are forgetting the treaty,” another soldier said; “we shall run the risk
of doing the Swiss an injury, if Manteuffel learns that they have allowed
prisoners to return to France.”
“Come,” said the captain, “those are all bad reasons. I mean to go and kill
some Prussians; that is all I care about. If you do not wish to do as I do, well
and good; only say so at once. I can quite well go by myself; I do not require
anybody’s company.”
Naturally we all protested, and, as it was quite impossible to make the
captain alter his mind, we felt obliged to promise to go with him. We liked
him too much to leave him in the lurch, as he never failed us in any extremity;
and so the expedition was decided on.

II

The captain had a plan of his own, that he had been cogitating over for some
time. A man in that part of the country whom he knew was going to lend him
a cart and six suits of peasants’ clothes. We could hide under some straw at
the bottom of the wagon, which would be loaded with Gruyere cheese, which
he was supposed to be going to sell in France. The captain told the sentinels
that he was taking two friends with him to protect his goods, in case any one
should try to rob him, which did not seem an extraordinary precaution. A
Swiss officer seemed to look at the wagon in a knowing manner, but that was
in order to impress his soldiers. In a word, neither officers nor men could
make it out.
“Get up,” the captain said to the horses, as he cracked his whip, while our
three men quietly smoked their pipes. I was half suffocated in my box, which
only admitted the air through those holes in front, and at the same time I was
nearly frozen, for it was terribly cold.
“Get up,” the captain said again, and the wagon loaded with Gruyere
cheese entered France.
The Prussian lines were very badly guarded, as the enemy trusted to the
watchfulness of the Swiss. The sergeant spoke North German, while our
captain spoke the bad German of the Four Cantons, and so they could not
understand each other. The sergeant, however, pretended to be very
intelligent; and, in order to make us believe that he understood us, they
allowed us to continue our journey; and, after travelling for seven hours,
being continually stopped in the same manner, we arrived at a small village
of the Jura in ruins, at nightfall.
What were we going to do? Our only arms were the captain’s whip, our
uniforms our peasants’ blouses, and our food the Gruyere cheese. Our sole
wealth consisted in our ammunition, packages of cartridges which we had
stowed away inside some of the large cheeses. We had about a thousand of
them, just two hundred each, but we needed rifles, and they must be
chassepots. Luckily, however, the captain was a bold man of an inventive
mind, and this was the plan that he hit upon:
While three of us remained hidden in a cellar in the abandoned village, he
continued his journey as far as Besancon with the empty wagon and one man.
The town was invested, but one can always make one’s way into a town
among the hills by crossing the tableland till within about ten miles of the
walls, and then following paths and ravines on foot. They left their wagon at
Omans, among the Germans, and escaped out of it at night on foot; so as to
gain the heights which border the River Doubs; the next day they entered
Besancon, where there were plenty of chassepots. There were nearly forty
thousand of them left in the arsenal, and General Roland, a brave marine,
laughed at the captain’s daring project, but let him have six rifles and wished
him “good luck.” There he had also found his wife, who had been through all
the war with us before the campaign in the East, and who had been only
prevented by illness from continuing with Bourbaki’s army. She had
recovered, however, in spite of the cold, which was growing more and more
intense, and in spite of the numberless privations that awaited her, she
persisted in accompanying her husband. He was obliged to give way to her,
and they all three, the captain, his wife, and our comrade, started on their
expedition.
Going was nothing in comparison to returning. They were obliged to
travel by night, so as to avoid meeting anybody, as the possession of six
rifles would have made them liable to suspicion. But, in spite of everything,
a week after leaving us, the captain and his two men were back with us
again. The campaign was about to begin.

III

The first night of his arrival he began it himself, and, under pretext of
examining the surrounding country, he went along the high road.
I must tell you that the little village which served as our fortress was a
small collection of poor, badly built houses, which had been deserted long
before. It lay on a steep slope, which terminated in a wooded plain. The
country people sell the wood; they send it down the slopes, which are called
coulees, locally, and which lead down to the plain, and there they stack it
into piles, which they sell thrice a year to the wood merchants. The spot
where this market is held in indicated by two small houses by the side of the
highroad, which serve for public houses. The captain had gone down there by
way of one of these coulees.
He had been gone about half an hour, and we were on the lookout at the
top of the ravine, when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not to
stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It was
made of a goat’s horn, and could be heard a league off; but it gave no sound,
and, in spite of our cruel anxiety, we were obliged to wait in silence, with
our rifles by our side.
It is nothing to go down these coulees; one just lets one’s self slide down;
but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to scramble up by catching
hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all fours, by
sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed, and he did not come; nothing
moved in the brushwood. The captain’s wife began to grow impatient. What
could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the shot that we had heard
proceed from an enemy, and had he killed or wounded our leader, her
husband? They did not know what to think, but I myself fancied either that he
was dead or that his enterprise was successful; and I was merely anxious and
curious to know what he had done.
Suddenly we heard the sound of his trumpet, and we were much surprised
that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the
village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the same
idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians were
blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore returned to the
cottage, keeping a careful lookout with our fingers on the trigger, and hiding
under the branches; but his wife, in spite of our entreaties, rushed on, leaping
like a tigress. She thought that she had to avenge her husband, and had fixed
the bayonet to her rifle, and we lost sight of her at the moment that we heard
the trumpet again; and, a few moments later, we heard her calling out to us:
“Come on! come on! He is alive! It is he!”
We hastened on, and saw the captain smoking his pipe at the entrance of
the village, but strangely enough, he was on horseback.
“Ah! ah!” he said to us, “you see that there is something to be done here.
Here I am on horseback already; I knocked over an uhlan yonder, and took
his horse; I suppose they were guarding the wood, but it was by drinking and
swilling in clover. One of them, the sentry at the door, had not time to see me
before I gave him a sugarplum in his stomach, and then, before the others
could come out, I jumped on the horse and was off like a shot. Eight or ten of
them followed me, I think; but I took the crossroads through the woods. I
have got scratched and torn a bit, but here I am, and now, my good fellows,
attention, and take care! Those brigands will not rest until they have caught
us, and we must receive them with rifle bullets. Come along; let us take up
our posts!”
We set out. One of us took up his position a good way from the village on
the crossroads; I was posted at the entrance of the main street, where the road
from the level country enters the village, while the two others, the captain
and his wife, were in the middle of the village, near the church, whose
tower-served for an observatory and citadel.
We had not been in our places long before we heard a shot, followed by
another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot — one
recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip —
while the other three came from the lancers’ carbines.
The captain was furious. He had given orders to the outpost to let the
enemy pass and merely to follow them at a distance if they marched toward
the village, and to join me when they had gone well between the houses.
Then they were to appear suddenly, take the patrol between two fires, and not
allow a single man to escape; for, posted as we were, the six of us could
have hemmed in ten Prussians, if needful.
“That confounded Piedelot has roused them,” the captain said, “and they
will not venture to come on blindfolded any longer. And then I am quite sure
that he has managed to get a shot into himself somewhere or other, for we
hear nothing of him. It serves him right; why did he not obey orders?” And
then, after a moment, he grumbled in his beard: “After all I am sorry for the
poor fellow; he is so brave, and shoots so well!”
The captain was right in his conjectures. We waited until evening, without
seeing the uhlans; they had retreated after the first attack; but unfortunately we
had not seen Piedelot, either. Was he dead or a prisoner? When night came,
the captain proposed that we should go out and look for him, and so the three
of us started. At the crossroads we found a broken rifle and some blood,
while the ground was trampled down; but we did not find either a wounded
man or a dead body, although we searched every thicket, and at midnight we
returned without having discovered anything of our unfortunate comrade.
“It is very strange,” the captain growled. “They must have killed him and
thrown him into the bushes somewhere; they cannot possibly have taken him
prisoner, as he would have called out for help. I cannot understand it at all.”
Just as he said that, bright flames shot up in the direction of the inn on the
high road, which illuminated the sky.
“Scoundrels! cowards!” he shouted. “I will bet that they have set fire to
the two houses on the marketplace, in order to have their revenge, and then
they will scuttle off without saying a word. They will be satisfied with
having killed a man and set fire to two houses. All right. It shall not pass
over like that. We must go for them; they will not like to leave their
illuminations in order to fight.”
“It would be a great stroke of luck if we could set Piedelot free at the
same time,” some one said.
The five of us set off, full of rage and hope. In twenty minutes we had got
to the bottom of the coulee, and had not yet seen any one when we were
within a hundred yards of the inn. The fire was behind the house, and all we
saw of it was the reflection above the roof. However, we were walking
rather slowly, as we were afraid of an ambush, when suddenly we heard
Piedelot’s well-known voice. It had a strange sound, however; for it was at
the same time — dull and vibrating, stifled and clear, as if he were calling
out as loud as he could with a bit of rag stuffed into his mouth. He seemed to
be hoarse and gasping, and the unlucky fellow kept exclaiming: “Help!
Help!”
We sent all thoughts of prudence to the devil, and in two bounds we were
at the back of the inn, where a terrible sight met our eyes.

IV

Piedelot was being burned alive. He was writhing in the midst of a heap of
fagots, tied to a stake, and the flames were licking him with their burning
tongues. When he saw us, his tongue seemed to stick in his throat; he drooped
his head, and seemed as if he were going to die. It was only the affair of a
moment to upset the burning pile, to scatter the embers, and to cut the ropes
that fastened him.
Poor fellow! In what a terrible state we found him. The evening before he
had had his left arm broken, and it seemed as if he had been badly beaten
since then, for his whole body was covered with wounds, bruises and blood.
The flames had also begun their work on him, and he had two large burns,
one on his loins and the other on his right thigh, and his beard and hair were
scorched. Poor Piedelot!
No one knows the terrible rage we felt at this sight! We would have
rushed headlong at a hundred thousand Prussians; our thirst for vengeance
was intense. But the cowards had run away, leaving their crime behind them.
Where could we find them now? Meanwhile, however, the captain’s wife
was looking after Piedelot, and dressing his wounds as best she could, while
the captain himself shook hands with him excitedly, and in a few minutes he
came to himself.
“Good-morning, captain; good-morning, all of you,” he said. “Ah! the
scoundrels, the wretches! Why, twenty of them came to surprise us.”
“Twenty, do you say?”
“Yes; there was a whole band of them, and that is why I disobeyed orders,
captain, and fired on them, for they would have killed you all, and I preferred
to stop them. That frightened them, and they did not venture to go farther than
the crossroads. They were such cowards. Four of them shot at me at twenty
yards, as if I had been a target, and then they slashed me with their swords.
My arm was broken, so that I could only use my bayonet with one hand.”
“But why did you not call for help?”
“I took good care not to do that, for you would all have come; and you
would neither have been able to defend me nor yourselves, being only five
against twenty.”
“You know that we should not have allowed you to have been taken, poor
old fellow.”
“I preferred to die by myself, don’t you see! I did not want to bring you
here, for it would have been a mere ambush.”
“Well, we will not talk about it any more. Do you feel rather easier?”
“No, I am suffocating. I know that I cannot live much longer. The brutes!
They tied me to a tree, and beat me till I was half dead, and then they shook
my broken arm; but I did not make a sound. I would rather have bitten my
tongue out than have called out before them. Now I can tell what I am
suffering and shed tears; it does one good. Thank you, my kind friends.”
“Poor Piedelot! But we will avenge you, you may be sure!”
“Yes, yes; I want you to do that. There is, in particular, a woman among
them who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed yesterday.
She is dressed like a lancer, and she tortured me the most yesterday, and
suggested burning me; and it was she who set fire to the wood. Oh! the
wretch, the brute! Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my arms!” and he fell
back gasping and exhausted, writhing in his terrible agony, while the
captain’s wife wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and we all shed
tears of grief and rage, as if we had been children. I will not describe the end
to you; he died half an hour later, previously telling us in what direction the
enemy had gone. When he was dead we gave ourselves time to bury him, and
then we set out in pursuit of them, with our hearts full of fury and hatred.
“We will throw ourselves on the whole Prussian army, if it be necessary,”
the captain said; “but we will avenge Piedelot. We must catch those
scoundrels. Let us swear to die, rather than not to find them; and if I am killed
first, these are my orders: All the prisoners that you take are to be shot
immediately, and as for the lancer’s wife, she is to be tortured before she is
put to death.”
 “She must not be shot, because she is a woman,” the captain’s wife said.
“If you survive, I am sure that you would not shoot a woman. Torturing her
will be quite sufficient; but if you are killed in this pursuit, I want one thing,
and that is to fight with her; I will kill her with my own hands, and the others
can do what they like with her if she kills me.”
“We will outrage her! We will burn her! We will tear her to pieces!
Piedelot shall be avenged!
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!”

The next morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four leagues

away. Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to mount their
horses, nor even to defend themselves; and in a few moments we had five
prisoner, corresponding to our own number. The captain questioned them,
and from their answers we felt certain that they were the same whom we had
encountered the previous day. Then a very curious operation took place. One
of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and nothing can describe our joy
when we discovered what we were seeking among them, the female
executioner who had tortured our friend.
The four others were shot on the spot, with their backs to us and close to
the muzzles of our rifles; and then we turned our attention to the woman.
What were we going to do with her? I must acknowledge that we were all of
us in favor of shooting her. Hatred, and the wish to avenge Piedelot, had
extinguished all pity in us, and we had forgotten that we were going to shoot
a woman, but a woman reminded us of it, the captain’s wife; at her entreaties,
therefore, we determined to keep her a prisoner.
The captain’s poor wife was to be severely punished for this act of
clemency.
The next day we heard that the armistice had been extended to the eastern
part of France, and we had to put an end to our little campaign. Two of us,
who belonged to the neighborhood, returned home, so there were only four of
us, all told: the captain, his wife, and two men. We belonged to Besancon,
which was still being besieged in spite of the armistice.
“Let us stop here,” said the captain. “I cannot believe that the war is going
to end like this. The devil take it! Surely there are men still left in France;
and now is the time to prove what they are made of. The spring is coming on,
and the armistice is only a trap laid for the Prussians. During the time that it
lasts, a new army will be raised, and some fine morning we shall fall upon
them again. We shall be ready, and we have a hostage — let us remain here.”
We fixed our quarters there. It was terribly cold, and we did not go out
much, and somebody had always to keep the female prisoner in sight.
She was sullen, and never said anything, or else spoke of her husband,
whom the captain had killed. She looked at him continually with fierce eyes,
and we felt that she was tortured by a wild longing for revenge. That seemed
to us to be the most suitable punishment for the terrible torments that she had
made Piedelot suffer, for impotent vengeance is such intense pain!
Alas! we who knew how to avenge our comrade ought to have thought that
this woman would know how to avenge her husband, and have been on our
guard. It is true that one of us kept watch every night, and that at first we tied
her by a long rope to the great oak bench that was fastened to the wall. But,
by and by, as she had never tried to escape, in spite of her hatred for us, we
relaxed our extreme prudence, and allowed her to sleep somewhere else
except on the bench, and without being tied. What had we to fear? She was at
the end of the room, a man was on guard at the door, and between her and the
sentinel the captain’s wife and two other men used to lie. She was alone and
unarmed against four, so there could be no danger.
One night when we were asleep, and the captain was on guard, the
lancer’s wife was lying more quietly in her corner than usual, and she had
even smiled for the first time since she had been our prisoner during the
evening. Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, we were all
awakened by a terrible cry. We got up, groping about, and at once stumbled
over a furious couple who were rolling about and fighting on the ground. It
was the captain and the lancer’s wife. We threw ourselves on them, and
separated them in a moment. She was shouting and laughing, and he seemed
to have the death rattle. All this took place in the dark. Two of us held her,
and when a light was struck a terrible sight met our eyes. The captain was
lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with an enormous gash in his throat, and
his sword bayonet, that had been taken from his rifle, was sticking in the red,
gaping wound. A few minutes afterward he died, without having been able to
utter a word.
His wife did not shed a tear. Her eyes were dry, her throat was
contracted, and she looked at the lancer’s wife steadfastly, and with a calm
ferocity that inspired fear.
 “This woman belongs to me,” she said to us suddenly. “You swore to me
not a week ago to let me kill her as I chose, if she killed my husband; and you
must keep your oath. You must fasten her securely to the fireplace, upright
against the back of it, and then you can go where you like, but far from here. I
will take my revenge on her myself. Leave the captain’s body, and we three,
he, she and I, will remain here.”
We obeyed, and went away. She promised to write to us to Geneva, as we
were returning thither.

VI

Two days later I received the following letter, dated the day after we had
left, that had been written at an inn on the high road:
“MY FRIEND: I am writing to you, according to my promise. For the
moment I am at the inn, where I have just handed my prisoner over to a
Prussian officer.
“I must tell you, my friend, that this poor woman has left two children in
Germany. She had followed her husband, whom she adored, as she did not
wish him to be exposed to the risks of war by himself, and as her children
were with their grandparents. I have learned all this since yesterday, and it
has turned my ideas of vengeance into more humane feelings. At the very
moment when I felt pleasure in insulting this woman, and in threatening her
with the most fearful torments, in recalling Piedelot, who had been burned
alive, and in threatening her with a similar death, she looked at me coldly,
and said:
“‘What have you got to reproach me with, Frenchwoman? You think that
you will do right in avenging your husband’s death, is not that so?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied.
“‘Very well, then; in killing him, I did what you are going to do in burning
me. I avenged my husband, for your husband killed him.’
“‘Well,’ I replied, ‘as you approve of this vengeance, prepare to endure
it.’
“‘I do not fear it.’
“And in fact she did not seem to have lost courage. Her face was calm,
and she looked at me without trembling, while I brought wood and dried
leaves together, and feverishly threw on to them the powder from some
cartridges, which was to make her funeral pile the more cruel.
 “I hesitated in my thoughts of persecution for a moment. But the captain
was there, pale and covered with blood, and he seemed to be looking at me
with his large, glassy eyes, and I applied myself to my work again after
kissing his pale lips. Suddenly, however, on raising my head, I saw that she
was crying, and I felt rather surprised.
“‘So you are frightened?’ I said to her.
“‘No, but when I saw you kiss your husband, I thought of mine, of all
whom I love.’
“She continued to sob, but stopping suddenly, she said to me in broken
words and in a low voice:
“‘Have you any children?’
“A shiver rare over me, for I guessed that this poor woman had some. She
asked me to look in a pocketbook which was in her bosom, and in it I saw
two photographs of quite young children, a boy and a girl, with those kind,
gentle, chubby faces that German children have. In it there were also two
locks of light hair and a letter in a large, childish hand, and beginning with
German words which meant:
“‘My dear little mother.
“‘I could not restrain my tears, my dear friend, and so I untied her, and
without venturing to look at the face of my poor dead husband, who was not
to be avenged, I went with her as far as the inn. She is free; I have just left
her, and she kissed me with tears. I am going upstairs to my husband; come as
soon as possible, my dear friend, to look for our two bodies.’”
I set off with all speed, and when I arrived there was a Prussian patrol at
the cottage; and when I asked what it all meant, I was told that there was a
captain of francs-tireurs and his wife inside, both dead. I gave their names;
they saw that I knew them, and I begged to be allowed to arrange their
funeral.
“Somebody has already undertaken it,” was the reply. “Go in if you wish
to, as you know them. You can settle about their funeral with their friend.”
I went in. The captain and his wife were lying side by side on a bed, and
were covered by a sheet. I raised it, and saw that the woman had inflicted a
similar wound in her throat to that from which her husband had died.
At the side of the bed there sat, watching and weeping, the woman who
had been mentioned to me as their best friend. It was the lancer’s wife.
 THE PRISONERS

There was not a sound in the forest save the indistinct, fluttering sound of the
snow falling on the trees. It had been snowing since noon; a little fine snow,
that covered the branches as with frozen moss, and spread a silvery covering
over the dead leaves in the ditches, and covered the roads with a white,
yielding carpet, and made still more intense the boundless silence of this
ocean of trees.
Before the door of the forester’s dwelling a young woman, her arms bare
to the elbow, was chopping wood with a hatchet on a block of stone. She was
tall, slender, strong-a true girl of the woods, daughter and wife of a forester.
A voice called from within the house:
“We are alone to-night, Berthine; you must come in. It is getting dark, and
there may be Prussians or wolves about.”
“I’ve just finished, mother,” replied the young woman, splitting as she
spoke an immense log of wood with strong, deft blows, which expanded her
chest each time she raised her arms to strike. “Here I am; there’s no need to
be afraid; it’s quite light still.”
Then she gathered up her sticks and logs, piled them in the chimney
corner, went back to close the great oaken shutters, and finally came in,
drawing behind her the heavy bolts of the door.
Her mother, a wrinkled old woman whom age had rendered timid, was
spinning by the fireside.
“I am uneasy,” she said, “when your father’s not here. Two women are not
much good.”
“Oh,” said the younger woman, “I’d cheerfully kill a wolf or a Prussian if
it came to that.”
And she glanced at a heavy revolver hanging above the hearth.
Her husband had been called upon to serve in the army at the beginning of
the Prussian invasion, and the two women had remained alone with the old
father, a keeper named Nicolas Pichon, sometimes called Long-legs, who
refused obstinately to leave his home and take refuge in the town.
 This town was Rethel, an ancient stronghold built on a rock. Its
inhabitants were patriotic, and had made up their minds to resist the
invaders, to fortify their native place, and, if need be, to stand a siege as in
the good old days. Twice already, under Henri IV and under Louis XIV, the
people of Rethel had distinguished themselves by their heroic defence of
their town. They would do as much now, by gad! or else be slaughtered
within their own walls.
They had, therefore, bought cannon and rifles, organized a militia, and
formed themselves into battalions and companies, and now spent their time
drilling all day long in the square. All-bakers, grocers, butchers, lawyers,
carpenters, booksellers, chemists-took their turn at military training at regular
hours of the day, under the auspices of Monsieur Lavigne, a former
noncommissioned officer in the dragoons, now a draper, having married the
daughter and inherited the business of Monsieur Ravaudan, Senior.
He had taken the rank of commanding officer in Rethel, and, seeing that all
the young men had gone off to the war, he had enlisted all the others who
were in favor of resisting an attack. Fat men now invariably walked the
streets at a rapid pace, to reduce their weight and improve their breathing,
and weak men carried weights to strengthen their muscles.
And they awaited the Prussians. But the Prussians did not appear. They
were not far off, however, for twice already their scouts had penetrated as
far as the forest dwelling of Nicolas Pichon, called Long-legs.
The old keeper, who could run like a fox, had come and warned the town.
The guns had been got ready, but the enemy had not shown themselves.
Long-legs’ dwelling served as an outpost in the Aveline forest. Twice a
week the old man went to the town for provisions and brought the citizens
news of the outlying district.
On this particular day he had gone to announce the fact that a small
detachment of German infantry had halted at his house the day before, about
two o’clock in the afternoon, and had left again almost immediately. The
noncommissioned officer in charge spoke French.
When the old man set out like this he took with him his dogs — two
powerful animals with the jaws of lions-as a safeguard against the wolves,
which were beginning to get fierce, and he left directions with the two
women to barricade themselves securely within their dwelling as soon as
night fell.
 The younger feared nothing, but her mother was always apprehensive, and
repeated continually:
“We’ll come to grief one of these days. You see if we don’t!”
This evening she was, if possible, more nervous than ever.
“Do you know what time your father will be back?” she asked.
“Oh, not before eleven, for certain. When he dines with the commandant
he’s always late.”
And Berthine was hanging her pot over the fire to warm the soup when
she suddenly stood still, listening attentively to a sound that had reached her
through the chimney.
“There are people walking in the wood,” she said; “seven or eight men at
least.”
The terrified old woman stopped her spinning wheel, and gasped:
“Oh, my God! And your father not here!”
She had scarcely finished speaking when a succession of violent blows
shook the door.
As the woman made no reply, a loud, guttural voice shouted:
“Open the door!”
After a brief silence the same voice repeated:
“Open the door or I’ll break it down!”
Berthine took the heavy revolver from its hook, slipped it into the pocket
of her skirt, and, putting her ear to the door, asked:
“Who are you?” demanded the young woman. “What do you want?”.
“The detachment that came here the other day,” replied the voice.
“My men and I have lost our way in the forest since morning. Open the
door or I’ll break it down!”
The forester’s daughter had no choice; she shot back the heavy bolts,
threw open the ponderous shutter, and perceived in the wan light of the snow
six men, six Prussian soldiers, the same who had visited the house the day
before.
“What are you doing here at this time of night?” she asked dauntlessly.
“I lost my bearings,” replied the officer; “lost them completely. Then I
recognized this house. I’ve eaten nothing since morning, nor my men either.”
“But I’m quite alone with my mother this evening,” said Berthine.
“Never mind,” replied the soldier, who seemed a decent sort of fellow.
“We won’t do you any harm, but you must give us something to eat. We are
nearly dead with hunger and fatigue.”
 Then the girl moved aside.
“Come in;” she said.
Then entered, covered with snow, their helmets sprinkled with a creamy-
looking froth, which gave them the appearance of meringues. They seemed
utterly worn out.
The young woman pointed to the wooden benches on either side of the
large table.
“Sit down,” she said, “and I’ll make you some soup. You certainly look
tired out, and no mistake.”
Then she bolted the door afresh.
She put more water in the pot, added butter and potatoes; then, taking
down a piece of bacon from a hook in the chimney earner, cut it in two and
slipped half of it into the pot.
The six men watched her movements with hungry eyes. They had placed
their rifles and helmets in a corner and waited for supper, as well behaved as
children on a school bench.
The old mother had resumed her spinning, casting from time to time a
furtive and uneasy glance at the soldiers. Nothing was to be heard save the
humming of the wheel, the crackling of the fire, and the singing of the water
in the pot.
But suddenly a strange noise — a sound like the harsh breathing of some
wild animal sniffing under the door-startled the occupants of the room.
The German officer sprang toward the rifles. Berthine stopped him with a
gesture, and said, smilingly:
“It’s only the wolves. They are like you — prowling hungry through the
forest.”
The incredulous man wanted to see with his own eyes, and as soon as the
door was opened he perceived two large grayish animals disappearing with
long, swinging trot into the darkness.
He returned to his seat, muttering:
“I wouldn’t have believed it!”
And he waited quietly till supper was ready.
The men devoured their meal voraciously, with mouths stretched to their
ears that they might swallow the more. Their round eyes opened at the same
time as their jaws, and as the soup coursed down their throats it made a noise
like the gurgling of water in a rainpipe.
 The two women watched in silence the movements of the big red beards.
The potatoes seemed to be engulfed in these moving fleeces.
But, as they were thirsty, the forester’s daughter went down to the cellar to
draw them some cider. She was gone some time. The cellar was small, with
an arched ceiling, and had served, so people said, both as prison and as
hiding-place during the Revolution. It was approached by means of a narrow,
winding staircase, closed by a trap-door at the farther end of the kitchen.
When Berthine returned she was smiling mysteriously to herself. She gave
the Germans her jug of cider.
Then she and her mother supped apart, at the other end of the kitchen.
The soldiers had finished eating, and were all six falling asleep as they
sat round the table. Every now and then a forehead fell with a thud on the
board, and the man, awakened suddenly, sat upright again.
Berthine said to the officer:
“Go and lie down, all of you, round the fire. There’s lots of room for six.
I’m going up to my room with my mother.”
And the two women went upstairs. They could be heard locking the door
and walking about overhead for a time; then they were silent.
The Prussians lay down on the floor, with their feet to the fire and their
heads resting on their rolled-up cloaks. Soon all six snored loudly and
uninterruptedly in six different keys.
They had been sleeping for some time when a shot rang out so loudly that
it seemed directed against the very wall’s of the house. The soldiers rose
hastily. Two-then three-more shots were fired.
The door opened hastily, and Berthine appeared, barefooted and only half
dressed, with her candle in her hand and a scared look on her face.
“There are the French,” she stammered; “at least two hundred of them. If
they find you here they’ll burn the house down. For God’s sake, hurry down
into the cellar, and don’t make a ‘sound, whatever you do. If you make any
noise we are lost.”
“We’ll go, we’ll go,” replied the terrified officer. “Which is the way?”
The young woman hurriedly raised the small, square trap-door, and the six
men disappeared one after another down the narrow, winding staircase,
feeling their way as they went.
But as soon as the spike of the out of the last helmet was out of sight
Berthine lowered the heavy oaken lid — thick as a wall, hard as steel,
furnished with the hinges and bolts of a prison cell — shot the two heavy
bolts, and began to laugh long and silently, possessed with a mad longing to
dance above the heads of her prisoners.
They made no sound, inclosed in the cellar as in a strong-box, obtaining
air only from a small, iron-barred vent-hole.
Berthine lighted her fire again, hung the pot over it, and prepared more
soup, saying to herself:
“Father will be tired to-night.”
Then she sat and waited. The heavy pendulum of the clock swung to and
fro with a monotonous tick.
Every now and then the young woman cast an impatient glance at the dial-
a glance which seemed to say:
“I wish he’d be quick!”
But soon there was a sound of voices beneath her feet. Low, confused
words reached her through the masonry which roofed the cellar. The
Prussians were beginning to suspect the trick she had played them, and
presently the officer came up the narrow staircase, and knocked at the trap-
door.
“Open the door!” he cried.
“What do you want?” she said, rising from her seat and approaching the
cellarway.
“Open the door!”
“I won’t do any such thing!”
“Open it or I’ll break it down!” shouted the man angrily.
She laughed.
“Hammer away, my good man! Hammer away!”
He struck with the butt-end of his gun at the closed oaken door. But it
would have resisted a battering-ram.
The forester’s daughter heard him go down the stairs again. Then the
soldiers came one after another and tried their strength against the trapdoor.
But, finding their efforts useless, they all returned to the cellar and began to
talk among themselves.
The young woman heard them for a short time, then she rose, opened the
door of the house; looked out into the night, and listened.
A sound of distant barking reached her ear. She whistled just as a
huntsman would, and almost immediately two great dogs emerged from the
darkness, and bounded to her side. She held them tight, and shouted at the top
of her voice:
 “Hullo, father!”
A far-off voice replied:
“Hullo, Berthine!”
She waited a few seconds, then repeated:
“Hullo, father!”
The voice, nearer now, replied:
“Hullo, Berthine!”
“Don’t go in front of the vent-hole!” shouted his daughter. “There are
Prussians in the cellar!”
Suddenly the man’s tall figure could be seen to the left, standing between
two tree trunks.
“Prussians in the cellar?” he asked anxiously. “What are they doing?”
The young woman laughed.
“They are the same as were here yesterday. They lost their way, and I’ve
given them free lodgings in the cellar.”
She told the story of how she had alarmed them by firing the revolver, and
had shut them up in the cellar.
The man, still serious, asked:
“But what am I to do with them at this time of night?”
“Go and fetch Monsieur Lavigne with his men,” she replied. “He’ll take
them prisoners. He’ll be delighted.”
Her father smiled.
“So he will-delighted.”
“Here’s some soup for you,” said his daughter. “Eat it quick, and then be
off.”
The old keeper sat down at the table, and began to eat his soup, having
first filled two plates and put them on the floor for the dogs.
The Prussians, hearing voices, were silent.
Long-legs set off a quarter of an hour later, and Berthine, with her head
between her hands, waited.
The prisoners began to make themselves heard again. They shouted,
called, and beat furiously with the butts of their muskets against the rigid
trap-door of the cellar.
Then they fired shots through the vent-hole, hoping, no doubt, to be heard
by any German detachment which chanced to be passing that way.
The forester’s daughter did not stir, but the noise irritated and unnerved
her. Blind anger rose in her heart against the prisoners; she would have been
only too glad to kill them all, and so silence them.
Then, as her impatience grew, she watched the clock, counting the minutes
as they passed.
Her father had been gone an hour and a half. He must have reached the
town by now. She conjured up a vision of him telling the story to Monsieur
Lavigne, who grew pale with emotion, and rang for his servant to bring him
his arms and uniform. She fancied she could bear the drum as it sounded the
call to arms. Frightened faces appeared at the windows. The citizen-soldiers
emerged from their houses half dressed, out of breath, buckling on their belts,
and hurrying to the commandant’s house.
Then the troop of soldiers, with Long-legs at its head, set forth through the
night and the snow toward the forest.
She looked at the clock. “They may be here in an hour.”
A nervous impatience possessed her. The minutes seemed interminable.
Would the time never come?
At last the clock marked the moment she had fixed on for their arrival.
And she opened the door to listen for their approach. She perceived a
shadowy form creeping toward the house. She was afraid, and cried out. But
it was her father.
“They have sent me,” he said, “to see if there is any change in the state of
affairs.”
“No-none.”
Then he gave a shrill whistle. Soon a dark mass loomed up under the
trees; the advance guard, composed of ten men.
“Don’t go in front of the vent-hole!” repeated Long-legs at intervals.
And the first arrivals pointed out the much-dreaded vent-hole to those
who came after.
At last the main body of the troop arrived, in all two hundred men, each
carrying two hundred cartridges.
Monsieur Lavigne, in a state of intense excitement, posted them in such a
fashion as to surround the whole house, save for a large space left vacant in
front of the little hole on a level with the ground, through which the cellar
derived its supply of air.
Monsieur Lavigne struck the trap-door a blow with his foot, and called:
“I wish to speak to the Prussian officer!”
The German did not reply.
“The Prussian officer!” again shouted the commandant.
 Still no response. For the space of twenty minutes Monsieur Lavigne
called on this silent officer to surrender with bag and baggage, promising him
that all lives should be spared, and that he and his men should be accorded
military honors. But he could extort no sign, either of consent or of defiance.
The situation became a puzzling one.
The citizen-soldiers kicked their heels in the snow, slapping their arms
across their chest, as cabdrivers do, to warm themselves, and gazing at the
vent-hole with a growing and childish desire to pass in front of it.
At last one of them took the risk-a man named Potdevin, who was fleet of
limb. He ran like a deer across the zone of danger. The experiment
succeeded. The prisoners gave no sign of life.
A voice cried:
“There’s no one there!”
And another soldier crossed the open space before the dangerous vent-
hole. Then this hazardous sport developed into a game. Every minute a man
ran swiftly from one side to the other, like a boy playing baseball, kicking up
the snow behind him as he ran. They had lighted big fires of dead wood at
which to warm themselves, and the, figures of the runners were illumined by
the flames as they passed rapidly from the camp on the right to that on the
left.
Some one shouted:
“It’s your turn now, Maloison.”
Maloison was a fat baker, whose corpulent person served to point many a
joke among his comrades.
He hesitated. They chaffed him. Then, nerving himself to the effort, he set
off at a little, waddling gait, which shook his fat paunch and made the whole
detachment laugh till they cried.
“Bravo, bravo, Maloison!” they shouted for his encouragement.
He had accomplished about two-thirds of his journey when a long,
crimson flame shot forth from the vent-hole. A loud report followed, and the
fat baker fell face forward to the ground, uttering a frightful scream. No one
went to his assistance. Then he was seen to drag himself, groaning, on all-
fours through the snow until he was beyond danger, when he fainted.
He was shot in the upper part of the thigh.
After the first surprise and fright were over they laughed at him again. But
Monsieur Lavigne appeared on the threshold of the forester’s dwelling. He
had formed his plan of attack. He called in a loud voice “I want Planchut, the
plumber, and his workmen.”
Three men approached.
“Take the eavestroughs from the roof.”
In a quarter of an hour they brought the commandant thirty yards of pipes.
Next, with infinite precaution, he had a small round hole drilled in the
trap-door; then, making a conduit with the troughs from the pump to this
opening, he said, with an air of extreme satisfaction:
“Now we’ll give these German gentlemen something to drink.”
A shout of frenzied admiration, mingled with uproarious laughter, burst
from his followers. And the commandant organized relays of men, who were
to relieve one another every five minutes. Then he commanded:
“Pump!!!”
And, the pump handle having been set in motion, a stream of water
trickled throughout the length of the piping, and flowed from step to step
down the cellar stairs with a gentle, gurgling sound.
They waited.
An hour passed, then two, then three. The commandant, in a state of
feverish agitation, walked up and down the kitchen, putting his ear to the
ground every now and then to discover, if possible, what the enemy were
doing and whether they would soon capitulate.
The enemy was astir now. They could be heard moving the casks about,
talking, splashing through the water.
Then, about eight o’clock in the morning, a voice came from the vent-hole
“I want to speak to the French officer.”
Lavigne replied from the window, taking care not to put his head out too
far:
“Do you surrender?”
“I surrender.”
“Then put your rifles outside.”
A rifle immediately protruded from the hole, and fell into the snow, then
another and another, until all were disposed of. And the voice which had
spoken before said:
“I have no more. Be quick! I am drowned.”
“Stop pumping!” ordered the commandant.
And the pump handle hung motionless.
 Then, having filled the kitchen with armed and waiting soldiers, he slowly
raised the oaken trapdoor.
Four heads appeared, soaking wet, four fair heads with long, sandy hair,
and one after another the six Germans emerged — scared, shivering and
dripping from head to foot.
They were seized and bound. Then, as the French feared a surprise, they
set off at once in two convoys, one in charge of the prisoners, and the other
conducting Maloison on a mattress borne on poles.
They made a triumphal entry into Rethel.
Monsieur Lavigne was decorated as a reward for having captured a
Prussian advance guard, and the fat baker received the military medal for
wounds received at the hands of the enemy.
 TWO LITTLE SOLDIERS

Every Sunday, as soon as they were free, the little soldiers would go for a
walk. They turned to the right on leaving the barracks, crossed Courbevoie
with rapid strides, as though on a forced march; then, as the houses grew
scarcer, they slowed down and followed the dusty road which leads to
Bezons.
They were small and thin, lost in their ill-fitting capes, too large and too
long, whose sleeves covered their hands; their ample red trousers fell in
folds around their ankles. Under the high, stiff shako one could just barely
perceive two thin, hollow-cheeked Breton faces, with their calm, naive blue
eyes. They never spoke during their journey, going straight before them, the
same idea in each one’s mind taking the place of conversation. For at the
entrance of the little forest of Champioux they had found a spot which
reminded them of home, and they did not feel happy anywhere else.
At the crossing of the Colombes and Chatou roads, when they arrived
under the trees, they would take off their heavy, oppressive headgear and
wipe their foreheads.
They always stopped for a while on the bridge at Bezons, and looked at
the Seine. They stood there several minutes, bending over the railing,
watching the white sails, which perhaps reminded them of their home, and of
the fishing smacks leaving for the open.
As soon as they had crossed the Seine, they would purchase provisions at
the delicatessen, the baker’s, and the wine merchant’s. A piece of bologna,
four cents’ worth of bread, and a quart of wine, made up the luncheon which
they carried away, wrapped up in their handkerchiefs. But as soon as they
were out of the village their gait would slacken and they would begin to talk.
Before them was a plain with a few clumps of trees, which led to the
woods, a little forest which seemed to remind them of that other forest at
Kermarivan. The wheat and oat fields bordered on the narrow path, and Jean
Kerderen said each time to Luc Le Ganidec:
“It’s just like home, just like Plounivon.”
“Yes, it’s just like home.”
 And they went on, side by side, their minds full of dim memories of home.
They saw the fields, the hedges, the forests, and beaches.
Each time they stopped near a large stone on the edge of the private estate,
because it reminded them of the dolmen of Locneuven.
As soon as they reached the first clump of trees, Luc Le Ganidec would
cut off a small stick, and, whittling it slowly, would walk on, thinking of the
folks at home.
Jean Kerderen carried the provisions.
From time to time Luc would mention a name, or allude to some boyish
prank which would give them food for plenty of thought. And the home
country, so dear and so distant, would little by little gain possession of their
minds, sending them back through space, to the well-known forms and noises,
to the familiar scenery, with the fragrance of its green fields and sea air. They
no longer noticed the smells of the city. And in their dreams they saw their
friends leaving, perhaps forever, for the dangerous fishing grounds.
They were walking slowly, Luc Le Ganidec and Jean Kerderen, contented
and sad, haunted by a sweet sorrow, the slow and penetrating sorrow of a
captive animal which remembers the days of its freedom.
And when Luc had finished whittling his stick, they came to a little nook,
where every Sunday they took their meal. They found the two bricks, which
they had hidden in a hedge, and they made a little fire of dry branches and
roasted their sausages on the ends of their knives.
When their last crumb of bread had been eaten and the last drop of wine
had been drunk, they stretched themselves out on the grass side by side,
without speaking, their half-closed eyes looking away in the distance, their
hands clasped as in prayer, their red-trousered legs mingling with the bright
colors of the wild flowers.
Towards noon they glanced, from time to time, towards the village of
Bezons, for the dairy maid would soon be coming. Every Sunday she would
pass in front of them on the way to milk her cow, the only cow in the
neighborhood which was sent out to pasture.
Soon they would see the girl, coming through the fields, and it pleased
them to watch the sparkling sunbeams reflected from her shining pail. They
never spoke of her. They were just glad to see her, without understanding
why.
She was a tall, strapping girl, freckled and tanned by the open air — a girl
typical of the Parisian suburbs.
 Once, on noticing that they were always sitting in the same place, she said
to them:
“Do you always come here?”
Luc Le Ganidec, more daring than his friend, stammered:
“Yes, we come here for our rest.”
That was all. But the following Sunday, on seeing them, she smiled with
the kindly smile of a woman who understood their shyness, and she asked:
“What are you doing here? Are you watching the grass grow?”
Luc, cheered up, smiled: “P’raps.”
She continued: “It’s not growing fast, is it?”
He answered, still laughing: “Not exactly.”
She went on. But when she came back with her pail full of milk, she
stopped before them and said:
“Want some? It will remind you of home.”
She had, perhaps instinctively, guessed and touched the right spot.
Both were moved. Then not without difficulty, she poured some milk into
the bottle in which they had brought their wine. Luc started to drink, carefully
watching lest he should take more than his share. Then he passed the bottle to
Jean. She stood before them, her hands on her hips, her pail at her feet,
enjoying the pleasure that she was giving them. Then she went on, saying:
“Well, bye-bye until next Sunday!”
For a long time they watched her tall form as it receded in the distance,
blending with the background, and finally disappeared.
The following week as they left the barracks, Jean said to Luc:
“Don’t you think we ought to buy her something good?”
They were sorely perplexed by the problem of choosing something to
bring to the dairy maid. Luc was in favor of bringing her some chitterlings;
but Jean, who had a sweet tooth, thought that candy would be the best thing.
He won, and so they went to a grocery to buy two sous’ worth, of red and
white candies.
This time they ate more quickly than usual, excited by anticipation.
Jean was the first one to notice her. “There she is,” he said; and Luc
answered: “Yes, there she is.”
She smiled when she saw them, and cried:
“Well, how are you to-day?”
They both answered together:
“All right! How’s everything with you?”
 Then she started to talk of simple things which might interest them; of the
weather, of the crops, of her masters.
They didn’t dare to offer their candies, which were slowly melting in
Jean’s pocket. Finally Luc, growing bolder, murmured:
“We have brought you something.”
She asked: “Let’s see it.”
Then Jean, blushing to the tips of his ears, reached in his pocket, and
drawing out the little paper bag, handed it to her.
She began to eat the little sweet dainties. The two soldiers sat in front of
her, moved and delighted.
At last she went to do her milking, and when she came back she again
gave them some milk.
They thought of her all through the week and often spoke of her: The
following Sunday she sat beside them for a longer time.
The three of them sat there, side by side, their eyes looking far away in the
distance, their hands clasped over their knees, and they told each other little
incidents and little details of the villages where they were born, while the
cow, waiting to be milked, stretched her heavy head toward the girl and
mooed.
Soon the girl consented to eat with them and to take a sip of wine. Often
she brought them plums pocket for plums were now ripe. Her presence
enlivened the little Breton soldiers, who chattered away like two birds.
One Tuesday something unusual happened to Luc Le Ganidec; he asked for
leave and did not return until ten o’clock at night.
Jean, worried and racked his brain to account for his friend’s having
obtained leave.
The following Friday, Luc borrowed ten sons from one of his friends, and
once more asked and obtained leave for several hours.
When he started out with Jean on Sunday he seemed queer, disturbed,
changed. Kerderen did not understand; he vaguely suspected something, but
he could not guess what it might be.
They went straight to the usual place, and lunched slowly. Neither was
hungry.
Soon the girl appeared. They watched her approach as they always did.
When she was near, Luc arose and went towards her. She placed her pail on
the ground and kissed him. She kissed him passionately, throwing her arms
around his neck, without paying attention to Jean, without even noticing that
he was there.
Poor Jean was dazed, so dazed that he could not understand. His mind
was upset and his heart broken, without his even realizing why.
Then the girl sat down beside Luc, and they started to chat.
Jean was not looking at them. He understood now why his friend had gone
out twice during the week. He felt the pain and the sting which treachery and
deceit leave in their wake.
Luc and the girl went together to attend to the cow.
Jean followed them with his eyes. He saw them disappear side by side,
the red trousers of his friend making a scarlet spot against the white road. It
was Luc who sank the stake to which the cow was tethered. The girl stooped
down to milk the cow, while he absent-mindedly stroked the animal’s glossy
neck. Then they left the pail in the grass and disappeared in the woods.
Jean could no longer see anything but the wall of leaves through which
they had passed. He was unmanned so that he did not have strength to stand.
He stayed there, motionless, bewildered and grieving-simple, passionate
grief. He wanted to weep, to run away, to hide somewhere, never to see
anyone again.
Then he saw them coming back again. They were walking slowly, hand in
hand, as village lovers do. Luc was carrying the pail.
After kissing him again, the girl went on, nodding carelessly to Jean. She
did not offer him any milk that day.
The two little soldiers sat side by side, motionless as always, silent and
quiet, their calm faces in no way betraying the trouble in their hearts. The sun
shone down on them. From time to time they could hear the plaintive lowing
of the cow. At the usual time they arose to return.
Luc was whittling a stick. Jean carried the empty bottle. He left it at the
wine merchant’s in Bezons. Then they stopped on the bridge, as they did
every Sunday, and watched the water flowing by.
Jean leaned over the railing, farther and farther, as though he had seen
something in the stream which hypnotized him. Luc said to him:
“What’s the matter? Do you want a drink?”
He had hardly said the last word when Jean’s head carried away the rest
of his body, and the little blue and red soldier fell like a shot and
disappeared in the water.
 Luc, paralyzed with horror, tried vainly to shout for help. In the distance
he saw something move; then his friend’s head bobbed up out of the water
only to disappear again.
Farther down he again noticed a hand, just one hand, which appeared and
again went out of sight. That was all.
The boatmen who had rushed to the scene found the body that day.
Luc ran back to the barracks, crazed, and with eyes and voice full of tears,
he related the accident: “He leaned — he — he was leaning — so far over
— that his head carried him away — and — he — fell — he fell — — “
Emotion choked him so that he could say no more. If he had only known.
 FATHER MILON

For a month the hot sun has been parching the fields. Nature is expanding
beneath its rays; the fields are green as far as the eye can see. The big azure
dome of the sky is unclouded. The farms of Normandy, scattered over the
plains and surrounded by a belt of tall beeches, look, from a distance, like
little woods. On closer view, after lowering the worm-eaten wooden bars,
you imagine yourself in an immense garden, for all the ancient apple-trees, as
gnarled as the peasants themselves, are in bloom. The sweet scent of their
blossoms mingles with the heavy smell of the earth and the penetrating odor
of the stables. It is noon. The family is eating under the shade of a pear tree
planted in front of the door; father, mother, the four children, and the help —
two women and three men are all there. All are silent. The soup is eaten and
then a dish of potatoes fried with bacon is brought on.
From time to time one of the women gets up and takes a pitcher down to
the cellar to fetch more cider.
The man, a big fellow about forty years old, is watching a grape vine, still
bare, which is winding and twisting like a snake along the side of the house.
At last he says: “Father’s vine is budding early this year. Perhaps we may
get something from it.”
The woman then turns round and looks, without saying a word.
This vine is planted on the spot where their father had been shot.
It was during the war of 1870. The Prussians were occupying the whole
country. General Faidherbe, with the Northern Division of the army, was
opposing them.
The Prussians had established their headquarters at this farm. The old
farmer to whom it belonged, Father Pierre Milon, had received and quartered
them to the best of his ability.
For a month the German vanguard had been in this village. The French
remained motionless, ten leagues away; and yet, every night, some of the
Uhlans disappeared.
Of all the isolated scouts, of all those who were sent to the outposts, in
groups of not more than three, not one ever returned.
 They were picked up the next morning in a field or in a ditch. Even their
horses were found along the roads with their throats cut.
These murders seemed to be done by the same men, who could never be
found.
The country was terrorized. Farmers were shot on suspicion, women were
imprisoned; children were frightened in order to try and obtain information.
Nothing could be ascertained.
But, one morning, Father Milon was found stretched out in the barn, with a
sword gash across his face.
Two Uhlans were found dead about a mile and a half from the farm. One
of them was still holding his bloody sword in his hand. He had fought, tried
to defend himself. A court-martial was immediately held in the open air, in
front of the farm. The old man was brought before it.
He was sixty-eight years old, small, thin, bent, with two big hands
resembling the claws of a crab. His colorless hair was sparse and thin, like
the down of a young duck, allowing patches of his scalp to be seen. The
brown and wrinkled skin of his neck showed big veins which disappeared
behind his jaws and came out again at the temples. He had the reputation of
being miserly and hard to deal with.
They stood him up between four soldiers, in front of the kitchen table,
which had been dragged outside. Five officers and the colonel seated
themselves opposite him.
The colonel spoke in French:
“Father Milon, since we have been here we have only had praise for you.
You have always been obliging and even attentive to us. But to-day a terrible
accusation is hanging over you, and you must clear the matter up. How did
you receive that wound on your face?”
The peasant answered nothing.
The colonel continued:
“Your silence accuses you, Father Milon. But I want you to answer me!
Do you understand? Do you know who killed the two Uhlans who were
found this morning near Calvaire?”
The old man answered clearly
“I did.”
The colonel, surprised, was silent for a minute, looking straight at the
prisoner. Father Milon stood impassive, with the stupid look of the peasant,
his eyes lowered as though he were talking to the priest. Just one thing
betrayed an uneasy mind; he was continually swallowing his saliva, with a
visible effort, as though his throat were terribly contracted.
The man’s family, his son Jean, his daughter-in-law and his two
grandchildren were standing a few feet behind him, bewildered and
affrighted.
The colonel went on:
“Do you also know who killed all the scouts who have been found dead,
for a month, throughout the country, every morning?”
The old man answered with the same stupid look:
“I did.”
“You killed them all?”
“Uh huh! I did.”
“You alone? All alone?”
“Uh huh!”
“Tell me how you did it.”
This time the man seemed moved; the necessity for talking any length of
time annoyed him visibly. He stammered:
“I dunno! I simply did it.”
The colonel continued:
“I warn you that you will have to tell me everything. You might as well
make up your mind right away. How did you begin?”
The man cast a troubled look toward his family, standing close behind
him. He hesitated a minute longer, and then suddenly made up his mind to
obey the order.
“I was coming home one night at about ten o’clock, the night after you got
here. You and your soldiers had taken more than fifty ecus worth of forage
from me, as well as a cow and two sheep. I said to myself: ‘As much as they
take from you; just so much will you make them pay back.’ And then I had
other things on my mind which I will tell you. Just then I noticed one of your
soldiers who was smoking his pipe by the ditch behind the barn. I went and
got my scythe and crept up slowly behind him, so that he couldn’t hear me.
And I cut his head off with one single blow, just as I would a blade of grass,
before he could say ‘Booh!’ If you should look at the bottom of the pond, you
will find him tied up in a potato-sack, with a stone fastened to it.
“I got an idea. I took all his clothes, from his boots to his cap, and hid
them away in the little wood behind the yard.”
 The old man stopped. The officers remained speechless, looking at each
other. The questioning began again, and this is what they learned.
Once this murder committed, the man had lived with this one thought:
“Kill the Prussians!” He hated them with the blind, fierce hate of the greedy
yet patriotic peasant. He had his idea, as he said. He waited several days.
He was allowed to go and come as he pleased, because he had shown
himself so humble, submissive and obliging to the invaders. Each night he
saw the outposts leave. One night he followed them, having heard the name
of the village to which the men were going, and having learned the few
words of German which he needed for his plan through associating with the
soldiers.
He left through the back yard, slipped into the woods, found the dead
man’s clothes and put them on. Then he began to crawl through the fields,
following along the hedges in order to keep out of sight, listening to the
slightest noises, as wary as a poacher.
As soon as he thought the time ripe, he approached the road and hid
behind a bush. He waited for a while. Finally, toward midnight, he heard the
sound of a galloping horse. The man put his ear to the ground in order to
make sure that only one horseman was approaching, then he got ready.
An Uhlan came galloping along, carrying des patches. As he went, he was
all eyes and ears. When he was only a few feet away, Father Milon dragged
himself across the road, moaning: “Hilfe! Hilfe!” ( Help! Help!) The
horseman stopped, and recognizing a German, he thought he was wounded
and dismounted, coming nearer without any suspicion, and just as he was
leaning over the unknown man, he received, in the pit of his stomach, a heavy
thrust from the long curved blade of the sabre. He dropped without suffering
pain, quivering only in the final throes. Then the farmer, radiant with the
silent joy of an old peasant, got up again, and, for his own pleasure, cut the
dead man’s throat. He then dragged the body to the ditch and threw it in.
The horse quietly awaited its master. Father Milon mounted him and
started galloping across the plains.
About an hour later he noticed two more Uhlans who were returning
home, side by side. He rode straight for them, once more crying “Hilfe!
Hilfe!”
The Prussians, recognizing the uniform, let him approach without distrust.
The old man passed between them like a cannon-ball, felling them both, one
with his sabre and the other with a revolver.
 Then he killed the horses, German horses! After that he quickly returned to
the woods and hid one of the horses. He left his uniform there and again put
on his old clothes; then going back into bed, he slept until morning.
For four days he did not go out, waiting for the inquest to be terminated;
but on the fifth day he went out again and killed two more soldiers by the
same stratagem. From that time on he did not stop. Each night he wandered
about in search of adventure, killing Prussians, sometimes here and
sometimes there, galloping through deserted fields, in the moonlight, a lost
Uhlan, a hunter of men. Then, his task accomplished, leaving behind him the
bodies lying along the roads, the old farmer would return and hide his horse
and uniform.
He went, toward noon, to carry oats and water quietly to his mount, and he
fed it well as he required from it a great amount of work.
But one of those whom he had attacked the night before, in defending
himself slashed the old peasant across the face with his sabre.
However, he had killed them both. He had come back and hidden the
horse and put on his ordinary clothes again; but as he reached home he began
to feel faint, and had dragged himself as far as the stable, being unable to
reach the house.
They had found him there, bleeding, on the straw.
When he had finished his tale, he suddenly lifted up his head and looked
proudly at the Prussian officers.
The colonel, who was gnawing at his mustache, asked:
“You have nothing else to say?”
“Nothing more; I have finished my task; I killed sixteen, not one more or
less.”
“Do you know that you are going to die?”
“I haven’t asked for mercy.”
“Have you been a soldier?”
“Yes, I served my time. And then, you had killed my father, who was a
soldier of the first Emperor. And last month you killed my youngest son,
Francois, near Evreux. I owed you one for that; I paid. We are quits.”
The officers were looking at each other.
The old man continued:
“Eight for my father, eight for the boy — we are quits. I did not seek any
quarrel with you. I don’t know you. I don’t even know where you come from.
And here you are, ordering me about in my home as though it were your own.
I took my revenge upon the others. I’m not sorry.”
And, straightening up his bent back, the old man folded his arms in the
attitude of a modest hero.
The Prussians talked in a low tone for a long time. One of them, a captain,
who had also lost his son the previous month, was defending the poor
wretch. Then the colonel arose and, approaching Father Milon, said in a low
voice:
“Listen, old man, there is perhaps a way of saving your life, it is to— “
But the man was not listening, and, his eyes fixed on the hated officer,
while the wind played with the downy hair on his head, he distorted his
slashed face, giving it a truly terrible expression, and, swelling out his chest,
he spat, as hard as he could, right in the Prussian’s face.
The colonel, furious, raised his hand, and for the second time the man spat
in his face.
All the officers had jumped up and were shrieking orders at the same
time.
In less than a minute the old man, still impassive, was pushed up against
the wall and shot, looking smilingly the while toward Jean, his eldest son, his
daughter-in-law and his two grandchildren, who witnessed this scene in
dumb terror.
 A COUP D’ETAT

Paris had just heard of the disaster at Sedan. A republic had been declared.
All France was wavering on the brink of this madness which lasted until
after the Commune. From one end of the country to the other everybody was
playing soldier.
Cap-makers became colonels, fulfilling the duties of generals; revolvers
and swords were displayed around big, peaceful stomachs wrapped in
flaming red belts; little tradesmen became warriors commanding battalions
of brawling volunteers, and swearing like pirates in order to give themselves
some prestige.
The sole fact of handling firearms crazed these people, who up to that
time had only handled scales, and made them, without any reason, dangerous
to all. Innocent people were shot to prove that they knew how to kill; in
forests which had never seen a Prussian, stray dogs, grazing cows and
browsing horses were killed.
Each one thought himself called upon to play a great part in military
affairs. The cafes of the smallest villages, full of uniformed tradesmen,
looked like barracks or hospitals.
The town of Canneville was still in ignorance of the maddening news
from the army and the capital; nevertheless, great excitement had prevailed
for the last month, the opposing parties finding themselves face to face.
The mayor, Viscount de Varnetot, a thin, little old man, a conservative,
who had recently, from ambition, gone over to the Empire, had seen a
determined opponent arise in Dr. Massarel, a big, full-blooded man, leader
of the Republican party of the neighborhood, a high official in the local
masonic lodge, president of the Agricultural Society and of the firemen’s
banquet and the organizer of the rural militia which was to save the country.
In two weeks, he had managed to gather together sixty-three volunteers,
fathers of families, prudent farmers and town merchants, and every morning
he would drill them in the square in front of the town-hall.
When, perchance, the mayor would come to the municipal building,
Commander Massarel, girt with pistols, would pass proudly in front of his
troop, his sword in his hand, and make all of them cry: “Long live the
Fatherland!” And it had been noticed that this cry excited the little viscount,
who probably saw in it a menace, a threat, as well as the odious memory of
the great Revolution.
On the morning of the fifth of September, the doctor, in full uniform, his
revolver on the table, was giving a consultation to an old couple, a farmer
who had been suffering from varicose veins for the last seven years and had
waited until his wife had them also, before he would consult the doctor,
when the postman brought in the paper.
M. Massarel opened it, grew pale, suddenly rose, and lifting his hands to
heaven in a gesture of exaltation, began to shout at the top of his voice before
the two frightened country folks:
“Long live the Republic! long live the Republic! long live the Republic!”
Then he fell back in his chair, weak from emotion.
And as the peasant resumed: “It started with the ants, which began to run
up and down my legs— “ Dr. Massarel exclaimed:
“Shut up! I haven’t got time to bother with your nonsense. The Republic
has been proclaimed, the emperor has been taken prisoner, France is saved!
Long live the Republic!”
Running to the door, he howled:
“Celeste, quick, Celeste!”
The servant, affrighted, hastened in; he was trying to talk so rapidly, that
he could only stammer:
“My boots, my sword, my cartridge-box and the Spanish dagger which is
on my night-table! Hasten!”
As the persistent peasant, taking advantage of a moment’s silence,
continued, “I seemed to get big lumps which hurt me when I walk,” the
physician, exasperated, roared:
“Shut up and get out! If you had washed your feet it would not have
happened!”
Then, grabbing him by the collar, he yelled at him:
“Can’t you understand that we are a republic, you brass-plated idiot!”
But professional sentiment soon calmed him, and he pushed the
bewildered couple out, saying:
“Come back to-morrow, come back to-morrow, my friends. I haven’t any
time to-day.”
 As he equipped himself from head to foot, he gave a series of important
orders to his servant:
“Run over to Lieutenant Picart and to Second Lieutenant Pommel, and tell
them that I am expecting them here immediately. Also send me Torchebeuf
with his drum. Quick! quick!”
When Celeste had gone out, he sat down and thought over the situation and
the difficulties which he would have to surmount.
The three men arrived together in their working clothes. The commandant,
who expected to see them in uniform, felt a little shocked.
“Don’t you people know anything? The emperor has been taken prisoner,
the Republic has been proclaimed. We must act. My position is delicate, I
might even say dangerous.”
He reflected for a few moments before his bewildered subordinates, then
he continued:
“We must act and not hesitate; minutes count as hours in times like these.
All depends on the promptness of our decision. You, Picart, go to the cure
and order him to ring the alarm-bell, in order to get together the people, to
whom I am going to announce the news. You, Torchebeuf beat the tattoo
throughout the whole neighborhood as far as the hamlets of Gerisaie and
Salmare, in order to assemble the militia in the public square. You, Pommel,
get your uniform on quickly, just the coat and cap. We are going to the town-
hall to demand Monsieur de Varnetot to surrender his powers to me. Do you
understand?”
“Yes.”
“Now carry out those orders quickly. I will go over to your house with
you, Pommel, since we shall act together.”
Five minutes later, the commandant and his subordinates, armed to the
teeth, appeared on the square, just as the little Viscount de Varnetot, his legs
encased in gaiters as for a hunting party, his gun on his shoulder, was coming
down the other street at double-quick time, followed by his three green-
coated guards, their swords at their sides and their guns swung over their
shoulders.
While the doctor stopped, bewildered, the four men entered the town-hall
and closed the door behind them.
“They have outstripped us,” muttered the physician, “we must now wait
for reenforcements. There is nothing to do for the present.”
Lieutenant Picart now appeared on the scene.
 “The priest refuses to obey,” he said. “He has even locked himself in the
church with the sexton and beadle.”
On the other side of the square, opposite the white, tightly closed town-
hall, stood the church, silent and dark, with its massive oak door studded
with iron.
But just as the perplexed inhabitants were sticking their heads out of the
windows or coming out on their doorsteps, the drum suddenly began to be
heard, and Torchebeuf appeared, furiously beating the tattoo. He crossed the
square running, and disappeared along the road leading to the fields.
The commandant drew his sword, and advanced alone to half way
between the two buildings behind which the enemy had intrenched itself, and,
waving his sword over his head, he roared with all his might:
“Long live the Republic! Death to traitors!”
Then he returned to his officers.
The butcher, the baker and the druggist, much disturbed, were anxiously
pulling down their shades and closing their shops. The grocer alone kept
open.
However, the militia were arriving by degrees, each man in a different
uniform, but all wearing a black cap with gold braid, the cap being the
principal part of the outfit. They were armed with old rusty guns, the old guns
which had hung for thirty years on the kitchen wall; and they looked a good
deal like an army of tramps.
When he had about thirty men about him, the commandant, in a few words,
outlined the situation to them. Then, turning to his staff: “Let us act,” he said.
The villagers were gathering together and talking the matter over.
The doctor quickly decided on a plan of campaign.
“Lieutenant Picart, you will advance under the windows of this town-hall
and summon Monsieur de Varnetot, in the name of the Republic, to hand the
keys over to me.”
But the lieutenant, a master mason, refused:
“You’re smart, you are. I don’t care to get killed, thank you. Those people
in there shoot straight, don’t you forget it. Do your errands yourself.”
The commandant grew very red.
“I command you to go in the name of discipline!”
The lieutenant rebelled:
“I’m not going to have my beauty spoiled without knowing why.”
 All the notables, gathered in a group near by, began to laugh. One of them
cried:
“You are right, Picart, this isn’t the right time.”
The doctor then muttered:
“Cowards!”
And, leaving his sword and his revolver in the hands of a soldier, he
advanced slowly, his eye fastened on the windows, expecting any minute to
see a gun trained on him.
When he was within a few feet of the building, the doors at both ends,
leading into the two schools, opened and a flood of children ran out, boys
from one side, girls from the ether, and began to play around the doctor, in the
big empty square, screeching and screaming, and making so much noise that
he could not make himself heard.
As soon as the last child was out of the building, the two doors closed
again.
Most of the youngsters finally dispersed, and the commandant called in a
loud voice:
“Monsieur de Varnetot!”
A window on the first floor opened and M. de Varnetot appeared.
The commandant continued:
“Monsieur, you know that great events have just taken place which have
changed the entire aspect of the government. The one which you represented
no longer exists. The one which I represent is taking control. Under these
painful, but decisive circumstances, I come, in the name of the new Republic,
to ask you to turn over to me the office which you held under the former
government.”
M. de Varnetot answered:
“Doctor, I am the mayor of Canneville, duly appointed, and I shall remain
mayor of Canneville until I have been dismissed by a decree from my
superiors. As mayor, I am in my place in the townhall, and here I stay.
Anyhow, just try to get me out.”
He closed the window.
The commandant returned to his troop. But before giving any information,
eyeing Lieutenant Picart from head to foot, he exclaimed:
“You’re a great one, you are! You’re a fine specimen of manhood! You’re
a disgrace to the army! I degrade you.”
“I don’t give a —— !”
 He turned away and mingled with a group of townspeople.
Then the doctor hesitated. What could he do? Attack? But would his men
obey orders? And then, did he have the right to do so?
An idea struck him. He ran to the telegraph office, opposite the town-hall,
and sent off three telegrams:
To the new republican government in Paris.
To the new prefect of the Seine-Inferieure, at Rouen.
To the new republican sub-prefect at Dieppe.
He explained the situation, pointed out the danger which the town would
run if it should remain in the hands of the royalist mayor; offered his faithful
services, asked for orders and signed, putting all his titles after his name.
Then he returned to his battalion, and, drawing ten francs from his pocket,
he cried: “Here, my friends, go eat and drink; only leave me a detachment of
ten men to guard against anybody’s leaving the town-hall.”
But ex-Lieutenant Picart, who had been talking with the watchmaker,
heard him; he began to laugh, and exclaimed: “By Jove, if they come out, it’ll
give you a chance to get in. Otherwise I can see you standing out there for the
rest of your life!”
The doctor did not reply, and he went to luncheon.
In the afternoon, he disposed his men about the town as though they were
in immediate danger of an ambush.
Several times he passed in front of the town-hall and of the church without
noticing anything suspicious; the two buildings looked as though empty.
The butcher, the baker and the druggist once more opened up their stores.
Everybody was talking about the affair. If the emperor were a prisoner,
there must have been some kind of treason. They did not know exactly which
of the republics had returned to power.
Night fell.
Toward nine o’clock, the doctor, alone, noiselessly approached the
entrance of the public building, persuaded that the enemy must have gone to
bed; and, as he was preparing to batter down the door with a pick-axe, the
deep voice of a sentry suddenly called:
“Who goes there?”
And M. Massarel retreated as fast as his legs could carry him.
Day broke without any change in the situation.
Armed militia occupied the square. All the citizens had gathered around
this troop awaiting developments. Even neighboring villagers had come to
look on.
Then the doctor, seeing that his reputation was at stake, resolved to put an
end to the matter in one way or another; and he was about to take some
measures, undoubtedly energetic ones, when the door of the telegraph station
opened and the little servant of the postmistress appeared, holding in her
hands two papers.
First she went to the commandant and gave him one of the despatches; then
she crossed the empty square, confused at seeing the eyes of everyone on her,
and lowering her head and running along with little quick steps, she went and
knocked softly at the door of the barricaded house, as though ignorant of the
fact that those behind it were armed.
The door opened wide enough to let a man’s hand reach out and receive
the message; and the young girl returned blushing, ready to cry at being thus
stared at by the whole countryside.
In a clear voice, the doctor cried:
“Silence, if you please.”
When the populace had quieted down, he continued proudly:
“Here is the communication which I have received from the government.”
And lifting the telegram he read:
Former mayor dismissed. Inform him immediately, More orders
following.
For the sub-prefect:
SAPIN, Councillor.
He was-triumphant; his heart was throbbing with joy and his hands were
trembling; but Picart, his former subordinate, cried to him from a neighboring
group:
“That’s all right; but supposing the others don’t come out, what good is the
telegram going to do you?”
M. Massarel grew pale. He had not thought of that; if the others did not
come out, he would now have to take some decisive step. It was not only his
right, but his duty.
He looked anxiously at the town-hall, hoping to see the door open and his
adversary give in.
The door remained closed. What could he do? The crowd was growing
and closing around the militia. They were laughing.
One thought especially tortured the doctor. If he attacked, he would have
to march at the head of his men; and as, with him dead, all strife would
cease, it was at him and him only that M. de Varnetot and his three guards
would aim. And they were good shots, very good shots, as Picart had just
said. But an idea struck him and, turning to Pommel, he ordered:
“Run quickly to the druggist and ask him to lend me a towel and a stick.”
The lieutenant hastened.
He would make a flag of truce, a white flag, at the sight of which the
royalist heart of the mayor would perhaps rejoice.
Pommel returned with the cloth and a broom-stick. With some twine they
completed the flag, and M. Massarel, grasping it in both hands and holding it
in front of him, again advanced in the direction of the town-hall. When he
was opposite the door, he once more called: “Monsieur de Varnetot!” The
door suddenly opened and M. de Varnetot and his three guards appeared on
the threshold.
Instinctively the doctor stepped back; then he bowed courteously to his
enemy, and, choking with emotion, he announced: “I have come, monsieur, to
make you acquainted with the orders which I have received.”
The nobleman, without returning the bow, answered: “I resign, monsieur,
but understand that it is neither through fear of, nor obedience to, the odious
government which has usurped the power.” And, emphasizing every word, he
declared: “I do not wish to appear, for a single day, to serve the Republic.
That’s all.”
Massarel, stunned, answered nothing; and M. de Varnetot, walking
quickly, disappeared around the corner of the square, still followed by his
escort.
The doctor, puffed up with pride, returned to the crowd. As soon as he
was near enough to make himself heard, he cried: “Hurrah! hurrah! Victory
crowns the Republic everywhere.”
There was no outburst of joy.
The doctor continued: “We are free, you are free, independent! Be proud!”
The motionless villagers were looking at him without any signs of triumph
shining in their eyes.
He looked at them, indignant at their indifference, thinking of what he
could say or do in order to make an impression to electrify this calm
peasantry, to fulfill his mission as a leader.
He had an inspiration and, turning to Pommel, he ordered: “Lieutenant, go
get me the bust of the ex-emperor which is in the meeting room of the
municipal council, and bring it here with a chair.”
 The man presently reappeared, carrying on his right shoulder the plaster
Bonaparte, and holding in his left hand a cane-seated chair.
M. Massarel went towards him, took the chair, placed the white bust on it,
then stepping back a few steps, he addressed it in a loud voice:
“Tyrant, tyrant, you have fallen down in the mud. The dying fatherland
was in its death throes under your oppression. Vengeful Destiny has struck
you. Defeat and shame have pursued you; you fall conquered, a prisoner of
the Prussians; and from the ruins of your crumbling empire, the young and
glorious Republic arises, lifting from the ground your broken sword — — “
He waited for applause. Not a sound greeted his listening ear. The
peasants, nonplussed, kept silent; and the white, placid, well-groomed statue
seemed to look at M. Massarel with its plaster smile, ineffaceable and
sarcastic.
Thus they stood, face to face, Napoleon on his chair, the physician
standing three feet away. Anger seized the commandant. What could he do to
move this crowd and definitely to win over public opinion?
He happened to carry his hand to his stomach, and he felt, under his red
belt, the butt of his revolver.
Not another inspiration, not another word cane to his mind. Then, he drew
his weapon, stepped back a few steps and shot the former monarch.
The bullet made a little black hole: like a spot, in his forehead. No
sensation was created. M. Massarel shot a second time and made a second
hole, then a third time, then, without stopping, he shot off the three remaining
shots. Napoleon’s forehead was blown away in a white powder, but his eyes,
nose and pointed mustache remained intact.
Then in exasperation, the doctor kicked the chair over, and placing one
foot on what remained of the bust in the position of a conqueror, he turned to
the amazed public and yelled: “Thus may all traitors die!”
As no enthusiasm was, as yet, visible, the spectators appearing to be
dumb with astonishment, the commandant cried to the militia: “You may go
home now.” And he himself walked rapidly, almost ran, towards his house.
As soon as he appeared, the servant told him that some patients had been
waiting in his office for over three hours. He hastened in. They were the
same two peasants as a few days before, who had returned at daybreak,
obstinate and patient.
The old man immediately began his explanation:
 “It began with ants, which seemed to be crawling up and down my legs —
—“
 THE HORRIBLE

The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained in
the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated, or astride of garden chairs,
were smoking outside the door of the house, around a table laden with cups
and liqueur glasses.
Their lighted cigars shone like eyes in the darkness, which was gradually
becoming more dense. They had been talking about a frightful accident which
had occurred the night before — two men and three women drowned in the
river before the eyes of the guests.
General de G —— remarked:
“Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.
“Horrible, that well-known word, means much more than terrible. A
frightful accident like this affects, upsets, terrifies; it does not horrify. In
order that we should experience horror, something more is needed than
emotion, something more than the spectacle of a dreadful death; there must be
a shuddering sense of mystery, or a sensation of abnormal terror, more than
natural. A man who dies, even under the most tragic circumstances, does not
excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible; blood is not horrible; the vilest
crimes are rarely horrible.
“Here are two personal examples which have shown me what is the
meaning of horror.
“It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont-Audemer,
after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twenty
thousand men, twenty thousand routed men, disbanded, demoralized,
exhausted, were going to disband at Havre.
“The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
eaten anything since the day before. They were fleeing rapidly, the Prussians
not being far off.
“All the Norman country, sombre, dotted with the shadows of the trees
surrounding the farms, stretched out beneath a black, heavy, threatening sky.
“Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight but the confused sound,
undefined though rapid, of a marching throng, an endless tramping, mingled
with the vague clink of tin bowls or swords. The men, bent, round-
shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged themselves along,
hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed stride.
“The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it was
freezing hard that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes in
order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet; and at every step he
left a track of blood. Then, after some time, he would sit down in a field for a
few minutes’ rest, and he never got up again. Every man who sat down was a
dead man.
“Should we have left behind us those poor, exhausted soldiers, who
fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had somewhat
refreshed their stiffened legs? But scarcely had they ceased to move, and to
make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins, than an
unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground, closed their
eyes, and paralyzed in one second this overworked human mechanism. And
they gradually sank down, their foreheads on their knees, without, however,
falling over, for their loins and their limbs became as hard and immovable as
wood, impossible to bend or to stand upright.
“And the rest of us, more robust, kept straggling on, chilled to the marrow,
advancing by a kind of inertia through the night, through the snow, through
that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above
all overcome by the abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of
death, of nothingness.
“I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,
old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.
“They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy.
The word ‘spy’ at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they
gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: ‘He must be
shot!’ And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only
holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden
that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.
“I wanted to speak. I was at that time in command of a battalion; but they
no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers; they would
even have shot me.
“One of the gendarmes said: ‘He has been following us for the three last
days. He has been asking information from every one about the artillery.’”
I took it on myself to question this person.
 “What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the
army?”
“He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,
indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an
agitated air in my presence that I really no longer doubted that he was a spy.
He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept looking at me from under his eyes
with a humble, stupid, crafty air.
“The men all round us exclaimed.
“‘To the wall! To the wall!’
“I said to the gendarmes:
“‘Will you be responsible for the prisoner?’
“I had not ceased speaking when a terrible shove threw me on my back,
and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown down,
struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a tree. He fell in
the snow, nearly dead already.
“And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, reloaded their
guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each
other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept on firing
at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.
“But suddenly a cry arose of ‘The Prussians! the Prussians!’
“And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this panic-stricken
army in full flight.
“A panic, the result of these shots fired at this vagabond, had filled his
very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that they were
themselves the originators of the scare, they fled and disappeared in the
darkness.
“I remained alone with the corpse, except for the two gendarmes whose
duty compelled them to stay with me.
“They lifted up the riddled mass of bruised and bleeding flesh.
“‘He must be searched,’ I said. And I handed them a box of taper matches
which I had in my pocket. One of the soldiers had another box. I was standing
between the two.
“The gendarme who was examining the body announced:
“‘Clothed in a blue blouse, a white shirt, trousers, and a pair of shoes.’
“The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man continued, as he
turned out his pockets:
 “‘A horn-handled pocketknife, check handkerchief, a snuffbox, a bit of
pack thread, a piece of bread.’
“The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after
having felt the corpse for a long time, said:
“‘That is all.’
“I said:
“‘Strip him. We shall perhaps find something next his skin.”
“And in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this task, I
stood between them to hold the lighted match. By the rapid and speedily
extinguished flame of the match, I saw them take off the garments one by one,
and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh, still warm, though lifeless.
“And suddenly one of them exclaimed:
“‘Good God, general, it is a woman!’
“I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain that
moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the snow before
this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a woman.
“The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my
opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory to adopt.
“Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:
“‘Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom she
had not heard from.’
“And the other chimed in:
“‘Perhaps, indeed, that is so.’
“And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to cry.
And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, on that icy cold night, in the midst
of that gloomy plain; at the sight of this mystery, at the sight of this murdered
stranger, the meaning of that word ‘horror.’
“I had the same sensation last year, while interrogating one of the
survivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter.
“You know the details of that atrocious drama. It is possible, however,
that you are unacquainted with one of them.
“The colonel travelled through the desert into the Soudan, and passed
through the immense territory of the Touaregs, who, in that great ocean of
sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the Soudan to
Algeria, are a kind of pirates, resembling those who ravaged the seas in
former days.
 “The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of the
Chambaa, of Ouargla.
“Now, one day we encamped in the middle of the desert, and the Arabs
declared that, as the spring was still some distance away, they would go with
all their camels to look for water.
“One man alone warned the colonel that he had been betrayed. Flatters
did not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers, the
doctors, and nearly all his officers.
“They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels were
captured.
“The captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who had
remained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis and
sharpshooters, and they began to retreat, leaving behind them the baggage and
provisions, for want of camels to carry them.
“Then they started on their journey through this solitude without shade and
boundless, beneath the devouring sun, which burned them from morning till
night.
“One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a tribute.
The dates were poisoned. Nearly all the Frenchmen died, and, among them,
the last officer.
“There now only remained a few spahis with their quartermaster,
Pobeguin, and some native sharpshooters of the Chambaa tribe. They had
still two camels left. They disappeared one night, along with two, Arabs.
“Then the survivors understood that they would be obliged to eat each
other, and as soon as they discovered the flight of the two men with the two
camels, those who remained separated, and proceeded to march, one by one,
through the soft sand, under the glare of a scorching sun, at a distance of more
than a gunshot from each other.
“So they went on all day, and when they reached a spring each of them
came to drink at it in turn, as soon as each solitary marcher had moved
forward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they continued
marching the whole day, raising everywhere they passed, in that level, burnt
up expanse, those little columns of dust which, from a distance, indicate
those who are trudging through the desert.
“But one morning one of the travellers suddenly turned round and
approached the man behind him. And they all stopped to look.
 “The man toward whom the famished soldier drew near did not flee, but
lay flat on the ground, and took aim at the one who was coming toward him.
When he believed he was within gunshot, he fired. The other was not hit, and
he continued then to advance, and levelling his gun, in turn, he killed his
comrade.
“Then from all directions the others rushed to seek their share. And he
who had killed the fallen man, cutting the corpse into pieces, distributed it.
“And they once more placed themselves at fixed distances, these
irreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which would bring them
together.
“For two days they lived on this human flesh which they divided between
them. Then, becoming famished again, he who had killed the first man began
killing afresh. And again, like a butcher, he cut up the corpse and offered it to
his comrades, keeping only his own portion of it.
“And so this retreat of cannibals continued.
“The last Frenchman, Pobeguin, was massacred at the side of a well, the
very night before the supplies arrived.
“Do you understand now what I mean by the horrible?”
This was the story told us a few nights ago by General de G —— .
 MADAME PARISSE

I was sitting on the pier of the small port of Obernon, near the village of
Salis, looking at Antibes, bathed in the setting sun. I had never before seen
anything so wonderful and so beautiful.
The small town, enclosed by its massive ramparts, built by Monsieur de
Vauban, extended into the open sea, in the middle of the immense Gulf of
Nice. The great waves, coming in from the ocean, broke at its feet,
surrounding it with a wreath of foam; and beyond the ramparts the houses
climbed up the hill, one after the other, as far as the two towers, which rose
up into the sky, like the peaks of an ancient helmet. And these two towers
were outlined against the milky whiteness of the Alps, that enormous distant
wall of snow which enclosed the entire horizon.
Between the white foam at the foot of the walls and the white snow on the
sky-line the little city, dazzling against the bluish background of the nearest
mountain ranges, presented to the rays of the setting sun a pyramid of red-
roofed houses, whose facades were also white, but so different one from
another that they seemed to be of all tints.
And the sky above the Alps was itself of a blue that was almost white, as
if the snow had tinted it; some silvery clouds were floating just over the pale
summits, and on the other side of the gulf Nice, lying close to the water,
stretched like a white thread between the sea and the mountain. Two great
sails, driven by a strong breeze, seemed to skim over the waves. I looked
upon all this, astounded.
This view was one of those sweet, rare, delightful things that seem to
permeate you and are unforgettable, like the memory of a great happiness.
One sees, thinks, suffers, is moved and loves with the eyes. He who can feel
with the eye experiences the same keen, exquisite and deep pleasure in
looking at men and things as the man with the delicate and sensitive ear,
whose soul music overwhelms.
I turned to my companion, M. Martini, a pureblooded Southerner.
“This is certainly one of the rarest sights which it has been vouchsafed to
me to admire.
 “I have seen Mont Saint-Michel, that monstrous granite jewel, rise out of
the sand at sunrise.
“I have seen, in the Sahara, Lake Raianechergui, fifty kilometers long,
shining under a moon as brilliant as our sun and breathing up toward it a
white cloud, like a mist of milk.
“I have seen, in the Lipari Islands, the weird sulphur crater of the
Volcanello, a giant flower which smokes and burns, an enormous yellow
flower, opening out in the midst of the sea, whose stem is a volcano.
“But I have seen nothing more wonderful than Antibes, standing against
the Alps in the setting sun.
“And I know not how it is that memories of antiquity haunt me; verses of
Homer come into my mind; this is a city of the ancient East, a city of the
odyssey; this is Troy, although Troy was very far from the sea.”
M. Martini drew the Sarty guide-book out of his pocket and read: “This
city was originally a colony founded by the Phocians of Marseilles, about
340 B.C. They gave it the Greek name of Antipolis, meaning counter-city,
city opposite another, because it is in fact opposite to Nice, another colony
from Marseilles.
“After the Gauls were conquered, the Romans turned Antibes into a
municipal city, its inhabitants receiving the rights of Roman citizenship.
“We know by an epigram of Martial that at this time — — “
I interrupted him:
“I don’t care what she was. I tell you that I see down there a city of the
Odyssey. The coast of Asia and the coast of Europe resemble each other in
their shores, and there is no city on the other coast of the Mediterranean
which awakens in me the memories of the heroic age as this one does.”
A footstep caused me to turn my head; a woman, a large, dark woman,
was walking along the road which skirts the sea in going to the cape.
“That is Madame Parisse, you know,” muttered Monsieur Martini,
dwelling on the final syllable.
No, I did not know, but that name, mentioned carelessly, that name of the
Trojan shepherd, confirmed me in my dream.
However, I asked: “Who is this Madame Parisse?”
He seemed astonished that I did not know the story.
I assured him that I did not know it, and I looked after the woman, who
passed by without seeing us, dreaming, walking with steady and slow step,
as doubtless the ladies of old walked.
 She was perhaps thirty-five years old and still very beautiful, though a
trifle stout.
And Monsieur Martini told me the following story:
Mademoiselle Combelombe was married, one year before the war of
1870, to Monsieur Parisse, a government official. She was then a handsome
young girl, as slender and lively as she has now become stout and sad.
Unwillingly she had accepted Monsieur Parisse, one of those little fat men
with short legs, who trip along, with trousers that are always too large.
After the war Antibes was garrisoned by a single battalion commanded by
Monsieur Jean de Carmelin, a young officer decorated during the war, and
who had just received his four stripes.
As he found life exceedingly tedious in this fortress this stuffy mole-hole
enclosed by its enormous double walls, he often strolled out to the cape, a
kind of park or pine wood shaken by all the winds from the sea.
There he met Madame Parisse, who also came out in the summer evenings
to get the fresh air under the trees. How did they come to love each other?
Who knows? They met, they looked at each other, and when out of sight they
doubtless thought of each other. The image of the young woman with the
brown eyes, the black hair, the pale skin, this fresh, handsome Southerner,
who displayed her teeth in smiling, floated before the eyes of the officer as
he continued his promenade, chewing his cigar instead of smoking it; and the
image of the commanding officer, in his close-fitting coat, covered with gold
lace, and his red trousers, and a little blond mustache, would pass before the
eyes of Madame Parisse, when her husband, half shaven and ill-clad, short-
legged and big-bellied, came home to supper in the evening.
As they met so often, they perhaps smiled at the next meeting; then, seeing
each other again and again, they felt as if they knew each other. He certainly
bowed to her. And she, surprised, bowed in return, but very, very slightly,
just enough not to appear impolite. But after two weeks she returned his
salutation from a distance, even before they were side by side.
He spoke to her. Of what? Doubtless of the setting sun. They admired it
together, looking for it in each other’s eyes more often than on the horizon.
And every evening for two weeks this was the commonplace and persistent
pretext for a few minutes’ chat.
Then they ventured to take a few steps together, talking of anything that
came into their minds, but their eyes were already saying to each other a
thousand more intimate things, those secret, charming things that are reflected
in the gentle emotion of the glance, and that cause the heart to beat, for they
are a better revelation of the soul than the spoken ward.
And then he would take her hand, murmuring those words which the
woman divines, without seeming to hear them.
And it was agreed between them that they would love each other without
evidencing it by anything sensual or brutal.
She would have remained indefinitely at this stage of intimacy, but he
wanted more. And every day he urged her more hotly to give in to his ardent
desire.
She resisted, would not hear of it, seemed determined not to give way.
But one evening she said to him casually: “My husband has just gone to
Marseilles. He will be away four days.”
Jean de Carmelin threw himself at her feet, imploring her to open her door
to him that very night at eleven o’clock. But she would not listen to him, and
went home, appearing to be annoyed.
The commandant was in a bad humor all the evening, and the next morning
at dawn he went out on the ramparts in a rage, going from one exercise field
to the other, dealing out punishment to the officers and men as one might fling
stones into a crowd,
On going in to breakfast he found an envelope under his napkin with these
four words: “To-night at ten.” And he gave one hundred sous without any
reason to the waiter.
The day seemed endless to him. He passed part of it in curling his hair
and perfuming himself.
As he was sitting down to the dinner-table another envelope was handed
to him, and in it he found the following telegram:
“My Love: Business completed. I return this evening on the nine
o’clock train.
PARISSE.”
The commandant let loose such a vehement oath that the waiter dropped
the soup-tureen on the floor.
What should he do? He certainly wanted her, that very, evening at
whatever cost; and he would have her. He would resort to any means, even to
arresting and imprisoning the husband. Then a mad thought struck him.
Calling for paper, he wrote the following note:
MADAME: He will not come back this evening, I swear it to
you, — and I shall be, you know where, at ten o’clock. Fear nothing.
 I will answer for everything, on my honor as an officer.
JEAN DE CARMELIN.
And having sent off this letter, he quietly ate his dinner.
Toward eight o’clock he sent for Captain Gribois, the second in
command, and said, rolling between his fingers the crumpled telegram of
Monsieur Parisse:
“Captain, I have just received a telegram of a very singular nature, which
it is impossible for me to communicate to you. You will immediately have all
the gates of the city closed and guarded, so that no one, mind me, no one, will
either enter or leave before six in the morning. You will also have men patrol
the streets, who will compel the inhabitants to retire to their houses at nine
o’clock. Any one found outside beyond that time will be conducted to his
home ‘manu militari’. If your men meet me this night they will at once go out
of my way, appearing not to know me. You understand me?”
“Yes, commandant.”
“I hold you responsible for the execution of my orders, my dear captain.”
“Yes, commandant.”
“Would you like to have a glass of chartreuse?”
“With great pleasure, commandant.”
They clinked glasses drank down the brown liquor and Captain Gribois
left the room.
The train from Marseilles arrived at the station at nine o’clock sharp, left
two passengers on the platform and went on toward Nice.
One of them, tall and thin, was Monsieur Saribe, the oil merchant, and the
other, short and fat, was Monsieur Parisse.
Together they set out, with their valises, to reach the city, one kilometer
distant.
But on arriving at the gate of the port the guards crossed their bayonets,
commanding them to retire.
Frightened, surprised, cowed with astonishment, they retired to
deliberate; then, after having taken counsel one with the other, they came
back cautiously to parley, giving their names.
But the soldiers evidently had strict orders, for they threatened to shoot;
and the two scared travellers ran off, throwing away their valises, which
impeded their flight.
Making the tour of the ramparts, they presented themselves at the gate on
the route to Cannes. This likewise was closed and guarded by a menacing
sentinel. Messrs. Saribe and Parisse, like the prudent men they were,
desisted from their efforts and went back to the station for shelter, since it
was not safe to be near the fortifications after sundown.
The station agent, surprised and sleepy, permitted them to stay till morning
in the waiting-room.
And they sat there side by side, in the dark, on the green velvet sofa, too
scared to think of sleeping.
It was a long and weary night for them.
At half-past six in the morning they were informed that the gates were
open and that people could now enter Antibes.
They set out for the city, but failed to find their abandoned valises on the
road.
When they passed through the gates of the city, still somewhat anxious, the
Commandant de Carmelin, with sly glance and mustache curled up, came
himself to look at them and question them.
Then he bowed to them politely, excusing himself for having caused them
a bad night. But he had to carry out orders.
The people of Antibes were scared to death. Some spoke of a surprise
planned by the Italians, others of the landing of the prince imperial and others
again believed that there was an Orleanist conspiracy. The truth was
suspected only later, when it became known that the battalion of the
commandant had been sent away, to a distance and that Monsieur de
Carmelin had been severely punished.
Monsieur Martini had finished his story. Madame Parisse returned, her
promenade being ended. She passed gravely near me, with her eyes fixed on
the Alps, whose summits now gleamed rosy in the last rays of the setting sun.
I longed to speak to her, this poor, sad woman, who would ever be
thinking of that night of love, now long past, and of the bold man who for the
sake of a kiss from her had dared to put a city into a state of siege and to
compromise his whole future.
And to-day he had probably forgotten her, if he did not relate this
audacious, comical and tender farce to his comrades over their cups.
Had she seen him again? Did she still love him? And I thought: Here is an
instance of modern love, grotesque and yet heroic. The Homer who should
sing of this new Helen and the adventure of her Menelaus must be gifted with
the soul of a Paul de Kock. And yet the hero of this deserted woman was
brave, daring, handsome, strong as Achilles and more cunning than Ulysses.
 MADEMOISELLE FIFI

Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his
newspaper as he lay back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet on the
beautiful marble mantelpiece where his spurs had made two holes, which
had grown deeper every day during the three months that he had been in the
chateau of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was stained
with liqueur, burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious
officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil, to jot down
figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his
orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous
pieces of green wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting
down the park in order to keep themselves warm, he went to the window.
The rain was descending in torrents, a regular Normandy rain, which looked
as if it were being poured out by some furious person, a slanting rain, opaque
as a curtain, which formed a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which
deluged everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences in the
neighborhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf and at the swollen
Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; he was drumming a
waltz with his fingers on the window-panes, when a noise made him turn
round. It was his second in command, Captain Baron van Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard,
which hung down like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person
suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail
spread out on his breast. He had cold, gentle blue eyes, and a scar from a
swordcut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was said to be
an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist, his
red hair was cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost
looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front
teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how, and this sometimes
made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald patch on top of his head
surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden hair, which made him look like
a monk.
The commandant shook hands with him and drank his cup of coffee (the
sixth that morning), while he listened to his subordinate’s report of what had
occurred; and then they both went to the window and declared that it was a
very unpleasant outlook. The major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at
home, could accommodate himself to everything; but the captain, who led a
fast life, who was in the habit of frequenting low resorts, and enjoying
women’s society, was angry at having to be shut up for three months in that
wretched hole.
There was a knock at the door, and when the commandant said, “Come
in,” one of the orderlies appeared, and by his mere presence announced that
breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of lower
rank — a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz
Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was
proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as
gunpowder.
Since he had been in France his comrades had called him nothing but
Mademoiselle Fifi. They had given him that nickname on account of his
dandified style and small waist, which looked as if he wore corsets; of his
pale face, on which his budding mustache scarcely showed, and on account
of the habit he had acquired of employing the French expression, ‘Fi, fi
donc’, which he pronounced with a slight whistle when he wished to express
his sovereign contempt for persons or things.
The dining-room of the chateau was a magnificent long room, whose fine
old mirrors, that were cracked by pistol bullets, and whose Flemish tapestry,
which was cut to ribbons, and hanging in rags in places from sword-cuts,
told too well what Mademoiselle Fifi’s occupation was during his spare
time.
There were three family portraits on the walls a steel-clad knight, a
cardinal and a judge, who were all smoking long porcelain pipes, which had
been inserted into holes in the canvas, while a lady in a long, pointed waist
proudly exhibited a pair of enormous mustaches, drawn with charcoal. The
officers ate their breakfast almost in silence in that mutilated room, which
looked dull in the rain and melancholy in its dilapidated condition, although
its old oak floor had become as solid as the stone floor of an inn.
When they had finished eating and were smoking and drinking, they began,
as usual, to berate the dull life they were leading. The bottles of brandy and
of liqueur passed from hand to hand, and all sat back in their chairs and took
repeated sips from their glasses, scarcely removing from their mouths the
long, curved stems, which terminated in china bowls, painted in a manner to
delight a Hottentot.
As soon as their glasses were empty they filled them again, with a gesture
of resigned weariness, but Mademoiselle Fifi emptied his every minute, and
a soldier immediately gave him another. They were enveloped in a cloud of
strong tobacco smoke, and seemed to be sunk in a state of drowsy, stupid
intoxication, that condition of stupid intoxication of men who have nothing to
do, when suddenly the baron sat up and said: “Heavens! This cannot go on;
we must think of something to do.” And on hearing this, Lieutenant Otto and
Sub-lieutenant Fritz, who preeminently possessed the serious, heavy German
countenance, said: “What, captain?”
He thought for a few moments and then replied: “What? Why, we must get
up some entertainment, if the commandant will allow us.” “What sort of an
entertainment, captain?” the major asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I
will arrange all that, commandant,” the baron said. “I will send Le Devoir to
Rouen, and he will bring back some ladies. I know where they can be found,
We will have supper here, as all the materials are at hand and; at least, we
shall have a jolly evening.”
Graf von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: “You must surely
be mad, my friend.”
But all the other officers had risen and surrounded their chief, saying: “Let
the captain have his way, commandant; it is terribly dull here.” And the major
ended by yielding. “Very well,” he replied, and the baron immediately sent
for Le Devoir. He was an old non-commissioned officer, who had never been
seen to smile, but who carried out all the orders of his superiors to the letter,
no matter what they might be. He stood there, with an impassive face, while
he received the baron’s instructions, and then went out, and five minutes later
a large military wagon, covered with tarpaulin, galloped off as fast as four
horses could draw it in the pouring rain. The officers all seemed to awaken
from their lethargy, their looks brightened, and they began to talk.
 Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was not
so dark, and Lieutenant von Grossling said with conviction that the sky was
clearing up, while Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be able to keep still.
He got up and sat down again, and his bright eyes seemed to be looking for
something to destroy. Suddenly, looking at the lady with the mustaches, the
young fellow pulled out his revolver and said: “You shall not see it.” And
without leaving his seat he aimed, and with two successive bullets cut out
both the eyes of the portrait.
“Let us make a mine!” he then exclaimed, and the conversation was
suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful subject of
interest. The mine was his invention, his method of destruction, and his
favorite amusement.
When he left the chateau, the lawful owner, Comte Fernand d’Amoys
d’Uville, had not had time to carry away or to hide anything except the plate,
which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the walls. As he was
very rich and had good taste, the large drawing-room, which opened into the
dining-room, looked like a gallery in a museum, before his precipitate flight.
Expensive oil paintings, water colors and drawings hung against the
walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves and in elegant glass
cupboards there were a thousand ornaments: small vases, statuettes, groups
of Dresden china and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory and Venetian
glass, which filled the large room with their costly and fantastic array.
Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for the
major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi would every now
and then have a mine, and on those occasions all the officers thoroughly
enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the
drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate
china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a
piece of punk through the spout. This he lighted and took his infernal machine
into the next room, but he came back immediately and shut the door. The
Germans all stood expectant, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity,
and as soon as the explosion had shaken the chateau, they all rushed in at
once.
Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at the
sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and each picked
up pieces of porcelain and wondered at the strange shape of the fragments,
while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large drawing-room,
which had been wrecked after the fashion of a Nero, and was strewn with the
fragments of works of art. He went out first and said with a smile: “That was
a great success this time.”
But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining-room, mingled with the
tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant opened the
window, and all the officers, who had returned for a last glass of cognac,
went up to it.
The moist air blew into the room, bringing with it a sort of powdery
spray, which sprinkled their beards. They looked at the tall trees which were
dripping with rain, at the broad valley which was covered with mist, and at
the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a gray point in the beating
rain.
The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only resistance
which the invaders had met with in the neighborhood. The parish priest had
not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian soldiers; he had several times
even drunk a bottle of beer or claret with the hostile commandant, who often
employed him as a benevolent intermediary; but it was no use to ask him for
a single stroke of the bells; he would sooner have allowed himself to be shot.
That was his way of protesting against the invasion, a peaceful and silent
protest, the only one, he said, which was suitable to a priest, who was a man
of mildness, and not of blood; and every one, for twenty-five miles round,
praised Abbe Chantavoine’s firmness and heroism in venturing to proclaim
the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.
The whole village, enthusiastic at his resistance, was ready to back up
their pastor and to risk anything, for they looked upon that silent protest as the
safeguard of the national honor. It seemed to the peasants that thus they
deserved better of their country than Belfort and Strassburg, that they had set
an equally valuable example, and that the name of their little village would
become immortalized by that; but, with that exception, they refused their
Prussian conquerors nothing.
The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at this
inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed
themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they willingly tolerated
their silent patriotism. Little Baron Wilhelm alone would have liked to have
forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his superior’s politic
compliance with the priest’s scruples, and every day begged the commandant
to allow him to sound “ding-dong, ding-dong,” just once, only just once, just
by way of a joke. And he asked it in the coaxing, tender voice of some loved
woman who is bent on obtaining her wish, but the commandant would not
yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi made a mine in the Chateau
d’Uville.
The five men stood there together for five minutes, breathing in the moist
air, and at last Lieutenant Fritz said with a laugh: “The ladies will certainly
not have fine weather for their drive.” Then they separated, each to his duty,
while the captain had plenty to do in arranging for the dinner.
When they met again toward evening they began to laugh at seeing each
other as spick and span and smart as on the day of a grand review. The
commandant’s hair did not look so gray as it was in the morning, and the
captain had shaved, leaving only his mustache, which made him look as if he
had a streak of fire under his nose.
In spite of the rain, they left the window open, and one of them went to
listen from time to time; and at a quarter past six the baron said he heard a
rumbling in the distance. They all rushed down, and presently the wagon
drove up at a gallop with its four horses steaming and blowing, and splashed
with mud to their girths. Five women dismounted, five handsome girls whom
a comrade of the captain, to whom Le Devoir had presented his card, had
selected with care.
They had not required much pressing, as they had got to know the
Prussians in the three months during which they had had to do with them, and
so they resigned themselves to the men as they did to the state of affairs.
They went at once into the dining-room, which looked still more dismal in
its dilapidated condition when it was lighted up; while the table covered
with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and the plate, which had
been found in the hole in the wall where its owner had hidden it, gave it the
appearance of a bandits’ inn, where they were supping after committing a
robbery in the place. The captain was radiant, and put his arm round the
women as if he were familiar with them; and when the three young men
wanted to appropriate one each, he opposed them authoritatively, reserving
to himself the right to apportion them justly, according to their several ranks,
so as not to offend the higher powers. Therefore, to avoid all discussion,
jarring, and suspicion of partiality, he placed them all in a row according to
height, and addressing the tallest, he said in a voice of command:
“What is your name?” “Pamela,” she replied, raising her voice. And then
he said: “Number One, called Pamela, is adjudged to the commandant.”
Then, having kissed Blondina, the second, as a sign of proprietorship, he
proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto; Eva, “the Tomato,” to Sub-
lieutenant Fritz, and Rachel, the shortest of them all, a very young, dark girl,
with eyes as black as ink, a Jewess, whose snub nose proved the rule which
allots hooked noses to all her race, to the youngest officer, frail Count
Wilhelm d’Eyrick.
They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and all
had a similarity of complexion and figure.
The three young men wished to carry off their prizes immediately, under
the pretext that they might wish to freshen their toilets; but the captain wisely
opposed this, for he said they were quite fit to sit down to dinner, and his
experience in such matters carried the day. There were only many kisses,
expectant kisses.
Suddenly Rachel choked, and began to cough until the tears came into her
eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretence of kissing her,
the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not fly into a
rage and did not say a word, but she looked at her tormentor with latent
hatred in her dark eyes.
They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made
Pamela sit on his right, and Blondina on his left, and said, as he unfolded his
table napkin: “That was a delightful idea of yours, captain.”
Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, who were as polite as if they had been with
fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their guests, but Baron von
Kelweinstein beamed, made obscene remarks and seemed on fire with his
crown of red hair. He paid the women compliments in French of the Rhine,
and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pothouse, from between
his two broken teeth.
They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not seem
to be awakened until he uttered foul words and broad expressions, which
were mangled by his accent. Then they all began to laugh at once like crazy
women and fell against each other, repeating the words, which the baron then
began to say all wrong, in order that he might have the pleasure of hearing
them say dirty things. They gave him as much of that stuff as he wanted, for
they were drunk after the first bottle of wine, and resuming their usual habits
and manners, they kissed the officers to right and left of them, pinched their
arms, uttered wild cries, drank out of every glass and sang French couplets
and bits of German songs which they had picked up in their daily intercourse
with the enemy.
Soon the men themselves became very unrestrained, shouted and broke the
plates and dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them stolidly.
The commandant was the only one who kept any restraint upon himself.
Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knee, and, getting excited, at
one moment he kissed the little black curls on her neck and at another he
pinched her furiously and made her scream, for he was seized by a species of
ferocity, and tormented by his desire to hurt her. He often held her close to
him and pressed a long kiss on the Jewess’ rosy mouth until she lost her
breath, and at last he bit her until a stream of blood ran down her chin and on
to her bodice.
For the second time she looked him full in the face, and as she bathed the
wound, she said: “You will have to pay for, that!” But he merely laughed a
hard laugh and said: “I will pay.”
At dessert champagne was served, and the commandant rose, and in the
same voice in which he would have drunk to the health of the Empress
Augusta, he drank: “To our ladies!” And a series of toasts began, toasts
worthy of the lowest soldiers and of drunkards, mingled with obscene jokes,
which were made still more brutal by their ignorance of the language. They
got up, one after the other, trying to say something witty, forcing themselves
to be funny, and the women, who were so drunk that they almost fell off their
chairs, with vacant looks and clammy tongues applauded madly each time.
The captain, who no doubt wished to impart an appearance of gallantry to
the orgy, raised his glass again and said: “To our victories over hearts.” and,
thereupon Lieutenant Otto, who was a species of bear from the Black Forest,
jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and suddenly seized by an
access of alcoholic patriotism, he cried: “To our victories over France!”
Drunk as they were, the women were silent, but Rachel turned round,
trembling, and said: “See here, I know some Frenchmen in whose presence
you would not dare say that.” But the little count, still holding her on his
knee, began to laugh, for the wine had made him very merry, and said: “Ha!
ha! ha! I have never met any of them myself. As soon as we show ourselves,
they run away!” The girl, who was in a terrible rage, shouted into his face:
“You are lying, you dirty scoundrel!”
For a moment he looked at her steadily with his bright eyes upon her, as
he had looked at the portrait before he destroyed it with bullets from his
revolver, and then he began to laugh: “Ah! yes, talk about them, my dear!
Should we be here now if they were brave?” And, getting excited, he
exclaimed: “We are the masters! France belongs to us!” She made one spring
from his knee and threw herself into her chair, while he arose, held out his
glass over the table and repeated: “France and the French, the woods, the
fields and the houses of France belong to us!”
The others, who were quite drunk, and who were suddenly seized by
military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses, and
shouting, “Long live Prussia!” they emptied them at a draught.
The girls did not protest, for they were reduced to silence and were
afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make. Then
the little marquis put his champagne glass, which had just been refilled, on
the head of the Jewess and exclaimed: “All the women in France belong to us
also!”
At that she got up so quickly that the glass upset, spilling the amber-
colored wine on her black hair as if to baptize her, and broke into a hundred
fragments, as it fell to the floor. Her lips trembling, she defied the looks of
the officer, who was still laughing, and stammered out in a voice choked with
rage:
“That — that — that — is not true — for you shall not have the women of
France!”
He sat down again so as to laugh at his ease; and, trying to speak with the
Parisian accent, he said: “She is good, very good! Then why did you come
here, my dear?” She was thunderstruck and made no reply for a moment, for
in her agitation she did not understand him at first, but as soon as she grasped
his meaning she said to him indignantly and vehemently: “I! I! I am not a
woman, I am only a strumpet, and that is all that Prussians want.”
Almost before she had finished he slapped her full in the face; but as he
was raising his hand again, as if to strike her, she seized a small dessert knife
with a silver blade from the table and, almost mad with rage, stabbed him
right in the hollow of his neck. Something that he was going to say was cut
short in his throat, and he sat there with his mouth half open and a terrible
look in his eyes.
All the officers shouted in horror and leaped up tumultuously; but,
throwing her chair between the legs of Lieutenant Otto, who fell down at full
length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could seize her and
jumped out into the night and the pouring rain.
 In two minutes Mademoiselle Fifi was dead, and Fritz and Otto drew their
swords and wanted to kill the women, who threw themselves at their feet and
clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the slaughter and
had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under the care of two
soldiers, and then he organized the pursuit of the fugitive as carefully as if he
were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure that she would be
caught.
The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a bed on
which to lay out the lieutenant, and the four officers stood at the windows,
rigid and sobered with the stern faces of soldiers on duty, and tried to pierce
through the darkness of the night amid the steady torrent of rain. Suddenly a
shot was heard and then another, a long way off; and for four hours they heard
from time to time near or distant reports and rallying cries, strange words of
challenge, uttered in guttural voices.
In the morning they all returned. Two soldiers had been killed and three
others wounded by their comrades in the ardor of that chase and in the
confusion of that nocturnal pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.
Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses were turned
topsy-turvy, the country was scoured and beaten up, over and over again, but
the Jewess did not seem to have left a single trace of her passage behind her.
When the general was told of it he gave orders to hush up the affair, so as
not to set a bad example to the army, but he severely censured the
commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had said: “One
does not go to war in order to amuse one’s self and to caress prostitutes.”
Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his mind to have his
revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext for showing severity, he
sent for the priest and ordered him to have the bell tolled at the funeral of
Baron von Eyrick.
Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most
respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi’s body left the Chateau d’Uville on
its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and
followed by soldiers who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time the
bell sounded its funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were
caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as
much as any one could desire. Sometimes even it would start at night and
sound gently through the darkness, seized with a strange joy, awakened one
could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was
bewitched, and nobody except the priest and the sacristan would now go near
the church tower. And they went because a poor girl was living there in grief
and solitude and provided for secretly by those two men.
She remained there until the German troops departed, and then one
evening the priest borrowed the baker’s cart and himself drove his prisoner
to Rouen. When they got there he embraced her, and she quickly went back on
foot to the establishment from which she had come, where the proprietress,
who thought that she was dead, was very glad to see her.
A short time afterward a patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked her
because of her bold deed, and who afterward loved her for herself, married
her and made her a lady quite as good as many others.
 A DUEL

The war was over. The Germans occupied France. The whole country was
pulsating like a conquered wrestler beneath the knee of his victorious
opponent.
The first trains from Paris, distracted, starving, despairing Paris, were
making their way to the new frontiers, slowly passing through the country
districts and the villages. The passengers gazed through the windows at the
ravaged fields and burned hamlets. Prussian soldiers, in their black helmets
with brass spikes, were smoking their pipes astride their chairs in front of the
houses which were still left standing. Others were working or talking just as
if they were members of the families. As you passed through the different
towns you saw entire regiments drilling in the squares, and, in spite of the
rumble of the carriage-wheels, you could every moment hear the hoarse
words of command.
M. Dubuis, who during the entire siege had served as one of the National
Guard in Paris, was going to join his wife and daughter, whom he had
prudently sent away to Switzerland before the invasion.
Famine and hardship had not diminished his big paunch so characteristic
of the rich, peace-loving merchant. He had gone through the terrible events of
the past year with sorrowful resignation and bitter complaints at the savagery
of men. Now that he was journeying to the frontier at the close of the war, he
saw the Prussians for the first time, although he had done his duty on the
ramparts and mounted guard on many a cold night.
He stared with mingled fear and anger at those bearded armed men,
installed all over French soil as if they were at home, and he felt in his soul a
kind of fever of impotent patriotism, at the same time also the great need of
that new instinct of prudence which since then has, never left us. In the same
railway carriage were two Englishmen, who had come to the country as
sightseers and were gazing about them with looks of quiet curiosity. They
were both also stout, and kept chatting in their own language, sometimes
referring to their guidebook, and reading aloud the names of the places
indicated.
 Suddenly the train stopped at a little village station, and a Prussian officer
jumped up with a great clatter of his sabre on the double footboard of the
railway carriage. He was tall, wore a tight-fitting uniform, and had whiskers
up to his eyes. His red hair seemed to be on fire, and his long mustache, of a
paler hue, stuck out on both sides of his face, which it seemed to cut in two.
The Englishmen at once began staring, at him with smiles of newly
awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a newspaper.
He sat concealed in his corner like a thief in presence of a gendarme.
The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting and looking out
for the exact scene of different battles; and all of a sudden, as one of them
stretched out his arm toward the horizon as he pointed out a village, the
Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long legs and lolling
backward:
“I killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village and took more than a hundred
prisoners.”
The Englishmen, quite interested, immediately asked:
“Ha! and what is the name of this village?”
The Prussian replied:
“Pharsbourg.” He added: “We caught those French scoundrels by the
ears.”
And he glanced toward M. Dubuis, laughing conceitedly into his
mustache.
The train rolled on, still passing through hamlets occupied by the
victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the edges
of fields, standing in front of gates or chatting outside cafes. They covered
the soil like African locusts.
The officer said, with a wave of his hand:
“If I had been in command, I’d have taken Paris, burned everything, killed
everybody. No more France!”
The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:
“Ah! yes.”
He went on:
“In twenty years all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is more
than a match for all of them.”
The Englishmen, getting uneasy, no longer replied. Their faces, which had
become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers. Then
the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back, he began to sneer.
He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted the prostrate enemy; he
sneered at Austria, which had been recently conquered; he sneered at the
valiant but fruitless defence of the departments; he sneered at the Garde
Mobile and at the useless artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to
build a city of iron with the captured cannon. And suddenly he placed his
boots against the thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned away his eyes, reddening to
the roots of his hair.
The Englishmen seemed to have become indifferent to all that was going
on, as if they were suddenly shut up in their own island, far from the din of
the world.
The officer took out his pipe, and looking fixedly at the Frenchman, said:
“You haven’t any tobacco — have you?”
M. Dubuis replied:
“No, monsieur.”
The German resumed:
“You might go and buy some for me when the train stops.”
And he began laughing afresh as he added:
“I’ll give you the price of a drink.”
The train whistled, and slackened its pace. They passed a station that had
been burned down; and then they stopped altogether.
The German opened the carriage door, and, catching M. Dubuis by the
arm, said:
“Go and do what I told you — quick, quick!”
A Prussian detachment occupied the station. Other soldiers were standing
behind wooden gratings, looking on. The engine was getting up steam before
starting off again. Then M. Dubuis hurriedly jumped on the platform, and, in
spite of the warnings of the station master, dashed into the adjoining
compartment.
He was alone! He tore open his waistcoat, his heart was beating so
rapidly, and, gasping for breath, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
The train drew up at another station. And suddenly the officer appeared at
the carriage door and jumped in, followed close behind by the two
Englishmen, who were impelled by curiosity. The German sat facing the
Frenchman, and, laughing still, said:
“You did not want to do what I asked you?”
M. Dubuis replied:
“No, monsieur.”
 The train had just left the station.
The officer said:
“I’ll cut off your mustache to fill my pipe with.”
And he put out his hand toward the Frenchman’s face.
The Englishmen stared at them, retaining their previous impassive manner.
The German had already pulled out a few hairs, and was still tugging at
the mustache, when M. Dubuis, with a back stroke of his hand, flung aside the
officer’s arm, and, seizing him by the collar, threw him down on the seat.
Then, excited to a pitch of fury, his temples swollen and his eyes glaring, he
kept throttling the officer with one hand, while with the other clenched he
began to strike him violent blows in the face. The Prussian struggled, tried to
draw his sword, to clinch with his adversary, who was on top of him. But M.
Dubuis crushed him with his enormous weight and kept punching him without
taking breath or knowing where his blows fell. Blood flowed down the face
of the German, who, choking and with a rattling in his throat, spat out his
broken teeth and vainly strove to shake off this infuriated man who was
killing him.
The Englishmen had got on their feet and came closer in order to see
better. They remained standing, full of mirth and curiosity, ready to bet for, or
against, either combatant.
Suddenly M. Dubuis, exhausted by his violent efforts, rose and resumed
his seat without uttering a word.
The Prussian did not attack him, for the savage assault had terrified and
astonished the officer as well as causing him suffering. When he was able to
breathe freely, he said:
“Unless you give me satisfaction with pistols I will kill you.”
M. Dubuis replied:
“Whenever you like. I’m quite ready.”
The German said:
“Here is the town of Strasbourg. I’ll get two officers to be my seconds,
and there will be time before the train leaves the station.”
M. Dubuis, who was puffing as hard as the engine, said to the Englishmen:
“Will you be my seconds?” They both answered together:
“Oh, yes!”
And the train stopped.
In a minute the Prussian had found two comrades, who brought pistols,
and they made their way toward the ramparts.
 The Englishmen were continually looking at their watches, shuffling their
feet and hurrying on with the preparations, uneasy lest they should be too late
for the train.
M. Dubuis had never fired a pistol in his life.
They made him stand twenty paces away from his enemy. He was asked:
“Are you ready?”
While he was answering, “Yes, monsieur,” he noticed that one of the
Englishmen had opened his umbrella in order to keep off the rays of the sun.
A voice gave the signal:
“Fire!”
M. Dubuis fired at random without delay, and he was amazed to see the
Prussian opposite him stagger, lift up his arms and fall forward, dead. He had
killed the officer.
One of the Englishmen exclaimed: “Ah!” He was quivering with delight,
with satisfied curiosity and joyous impatience. The other, who still kept his
watch in his hand, seized M. Dubuis’ arm and hurried him in double-quick
time toward the station, his fellow-countryman marking time as he ran beside
them, with closed fists, his elbows at his sides, “One, two; one, two!”
And all three, running abreast rapidly, made their way to the station like
three grotesque figures in a comic newspaper.
The train was on the point of starting. They sprang into their carriage.
Then the Englishmen, taking off their travelling caps, waved them three times
over their heads, exclaiming:
“Hip! hip! hip! hurrah!”
And gravely, one after the other, they extended their right hands to M.
Dubuis and then went back and sat down in their own corner.
 THE MAISON TELLIER

They went there every evening about eleven o’clock, just as they would go to
the club. Six or eight of them; always the same set, not fast men, but
respectable tradesmen, and young men in government or some other employ,
and they would drink their Chartreuse, and laugh with the girls, or else talk
seriously with Madame Tellier, whom everybody respected, and then they
would go home at twelve o’clock! The younger men would sometimes stay
later.
It was a small, comfortable house painted yellow, at the corner of a street
behind Saint Etienne’s Church, and from the windows one could see the
docks full of ships being unloaded, the big salt marsh, and, rising beyond it,
the Virgin’s Hill with its old gray chapel.
Madame Tellier, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors
in the Department of the Eure, had taken up her profession, just as she would
have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice which is so violent and
deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country places in
Normandy. The peasant says:
“It is a paying-business,” and he sends his daughter to keep an
establishment of this character just as he would send her to keep a girls’
school.
She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged.
Monsieur and Madame Tellier, who had formerly been innkeepers near
Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the business at
Fecamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning to assume
the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account of the
absence of the proprietors. They were good people enough in their way, and
soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbors.
Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as the new place kept him
in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout, and his
health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the frequenters of the
establishment made much of her; but people said that, personally, she was
quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house could not discover anything
against her. She was tall, stout and affable, and her complexion, which had
become pale in the dimness of her house, the shutters of which were scarcely
ever opened, shone as if it had been varnished. She had a fringe of curly false
hair, which gave her a juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the
ripeness of her figure. She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of
a joke, but there was a shade of reserve about her, which her occupation had
not quite made her lose. Coarse words always shocked her, and when any
young fellow who had been badly brought up called her establishment a hard
name, she was angry and disgusted.
In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as
friends, yet she very frequently used to say that “she and they were not made
of the same stuff.”
Sometimes during the week she would hire a carriage and take some of
her girls into the country, where they used to enjoy themselves on the grass by
the side of the little river. They were like a lot of girls let out from school,
and would run races and play childish games. They had a cold dinner on the
grass, and drank cider, and went home at night with a delicious feeling of
fatigue, and in the carriage they kissed Madame’ Tellier as their kind mother,
who was full of goodness and complaisance.
The house had two entrances. At the corner there was a sort of tap-room,
which sailors and the lower orders frequented at night, and she had two girls
whose special duty it was to wait on them with the assistance of Frederic, a
short, light-haired, beardless fellow, as strong as a horse. They set the half
bottles of wine and the jugs of beer on the shaky marble tables before the
customers, and then urged the men to drink.
The three other girls — there were only five of them — formed a kind of
aristocracy, and they remained with the company on the first floor, unless
they were wanted downstairs and there was nobody on the first floor. The
salon de Jupiter, where the tradesmen used to meet, was papered in blue, and
embellished with a large drawing representing Leda and the swan. The room
was reached by a winding staircase, through a narrow door opening on the
street, and above this door a lantern inclosed in wire, such as one still sees
in some towns, at the foot of the shrine of some saint, burned all night long.
The house, which was old and damp, smelled slightly of mildew. At times
there was an odor of eau de Cologne in the passages, or sometimes from a
half-open door downstairs the noisy mirth of the common men sitting and
drinking rose to the first floor, much to the disgust of the gentlemen who were
there. Madame Tellier, who was on friendly terms with her customers, did
not leave the room, and took much interest in what was going on in the town,
and they regularly told her all the news. Her serious conversation was a
change from the ceaseless chatter of the three women; it was a rest from the
obscene jokes of those stout individuals who every evening indulged in the
commonplace debauchery of drinking a glass of liqueur in company with
common women.
The names of the girls on the first floor were Fernande, Raphaele, and
Rosa, the Jade. As the staff was limited, madame had endeavored that each
member of it should be a pattern, an epitome of the feminine type, so that
every customer might find as nearly as possible the realization of his ideal.
Fernande represented the handsome blonde; she was very tall, rather fat, and
lazy; a country girl, who could not get rid of her freckles, and whose short,
light, almost colorless, tow-like hair, like combed-out hemp, barely covered
her head.
Raphaele, who came from Marseilles, played the indispensable part of the
handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheekbones, which were covered
with rouge, and black hair covered with pomatum, which curled on her
forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had a
speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two false
upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color of the rest.
Rosa was a little roll of fat, nearly all body, with very short legs, and
from morning till night she sang songs, which were alternately risque or
sentimental, in a harsh voice; told silly, interminable tales, and only stopped
talking in order to eat, and left off eating in order to talk; she was never still,
and was active as a squirrel, in spite of her embonpoint and her short legs;
her laugh, which was a torrent of shrill cries, resounded here and there,
ceaselessly, in a bedroom, in the loft, in the cafe, everywhere, and all about
nothing.
The two women on the ground floor, Lodise, who was nicknamed La
Cocotte, and Flora, whom they called Balancoise, because she limped a
little, the former always dressed as the Goddess of Liberty, with a tri-
colored sash, and the other as a Spanish woman, with a string of copper
coins in her carroty hair, which jingled at every uneven step, looked like
cooks dressed up for the carnival. They were like all other women of the
lower orders, neither uglier nor better looking than they usually are.
They looked just like servants at an inn, and were generally called “the
two pumps.”
 A jealous peace, which was, however, very rarely disturbed, reigned
among these five women, thanks to Madame Tellier’s conciliatory wisdom,
and to her constant good humor, and the establishment, which was the only
one of the kind in the little town, was very much frequented. Madame Tellier
had succeeded in giving it such a respectable appearance, she was so
amiable and obliging to everybody, her good heart was so well known, that
she was treated with a certain amount of consideration. The regular
customers spent money on her, and were delighted when she was especially
friendly toward them, and when they met during the day, they would say:
“Until this evening, you know where,” just as men say: “At the club, after
dinner.” In a word, Madame Tellier’s house was somewhere to go to, and
they very rarely missed their daily meetings there.
One evening toward the end of May, the first arrival, Monsieur Poulin,
who was a timber merchant, and had been mayor, found the door shut. The
lantern behind the grating was not alight; there was not a sound in the house;
everything seemed dead. He knocked, gently at first, but then more loudly, but
nobody answered the door. Then he went slowly up the street, and when he
got to the market place he met Monsieur Duvert, the gunmaker, who was
going to the same place, so they went back together, but did not meet with any
better success. But suddenly they heard a loud noise, close to them, and on
going round the house, they saw a number of English and French sailors, who
were hammering at the closed shutters of the taproom with their fists.
The two tradesmen immediately made their escape, but a low “Pst!”
stopped them; it was Monsieur Tournevau, the fish curer, who had recognized
them, and was trying to attract their attention. They told him what had
happened, and he was all the more annoyed, as he was a married man and
father of a family, and only went on Saturdays. That was his regular evening,
and now he should be deprived of this dissipation for the whole week.
The three men went as far as the quay together, and on the way they met
young Monsieur Philippe, the banker’s son, who frequented the place
regularly, and Monsieur Pinipesse, the collector, and they all returned to the
Rue aux Juifs together, to make a last attempt. But the exasperated sailors
were besieging the house, throwing stones at the shutters, and shouting, and
the five first-floor customers went away as quickly as possible, and walked
aimlessly about the streets.
Presently they met Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, and then
Monsieur Vasse, the Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and they took a long
walk, going to the pier first of all, where they sat down in a row on the
granite parapet and watched the rising tide, and when the promenaders had
sat there for some time, Monsieur Tournevau said:
“This is not very amusing!”
“Decidedly not,” Monsieur Pinipesse replied, and they started off to walk
again.
After going through the street alongside the hill, they returned over the
wooden bridge which crosses the Retenue, passed close to the railway, and
came out again on the market place, when, suddenly, a quarrel arose between
Monsieur Pinipesse, the collector, and Monsieur Tournevau about an edible
mushroom which one of them declared he had found in the neighborhood.
As they were out of temper already from having nothing to do, they would
very probably have come to blows, if the others had not interfered. Monsieur
Pinipesse went off furious, and soon another altercation arose between the
ex-mayor, Monsieur Poulin, and Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, on the
subject of the tax collector’s salary and the profits which he might make.
Insulting remarks were freely passing between them, when a torrent of
formidable cries was heard, and the body of sailors, who were tired of
waiting so long outside a closed house, came into the square. They were
walking arm in arm, two and two, and formed a long procession, and were
shouting furiously. The townsmen hid themselves in a doorway, and the
yelling crew disappeared in the direction of the abbey. For a long time they
still heard the noise, which diminished like a storm in the distance, and then
silence was restored. Monsieur Poulin and Monsieur Dupuis, who were
angry with each other, went in different directions, without wishing each
other good-by.
The other four set off again, and instinctively went in the direction of
Madame Tellier’s establishment, which was still closed, silent,
impenetrable. A quiet, but obstinate drunken man was knocking at the door of
the lower room, and then stopped and called Frederic, in a low voice, but
finding that he got no answer, he sat down on the doorstep, and waited the
course of events.
The others were just going to retire, when the noisy band of sailors
reappeared at the end of the street. The French sailors were shouting the
“Marseillaise,” and the Englishmen “Rule Britannia.” There was a general
lurching against the wall, and then the drunken fellows went on their way
toward the quay, where a fight broke out between the two nations, in the
course of which an Englishman had his arm broken and a Frenchman his nose
split.
The drunken man who had waited outside the door, was crying by that
time, as drunken men and children cry when they are vexed, and the others
went away. By degrees, calm was restored in the noisy town; here and there,
at moments, the distant sound of voices could be heard, and then died away
in the distance.
One man only was still wandering about, Monsieur Tournevau, the fish
curer, who was annoyed at having to wait until the following Saturday, and
he hoped something would turn up, he did not know what; but he was
exasperated at the police for thus allowing an establishment of such public
utility, which they had under their control, to be closed.
He went back to it and examined the walls, trying to find out some reason,
and on the shutter he saw a notice stuck up. He struck a wax match and read
the following, in a large, uneven hand: “Closed on account of the
Confirmation.”
Then he went away, as he saw it was useless to remain, and left the
drunken man lying on the pavement fast asleep, outside that inhospitable
door.
The next day, all the regular customers, one after the other, found some
reason for going through the street, with a bundle of papers under their arm to
keep them in countenance, and with a furtive glance they all read that
mysterious notice:
“Closed on account of the Confirmation.”

PART II

Madame Tellier had a brother, who was a carpenter in their native place,
Virville, in the Department of Eure. When she still kept the inn at Yvetot, she
had stood godmother to that brother’s daughter, who had received the name
of Constance — Constance Rivet; she herself being a Rivet on her father’s
side. The carpenter, who knew that his sister was in a good position, did not
lose sight of her, although they did not meet often, for they were both kept at
home by their occupations, and lived a long way from each other. But as the
girl was twelve years old, and going to be confirmed, he seized that
opportunity to write to his sister, asking her to come and be present at the
ceremony. Their old parents were dead, and as she could not well refuse her
goddaughter, she accepted the invitation. Her brother, whose name was
Joseph, hoped that by dint of showing his sister attention, she might be
induced to make her will in the girl’s favor, as she had no children of her
own.
His sister’s occupation did not trouble his scruples in the least, and,
besides, nobody knew anything about it at Virville. When they spoke of her,
they only said: “Madame Tellier is living at Fecamp,” which might mean that
she was living on her own private income. It was quite twenty leagues from
Fecamp to Virville, and for a peasant, twenty leagues on land is as long a
journey as crossing the ocean would be to city people. The people at Virville
had never been further than Rouen, and nothing attracted the people from
Fecamp to a village of five hundred houses in the middle of a plain, and
situated in another department; at any rate, nothing was known about her
business.
But the Confirmation was coming on, and Madame Tellier was in great
embarrassment. She had no substitute, and did not at all care to leave her
house, even for a day; for all the rivalries between the girls upstairs and
those downstairs would infallibly break out. No doubt Frederic would get
drunk, and when he was in that state, he would knock anybody down for a
mere word. At last, however, she made up her mind to take them all with her,
with the exception of the man, to whom she gave a holiday until the next day
but one.
When she asked her brother, he made no objection, but undertook to put
them all up for a night, and so on Saturday morning the eight-o’clock express
carried off Madame Tellier and her companions in a second-class carriage.
As far as Beuzeville they were alone, and chattered like magpies, but at that
station a couple got in. The man, an old peasant, dressed in a blue blouse
with a turned-down collar, wide sleeves tight at the wrist, ornamented with
white embroidery, wearing an old high hat with long nap, held an enormous
green umbrella in one hand, and a large basket in the other, from which the
heads of three frightened ducks protruded. The woman, who sat up stiffly in
her rustic finery, had a face like a fowl, with a nose that was as pointed as a
bill. She sat down opposite her husband and did not stir, as she was startled
at finding herself in such smart company.
 There was certainly an array of striking colors in the carriage. Madame
Tellier was dressed in blue silk from head to foot, and had on a dazzling red
imitation French cashmere shawl. Fernande was puffing in a Scotch plaid
dress, of which her companions had laced the bodice as tight as they could,
forcing up her full bust, that was continually heaving up and down. Raphaele,
with a bonnet covered with feathers, so that it looked like a bird’s nest, had
on a lilac dress with gold spots on it, and there was something Oriental about
it that suited her Jewish face. Rosa had on a pink skirt with largo flounces,
and looked like a very fat child, an obese dwarf; while the two Pumps
looked as if they had cut their dresses out of old flowered curtains dating
from the Restoration.
As soon as they were no longer alone in the compartment, the ladies put
on staid looks, and began to talk of subjects which might give others a high
opinion of them. But at Bolbeck a gentleman with light whiskers, a gold
chain, and wearing two or three rings, got in, and put several parcels
wrapped in oilcloth on the rack over his head. He looked inclined for a joke,
and seemed a good-hearted fellow.
“Are you ladies changing your quarters?” he said, and that question
embarrassed them all considerably. Madame Tellier, however, quickly
regained her composure, and said sharply, to avenge the honor of her corps:
“I think you might try and be polite!”
He excused himself, and said: “I beg your pardon, I ought to have said
your nunnery.”
She could not think of a retort, so, perhaps thinking she had said enough,
madame gave him a dignified bow and compressed her lips.
Then the gentleman, who was sitting between Rosa and the old peasant,
began to wink knowingly at the ducks whose heads were sticking out of the
basket, and when he felt that he had fixed the attention of his public, he began
to tickle them under the bills and spoke funnily to them to make the company
smile.
“We have left our little pond, quack! quack! to make the acquaintance of
the little spit, qu-ack! qu-ack!”
The unfortunate creatures turned their necks away, to avoid his caresses,
and made desperate efforts to get out of their wicker prison, and then,
suddenly, all at once, uttered the most lamentable quacks of distress. The
women exploded with laughter. They leaned forward and pushed each other,
so as to see better; they were very much interested in the ducks, and the
gentleman redoubled his airs, his wit and his teasing.
Rosa joined in, and leaning over her neighbor’s legs, she kissed the three
animals on the head, and immediately all the girls wanted to kiss them, in
turn, and as they did so the gentleman took them on his knee, jumped them up
and down and pinched their arms. The two peasants, who were even in
greater consternation than their poultry, rolled their eyes as if they were
possessed, without venturing to move, and their old wrinkled faces had not a
smile, not a twitch.
Then the gentleman, who was a commercial traveller, offered the ladies
suspenders by way of a joke, and taking up one of his packages, he opened it.
It was a joke, for the parcel contained garters. There were blue silk, pink
silk, red silk, violet silk, mauve silk garters, and the buckles were made of
two gilt metal cupids embracing each other. The girls uttered exclamations of
delight and looked at them with that gravity natural to all women when they
are considering an article of dress. They consulted one another by their looks
or in a whisper, and replied in the same manner, and Madame Tellier was
longingly handling a pair of orange garters that were broader and more
imposing looking than the rest; really fit for the mistress of such an
establishment.
The gentleman waited, for he had an idea.
“Come, my kittens,” he said, “you must try them on.”
There was a torrent of exclamations, and they squeezed their petticoats
between their legs, but he quietly waited his time and said: “Well, if you will
not try them on I shall pack them up again.”
And he added cunningly: “I offer any pair they like to those who will try
them on.”
But they would not, and sat up very straight and looked dignified.
But the two Pumps looked so distressed that he renewed his offer to them,
and Flora, especially, visibly hesitated, and he insisted: “Come, my dear, a
little courage! Just look at that lilac pair; it will suit your dress admirably.”
That decided her, and pulling up her dress she showed a thick leg fit for a
milkmaid, in a badly fitting, coarse stocking. The commercial traveller
stooped down and fastened the garter. When he had done this, he gave her the
lilac pair and asked: “Who next?”
“I! I!” they all shouted at once, and he began on Rosa, who uncovered a
shapeless, round thing without any ankle, a regular “sausage of a leg,” as
Raphaele used to say.
Lastly, Madame Tellier herself put out her leg, a handsome, muscular
Norman leg, and in his surprise and pleasure, the commercial traveller
gallantly took off his hat to salute that master calf, like a true French cavalier.
The two peasants, who were speechless from surprise, glanced sideways
out of the corner of one eye, and they looked so exactly like fowls that the
man with the light whiskers, when he sat up, said: “Co — co — ri — co”
under their very noses, and that gave rise to another storm of amusement.
The old people got out at Motteville with their basket, their ducks and
their umbrella, and they heard the woman say to her husband as they went
away:
“They are no good and are off to that cursed place, Paris.”
The funny commercial traveller himself got out at Rouen, after behaving
so coarsely that Madame Tellier was obliged sharply to put him in his right
place, and she added, as a moral: “This will teach us not to talk to the first
comer.”
At Oissel they changed trains, and at a little station further on Monsieur
Joseph Rivet was waiting for them with a large cart with a number of chairs
in it, drawn by a white horse.
The carpenter politely kissed all the ladies and then helped them into his
conveyance.
Three of them sat on three chairs at the back, Raphaele, Madame Tellier
and her brother on the three chairs in front, while Rosa, who had no seat,
settled herself as comfortably as she could on tall Fernande’s knees, and then
they set off.
But the horse’s jerky trot shook the cart so terribly that the chairs began to
dance and threw the travellers about, to the right and to the left, as if they
were dancing puppets, which made them scream and make horrible grimaces.
They clung on to the sides of the vehicle, their bonnets fell on their backs,
over their faces and on their shoulders, and the white horse went on
stretching out his head and holding out his little hairless tail like a rat’s, with
which he whisked his buttocks from time to time.
Joseph Rivet, with one leg on the shafts and the other doubled under him,
held the reins with his elbows very high, and kept uttering a kind of clucking
sound, which made the horse prick up its ears and go faster.
The green country extended on either side of the road, and here and there
the colza in flower presented a waving expanse of yellow, from which arose
a strong, wholesome, sweet and penetrating odor, which the wind carried to
some distance.
The cornflowers showed their little blue heads amid the rye, and the
women wanted to pick them, but Monsieur Rivet refused to stop.
Then, sometimes, a whole field appeared to be covered with blood, so
thick were the poppies, and the cart, which looked as if it were filled with
flowers of more brilliant hue, jogged on through fields bright with wild
flowers, and disappeared behind the trees of a farm, only to reappear and to
go on again through the yellow or green standing crops, which were studded
with red or blue.
One o’clock struck as they drove up to the carpenter’s door. They were
tired out and pale with hunger, as they had eaten nothing since they left home.
Madame Rivet ran out and made them alight, one after another, and kissed
them as soon as they were on the ground, and she seemed as if she would
never tire of kissing her sister-in-law, whom she apparently wanted to
monopolize. They had lunch in the workshop, which had been cleared out for
the next day’s dinner.
The capital omelet, followed by boiled chitterlings and washed down
with good hard cider, made them all feel comfortable.
Rivet had taken a glass so that he might drink with them, and his wife
cooked, waited on them, brought in the dishes, took them out and asked each
of them in a whisper whether they had everything they wanted. A number of
boards standing against the walls and heaps of shavings that had been swept
into the corners gave out a smell of planed wood, a smell of a carpenter’s
shop, that resinous odor which penetrates to the lungs.
They wanted to see the little girl, but she had gone to church and would
not be back again until evening, so they all went out for a stroll in the country.
It was a small village, through which the highroad passed. Ten or a dozen
houses on either side of the single street were inhabited by the butcher, the
grocer, the carpenter, the innkeeper, the shoemaker and the baker.
The church was at the end of the street and was surrounded by a small
churchyard, and four immense lime-trees, which stood just outside the porch,
shaded it completely. It was built of flint, in no particular style, and had a
slate-roofed steeple. When you got past it, you were again in the open
country, which was varied here and there by clumps of trees which hid the
homesteads.
 Rivet had given his arm to his sister, out of politeness, although he was in
his working clothes, and was walking with her in a dignified manner. His
wife, who was overwhelmed by Raphaele’s gold-striped dress, walked
between her and Fernande, and roly-poly Rosa was trotting behind with
Louise and Flora, the Seesaw, who was limping along, quite tired out.
The inhabitants came to their doors, the children left off playing, and a
window curtain would be raised, so as to show a muslin cap, while an old
woman with a crutch, who was almost blind, crossed herself as if it were a
religious procession, and they all gazed for a long time at those handsome
ladies from town, who had come so far to be present at the confirmation of
Joseph Rivet’s little girl, and the carpenter rose very much in the public
estimation.
As they passed the church they heard some children singing. Little shrill
voices were singing a hymn, but Madame Tellier would not let them go in,
for fear of disturbing the little cherubs.
After the walk, during which Joseph Rivet enumerated the principal
landed proprietors, spoke about the yield of the land and the productiveness
of the cows and sheep, he took his tribe of women home and installed them in
his house, and as it was very small, they had to put them into the rooms, two
and two.
Just for once Rivet would sleep in the workshop on the shavings; his wife
was to share her bed with her sister-in-law, and Fernande and Raphaele
were to sleep together in the next room. Louise and Flora were put into the
kitchen, where they had a mattress on the floor, and Rosa had a little dark
cupboard to herself at the top of the stairs, close to the loft, where the
candidate for confirmation was to sleep.
When the little girl came in she was overwhelmed with kisses; all the
women wished to caress her with that need of tender expansion, that habit of
professional affection which had made them kiss the ducks in the railway
carriage.
They each of them took her on their knees, stroked her soft, light hair and
pressed her in their arms with vehement and spontaneous outbursts of
affection, and the child, who was very good and religious, bore it all
patiently.
As the day had been a fatiguing one for everybody, they all went to bed
soon after dinner. The whole village was wrapped in that perfect stillness of
the country, which is almost like a religious silence, and the girls, who were
accustomed to the noisy evenings of their establishment, felt rather impressed
by the perfect repose of the sleeping village, and they shivered, not with
cold, but with those little shivers of loneliness which come over uneasy and
troubled hearts.
As soon as they were in bed, two and two together, they clasped each
other in their arms, as if to protect themselves against this feeling of the calm
and profound slumber of the earth. But Rosa, who was alone in her little dark
cupboard, felt a vague and painful emotion come over her.
She was tossing about in bed, unable to get to sleep, when she heard the
faint sobs of a crying child close to her head, through the partition. She was
frightened, and called out, and was answered by a weak voice, broken by
sobs. It was the little girl, who was always used to sleeping in her mother’s
room, and who was afraid in her small attic.
Rosa was delighted, got up softly so as not to awaken any one, and went
and fetched the child. She took her into her warm bed, kissed her and pressed
her to her bosom, lavished exaggerated manifestations of tenderness on her,
and at last grew calmer herself and went to sleep. And till morning the
candidate for confirmation slept with her head on Rosa’s bosom.
At five o’clock the little church bell, ringing the Angelus, woke the
women, who usually slept the whole morning long.
The villagers were up already, and the women went busily from house to
house, carefully bringing short, starched muslin dresses or very long wax
tapers tied in the middle with a bow of silk fringed with gold, and with dents
in the wax for the fingers.
The sun was already high in the blue sky, which still had a rosy tint
toward the horizon, like a faint remaining trace of dawn. Families of fowls
were walking about outside the houses, and here and there a black cock, with
a glistening breast, raised his head, which was crowned by his red comb,
flapped his wings and uttered his shrill crow, which the other cocks
repeated.
Vehicles of all sorts came from neighboring parishes, stopping at the
different houses, and tall Norman women dismounted, wearing dark dresses,
with kerchiefs crossed over the bosom, fastened with silver brooches a
hundred years old.
The men had put on their blue smocks over their new frock-coats or over
their old dress-coats of green-cloth, the two tails of which hung down below
their blouses. When the horses were in the stable there was a double line of
rustic conveyances along the road: carts, cabriolets, tilburies, wagonettes,
traps of every shape and age, tipping forward on their shafts or else tipping
backward with the shafts up in the air.
The carpenter’s house was as busy as a bee-hive. The women, in
dressing-jackets and petticoats, with their thin, short hair, which looked
faded and worn, hanging down their backs, were busy dressing the child,
who was standing quietly on a table, while Madame Tellier was directing the
movements of her battalion. They washed her, did her hair, dressed her, and
with the help of a number of pins, they arranged the folds of her dress and
took in the waist, which was too large.
Then, when she was ready, she was told to sit down and not to move, and
the women hurried off to get ready themselves.
The church bell began to ring again, and its tinkle was lost in the air, like
a feeble voice which is soon drowned in space. The candidates came out of
the houses and went toward the parochial building, which contained the two
schools and the mansion house, and which stood quite at one end of the
village, while the church was situated at the other.
The parents, in their very best clothes, followed their children, with
embarrassed looks, and those clumsy movements of a body bent by toil.
The little girls disappeared in a cloud of muslin, which looked like
whipped cream, while the lads, who looked like embryo waiters in a cafe
and whose heads shone with pomatum, walked with their legs apart, so as not
to get any dust or dirt on their black trousers.
It was something for a family, to be proud of, when a large number of
relatives, who had come from a distance, surrounded the child, and the
carpenter’s triumph was complete.
Madame Tellier’s regiment, with its leader at its head, followed
Constance; her father gave his arm to his sister, her mother walked by the
side of Raphaele, Fernande with Rosa and Louise and Flora together, and
thus they proceeded majestically through the village, like a general’s staff in
full uniform, while the effect on the village was startling.
At the school the girls ranged themselves under the Sister of Mercy and
the boys under the schoolmaster, and they started off, singing a hymn as they
went. The boys led the way, in two files, between the two rows of vehicles,
from which the horses had been taken out, and the girls followed in the same
order; and as all the people in the village had given the town ladies the
precedence out of politeness, they came immediately behind the girls, and
lengthened the double line of the procession still more, three on the right and
three on the left, while their dresses were as striking as a display of
fireworks.
When they went into the church the congregation grew quite excited. They
pressed against each other, turned round and jostled one another in order to
see, and some of the devout ones spoke almost aloud, for they were so
astonished at the sight of those ladies whose dresses were more elaborate
than the priest’s vestments.
The mayor offered them his pew, the first one on the right, close to the
choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and
Raphaele. Rosa, Louise and Flora occupied the second seat, in company with
the carpenter.
The choir was full of kneeling children, the girls on one side and the boys
on the other, and the long wax tapers which they held looked like lances
pointing in all directions, and three men were standing in front of the lectern,
singing as loud as they could.
They prolonged the syllables of the sonorous Latin indefinitely, holding on
to “Amens” with interminable “a-a’s,” which the reed stop of the organ
sustained in a monotonous, long-drawn-out tone.
A child’s shrill voice took up the reply, and from time to time a priest
sitting in a stall and wearing a biretta got up, muttered something and sat
down again, while the three singers continued, their eyes fixed on the big
book of plain chant lying open before them on the outstretched wings of a
wooden eagle.
Then silence ensued and the service went on. Toward the close Rosa,
with her head in both hands, suddenly thought of her mother, her village
church and her first communion. She almost fancied that that day had
returned, when she was so small anti was almost hidden in her white dress,
and she began to cry.
First of all she wept silently, and the tears dropped slowly from her eyes,
but her emotion increased with her recollections, and she began to sob. She
took out her pocket handkerchief, wiped her eyes and held it to her mouth, so
as not to scream, but it was in vain. A sort of rattle escaped her throat, and
she was answered by two other profound, heartbreaking sobs, for her two
neighbors, Louise and Flora, who were kneeling near her, overcome by
similar recollections, were sobbing by her side, amid a flood of tears; and as
tears are contagious, Madame Tellier soon in turn found that her eyes were
wet, and on turning to her sister-in-law, she saw that all the occupants of her
seat were also crying.
Soon, throughout the church, here and there, a wife, a mother, a sister,
seized by the strange sympathy of poignant emotion, and affected at the sight
of those handsome ladies on their knees, shaken with sobs was moistening
her cambric pocket handkerchief and pressing her beating heart with her left
hand.
Just as the sparks from an engine will set fire to dry grass, so the tears of
Rosa and of her companions infected the whole congregation in a moment.
Men, women, old men and lads in new smocks were soon all sobbing, and
something superhuman seemed to be hovering over their heads — a spirit, the
powerful breath of an invisible and all powerful Being.
Suddenly a species of madness seemed to pervade the church, the noise of
a crowd in a state of frenzy, a tempest of sobs and stifled cries. It came like
gusts of wind which blow the trees in a forest, and the priest, paralyzed by
emotion, stammered out incoherent prayers, without finding words, ardent
prayers of the soul soaring to heaven.
The people behind him gradually grew calmer. The cantors, in all the
dignity of their white surplices, went on in somewhat uncertain voices, and
the reed stop itself seemed hoarse, as if the instrument had been weeping; the
priest, however, raised his hand to command silence and went and stood on
the chancel steps, when everybody was silent at once.
After a few remarks on what had just taken place, and which he attributed
to a miracle, he continued, turning to the seats where the carpenter’s guests
were sitting; “I especially thank you, my dear sisters, who have come from
such a distance, and whose presence among us, whose evident faith and
ardent piety have set such a salutary example to all. You have edified my
parish; your emotion has warmed all hearts; without you, this great day
would not, perhaps, have had this really divine character. It is sufficient, at
times, that there should be one chosen lamb, for the Lord to descend on His
flock.”
His voice failed him again, from emotion, and he said no more, but
concluded the service.
They now left the church as quickly as possible; the children themselves
were restless and tired with such a prolonged tension of the mind. The
parents left the church by degrees to see about dinner.
 There was a crowd outside, a noisy crowd, a babel of loud voices, where
the shrill Norman accent was discernible. The villagers formed two ranks,
and when the children appeared, each family took possession of their own.
The whole houseful of women caught hold of Constance, surrounded her
and kissed her, and Rosa was especially demonstrative. At last she took hold
of one hand, while Madame Tellier took the other, and Raphaele and
Fernande held up her long muslin skirt, so that it might not drag in the dust;
Louise and Flora brought up the rear with Madame Rivet; and the child, who
was very silent and thoughtful, set off for home in the midst of this guard of
honor.
Dinner was served in the workshop on long boards supported by trestles,
and through the open door they could see all the enjoyment that was going on
in the village. Everywhere they were feasting, and through every window
were to be seen tables surrounded by people in their Sunday best, and a
cheerful noise was heard in every house, while the men sat in their shirt-
sleeves, drinking glass after glass of cider.
In the carpenter’s house the gaiety maintained somewhat of an air of
reserve, the consequence of the emotion of the girls in the morning, and Rivet
was the only one who was in a jolly mood, and he was drinking to excess.
Madame Tellier looked at the clock every moment, for, in order not to lose
two days running, they must take the 3:55 train, which would bring them to
Fecamp by dark.
The carpenter tried very hard to distract her attention, so as to keep his
guests until the next day, but he did not succeed, for she never joked when
there was business on hand, and as soon as they had had their coffee she
ordered her girls to make haste and get ready, and then, turning to her brother,
she said:
“You must put in the horse immediately,” and she herself went to finish her
last preparations.
When she came down again, her sister-in-law was waiting to speak to her
about the child, and a long conversation took place, in which, however,
nothing was settled. The carpenter’s wife was artful and pretended to be very
much affected, and Madame Tellier, who was holding the girl on her knee,
would not pledge herself to anything definite, but merely gave vague
promises — she would not forget her, there was plenty of time, and besides,
they would meet again.
 But the conveyance did not come to the door and the women did not come
downstairs. Upstairs they even heard loud laughter, romping, little screams,
and much clapping of hands, and so, while the carpenter’s wife went to the
stable to see whether the cart was ready, madame went upstairs.
Rivet, who was very drunk, was plaguing Rosa, who was half choking
with laughter. Louise and Flora were holding him by the arms and trying to
calm him, as they were shocked at his levity after that morning’s ceremony;
but Raphaele and Fernande were urging him on, writhing and holding their
sides with laughter, and they uttered shrill cries at every rebuff the drunken
fellow received.
The man was furious, his face was red, and he was trying to shake off the
two women who were clinging to him, while he was pulling Rosa’s skirt
with all his might and stammering incoherently.
But Madame Tellier, who was very indignant, went up to her brother,
seized him by the shoulders, and threw him out of the room with such
violence that he fell against the wall in the passage, and a minute afterward
they heard him pumping water on his head in the yard, and when he
reappeared with the cart he was quite calm.
They started off in the same way as they had come the day before, and the
little white horse started off with his quick, dancing trot. Under the hot sun,
their fun, which had been checked during dinner, broke out again. The girls
now were amused at the jolting of the cart, pushed their neighbors’ chairs,
and burst out laughing every moment.
There was a glare of light over the country, which dazzled their eyes, and
the wheels raised two trails of dust along the highroad. Presently, Fernande,
who was fond of music, asked Rosa to sing something, and she boldly struck
up the “Gros Cure de Meudon,” but Madame Tellier made her stop
immediately, as she thought it a very unsuitable song for such a day, and she
added:
“Sing us something of Beranger’s.” And so, after a moment’s hesitation,
Rosa began Beranger’s song “The Grandmother” in her worn-out voice, and
all the girls, and even Madame Tellier herself, joined in the chorus:
“How I regret
My dimpled arms,
My nimble legs,
And vanished charms.”
 “That is first rate,” Rivet declared, carried away by the rhythm, and they
shouted the refrain to every verse, while Rivet beat time on the shaft with his
foot, and with the reins on the back of the horse, who, as if he himself were
carried away by the rhythm, broke into a wild gallop, and threw all the
women in a heap, one on top of the other, on the bottom of the conveyance.
They got up, laughing as if they were mad, and the Gong went on, shouted
at the top of their voices, beneath the burning sky, among the ripening grain,
to the rapid gallop of the little horse, who set off every time the refrain was
sung, and galloped a hundred yards, to their great delight, while occasionally
a stone-breaker by the roadside sat up and looked at the load of shouting
females through his wire spectacles.
When they got out at the station, the carpenter said:
“I am sorry you are going; we might have had some good times together.”
But Madame Tellier replied very sensibly: “Everything has its right time, and
we cannot always be enjoying ourselves.” And then he had a sudden
inspiration:
“Look here, I will come and see you at Fecamp next month.” And he gave
Rosa a roguish and knowing look.
“Come,” his sister replied, “you must be sensible; you may come if you
like, but you are not to be up to any of your tricks.”
He did not reply, and as they heard the whistle of the train, he immediately
began to kiss them all. When it came to Rosa’s turn, he tried to get to her
mouth, which she, however, smiling with her lips closed, turned away from
him each time by a rapid movement of her head to one side. He held her in
his arms, but he could not attain his object, as his large whip, which he was
holding in his hand and waving behind the girl’s back in desperation,
interfered with his movements.
“Passengers for Rouen, take your seats!” a guard cried, and they got in.
There was a slight whistle, followed by a loud whistle from the engine,
which noisily puffed cut its first jet of steam, while the wheels began to turn
a little with a visible effort, and Rivet left the station and ran along by the
track to get another look at Rosa, and as the carriage passed him, he began to
crack his whip and to jump, while he sang at the top of his voice:
“How I regret
My dimpled arms,
My nimble legs,
And vanished charms.”
 And then he watched a white pocket-handkerchief, which somebody was
waving, as it disappeared in the distance.

PART III

They slept the peaceful sleep of a quiet conscience, until they got to Rouen,
and when they returned to the house, refreshed and rested, Madame Tellier
could not help saying:
“It was all very well, but I was longing to get home.”
They hurried over their supper, and then, when they had put on their usual
evening costume, waited for their regular customers, and the little colored
lamp outside the door told the passers-by that Madame Tellier had returned,
and in a moment the news spread, nobody knew how or through whom.
Monsieur Philippe, the banker’s son, even carried his friendliness so far
as to send a special messenger to Monsieur Tournevau, who was in the
bosom of his family.
The fish curer had several cousins to dinner every Sunday, and they were
having coffee, when a man came in with a letter in his hand. Monsieur
Tournevau was much excited; he opened the envelope and grew pale; it
contained only these words in pencil:
“The cargo of cod has been found; the ship has come into port; good
business for you. Come immediately.”
He felt in his pockets, gave the messenger two sons, and suddenly
blushing to his ears, he said: “I must go out.” He handed his wife the laconic
and mysterious note, rang the bell, and when the servant came in, he asked
her to bring him has hat and overcoat immediately. As soon as he was in the
street, he began to hurry, and the way seemed to him to be twice as long as
usual, in consequence of his impatience.
Madame Tellier’s establishment had put on quite a holiday look. On the
ground floor, a number of sailors were making a deafening noise, and Louise
and Flora drank with one and the other, and were being called for in every
direction at once.
The upstairs room was full by nine o’clock. Monsieur Vasse, the Judge of
the Tribunal of Commerce, Madame Tellier’s regular but Platonic wooer,
was talking to her in a corner in a low voice, and they were both smiling, as
if they were about to come to an understanding.
Monsieur Poulin, the ex-mayor, was talking to Rosa, and she was running
her hands through the old gentleman’s white whiskers.
Tall Fernande was on the sofa, her feet on the coat of Monsieur Pinipesse,
the tax collector, and leaning back against young Monsieur Philippe, her right
arm around his neck, while she held a cigarette in her left hand.
Raphaele appeared to be talking seriously with Monsieur Dupuis, the
insurance agent, and she finished by saying: “Yes, I will, yes.”
Just then, the door opened suddenly, and Monsieur Tournevau came in,
and was greeted with enthusiastic cries of “Long live Tournevau!” And
Raphaele, who was dancing alone up and down the room, went and threw
herself into his arms. He seized her in a vigorous embrace and, without
saying a word, lifted her up as if she had been a feather.
Rosa was chatting to the ex-mayor, kissing him and puffing; both his
whiskers at the same time, in order to keep his head straight.
Fernanae and Madame Tellier remained with the four men, and Monsieur
Philippe exclaimed: “I will pay for some champagne; get three bottles,
Madame Tellier.” And Fernande gave him a hug, and whispered to him:
“Play us a waltz, will you?” So he rose and sat down at the old piano in the
corner, and managed to get a hoarse waltz out of the depths of the instrument.
The tall girl put her arms round the tax collector, Madame Tellier let
Monsieur Vasse take her round the waist, and the two couples turned round,
kissing as they danced. Monsieur Vasse, who had formerly danced in good
society, waltzed with such elegance that Madame Tellier was quite
captivated.
Frederic brought the champagne; the first cork popped, and Monsieur
Philippe played the introduction to a quadrille, through which the four
dancers walked in society fashion, decorously, with propriety, deportment,
bows and curtsies, and then they began to drink.
Monsieur Philippe next struck up a lively polka, and Monsieur Tournevau
started off with the handsome Jewess, whom he held without letting her feet
touch the ground. Monsieur Pinipesse and Monsieur Vasse had started off
with renewed vigor, and from time to time one or other couple would stop to
toss off a long draught of sparkling wine, and that dance was threatening to
become never-ending, when Rosa opened the door.
 “I want to dance,” she exclaimed. And she caught hold of Monsieur
Dupuis, who was sitting idle on the couch, and the dance began again.
But the bottles were empty. “I will pay for one,” Monsieur Tournevau
said. “So will I,” Monsieur Vasse declared. “And. I will do the same,”
Monsieur Dupuis remarked.
They all began to clap their hands, and it soon became a regular ball, and
from time to time Louise and Flora ran upstairs quickly and had a few turns,
while their customers downstairs grew impatient, and then they returned
regretfully to the tap-room. At midnight they were still dancing.
Madame Tellier let them amuse themselves while she had long private
talks in corners with Monsieur Vasse, as if to settle the last details of
something that had already been settled.
At last, at one o’clock, the two married men, Monsieur Tournevau and
Monsieur Pinipesse, declared that they were going home, and wanted to pay.
Nothing was charged for except the champagne, and that cost only six francs
a bottle, instead of ten, which was the usual price, and when they expressed
their surprise at such generosity, Madame Tellier, who was beaming, said to
them:
“We don’t have a holiday every day.”
 IN THE SPRING

With the first day of spring, when the awakening earth puts on its garment of
green, and the warm, fragrant air fans our faces and fills our lungs and
appears even to penetrate to our hearts, we experience a vague, undefined
longing for freedom, for happiness, a desire to run, to wander aimlessly, to
breathe in the spring. The previous winter having been unusually severe, this
spring feeling was like a form of intoxication in May, as if there were an
overabundant supply of sap.
One morning on waking I saw from my window the blue sky glowing in
the sun above the neighboring houses. The canaries hanging in the windows
were singing loudly, and so were the servants on every floor; a cheerful
noise rose up from the streets, and I went out, my spirits as bright as the day,
to go — I did not exactly know where. Everybody I met seemed to be
smiling; an air of happiness appeared to pervade everything in the warm light
of returning spring. One might almost have said that a breeze of love was
blowing through the city, and the sight of the young women whom I saw in the
streets in their morning toilets, in the depths of whose eyes there lurked a
hidden tenderness, and who walked with languid grace, filled my heart with
agitation.
Without knowing how or why, I found myself on the banks of the Seine.
Steamboats were starting for Suresnes, and suddenly I was seized by an
unconquerable desire to take a walk through the woods. The deck of the
Mouche was covered with passengers, for the sun in early spring draws one
out of the house, in spite of themselves, and everybody moves about, goes
and comes and talks to his neighbor.
I had a girl neighbor; a little work-girl, no doubt, who possessed the true
Parisian charm: a little head, with light curly hair, which looked like a
shimmer of light as it danced in the wind, came down to her ears, and
descended to the nape of her neck, where it became such fine, light-colored
clown that one could scarcely see it, but felt an irresistible desire to shower
kisses on it.
 Under my persistent gaze, she turned her head toward me, and then
immediately looked down, while a slight crease at the side of her mouth, that
was ready to break out into a smile, also showed a fine, silky, pale down
which the sun was gilding a little.
The calm river grew wider; the atmosphere was warm and perfectly still,
but a murmur of life seemed to fill all space.
My neighbor raised her eyes again, and this time, as I was still looking at
her, she smiled decidedly. She was charming, and in her passing glance I saw
a thousand things, which I had hitherto been ignorant of, for I perceived
unknown depths, all the charm of tenderness, all the poetry which we dream
of, all the happiness which we are continually in search of. I felt an insane
longing to open my arms and to carry her off somewhere, so as to whisper the
sweet music of words of love into her ears.
I was just about to address her when somebody touched me on the
shoulder, and as I turned round in some surprise, I saw an ordinary-looking
man, who was neither young nor old, and who gazed at me sadly.
“I should like to speak to you,” he said.
I made a grimace, which he no doubt saw, for he added:
“It is a matter of importance.”
I got up, therefore, and followed him to the other end of the boat and then
he said:
“Monsieur, when winter comes, with its cold, wet and snowy weather,
your doctor says to you constantly: ‘Keep your feet warm, guard against
chills, colds, bronchitis, rheumatism and pleurisy.’
“Then you are very careful, you wear flannel, a heavy greatcoat and thick
shoes, but all this does not prevent you from passing two months in bed. But
when spring returns, with its leaves and flowers, its warm, soft breezes and
its smell of the fields, all of which causes you vague disquiet and causeless
emotion, nobody says to you:
“‘Monsieur, beware of love! It is lying in ambush everywhere; it is
watching for you at every corner; all its snares are laid, all its weapons are
sharpened, all its guiles are prepared! Beware of love! Beware of love! It is
more dangerous than brandy, bronchitis or pleurisy! It never forgives and
makes everybody commit irreparable follies.’
“Yes, monsieur, I say that the French Government ought to put large public
notices on the walls, with these words: ‘Return of spring. French citizens,
beware of love!’ just as they put: ‘Beware of paint:
 “However, as the government will not do this, I must supply its place, and
I say to you: ‘Beware of love!’ for it is just going to seize you, and it is my
duty to inform you of it, just as in Russia they inform any one that his nose is
frozen.”
I was much astonished at this individual, and assuming a dignified manner,
I said:
“Really, monsieur, you appear to me to be interfering in a matter which is
no concern of yours.”
He made an abrupt movement and replied:
“Ah! monsieur, monsieur! If I see that a man is in danger of being drowned
at a dangerous spot, ought I to let him perish? So just listen to my story and
you will see why I ventured to speak to you like this.
“It was about this time last year that it occurred. But, first of all, I must
tell you that I am a clerk in the Admiralty, where our chiefs, the
commissioners, take their gold lace as quill-driving officials seriously, and
treat us like forecastle men on board a ship. Well, from my office I could see
a small bit of blue sky and the swallows, and I felt inclined to dance among
my portfolios.
“My yearning for freedom grew so intense that, in spite of my repugnance,
I went to see my chief, a short, bad-tempered man, who was always in a
rage. When I told him that I was not well, he looked at me and said: ‘I do not
believe it, monsieur, but be off with you! Do you think that any office can go
on with clerks like you?’ I started at once and went down the Seine. It was a
day like this, and I took the Mouche, to go as far as Saint Cloud. Ah! what a
good thing it would have been if my chief had refused me permission to leave
the office that day!
“I seemed to myself to expand in the sun. I loved everything — the
steamer, the river, the trees, the houses and my fellow-passengers. I felt
inclined to kiss something, no matter what; it was love, laying its snare.
Presently, at the Trocadero, a girl, with a small parcel in her hand, came on
board and sat down opposite me. She was decidedly pretty, but it is
surprising, monsieur, how much prettier women seem to us when the day is
fine at the beginning of the spring. Then they have an intoxicating charm,
something quite peculiar about them. It is just like drinking wine after cheese.
“I looked at her and she also looked at me, but only occasionally, as that
girl did at you, just now; but at last, by dint of looking at each other
constantly, it seemed to me that we knew each other well enough to enter into
conversation, and I spoke to her and she replied. She was decidedly pretty
and nice and she intoxicated me, monsieur!
“She got out at Saint-Cloud, and I followed her. She went and delivered
her parcel, and when she returned the boat had just started. I walked by her
side, and the warmth of the ‘air made us both sigh. ‘It would be very nice in
the woods,’ I said. ‘Indeed, it would!’ she replied. ‘Shall we go there for a
walk, mademoiselie?’
“She gave me a quick upward look, as if to see exactly what I was like,
and then, after a little hesitation, she accepted my proposal, and soon we
were there, walking side by side. Under the foliage, which was still rather
scanty, the tall, thick, bright green grass was inundated by the sun, and the air
was full of insects that were also making love to one another, and birds were
singing in all directions. My companion began to jump and to run, intoxicated
by the air and the smell of the country, and I ran and jumped, following her
example. How silly we are at times, monsieur!
“Then she sang unrestrainedly a thousand things, opera airs and the song
of Musette! The song of Musette! How poetical it seemed to me, then! I
almost cried over it. Ah! Those silly songs make us lose our heads; and,
believe me, never marry a woman who sings in the country, especially if she
sings the song of Musette!
“She soon grew tired, and sat down on a grassy slope, and I sat at her feet
and took her hands, her little hands, that were so marked with the needle, and
that filled me with emotion. I said to myself:
“‘These are the sacred marks of toil.’ Oh! monsieur, do you know what
those sacred marks of toil mean? They mean all the gossip of the workroom,
the whispered scandal, the mind soiled by all the filth that is talked; they
mean lost chastity, foolish chatter, all the wretchedness of their everyday life,
all the narrowness of ideas which belongs to women of the lower orders,
combined to their fullest extent in the girl whose fingers bear the sacred
marks of toil.
“Then we looked into each other’s eyes for a long while. Oh! what power
a woman’s eye has! How it agitates us, how it invades our very being, takes
possession of us, and dominates us! How profound it seems, how full of
infinite promises! People call that looking into each other’s souls! Oh!
monsieur, what humbug! If we could see into each other’s souls, we should
be more careful of what we did. However, I was captivated and was crazy
about her and tried to take her into my arms, but she said: ‘Paws off!’. Then I
knelt down and opened my heart to her and poured out all the affection that
was suffocating me. She seemed surprised at my change of manner and gave
me a sidelong glance, as if to say, ‘Ah! so that is the way women make a fool
of you, old fellow! Very well, we will see.’
“In love, monsieur, we are always novices, and women artful dealers.
“No doubt I could have had her, and I saw my own stupidity later, but
what I wanted was not a woman’s person, it was love, it was the ideal. I was
sentimental, when I ought to have been using my time to a better purpose.
“As soon as she had had enough of my declarations of affection, she got
up, and we returned to Saint-Cloud, and I did not leave her until we got to
Paris; but she had looked so sad as we were returning, that at last I asked her
what was the matter. ‘I am thinking,’ she replied, ‘that this has been one of
those days of which we have but few in life.’ My heart beat so that it felt as if
it would break my ribs.
“I saw her on the following Sunday, and the next Sunday, and every
Sunday. I took her to Bougival, Saint-Germain, Maisons-Lafitte, Poissy; to
every suburban resort of lovers.
“The little jade, in turn, pretended to love me, until, at last, I altogether
lost my head, and three months later I married her.
“What can you expect, monsieur, when a man is a clerk, living alone,
without any relations, or any one to advise him? One says to one’s self:
‘How sweet life would be with a wife!’
“And so one gets married and she calls you names from morning till night,
understands nothing, knows nothing, chatters continually, sings the song of
Musette at the, top of her voice (oh! that song of Musette, how tired one gets
of it!); quarrels with the charcoal dealer, tells the janitor all her domestic
details, confides all the secrets of her bedroom to the neighbor’s servant,
discusses her husband with the tradespeople and has her head so stuffed with
stupid stories, with idiotic superstitions, with extraordinary ideas and
monstrous prejudices, that I — for what I have said applies more particularly
to myself — shed tears of discouragement every time I talk to her.”
He stopped, as he was rather out of breath and very much moved, and I
looked at him, for I felt pity for this poor, artless devil, and I was just going
to give him some sort of answer, when the boat stopped. We were at Saint-
Cloud.
The little woman who had so taken my fancy rose from her seat in order to
land. She passed close to me, and gave me a sidelong glance and a furtive
smile, one of those smiles that drive you wild. Then she jumped on the
landing-stage. I sprang forward to follow her, but my neighbor laid hold of
my arm. I shook myself loose, however, whereupon he seized the skirt of my
coat and pulled me back, exclaiming: “You shall not go! you shall not go!” in
such a loud voice that everybody turned round and laughed, and I remained
standing motionless and furious, but without venturing to face scandal and
ridicule, and the steamboat started.
The little woman on the landing-stage looked at me as I went off with an
air of disappointment, while my persecutor rubbed his hands and whispered
to me:
“You must acknowledge that I have done you a great service.”
 A FAMILY

I was to see my old friend, Simon Radevin, of whom I had lost sight for
fifteen years. At one time he was my most intimate friend, the friend who
knows one’s thoughts, with whom one passes long, quiet, happy evenings, to
whom one tells one’s secret love affairs, and who seems to draw out those
rare, ingenious, delicate thoughts born of that sympathy that gives a sense of
repose.
For years we had scarcely been separated; we had lived, travelled,
thought and dreamed together; had liked the same things, had admired the
same books, understood the same authors, trembled with the same sensations,
and very often laughed at the same individuals, whom we understood
completely by merely exchanging a glance.
Then he married. He married, quite suddenly, a little girl from the
provinces, who had come to Paris in search of a husband. How in the world
could that little thin, insipidly fair girl, with her weak hands, her light, vacant
eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was exactly like a hundred thousand
marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent, clever young fellow? Can
any one understand these things? No doubt he had hoped for happiness,
simple, quiet and long-enduring happiness, in the arms of a good, tender and
faithful woman; he had seen all that in the transparent looks of that schoolgirl
with light hair.
He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living and vibrating man
grows weary of everything as soon as he understands the stupid reality,
unless, indeed, he becomes so brutalized that he understands nothing
whatever.
What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty, light-
hearted and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor induced by provincial
life? A man may change greatly in the course of fifteen years!
The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage, a
stout, a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up to me
with open arms, exclaiming: “George!” I embraced him, but I had not
recognized him, and then I said, in astonishment: “By Jove! You have not
grown thin!” And he replied with a laugh:
“What did you expect? Good living, a good table and good nights! Eating
and sleeping, that is my existence!”
I looked at him closely, trying to discover in that broad face the features I
held so dear. His eyes alone had not changed, but I no longer saw the same
expression in them, and I said to myself: “If the expression be the reflection
of the mind, the thoughts in that head are not what they used to be formerly;
those thoughts which I knew so well.”
Yet his eyes were bright, full of happiness and friendship, but they had not
that clear, intelligent expression which shows as much as words the
brightness of the intellect. Suddenly he said:
“Here are my two eldest children.” A girl of fourteen, who was almost a
woman, and a boy of thirteen, in the dress of a boy from a Lycee, came
forward in a hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low voice: “Are
they yours?” “Of course they are,” he replied, laughing. “How many have
you?” “Five! There are three more at home.”
He said this in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and I felt
profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt, for this vainglorious
and simple reproducer of his species.
I got into a carriage which he drove himself, and we set off through the
town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the streets
except a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there a
shopkeeper, standing at his door, took off his hat, and Simon returned his
salute and told me the man’s name; no doubt to show me that he knew all the
inhabitants personally, and the thought struck me that he was thinking of
becoming a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, that dream of all those
who bury themselves in the provinces.
We were soon out of the town, and the carriage turned into a garden that
was an imitation of a park, and stopped in front of a turreted house, which
tried to look like a chateau.
“That is my den,” said Simon, so that I might compliment him on it. “It is
charming,” I replied.
A lady appeared on the steps, dressed for company, and with company
phrases all ready prepared. She was no longer the light-haired, insipid girl I
had seen in church fifteen years previously, but a stout lady in curls and
flounces, one of those ladies of uncertain age, without intellect, without any
of those things that go to make a woman. In short, she was a mother, a stout,
commonplace mother, a human breeding machine which procreates without
any other preoccupation but her children and her cook-book.
She welcomed me, and I went into the hall, where three children, ranged
according to their height, seemed set out for review, like firemen before a
mayor, and I said: “Ah! ah! so there are the others?” Simon, radiant with
pleasure, introduced them: “Jean, Sophie and Gontran.”
The door of the drawing-room was open. I went in, and in the depths of an
easy-chair, I saw something trembling, a man, an old, paralyzed man.
Madame Radevin came forward and said: “This is my grandfather, monsieur;
he is eighty-seven.” And then she shouted into the shaking old man’s ears:
“This is a friend of Simon’s, papa.” The old gentleman tried to say “good-
day” to me, and he muttered: “Oua, oua, oua,” and waved his hand, and I took
a seat saying: “You are very kind, monsieur.”
Simon had just come in, and he said with a laugh: “So! You have made
grandpapa’s acquaintance. He is a treasure, that old man; he is the delight of
the children. But he is so greedy that he almost kills himself at every meal;
you have no idea what he would eat if he were allowed to do as he pleased.
But you will see, you will see. He looks at all the sweets as if they were so
many girls. You never saw anything so funny; you will see presently.”
I was then shown to my room, to change my dress for dinner, and hearing a
great clatter behind me on the stairs, I turned round and saw that all the
children were following me behind their father; to do me honor, no doubt.
My windows looked out across a dreary, interminable plain, an ocean of
grass, of wheat and of oats, without a clump of trees or any rising ground, a
striking and melancholy picture of the life which they must be leading in that
house.
A bell rang; it was for dinner, and I went downstairs. Madame Radevin
took my arm in a ceremonious manner, and we passed into the dining-room.
A footman wheeled in the old man in his armchair. He gave a greedy and
curious look at the dessert, as he turned his shaking head with difficulty from
one dish to the other.
Simon rubbed his hands: “You will be amused,” he said; and all the
children understanding that I was going to be indulged with the sight of their
greedy grandfather, began to laugh, while their mother merely smiled and
shrugged her shoulders, and Simon, making a speaking trumpet of his hands,
shouted at the old man: “This evening there is sweet creamed rice!” The
wrinkled face of the grandfather brightened, and he trembled more violently,
from head to foot, showing that he had understood and was very pleased. The
dinner began.
“Just look!” Simon whispered. The old man did not like the soup, and
refused to eat it; but he was obliged to do it for the good of his health, and the
footman forced the spoon into his mouth, while the old man blew so
energetically, so as not to swallow the soup, that it was scattered like a spray
all over the table and over his neighbors. The children writhed with laughter
at the spectacle, while their father, who was also amused, said: “Is not the
old man comical?”
During the whole meal they were taken up solely with him. He devoured
the dishes on the table with his eyes, and tried to seize them and pull them
over to him with his trembling hands. They put them almost within his reach,
to see his useless efforts, his trembling clutches at them, the piteous appeal of
his whole nature, of his eyes, of his mouth and of his nose as he smelt them,
and he slobbered on his table napkin with eagerness, while uttering
inarticulate grunts. And the whole family was highly amused at this horrible
and grotesque scene.
Then they put a tiny morsel on his plate, and he ate with feverish gluttony,
in order to get something more as soon as possible, and when the sweetened
rice was brought in, he nearly had a fit, and groaned with greediness, and
Gontran called out to him:
“You have eaten too much already; you can have no more.” And they
pretended not to give him any. Then he began to cry; he cried and trembled
more violently than ever, while all the children laughed. At last, however,
they gave him his helping, a very small piece; and as he ate the first mouthful,
he made a comical noise in his throat, and a movement with his neck as ducks
do when they swallow too large a morsel, and when he had swallowed it, he
began to stamp his feet, so as to get more.
I was seized with pity for this saddening and ridiculous Tantalus, and
interposed on his behalf:
“Come, give him a little more rice!” But Simon replied: “Oh! no, my dear
fellow, if he were to eat too much, it would harm him, at his age.”
I held my tongue, and thought over those words. Oh, ethics! Oh, logic! Oh,
wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining pleasure out
of regard for his health! His health! What would he do with it, inert and
trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care of his life, so they said.
His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred? Why? For his
own sake? Or to preserve for some time longer the spectacle of his impotent
greediness in the family.
There was nothing left for him to do in this life, nothing whatever. He had
one single wish left, one sole pleasure; why not grant him that last solace
until he died?
After we had played cards for a long time, I went up to my room and to
bed; I was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! and I sat at my window. Not a
sound could be heard outside but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a tree,
somewhere in the distance. No doubt the bird was singing in a low voice
during the night, to lull his mate, who was asleep on her eggs. And I thought
of my poor friend’s five children, and pictured him to myself, snoring by the
side of his ugly wife.
 THE COLONEL’S IDEAS

“Upon my word,” said Colonel Laporte, “although I am old and gouty, my

legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to tell me to
go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at it, like a
clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the blood. I am an old
beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a woman, a pretty woman, stirs
me to the tips of my toes. There!
“We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain
knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose
bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts;
there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to
love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as
there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped
off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.
“When I am in the presence of a woman, of a pretty woman, I feel capable
of anything. By Jove! when I feel her looks penetrating me, her confounded
looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to do I don’t know what; to
fight a duel, to have a row, to smash the furniture, in order to show that I am
the strongest, the bravest, the most daring and the most devoted of men.
“But I am not the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like
me, I swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all start out,
from the van to the rear guard, when there is a woman in the case, a pretty
woman. Do you remember what Joan of Arc made us do formerly? Come. I
will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the army on the
eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we should have
broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of their guns.
“It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve, who was needed in Paris;
and I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are capable
of everything in presence of a woman.
“I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command of a
detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which swarmed
with Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and half dead with
fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain before the
morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred. I do not know
how we managed to escape so far. However, we had ten leagues to go during
the night, ten leagues through the night, ten leagues through the snow, and with
empty stomachs, and I thought to myself:
“‘It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.’
“We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we
remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold
so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and starts, as
one does when worn out with fatigue.
“It was dark by five o’clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook
my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable of
moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and hunger.
“Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was
still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed everything
under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One might have
thought that it was the end of the world.
“‘Come, my lads, let us start.’
“They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and they
seemed to think: ‘We have had enough of this; we may just as well die here!’
Then I took out my revolver and said:
“‘I will shoot the first man who flinches.’ And so they set off, but very
slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent four of
them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others followed pell-mell,
walking at random and without any order. I put the strongest in the rear, with
orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of their bayonets
in the back.
“The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our
kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of
spectres of dead, weary soldiers. I said to myself: ‘We shall never get out of
this except by a, miracle.’
“Sometimes we had to stop for a few minutes, on account of those who
could not follow us, and then we heard nothing except the falling snow, that
vague, almost undiscernible sound made by the falling flakes. Some of the
men shook themselves, others did not move, and so I gave the order to set off
again. They shouldered their rifles, and with weary feet we resumed our
march, when suddenly the scouts fell back. Something had alarmed them; they
had heard voices in front of them. I sent forward six men and a sergeant and
waited.
“All at once a shrill cry, a woman’s cry, pierced through the heavy silence
of the snow, and in a few minutes they brought back two prisoners, an old
man and a girl, whom I questioned in a low voice. They were escaping from
the Prussians, who had occupied their house during the evening and had got
drunk. The father was alarmed on his daughter’s account, and, without even
telling their servants, they had made their escape in the darkness. I saw
immediately that they belonged to the better class. I invited them to
accompany us, and we started off again, the old man who knew the road
acting as our guide.
“It had ceased snowing, the stars appeared and the cold became intense.
The girl, who was leaning on her father’s arm, walked unsteadily as though
in pain, and several times she murmured:
“‘I have no feeling at all in my feet’; and I suffered more than she did to
see that poor little woman dragging herself like that through the snow. But
suddenly she stopped and said:
“‘Father, I am so tired that I cannot go any further.’
“The old man wanted to carry her, but he could not even lift her up, and
she sank to the ground with a deep sigh. We all gathered round her, and, as
for me, I stamped my foot in perplexity, not knowing what to do, and being
unwilling to abandon that man and girl like that, when suddenly one of the
soldiers, a Parisian whom they had nicknamed Pratique, said:
“‘Come, comrades, we must carry the young lady, otherwise we shall not
show ourselves Frenchmen, confound it!’
“I really believe that I swore with pleasure. ‘That is very good of you, my
children,’ I said; ‘and I will take my share of the burden.’
“We could indistinctly see, through the darkness, the trees of a little wood
on the left. Several of the men went into it, and soon came back with a bundle
of branches made into a litter.
“‘Who will lend his cape? It is for a pretty girl, comrades,’ Pratique said,
and ten cloaks were thrown to him. In a moment the girl was lying, warm and
comfortable, among them, and was raised upon six shoulders. I placed myself
at their head, on the right, well pleased with my position.
“We started off much more briskly, as if we had had a drink of wine, and I
even heard some jokes. A woman is quite enough to electrify Frenchmen, you
see. The soldiers, who had become cheerful and warm, had almost reformed
their ranks, and an old ‘franc-tireur’ who was following the litter, waiting for
his turn to replace the first of his comrades who might give out, said to one of
his neighbors, loud enough for me to hear: “‘I am not a young man now, but
by — , there is nothing like the women to put courage into you!’
“We went on, almost without stopping, until three o’clock in the morning,
when suddenly our scouts fell back once more, and soon the whole
detachment showed nothing but a vague shadow on the ground, as the men lay
on the snow. I gave my orders in a low voice, and heard the harsh, metallic
sound of the cocking, of rifles. For there, in the middle of the plain, some
strange object was moving about. It looked like some enormous animal
running about, now stretching out like a serpent, now coiling itself into a ball,
darting to the right, then to the left, then stopping, and presently starting off
again. But presently that wandering shape came nearer, and I saw a dozen
lancers at full gallop, one behind the other. They had lost their way and were
trying to find it.
“They were so near by that time that I could hear the loud breathing of
their horses, the clinking of their swords and the creaking of their saddles,
and cried: ‘Fire!’
“Fifty rifle shots broke the stillness of the night, then there were four or
five reports, and at last one single shot was heard, and when the smoke had
cleared away, we saw that the twelve men and nine horses had fallen. Three
of the animals were galloping away at a furious pace, and one of them was
dragging the dead body of its rider, which rebounded violently from the
ground; his foot had caught in the stirrup.
“One of the soldiers behind me gave a terrible laugh and said: ‘There will
be some widows there!’
“Perhaps he was married. A third added: ‘It did not take long!’
“A head emerged from the litter.
“‘What is the matter?’ she asked; ‘are you fighting?’
“‘It is nothing, mademoiselle,’ I replied; ‘we have got rid of a dozen
Prussians!’
“‘Poor fellows!’ she said. But as she was cold, she quickly disappeared
beneath the cloaks again, and we started off once more. We marched on for a
long time, and at last the sky began to grow lighter. The snow became quite
clear, luminous and glistening, and a rosy tint appeared in the east. Suddenly
a voice in the distance cried:
“‘Who goes there?’
 “The whole detachment halted, and I advanced to give the countersign. We
had reached the French lines, and, as my men defiled before the outpost, a
commandant on horseback, whom I had informed of what had taken place,
asked in a sonorous voice, as he saw the litter pass him: ‘What have you in
there?’
“And immediately a small head covered with light hair appeared,
dishevelled and smiling, and replied:
“‘It is I, monsieur.’
“At this the men raised a hearty laugh, and we felt quite light-hearted,
while Pratique, who was walking by the side of the litter, waved his kepi and
shouted:
“‘Vive la France!’ And I felt really affected. I do not know why, except
that I thought it a pretty and gallant thing to say.
“It seemed to me as if we had just saved the whole of France and had
done something that other men could not have done, something simple and
really patriotic. I shall never forget that little face, you may be sure; and if I
had to give my opinion about abolishing drums, trumpets and bugles, I should
propose to replace them in every regiment by a pretty girl, and that would be
even better than playing the ‘Marseillaise: By Jove! it would put some spirit
into a trooper to have a Madonna like that, a live Madonna, by the colonel’s
side.”
He was silent for a few moments and then continued, with an air of
conviction, and nodding his head:
“All the same, we are very fond of women, we Frenchmen!”
 MOTHER SAUVAGE

Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne. I returned there in the
autumn to shoot with my friend Serval, who had at last rebuilt his chateau,
which the Prussians had destroyed.
I loved that district. It is one of those delightful spots which have a
sensuous charm for the eyes. You love it with a physical love. We, whom the
country enchants, keep tender memories of certain springs, certain woods,
certain pools, certain hills seen very often which have stirred us like joyful
events. Sometimes our thoughts turn back to a corner in a forest, or the end of
a bank, or an orchard filled with flowers, seen but a single time on some
bright day, yet remaining in our hearts like the image of certain women met in
the street on a spring morning in their light, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and
body an unsatisfied desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that you
have just passed by happiness.
At Virelogne I loved the whole countryside, dotted with little woods and
crossed by brooks which sparkled in the sun and looked like veins carrying
blood to the earth. You fished in them for crawfish, trout and eels. Divine
happiness! You could bathe in places and you often found snipe among the
high grass which grew along the borders of these small water courses.
I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my two dogs running ahead
of me, Serval, a hundred metres to my right, was beating a field of lucerne. I
turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary of the wood of Sandres
and I saw a cottage in ruins.
Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last time, in 1869, neat,
covered with vines, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than a
dead house, with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?
I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very tiring day, the good
woman had given me a glass of wine to drink and that Serval had told me the
history of its people. The father, an old poacher, had been killed by the
gendarmes. The son, whom I had once seen, was a tall, dry fellow who also
passed for a fierce slayer of game. People called them “Les Sauvage.”
Was that a name or a nickname?
 I called to Serval. He came up with his long strides like a crane.
I asked him:
“What’s become of those people?”
This was his story:
When war was declared the son Sauvage, who was then thirty-three years
old, enlisted, leaving his mother alone in the house. People did not pity the
old woman very much because she had money; they knew it.
She remained entirely alone in that isolated dwelling, so far from the
village, on the edge of the wood. She was not afraid, however, being of the
same strain as the men folk — a hardy old woman, tall and thin, who seldom
laughed and with whom one never jested. The women of the fields laugh but
little in any case, that is men’s business. But they themselves have sad and
narrowed hearts, leading a melancholy, gloomy life. The peasants imbibe a
little noisy merriment at the tavern, but their helpmates always have grave,
stern countenances. The muscles of their faces have never learned the
motions of laughter.
Mother Sauvage continued her ordinary existence in her cottage, which
was soon covered by the snows. She came to the village once a week to get
bread and a little meat. Then she returned to her house. As there was talk of
wolves, she went out with a gun upon her shoulder — her son’s gun, rusty
and with the butt worn by the rubbing of the hand — and she was a strange
sight, the tall “Sauvage,” a little bent, going with slow strides over the snow,
the muzzle of the piece extending beyond the black headdress, which
confined her head and imprisoned her white hair, which no one had ever
seen.
One day a Prussian force arrived. It was billeted upon the inhabitants,
according to the property and resources of each. Four were allotted to the old
woman, who was known to be rich.
They were four great fellows with fair complexion, blond beards and blue
eyes, who had not grown thin in spite of the fatigue which they had endured
already and who also, though in a conquered country, had remained kind and
gentle. Alone with this aged woman, they showed themselves full of
consideration, sparing her, as much as they could, all expense and fatigue.
They could be seen, all four of them, making their toilet at the well in their
shirt-sleeves in the gray dawn, splashing with great swishes of water their
pink-white northern skin, while La Mere Sauvage went and came, preparing
their soup. They would be seen cleaning the kitchen, rubbing the tiles,
splitting wood, peeling potatoes, doing up all the housework like four good
sons around their mother.
But the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, with
his hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mustache which made a
roll of black hair upon his lip. She asked every day of each of the soldiers
who were installed beside her hearth: “Do you know where the French
marching regiment, No. 23, was sent? My boy is in it.”
They invariably answered, “No, we don’t know, don’t know a thing at
all.” And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness — they who had
mothers, too, there at home — they rendered her a thousand little services.
She loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the peasantry have
no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. The humble, those
who pay the most because they are poor and because every new burden
crushes them down; those who are killed in masses, who make the true
cannon’s prey because they are so many; those, in fine, who suffer most
cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer
least resistance — they hardly understand at all those bellicose ardors, that
excitable sense of honor or those pretended political combinations which in
six months exhaust two nations, the conqueror with the conquered.
They said in the district, in speaking of the Germans of La Mere Sauvage:
“There are four who have found a soft place.”
Now, one morning, when the old woman was alone in the house, she
observed, far off on the plain, a man coming toward her dwelling. Soon she
recognized him; it was the postman to distribute the letters. He gave her a
folded paper and she drew out of her case the spectacles which she used for
sewing. Then she read:
MADAME SAUVAGE: This letter is to tell you sad news. Your boy
Victor was killed yesterday by a shell which almost cut him in two.
I was near by, as we stood next each other in the company, and he
told me about you and asked me to let you know on the same day if
anything happened to him.

I took his watch, which was in his pocket, to bring it back to you
when the war is done.
CESAIRE RIVOT,

Soldier of the 2d class, March. Reg. No. 23.

 The letter was dated three weeks back.
She did not cry at all. She remained motionless, so overcome and
stupefied that she did not even suffer as yet. She thought: “There’s Victor
killed now.” Then little by little the tears came to her eyes and the sorrow
filled her heart. Her thoughts came, one by one, dreadful, torturing. She
would never kiss him again, her child, her big boy, never again! The
gendarmes had killed the father, the Prussians had killed the son. He had been
cut in two by a cannon-ball. She seemed to see the thing, the horrible thing:
the head falling, the eyes open, while he chewed the corner of his big
mustache as he always did in moments of anger.
What had they done with his body afterward? If they had only let her have
her boy back as they had brought back her husband — with the bullet in the
middle of the forehead!
But she heard a noise of voices. It was the Prussians returning from the
village. She hid her letter very quickly in her pocket, and she received them
quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes.
They were laughing, all four, delighted, for they brought with them a fine
rabbit — stolen, doubtless — and they made signs to the old woman that
there was to be something good to east.
She set herself to work at once to prepare breakfast, but when it came to
killing the rabbit, her heart failed her. And yet it was not the first. One of the
soldiers struck it down with a blow of his fist behind the ears.
The beast once dead, she skinned the red body, but the sight of the blood
which she was touching, and which covered her hands, and which she felt
cooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to foot, and she kept
seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitating animal.
She sat down at table with the Prussians, but she could not eat, not even a
mouthful. They devoured the rabbit without bothering themselves about her.
She looked at them sideways, without speaking, her face so impassive that
they perceived nothing.
All of a sudden she said: “I don’t even know your names, and here’s a
whole month that we’ve been together.” They understood, not without
difficulty, what she wanted, and told their names.
That was not sufficient; she had them written for her on a paper, with the
addresses of their families, and, resting her spectacles on her great nose, she
contemplated that strange handwriting, then folded the sheet and put it in her
pocket, on top of the letter which told her of the death of her son.
 When the meal was ended she said to the men:
“I am going to work for you.”
And she began to carry up hay into the loft where they slept.
They were astonished at her taking all this trouble; she explained to them
that thus they would not be so cold; and they helped her. They heaped the
stacks of hay as high as the straw roof, and in that manner they made a sort of
great chamber with four walls of fodder, warm and perfumed, where they
should sleep splendidly.
At dinner one of them was worried to see that La Mere Sauvage still ate
nothing. She told him that she had pains in her stomach. Then she kindled a
good fire to warm herself, and the four Germans ascended to their lodging-
place by the ladder which served them every night for this purpose.
As soon as they closed the trapdoor the old woman removed the ladder,
then opened the outside door noiselessly and went back to look for more
bundles of straw, with which she filled her kitchen. She went barefoot in the
snow, so softly that no sound was heard. From time to time she listened to the
sonorous and unequal snoring of the four soldiers who were fast asleep.
When she judged her preparations to be sufficient, she threw one of the
bundles into the fireplace, and when it was alight she scattered it over all the
others. Then she went outside again and looked.
In a few seconds the whole interior of the cottage was illumined with a
brilliant light and became a frightful brasier, a gigantic fiery furnace, whose
glare streamed out of the narrow window and threw a glittering beam upon
the snow.
Then a great cry issued from the top of the house; it was a clamor of men
shouting heartrending calls of anguish and of terror. Finally the trapdoor
having given way, a whirlwind of fire shot up into the loft, pierced the straw
roof, rose to the sky like the immense flame of a torch, and all the cottage
flared.
Nothing more was heard therein but the crackling of the fire, the cracking
of the walls, the falling of the rafters. Suddenly the roof fell in and the
burning carcass of the dwelling hurled a great plume of sparks into the air,
amid a cloud of smoke.
The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silver tinted
with red.
A bell, far off, began to toll.
 The old “Sauvage” stood before her ruined dwelling, armed with her gun,
her son’s gun, for fear one of those men might escape.
When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier. A
loud report followed.
People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.
They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied.
A German officer, but speaking French like a son of France, demanded:
“Where are your soldiers?”
She reached her bony arm toward the red heap of fire which was almost
out and answered with a strong voice:
“There!”
They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:
“How did it take fire?”
“It was I who set it on fire.”
They did not believe her, they thought that the sudden disaster had made
her crazy. While all pressed round and listened, she told the story from
beginning to end, from the arrival of the letter to the last shriek of the men
who were burned with her house, and never omitted a detail.
When she had finished, she drew two pieces of paper from her pocket,
and, in order to distinguish them by the last gleams of the fire, she again
adjusted her spectacles. Then she said, showing one:
“That, that is the death of Victor.” Showing the other, she added,
indicating the red ruins with a bend of the head: “Here are their names, so
that you can write home.” She quietly held a sheet of paper out to the officer,
who held her by the shoulders, and she continued:
“You must write how it happened, and you must say to their mothers that it
was I who did that, Victoire Simon, la Sauvage! Do not forget.”
The officer shouted some orders in German. They seized her, they threw
her against the walls of her house, still hot. Then twelve men drew quickly
up before her, at twenty paces. She did not move. She had understood; she
waited.
An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report. A belated shot
went off by itself, after the others.
The old woman did not fall. She sank as though they had cut off her legs.
The Prussian officer approached. She was almost cut in two, and in her
withered hand she held her letter bathed with blood.
My friend Serval added:
 “It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of the
district, which belonged to me.”
I thought of the mothers of those four fine fellows burned in that house and
of the horrible heroism of that other mother shot against the wall.
And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by the flames.
 EPIPHANY

I should say I did remember that Epiphany supper during the war! exclaimed
Count de Garens, an army captain.
I was quartermaster of cavalry at the time, and for a fortnight had been
scouting in front of the German advance guard. The evening before we had
cut down a few Uhlans and had lost three men, one of whom was that poor
little Raudeville. You remember Joseph de Raudeville, of course.
Well, on that day my commanding officer ordered me to take six troopers
and to go and occupy the village of Porterin, where there had been five
skirmishes in three weeks, and to hold it all night. There were not twenty
houses left standing, not a dozen houses in that wasps’ nest. So I took ten
troopers and set out about four o’clock, and at five o’clock, while it was still
pitch dark, we reached the first houses of Porterin. I halted and ordered
Marchas — you know Pierre de Marchas, who afterward married little
Martel-Auvelin, the daughter of the Marquis de Martel-Auvelin — to go
alone into the village, and to report to me what he saw.
I had selected nothing but volunteers, all men of good family. It is pleasant
when on duty not to be forced to be on intimate terms with unpleasant
fellows. This Marchas was as smart as possible, cunning as a fox and supple
as a serpent. He could scent the Prussians as a dog can scent a hare, could
discover food where we should have died of hunger without him, and
obtained information from everybody, and information which was always
reliable, with incredible cleverness.
In ten minutes he returned. “All right,” he said; “there have been no
Prussians here for three days. It is a sinister place, is this village. I have been
talking to a Sister of Mercy, who is caring for four or five wounded men in
an abandoned convent.”
I ordered them to ride on, and we entered the principal street. On the right
and left we could vaguely see roofless walls, which were hardly visible in
the profound darkness. Here and there a light was burning in a room; some
family had remained to keep its house standing as well as they were able; a
family of brave or of poor people. The rain began to fall, a fine, icy cold
rain, which froze as it fell on our cloaks. The horses stumbled against stones,
against beams, against furniture. Marchas guided us, going before us on foot,
and leading his horse by the bridle.
“Where are you taking us to?” I asked him. And he replied: “I have a
place for us to lodge in, and a rare good one.” And we presently stopped
before a small house, evidently belonging to some proprietor of the middle
class. It stood on the street, was quite inclosed, and had a garden in the rear.
Marchas forced open the lock by means of a big stone which he picked up
near the garden gate; then he mounted the steps, smashed in the front door
with his feet and shoulders, lit a bit of wax candle, which he was never
without, and went before us into the comfortable apartments of some rich
private individual, guiding us with admirable assurance, as if he lived in this
house which he now saw for the first time.
Two troopers remained outside to take care of our horses, and Marchas
said to stout Ponderel, who followed him: “The stables must be on the left; I
saw that as we came in; go and put the animals up there, for we do not need
them”; and then, turning to me, he said: “Give your orders, confound it all!”
This fellow always astonished me, and I replied with a laugh: “I will post
my sentinels at the country approaches and will return to you here.”
“How many men are you going to take?”
“Five. The others will relieve them at five o’clock in the evening.”
“Very well. Leave me four to look after provisions, to do the cooking and
to set the table. I will go and find out where the wine is hidden.”
I went off, to reconnoitre the deserted streets until they ended in the open
country, so as to post my sentries there.
Half an hour later I was back, and found Marchas lounging in a great easy-
chair, the covering of which he had taken off, from love of luxury, as he said.
He was warming his feet at the fire and smoking an excellent cigar, whose
perfume filled the room. He was alone, his elbows resting on the arms of the
chair, his head sunk between his shoulders, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
bright, and looking delighted.
I heard the noise of plates and dishes in the next room, and Marchas said
to me, smiling in a con tented manner: “This is famous; I found the
champagne under the flight of steps outside, the brandy — fifty bottles of the
very finest in the kitchen garden under a pear tree, which did not seem to me
to be quite straight when I looked at it by the light of my lantern. As for
solids, we have two fowls, a goose, a duck, and three pigeons. They are
being cooked at this moment. It is a delightful district.”
I sat down opposite him, and the fire in the grate was burning my nose and
cheeks. “Where did you find this wood?” I asked. “Splendid wood,” he
replied. “The owner’s carriage. It is the paint which is causing all this flame,
an essence of punch and varnish. A capital house!”
I laughed, for I saw the creature was funny, and he went on: “Fancy this
being the Epiphany! I have had a bean put into the goose dressing; but there is
no queen; it is really very annoying!” And I repeated like an echo: “It is
annoying, but what do you want me to do in the matter?” “To find some, of
course.” “Some women. Women? — you must be mad?” “I managed to find
the brandy under the pear tree, and the champagne under the steps; and yet
there was nothing to guide me, while as for you, a petticoat is a sure bait. Go
and look, old fellow.”
He looked so grave, so convinced, that I could not tell whether he was
joking or not, and so I replied: “Look here, Marchas, are you having a joke
with me?” “I never joke on duty.” “But where the devil do you expect me to
find any women?” “Where you like; there must be two or three remaining in
the neighborhood, so ferret them out and bring them here.”
I got up, for it was too hot in front of the fire, and Marchas went off:
“Do you want an idea?” “Yes.” “Go and see the priest.” “The priest?
What for?” “Ask him to supper, and beg him to bring a woman with him.”
“The priest! A woman! Ha! ha! ha!”
But Marchas continued with extraordinary gravity: “I am not laughing; go
and find the priest and tell him how we are situated, and, as he must be
horribly dull, he will come. But tell him that we want one woman at least, a
lady, of course, since we, are all men of the world. He is sure to know his
female parishioners on the tips of his fingers, and if there is one to suit us,
and you manage it well, he will suggest her to you.”
“Come, come, Marchas, what are you thinking of?” “My dear Garens, you
can do this quite well. It will even be very funny. We are well bred, by Jove!
and we will put on our most distinguished manners and our grandest style.
Tell the abbe who we are, make him laugh, soften his heart, coax him and
persuade him!” “No, it is impossible.”
He drew his chair close to mine, and as he knew my special weakness, the
scamp continued: “Just think what a swaggering thing it will be to do and
how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give
you a famous reputation.”
I hesitated, for the adventure rather tempted me, and he persisted: “Come,
my little Garens. You are the head of this detachment, and you alone can go
and call on the head of the church in this neighborhood. I beg of you to go,
and I promise you that after the war I will relate the whole affair in verse in
the Revue de Deux Mondes. You owe this much to your men, for you have
made them march enough during the last month.”
I got up at last and asked: “Where is the priest’s house?” “Take the second
turning at the end of the street, you will see an avenue, and at the end of the
avenue you will find the church. The parsonage is beside it.” As I went out,
he called out: “Tell him the bill of fare, to make him hungry!”
I discovered the ecclesiastic’s little house without any difficulty; it was by
the side of a large, ugly brick church. I knocked at the door with my fist, as
there was neither bell nor knocker, and a loud voice from inside asked:
“Who is there?” To which I replied: “A quartermaster of hussars.”
I heard the noise of bolts and of a key being turned, and found myself face
to face with a tall priest with a large stomach, the chest of a prizefighter,
formidable hands projecting from turned-up sleeves, a red face, and the look
of a kind man. I gave him a military salute and said: “Good-day, Monsieur le
Cure.”
He had feared a surprise, some marauders’ ambush, and he smiled as he
replied: “Good-day, my friend; come in.” I followed him into a small room
with a red tiled floor, in which a small fire was burning, very different to
Marchas’ furnace, and he gave me a chair and said: “What can I do for you?”
“Monsieur, allow me first of all to introduce myself”; and I gave him my
card, which he took and read half aloud: “Le Comte de Garens.”
I continued: “There are eleven of us here, Monsieur l’Abbe, five on picket
duty, and six installed at the house of an unknown inhabitant. The names of
the six are: Garens, myself; Pierre de Marchas, Ludovic de Ponderel, Baron
d’Streillis, Karl Massouligny, the painter’s son, and Joseph Herbon, a young
musician. I have come to ask you, in their name and my own, to do us the
honor of supping with us. It is an Epiphany supper, Monsieur le Cure, and we
should like to make it a little cheerful.”
The priest smiled and murmured: “It seems to me to be hardly a suitable
occasion for amusing one’s self.” And I replied: “We are fighting during the
day, monsieur. Fourteen of our comrades have been killed in a month, and
three fell as late as yesterday. It is war time. We stake our life at every
moment; have we not, therefore, the right to amuse ourselves freely? We are
Frenchmen, we like to laugh, and we can laugh everywhere. Our fathers
laughed on the scaffold! This evening we should like to cheer ourselves up a
little, like gentlemen, and not like soldiers; you understand me, I hope. Are
we wrong?”
He replied quickly: “You are quite right, my friend, and I accept your
invitation with great pleasure.” Then he called out: “Hermance!”
An old bent, wrinkled, horrible peasant woman appeared and said: “What
do you want?” “I shall not dine at home, my daughter.” “Where are you going
to dine then?” “With some gentlemen, the hussars.”
I felt inclined to say: “Bring your servant with you,” just to see Marchas’
face, but I did not venture, and continued: “Do you know any one among your
parishioners, male or female, whom I could invite as well?” He hesitated,
reflected, and then said: “No, I do not know anybody!”
I persisted: “Nobody! Come, monsieur, think; it would be very nice to
have some ladies, I mean to say, some married couples! I know nothing about
your parishioners. The baker and his wife, the grocer, the — the — the —
watchmaker — the — shoemaker — the — the druggist with Mrs. Druggist.
We have a good spread and plenty of wine, and we should be enchanted to
leave pleasant recollections of ourselves with the people here.”
The priest thought again for a long time, and then said resolutely: “No,
there is nobody.” I began to laugh. “By Jove, Monsieur le Cure, it is very
annoying not to have an Epiphany queen, for we have the bean. Come, think.
Is there not a married mayor, or a married deputy mayor, or a married
municipal councillor or a schoolmaster?” “No, all the ladies have gone
away.” “What, is there not in the whole place some good tradesman’s wife
with her good tradesman, to whom we might give this pleasure, for it would
be a pleasure to them, a great pleasure under present circumstances?”
But, suddenly, the cure began to laugh, and laughed so violently that he
fairly shook, and presently exclaimed: “Ha! ha! ha! I have got what you want,
yes. I have got what you want! Ha! ha! ha! We will laugh and enjoy
ourselves, my children; we will have some fun. How pleased the ladies will
be, I say, how delighted they will be! Ha! ha! Where are you staying?”
I described the house, and he understood where it was. “Very good,” he
said. “It belongs to Monsieur Bertin-Lavaille. I will be there in half an hour,
with four ladies! Ha! ha! ha! four ladies!”
 He went out with me, still laughing, and left me, repeating: “That is
capital; in half an hour at Bertin-Lavaille’s house.”
I returned quickly, very much astonished and very much puzzled. “Covers
for how many?” Marchas asked, as soon as he saw me. “Eleven. There are
six of us hussars, besides the priest and four ladies.” He was thunderstruck,
and I was triumphant. He repeated: “Four ladies! Did you say, four ladies?”
“I said four women.” “Real women?” “Real women.” “Well, accept my
compliments!” “I will, for I deserve them.”
He got out of his armchair, opened the door, and I saw a beautiful white
tablecloth on a long table, round which three hussars in blue aprons were
setting out the plates and glasses. “There are some women coming!” Marchas
cried. And the three men began to dance and to cheer with all their might.
Everything was ready, and we were waiting. We waited for nearly an
hour, while a delicious smell of roast poultry pervaded the whole house. At
last, however, a knock against the shutters made us all jump up at the same
moment. Stout Ponderel ran to open the door, and in less than a minute a little
Sister of Mercy appeared in the doorway. She was thin, wrinkled and timid,
and successively greeted the four bewildered hussars who saw her enter.
Behind her, the noise of sticks sounded on the tiled floor in the vestibule, and
as soon as she had come into the drawing-room, I saw three old heads in
white caps, following each other one by one, who came in, swaying with
different movements, one inclining to the right, while the other inclined to the
left. And three worthy women appeared, limping, dragging their legs behind
them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old
women, past service, the only three pensioners who were able to walk in the
home presided over by Sister Saint-Benedict.
She had turned round to her invalids, full of anxiety for them, and then,
seeing my quartermaster’s stripes, she said to me: “I am much obliged to you
for thinking of these poor women. They have very little pleasure in life, and
you are at the same time giving them a great treat and doing them a great
honor.”
I saw the priest, who had remained in the dark hallway, and was laughing
heartily, and I began to laugh in my turn, especially when I saw Marchas’
face. Then, motioning the nun to the seats, I said:
“Sit down, sister; we are very proud and very happy that you have
accepted our unpretentious invitation.”
 She took three chairs which stood against the wall, set them before the
fire, led her three old women to them, settled them on them, took their sticks
and shawls, which she put into a corner, and then, pointing to the first, a thin
woman with an enormous stomach, who was evidently suffering from the
dropsy, she said: “This is Mother Paumelle; whose husband was killed by
falling from a roof, and whose son died in Africa; she is sixty years old.”
Then she pointed to another, a tall woman, whose head trembled unceasingly:
“This is Mother Jean-Jean, who is sixty-seven. She is nearly blind, for her
face was terribly singed in a fire, and her right leg was half burned off.”
Then she pointed to the third, a sort of dwarf, with protruding, round,
stupid eyes, which she rolled incessantly in all directions, “This is La Putois,
an idiot. She is only forty-four.”
I bowed to the three women as if I were being presented to some royal
highnesses, and turning to the priest, I said: “You are an excellent man,
Monsieur l’Abbe, to whom all of us here owe a debt of gratitude.”
Everybody was laughing, in fact, except Marchas, who seemed furious,
and just then Karl Massouligny cried: “Sister Saint-Benedict, supper is on
the table!”
I made her go first with the priest, then I helped up Mother Paumelle,
whose arm I took and dragged her into the next room, which was no easy
task, for she seemed heavier than a lump of iron.
Stout Ponderel gave his arm to Mother Jean-Jean, who bemoaned her
crutch, and little Joseph Herbon took the idiot, La Putois, to the dining-room,
which was filled with the odor of the viands.
As soon as we were opposite our plates, the sister clapped her hands
three times, and, with the precision of soldiers presenting arms, the women
made a rapid sign of the cross, and then the priest slowly repeated the
Benedictus in Latin. Then we sat down, and the two fowls appeared, brought
in by Marchas, who chose to wait at table, rather than to sit down as a guest
to this ridiculous repast.
But I cried: “Bring the champagne at once!” and a cork flew out with the
noise of a pistol, and in spite of the resistance of the priest and of the kind
sister, the three hussars, sitting by the side of the three invalids, emptied their
three full glasses down their throats by force.
Massouligny, who possessed the faculty of making himself at home, and of
being on good terms with every one, wherever he was, made love to Mother
Paumelle in the drollest manner. The dropsical woman, who had retained her
cheerfulness in spite of her misfortunes, answered him banteringly in a high
falsetto voice which appeared as if it were put on, and she laughed so
heartily at her neighbor’s jokes that it was quite alarming. Little Herbon had
seriously undertaken the task of making the idiot drunk, and Baron d’Streillis,
whose wits were not always particularly sharp, was questioning old Jean-
Jean about the life, the habits, and the rules of the hospital.
The nun said to Massouligny in consternation:
“Oh! oh! you will make her ill; pray do not make her laugh like that,
monsieur. Oh! monsieur— “ Then she got up and rushed at Herbon to take
from him a full glass which he was hastily emptying down La Putois’ throat,
while the priest shook with laughter, and said to the sister: “Never mind; just
this once, it will not hurt them. Do leave them alone.”
After the two fowls they ate the duck, which was flanked by the three
pigeons and the blackbird, and then the goose appeared, smoking, golden-
brown, and diffusing a warm odor of hot, browned roast meat. La Paumelle,
who was getting lively, clapped her hands; La Jean-Jean left off answering
the baron’s numerous questions, and La Putois uttered. grunts of pleasure,
half cries and half sighs, as little children do when one shows them candy.
“Allow me to take charge of this animal,” the cure said. “I understand these
sort of operations better than most people.” “Certainly, Monsieur l’Abbe,”
and the sister said: “How would it be to open the window a little? They are
too warm, and I am afraid they will be ill.”
I turned to Marchas: “Open the window for a minute.” He did so; the cold
outer air as it came in made the candles flare, and the steam from the goose,
which the cure was scientifically carving, with a table napkin round his neck,
whirl about. We watched him doing it, without speaking now, for we were
interested in his attractive handiwork, and seized with renewed appetite at
the sight of that enormous golden-brown bird, whose limbs fell one after
another into the brown gravy at the bottom of the dish. At that moment, in the
midst of that greedy silence which kept us all attentive, the distant report of a
shot came in at the open window.
I started to my feet so quickly that my chair fell down behind me, and I
shouted: “To saddle, all of you! You, Marches, take two men and go and see
what it is. I shall expect you back here in five minutes.” And while the three
riders went off at full gallop through the night, I got into the saddle with my
three remaining hussars, in front of the steps of the villa, while the cure, the
sister and the three old women showed their frightened faces at the window.
 We heard nothing more, except the barking of a dog in the distance. The
rain had ceased, and it was cold, very cold, and soon I heard the gallop of a
horse, of a single horse, coming back. It was Marchas, and I called out to
him: “Well?” “It is nothing; Francois has wounded an old peasant who
refused to answer his challenge: ‘Who goes there?’ and who continued to
advance in spite of the order to keep off; but they are bringing him here, and
we shall see what is the matter.”
I gave orders for the horses to be put back in the stable, and I sent my two
soldiers to meet the others, and returned to the house. Then the cure,
Marchas, and I took a mattress into the room to lay the wounded man on; the
sister tore up a table napkin in order to make lint, while the three frightened
women remained huddled up in a corner.
Soon I heard the rattle of sabres on the road, and I took a candle to show a
light to the men who were returning; and they soon appeared, carrying that
inert, soft, long, sinister object which a human body becomes when life no
longer sustains it.
They put the wounded man on the mattress that had been prepared for him,
and I saw at the first glance that he was dying. He had the death rattle and
was spitting up blood, which ran out of the corners of his mouth at every
gasp. The man was covered with blood! His cheeks, his beard, his hair, his
neck and his clothes seemed to have been soaked, to have been dipped in a
red tub; and that blood stuck to him, and had become a dull color which was
horrible to look at.
The wounded man, wrapped up in a large shepherd’s cloak, occasionally
opened his dull, vacant eyes, which seemed stupid with astonishment, like
those of animals wounded by a sportsman, which fall at his feet, more than
half dead already, stupefied with terror and surprise.
The cure exclaimed: “Ah, it is old Placide, the shepherd from Les
Moulins. He is deaf, poor man, and heard nothing. Ah! Oh, God! they have
killed the unhappy man!” The sister had opened his blouse and shirt, and was
looking at a little blue hole in his chest, which was not bleeding any more.
“There is nothing to be done,” she said.
The shepherd was gasping terribly and bringing up blood with every last
breath, and in his throat, to the very depth of his lungs, they could hear an
ominous and continued gurgling. The cure, standing in front of him, raised his
right hand, made the sign of the cross, and in a slow and solemn voice
pronounced the Latin words which purify men’s souls, but before they were
finished, the old man’s body trembled violently, as if something had given
way inside him, and he ceased to breathe. He was dead.
When I turned round, I saw a sight which was even more horrible than the
death struggle of this unfortunate man; the three old women were standing up
huddled close together, hideous, and grimacing with fear and horror. I went
up to them, and they began to utter shrill screams, while La Jean-Jean, whose
burned leg could no longer support her, fell to the ground at full length.
Sister Saint-Benedict left the dead man, ran up to her infirm old women,
and without a word or a look for me, wrapped their shawls round them, gave
them their crutches, pushed them to the door, made them go out, and
disappeared with them into the dark night.
I saw that I could not even let a hussar accompany them, for the mere
rattle of a sword would have sent them mad with fear.
The cure was still looking at the dead man; but at last he turned round to
me and said:
“Oh! What a horrible thing!”
 THE MUSTACHE

CHATEAU DE SOLLES,
July 30, 1883.
My Dear Lucy:
I have no news. We live in the drawing-room, looking out at the rain. We
cannot go out in this frightful weather, so we have theatricals. How stupid
they are, my dear, these drawing entertainments in the repertory of real life!
All is forced, coarse, heavy. The jokes are like cannon balls, smashing
everything in their passage. No wit, nothing natural, no sprightliness, no
elegance. These literary men, in truth, know nothing of society. They are
perfectly ignorant of how people think and talk in our set. I do not mind if
they despise our customs, our conventionalities, but I do not forgive them for
not knowing them. When they want to be humorous they make puns that would
do for a barrack; when they try to be jolly, they give us jokes that they must
have picked up on the outer boulevard in those beer houses artists are
supposed to frequent, where one has heard the same students’ jokes for fifty
years.
So we have taken to Theatricals. As we are only two women, my husband
takes the part of a soubrette, and, in order to do that, he has shaved off his
mustache. You cannot imagine, my dear Lucy, how it changes him! I no longer
recognize him-by day or at night. If he did not let it grow again I think I
should no longer love him; he looks so horrid like this.
In fact, a man without a mustache is no longer a man. I do not care much
for a beard; it almost always makes a man look untidy. But a mustache, oh, a
mustache is indispensable to a manly face. No, you would never believe how
these little hair bristles on the upper lip are a relief to the eye and good in
other ways. I have thought over the matter a great deal but hardly dare to
write my thoughts. Words look so different on paper and the subject is so
difficult, so delicate, so dangerous that it requires infinite skill to tackle it.
Well, when my husband appeared, shaven, I understood at once that I
never could fall in love with a strolling actor nor a preacher, even if it were
Father Didon, the most charming of all! Later when I was alone with him (my
husband) it was worse still. Oh, my dear Lucy, never let yourself be kissed
by a man without a mustache; their kisses have no flavor, none whatever!
They no longer have the charm, the mellowness and the snap — yes, the snap
— of a real kiss. The mustache is the spice.
Imagine placing to your lips a piece of dry — or moist — parchment. That
is the kiss of the man without a mustache. It is not worth while.
Whence comes this charm of the mustache, will you tell me? Do I know
myself? It tickles your face, you feel it approaching your mouth and it sends a
little shiver through you down to the tips of your toes.
And on your neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It
intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You
wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away
and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. But how
good it is!
A lip without a mustache is like a body without clothing; and one must
wear clothes, very few, if you like, but still some clothing.
I recall a sentence (uttered by a politician) which has been running in my
mind for three months. My husband, who keeps up with the newspapers, read
me one evening a very singular speech by our Minister of Agriculture, who
was called M. Meline. He may have been superseded by this time. I do not
know.
I was paying no attention, but the name Meline struck me. It recalled, I do
not exactly know why, the ‘Scenes de la vie de boheme’. I thought it was
about some grisette. That shows how scraps of the speech entered my mind.
This M. Meline was making this statement to the people of Amiens, I believe,
and I have ever since been trying to understand what he meant: “There is no
patriotism without agriculture!” Well, I have just discovered his meaning,
and I affirm in my turn that there is no love without a mustache. When you say
it that way it sounds comical, does it not?
There is no love without a mustache!
“There is no patriotism without agriculture,” said M. Meline, and he was
right, that minister; I now understand why.
From a very different point of view the mustache is essential. It gives
character to the face. It makes a man look gentle, tender, violent, a monster, a
rake, enterprising! The hairy man, who does not shave off his whiskers,
never has a refined look, for his features are concealed; and the shape of the
jaw and the chin betrays a great deal to those who understand.
 The man with a mustache retains his own peculiar expression and his
refinement at the same time.
And how many different varieties of mustaches there are! Sometimes they
are twisted, curled, coquettish. Those seem to be chiefly devoted to women.
Sometimes they are pointed, sharp as needles, and threatening. That kind
prefers wine, horses and war.
Sometimes they are enormous, overhanging, frightful. These big ones
generally conceal a fine disposition, a kindliness that borders on weakness
and a gentleness that savors of timidity.
But what I adore above all in the mustache is that it is French, altogether
French. It came from our ancestors, the Gauls, and has remained the insignia
of our national character.
It is boastful, gallant and brave. It sips wine gracefully and knows how to
laugh with refinement, while the broad-bearded jaws are clumsy in
everything they do.
I recall something that made me weep all my tears and also — I see it
now — made me love a mustache on a man’s face.
It was during the war, when I was living with my father. I was a young girl
then. One day there was a skirmish near the chateau. I had heard the firing of
the cannon and of the artillery all the morning, and that evening a German
colonel came and took up his abode in our house. He left the following day.
My father was informed that there were a number of dead bodies in the
fields. He had them brought to our place so that they might be buried together.
They were laid all along the great avenue of pines as fast as they brought
them in, on both sides of the avenue, and as they began to smell unpleasant,
their bodies were covered with earth until the deep trench could be dug. Thus
one saw only their heads which seemed to protrude from the clayey earth and
were almost as yellow, with their closed eyes.
I wanted to see them. But when I saw those two rows of frightful faces, I
thought I should faint. However, I began to look at them, one by one, trying to
guess what kind of men these had been.
The uniforms were concealed beneath the earth, and yet immediately, yes,
immediately, my dear, I recognized the Frenchmen by their mustache!
Some of them had shaved on the very day of the battle, as though they
wished to be elegant up to the last; others seemed to have a week’s growth,
but all wore the French mustache, very plain, the proud mustache that seems
to say: “Do not take me for my bearded friend, little one; I am a brother.”
 And I cried, oh, I cried a great deal more than I should if I had not
recognized them, the poor dead fellows.
It was wrong of me to tell you this. Now I am sad and cannot chatter any
longer. Well, good-by, dear Lucy. I send you a hearty kiss. Long live
the mustache!
JEANNE.
 MADAME BAPTISTE

The first thing I did was to look at the clock as I entered the waiting-room of
the station at Loubain, and I found that I had to wait two hours and ten
minutes for the Paris express.
I had walked twenty miles and felt suddenly tired. Not seeing anything on
the station walls to amuse me, I went outside and stood there racking my
brains to think of something to do. The street was a kind of boulevard,
planted with acacias, and on either side a row of houses of varying shape and
different styles of architecture, houses such as one only sees in a small town,
and ascended a slight hill, at the extreme end of which there were some trees,
as though it ended in a park.
From time to time a cat crossed the street and jumped over the gutters
carefully. A cur sniffed at every tree and hunted for scraps from the kitchens,
but I did not see a single human being, and I felt listless and disheartened.
What could I do with myself? I was already thinking of the inevitable and
interminable visit to the small cafe at the railway station, where I should
have to sit over a glass of undrinkable beer and the illegible newspaper,
when I saw a funeral procession coming out of a side street into the one in
which I was, and the sight of the hearse was a relief to me. It would, at any
rate, give me something to do for ten minutes.
Suddenly, however, my curiosity was aroused. The hearse was followed
by eight gentlemen, one of whom was weeping, while the others were
chatting together, but there was no priest, and I thought to myself:
“This is a non-religious funeral,” and then I reflected that a town like
Loubain must contain at least a hundred freethinkers, who would have made a
point of making a manifestation. What could it be, then? The rapid pace of the
procession clearly proved that the body was to be buried without ceremony,
and, consequently, without the intervention of the Church.
My idle curiosity framed the most complicated surmises, and as the hearse
passed me, a strange idea struck me, which was to follow it, with the eight
gentlemen. That would take up my time for an hour, at least, and I accordingly
walked with the others, with a sad look on my face, and, on seeing this, the
two last turned round in surprise, and then spoke to each other in a low
voice.
No doubt they were asking each other whether I belonged to the town, and
then they consulted the two in front of them, who stared at me in turn. This
close scrutiny annoyed me, and to put an end to it I went up to them, and, after
bowing, I said:
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for interrupting your conversation, but,
seeing a civil funeral, I have followed it, although I did not know the
deceased gentleman whom you are accompanying.”
“It was a woman,” one of them said.
I was much surprised at hearing this, and asked:
“But it is a civil funeral, is it not?”
The other gentleman, who evidently wished to tell me all about it, then
said: “Yes and no. The clergy have refused to allow us the use of the church.”
On hearing this I uttered a prolonged “A-h!” of astonishment. I could not
understand it at all, but my obliging neighbor continued:
“It is rather a long story. This young woman committed suicide, and that is
the reason why she cannot be buried with any religious ceremony. The
gentleman who is walking first, and who is crying, is her husband.”
I replied with some hesitation:
“You surprise and interest me very much, monsieur. Shall I be indiscreet if
I ask you to tell me the facts of the case? If I am troubling you, forget that I
have said anything about the matter.”
The gentleman took my arm familiarly.
“Not at all, not at all. Let us linger a little behind the others, and I will tell
it you, although it is a very sad story. We have plenty of time before getting to
the cemetery, the trees of which you see up yonder, for it is a stiff pull up this
hill.”
And he began:
“This young woman, Madame Paul Hamot, was the daughter of a wealthy
merchant in the neighborhood, Monsieur Fontanelle. When she was a mere
child of eleven, she had a shocking adventure; a footman attacked her and she
nearly died. A terrible criminal case was the result, and the man was
sentenced to penal servitude for life.
“The little girl grew up, stigmatized by disgrace, isolated, without any
companions; and grown-up people would scarcely kiss her, for they thought
that they would soil their lips if they touched her forehead, and she became a
sort of monster, a phenomenon to all the town. People said to each other in a
whisper: ‘You know, little Fontanelle,’ and everybody turned away in the
streets when she passed. Her parents could not even get a nurse to take her
out for a walk, as the other servants held aloof from her, as if contact with
her would poison everybody who came near her.
“It was pitiable to see the poor child go and play every afternoon. She
remained quite by herself, standing by her maid and looking at the other
children amusing themselves. Sometimes, yielding to an irresistible desire to
mix with the other children, she advanced timidly, with nervous gestures, and
mingled with a group, with furtive steps, as if conscious of her own disgrace.
And immediately the mothers, aunts and nurses would come running from
every seat and take the children entrusted to their care by the hand and drag
them brutally away.
“Little Fontanelle remained isolated, wretched, without understanding
what it meant, and then she began to cry, nearly heartbroken with grief, and
then she used to run and hide her head in her nurse’s lap, sobbing.
“As she grew up, it was worse still. They kept the girls from her, as if she
were stricken with the plague. Remember that she had nothing to learn,
nothing; that she no longer had the right to the symbolical wreath of orange-
flowers; that almost before she could read she had penetrated that
redoubtable mystery which mothers scarcely allow their daughters to guess
at, trembling as they enlighten them on the night of their marriage.
“When she went through the streets, always accompanied by her
governess, as if, her parents feared some fresh, terrible adventure, with her
eyes cast down under the load of that mysterious disgrace which she felt was
always weighing upon her, the other girls, who were not nearly so innocent
as people thought, whispered and giggled as they looked at her knowingly,
and immediately turned their heads absently, if she happened to look at them.
People scarcely greeted her; only a few men bowed to her, and the mothers
pretended not to see her, while some young blackguards called her Madame
Baptiste, after the name of the footman who had attacked her.
“Nobody knew the secret torture of her mind, for she hardly ever spoke,
and never laughed, and her parents themselves appeared uncomfortable in
her presence, as if they bore her a constant grudge for some irreparable fault.
“An honest man would not willingly give his hand to a liberated convict,
would he, even if that convict were his own son? And Monsieur and Madame
Fontanelle looked on their daughter as they would have done on a son who
had just been released from the hulks. She was pretty and pale, tall, slender,
distinguished-looking, and she would have pleased me very much, monsieur,
but for that unfortunate affair.
“Well, when a new sub-prefect was appointed here, eighteen months ago,
he brought his private secretary with him. He was a queer sort of fellow,
who had lived in the Latin Quarter, it appears. He saw Mademoiselle
Fontanelle and fell in love with her, and when told of what occurred, he
merely said:
“‘Bah! That is just a guarantee for the future, and I would rather it should
have happened before I married her than afterward. I shall live tranquilly
with that woman.’
“He paid his addresses to her, asked for her hand and married her, and
then, not being deficient in assurance, he paid wedding calls, as if nothing
had happened. Some people returned them, others did not; but, at last, the
affair began to be forgotten, and she took her proper place in society.
“She adored her husband as if he had been a god; for, you must remember,
he had restored her to honor and to social life, had braved public opinion,
faced insults, and, in a word, performed such a courageous act as few men
would undertake, and she felt the most exalted and tender love for him.
“When she became enceinte, and it was known, the most particular people
and the greatest sticklers opened their doors to her, as if she had been
definitely purified by maternity.
“It is strange, but so it is, and thus everything was going on as well as
possible until the other day, which was the feast of the patron saint of our
town. The prefect, surrounded by his staff and the authorities, presided at the
musical competition, and when he had finished his speech the distribution of
medals began, which Paul Hamot, his private secretary, handed to those who
were entitled to them.
“As you know, there are always jealousies and rivalries, which make
people forget all propriety. All the ladies of the town were there on the
platform, and, in his turn, the bandmaster from the village of Mourmillon
came up. This band was only to receive a second-class medal, for one cannot
give first-class medals to everybody, can one? But when the private secretary
handed him his badge, the man threw it in his face and exclaimed:
“‘You may keep your medal for Baptiste. You owe him a first-class one,
also, just as you do me.’
 “There were a number of people there who began to laugh. The common
herd are neither charitable nor refined, and every eye was turned toward that
poor lady. Have you ever seen a woman going mad, monsieur? Well, we
were present at the sight! She got up and fell back on her chair three times in
succession, as if she wished to make her escape, but saw that she could not
make her way through the crowd, and then another voice in the crowd
exclaimed:
“‘Oh! Oh! Madame Baptiste!’
“And a great uproar, partly of laughter and partly of indignation, arose.
The word was repeated over and over again; people stood on tiptoe to see
the unhappy woman’s face; husbands lifted their wives up in their arms, so
that they might see her, and people asked:
“‘Which is she? The one in blue?’
“The boys crowed like cocks, and laughter was heard all over the place.
“She did not move now on her state chair, but sat just as if she had been
put there for the crowd to look at. She could not move, nor conceal herself,
nor hide her face. Her eyelids blinked quickly, as if a vivid light were
shining on them, and she breathed heavily, like a horse that is going up a
steep hill, so that it almost broke one’s heart to see her. Meanwhile, however,
Monsieur Hamot had seized the ruffian by the throat, and they were rolling on
the ground together, amid a scene of indescribable confusion, and the
ceremony was interrupted.
“An hour later, as the Hamots were returning home, the young woman,
who had not uttered a word since the insult, but who was trembling as if all
her nerves had been set in motion by springs, suddenly sprang over the
parapet of the bridge and threw herself into the river before her husband
could prevent her. The water is very deep under the arches, and it was two
hours before her body was recovered. Of course, she was dead.”
The narrator stopped and then added:
“It was, perhaps, the best thing she could do under the circumstances.
There are some things which cannot be wiped out, and now you understand
why the clergy refused to have her taken into church. Ah! If it had been a
religious funeral the whole town would have been present, but you can
understand that her suicide added to the other affair and made families
abstain from attending her funeral; and then, it is not an easy matter here to
attend a funeral which is performed without religious rites.”
 We passed through the cemetery gates and I waited, much moved by what I
had heard, until the coffin had been lowered into the grave, before I went up
to the poor fellow who was sobbing violently, to press his hand warmly. He
looked at me in surprise through his tears and then said:
“Thank you, monsieur.” And I was not sorry that I had followed the
funeral.
 THE QUESTION OF LATIN

This subject of Latin that has been dinned into our ears for some time past
recalls to my mind a story — a story of my youth.
I was finishing my studies with a teacher, in a big central town, at the
Institution Robineau, celebrated through the entire province for the special
attention paid there to the study of Latin.
For the past ten years, the Robineau Institute beat the imperial lycee of the
town at every competitive examination, and all the colleges of the
subprefecture, and these constant successes were due, they said, to an usher,
a simple usher, M. Piquedent, or rather Pere Piquedent.
He was one of those middle-aged men quite gray, whose real age it is
impossible to tell, and whose history we can guess at first glance. Having
entered as an usher at twenty into the first institution that presented itself so
that he could proceed to take first his degree of Master of Arts and afterward
the degree of Doctor of Laws, he found himself so enmeshed in this routine
that he remained an usher all his life. But his love for Latin did not leave him
and harassed him like an unhealthy passion. He continued to read the poets,
the prose writers, the historians, to interpret them and penetrate their
meaning, to comment on them with a perseverance bordering on madness.
One day, the idea came into his head to oblige all the students in his class
to answer him in Latin only; and he persisted in this resolution until at last
they were capable of sustaining an entire conversation with him just as they
would in their mother tongue. He listened to them, as a leader of an orchestra
listens to his musicians rehearsing, and striking his desk every moment with
his ruler, he exclaimed:
“Monsieur Lefrere, Monsieur Lefrere, you are committing a solecism! You
forget the rule.
“Monsieur Plantel, your way of expressing yourself is altogether French
and in no way Latin. You must understand the genius of a language. Look
here, listen to me.”
Now, it came to pass that the pupils of the Institution Robineau carried off,
at the end of the year, all the prizes for composition, translation, and Latin
conversation.
Next year, the principal, a little man, as cunning as an ape, whom he
resembled in his grinning and grotesque appearance, had had printed on his
programmes, on his advertisements, and painted on the door of his institution:
“Latin Studies a Specialty. Five first prizes carried off in the five classes
of the lycee.
“Two honor prizes at the general examinations in competition with all the
lycees and colleges of France.”
For ten years the Institution Robineau triumphed in the same fashion. Now
my father, allured by these successes, sent me as a day pupil to Robineau’s
— or, as we called it, Robinetto or Robinettino’s — and made me take
special private lessons from Pere Piquedent at the rate of five francs per
hour, out of which the usher got two francs and the principal three francs. I
was then eighteen, and was in the philosophy class.
These private lessons were given in a little room looking out on the street.
It so happened that Pere Piquedent, instead of talking Latin to me, as he did
when teaching publicly in the institution, kept telling me his troubles in
French. Without relations, without friends, the poor man conceived an
attachment to me, and poured out his misery to me.
He had never for the last ten or fifteen years chatted confidentially with
any one.
“I am like an oak in a desert,” he said— “‘sicut quercus in solitudine’.”
The other ushers disgusted him. He knew nobody in the town, since he had
no time to devote to making acquaintances.
“Not even the nights, my friend, and that is the hardest thing on me. The
dream of my life is to have a room with my own furniture, my own books,
little things that belong to myself and which others may not touch. And I have
nothing of my own, nothing except my trousers and my frock-coat, nothing,
not even my mattress and my pillow! I have not four walls to shut myself up
in, except when I come to give a lesson in this room. Do you see what this
means — a man forced to spend his life without ever having the right,
without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to
think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door
which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!
“Here, all day long, teaching all those restless rogues, and during the night
the dormitory with the same restless rogues snoring. And I have to sleep in
the bed at the end of two rows of beds occupied by these youngsters whom I
must look after. I can never be alone, never! If I go out I find the streets full of
people, and, when I am tired of walking, I go into some cafe crowded with
smokers and billiard players. I tell you what, it is the life of a galley slave.”
I said:
“Why did you not take up some other line, Monsieur Piquedent?”
He exclaimed:
“What, my little friend? I am not a shoemaker, or a joiner, or a hatter, or a
baker, or a hairdresser. I only know Latin, and I have no diploma which
would enable me to sell my knowledge at a high price. If I were a doctor I
would sell for a hundred francs what I now sell for a hundred sous; and I
would supply it probably of an inferior quality, for my title would be enough
to sustain my reputation.”
Sometimes he would say to me:
“I have no rest in life except in the hours spent with you. Don’t be afraid!
you’ll lose nothing by that. I’ll make it up to you in the class-room by making
you speak twice as much Latin as the others.”
One day, I grew bolder, and offered him a cigarette. He stared at me in
astonishment at first, then he gave a glance toward the door.
“If any one were to come in, my dear boy?”
“Well, let us smoke at the window,” said I.
And we went and leaned our elbows on the windowsill looking on the
street, holding concealed in our hands the little rolls of tobacco. Just
opposite to us was a laundry. Four women in loose white waists were
passing hot, heavy irons over the linen spread out before them, from which a
warm steam arose.
Suddenly, another, a fifth, carrying on her arm a large basket which made
her stoop, came out to take the customers their shirts, their handkerchiefs, and
their sheets. She stopped on the threshold as if she were already fatigued;
then, she raised her eyes, smiled as she saw us smoking, flung at us, with her
left hand, which was free, the sly kiss characteristic of a free-and-easy
working-woman, and went away at a slow place, dragging her feet as she
went.
She was a woman of about twenty, small, rather thin, pale, rather pretty,
with a roguish air and laughing eyes beneath her ill-combed fair hair.
Pere Piquedent, affected, began murmuring:
“What an occupation for a woman! Really a trade only fit for a horse.”
 And he spoke with emotion about the misery of the people. He had a heart
which swelled with lofty democratic sentiment, and he referred to the
fatiguing pursuits of the working class with phrases borrowed from Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, and with sobs in his throat.
Next day, as we were leaning our elbows on the same window sill, the
same woman perceived us and cried out to us:
“Good-day, scholars!” in a comical sort of tone, while she made a
contemptuous gesture with her hands.
I flung her a cigarette, which she immediately began to smoke. And the
four other ironers rushed out to the door with outstretched hands to get
cigarettes also.
And each day a friendly intercourse was established between the
working-women of the pavement and the idlers of the boarding school.
Pere Piquedent was really a comical sight. He trembled at being noticed,
for he might lose his position; and he made timid and ridiculous gestures,
quite a theatrical display of love signals, to which the women responded
with a regular fusillade of kisses.
A perfidious idea came into my mind. One day, on entering our room, I
said to the old usher in a low tone:
“You would not believe it, Monsieur Piquedent, I met the little
washerwoman! You know the one I mean, the woman who had the basket, and
I spoke to her!”
He asked, rather worried at my manner:
“What did she say to you?”
“She said to me — why, she said she thought you were very nice. The fact
of the matter is, I believe, I believe, that she is a little in love with you.” I
saw that he was growing pale.
“She is laughing at me, of course. These things don’t happen at my age,”
he replied.
I said gravely:
“How is that? You are all right.”
As I felt that my trick had produced its effect on him, I did not press the
matter.
But every day I pretended that I had met the little laundress and that I had
spoken to her about him, so that in the end he believed me, and sent her
ardent and earnest kisses.
 Now it happened that one morning, on my way to the boarding school, I
really came across her. I accosted her without hesitation, as if I had known
her for the last ten years.
“Good-day, mademoiselle. Are you quite well?”
“Very well, monsieur, thank you.”
“Will you have a cigarette?”
“Oh! not in the street.”
“You can smoke it at home.”
“In that case, I will.”
“Let me tell you, mademoiselle, there’s something you don’t know.”
“What is that, monsieur?”
“The old gentleman — my old professor, I mean— “
“Pere Piquedent?”
“Yes, Pere Piquedent. So you know his name?”
“Faith, I do! What of that?”
“Well, he is in love with you!”
She burst out laughing wildly, and exclaimed:
“You are only fooling.”
“Oh! no, I am not fooling! He keeps talking of you all through the lesson. I
bet that he’ll marry you!”
She ceased laughing. The idea of marriage makes every girl serious. Then
she repeated, with an incredulous air:
“This is humbug!”
“I swear to you, it’s true.”
She picked up her basket which she had laid down at her feet.
“Well, we’ll see,” she said. And she went away.
Presently when I had reached the boarding school, I took Pere Piquedent
aside, and said:
“You must write to her; she is infatuated with you.”
And he wrote a long letter, tenderly affectionate, full of phrases and
circumlocutions, metaphors and similes, philosophy and academic gallantry;
and I took on myself the responsibility of delivering it to the young woman.
She read it with gravity, with emotion; then she murmured:
“How well he writes! It is easy to see he has got education! Does he
really mean to marry me?”
I replied intrepidly: “Faith, he has lost his head about you!”
“Then he must invite me to dinner on Sunday at the Ile des Fleurs.”
 I promised that she should be invited.
Pere Piquedent was much touched by everything I told him about her.
I added:
“She loves you, Monsieur Piquedent, and I believe her to be a decent girl.
It is not right to lead her on and then abandon her.”
He replied in a firm tone:
“I hope I, too, am a decent man, my friend.”
I confess I had at the time no plan. I was playing a practical joke a
schoolboy joke, nothing more. I had been aware of the simplicity of the old
usher, his innocence and his weakness. I amused myself without asking
myself how it would turn out. I was eighteen, and I had been for a long time
looked upon at the lycee as a sly practical joker.
So it was agreed that Pere Piquedent and I should set out in a hack for the
ferry of Queue de Vache, that we should there pick up Angele, and that I
should take them into my boat, for in those days I was fond of boating. I
would then bring them to the Ile des Fleurs, where the three of us would dine.
I had inflicted myself on them, the better to enjoy my triumph, and the usher,
consenting to my arrangement, proved clearly that he was losing his head by
thus risking the loss of his position.
When we arrived at the ferry, where my boat had been moored since
morning, I saw in the grass, or rather above the tall weeds of the bank, an
enormous red parasol, resembling a monstrous wild poppy. Beneath the
parasol was the little laundress in her Sunday clothes. I was surprised. She
was really pretty, though pale; and graceful, though with a rather suburban
grace.
Pere Piquedent raised his hat and bowed. She put out her hand toward
him, and they stared at one another without uttering a word. Then they
stepped into my boat, and I took the oars. They were seated side by side near
the stern.
The usher was the first to speak.
“This is nice weather for a row in a boat.”
She murmured:
“Oh! yes.”
She dipped her hand into the water, skimming the surface, making a thin,
transparent film like a sheet of glass, which made a soft plashing along the
side of the boat.
 When they were in the restaurant, she took it on herself to speak, and
ordered dinner, fried fish, a chicken, and salad; then she led us on toward the
isle, which she knew perfectly.
After this, she was gay, romping, and even rather tantalizing.
Until dessert, no question of love arose. I had treated them to champagne,
and Pere Piquedent was tipsy. Herself slightly the worse, she called out to
him:
“Monsieur Piquenez.”
He said abruptly:
“Mademoiselle, Monsieur Raoul has communicated my sentiments to
you.”
She became as serious as a judge.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“What is your reply?”
“We never reply to these questions!”
He puffed with emotion, and went on:
“Well, will the day ever come that you will like me?”
She smiled.
“You big stupid! You are very nice.”
“In short, mademoiselle, do you think that, later on, we might— “
She hesitated a second; then in a trembling voice she said:
“Do you mean to marry me when you say that? For on no other condition,
you know.”
“Yes, mademoiselle!”
“Well, that’s all right, Monsieur Piquedent!”
It was thus that these two silly creatures promised marriage to each other
through the trick of a young scamp. But I did not believe that it was serious,
nor, indeed, did they, perhaps.
“You know, I have nothing, not four sous,” she said.
He stammered, for he was as drunk as Silenus:
“I have saved five thousand francs.”
She exclaimed triumphantly:
“Then we can set up in business?”
He became restless.
“In what business?”
“What do I know? We shall see. With five thousand francs we could do
many things. You don’t want me to go and live in your boarding school, do
you?”
He had not looked forward so far as this, and he stammered in great
perplexity:
“What business could we set up in? That would not do, for all I know is
Latin!”
She reflected in her turn, passing in review all her business ambitions.
“You could not be a doctor?”
“No, I have no diploma.”
“Or a chemist?”
“No more than the other.”
She uttered a cry of joy. She had discovered it.
“Then we’ll buy a grocer’s shop! Oh! what luck! we’ll buy a grocer’s
shop. Not on a big scale, of course; with five thousand francs one does not go
far.”
He was shocked at the suggestion.
“No, I can’t be a grocer. I am — I am — too well known: I only know
Latin, that is all I know.”
But she poured a glass of champagne down his throat. He drank it and was
silent.
We got back into the boat. The night was dark, very dark. I saw clearly,
however, that he had caught her by the waist, and that they were hugging each
other again and again.
It was a frightful catastrophe. Our escapade was discovered, with the
result that Pere Piquedent was dismissed. And my father, in a fit of anger,
sent me to finish my course of philosophy at Ribaudet’s school.
Six months later I took my degree of Bachelor of Arts. Then I went to
study law in Paris, and did not return to my native town till two years later.
At the corner of the Rue de Serpent a shop caught my eye. Over the door
were the words: “Colonial Products — Piquedent”; then underneath, so as to
enlighten the most ignorant: “Grocery.”
I exclaimed:
“‘Quantum mutatus ab illo!’”
Piquedent raised his head, left his female customer, and rushed toward me
with outstretched hands.
“Ah! my young friend, my young friend, here you are! What luck! what
luck!”
 A beautiful woman, very plump, abruptly left the cashier’s desk and flung
herself on my breast. I had some difficulty in recognizing her, she had grown
so stout.
I asked:
“So then you’re doing well?”
Piquedent had gone back to weigh the groceries.
“Oh! very well, very well, very well. I have made three thousand francs
clear this year!”
“And what about Latin, Monsieur Piquedent?”
“Oh, good heavens! Latin, Latin, Latin — you see it does not keep the pot
boiling!”
 A MEETING

It was nothing but an accident, an accident pure and simple. On that

particular evening the princess’ rooms were open, and as they appeared dark
after the brilliantly lighted parlors, Baron d’Etraille, who was tired of
standing, inadvertently wandered into an empty bedroom.
He looked round for a chair in which to have a doze, as he was sure his
wife would not leave before daylight. As soon as he became accustomed to
the light of the room he distinguished the big bed with its azure-and-gold
hangings, in the middle of the great room, looking like a catafalque in which
love was buried, for the princess was no longer young. Behind it, a large
bright surface looked like a lake seen at a distance. It was a large mirror,
discreetly covered with dark drapery, that was very rarely let down, and
seemed to look at the bed, which was its accomplice. One might almost fancy
that it had reminiscences, and that one might see in it charming female forms
and the gentle movement of loving arms.
The baron stood still for a moment, smiling, almost experiencing an
emotion on the threshold of this chamber dedicated to love. But suddenly
something appeared in the looking-glass, as if the phantoms which he had
evoked had risen up before him. A man and a woman who had been sitting on
a low couch concealed in the shadow had arisen, and the polished surface,
reflecting their figures, showed that they were kissing each other before
separating.
Baron d’Etraille recognized his wife and the Marquis de Cervigne. He
turned and went away like a man who is fully master of himself, and waited
till it was day before taking away the baroness; but he had no longer any
thoughts of sleeping.
As soon as they were alone he said:
“Madame, I saw you just now in Princesse de Raynes’ room; I need say
no more, and I am not fond either of reproaches, acts of violence, or of
ridicule. As I wish to avoid all such things, we shall separate without any
scandal. Our lawyers will settle your position according to my orders. You
will be free to live as you please when you are no longer under my roof; but,
as you will continue to bear my name, I must warn you that should any
scandal arise I shall show myself inflexible.”
She tried to speak, but he stopped her, bowed, and left the room.
He was more astonished and sad than unhappy. He had loved her dearly
during the first period of their married life; but his ardor had cooled, and
now he often amused himself elsewhere, either in a theatre or in society,
though he always preserved a certain liking for the baroness.
She was very young, hardly four-and-twenty, small, slight — too slight —
and very fair. She was a true Parisian doll: clever, spoiled, elegant,
coquettish, witty, with more charm than real beauty. He used to say familiarly
to his brother, when speaking of her:
“My wife is charming, attractive, but — there is nothing to lay hold of.
She is like a glass of champagne that is all froth; when you get to the wine it
is very good, but there is too little of it, unfortunately.”
He walked up and down the room in great agitation, thinking of a thousand
things. At one moment he was furious, and felt inclined to give the marquis a
good thrashing, or to slap his face publicly, in the club. But he decided that
would not do, it would not be good form; he would be laughed at, and not his
rival, and this thought wounded his vanity. So he went to bed, but could not
sleep. Paris knew in a few days that the Baron and Baroness d’Etraille had
agreed to an amicable separation on account of incompatibility of temper. No
one suspected anything, no one laughed, and no one was astonished.
The baron, however, to avoid meeting his wife, travelled for a year, then
spent the summer at the seaside, and the autumn in shooting, returning to Paris
for the winter. He did not meet the baroness once.
He did not even know what people said about her. In any case, she took
care to respect appearances, and that was all he asked for.
He became dreadfully bored, travelled again, restored his old castle of
Villebosc, which took him two years; then for over a year he entertained
friends there, till at last, tired of all these so-called pleasures, he returned to
his mansion in the Rue de Lille, just six years after the separation.
He was now forty-five, with a good crop of gray hair, rather stout, and
with that melancholy look characteristic of those who have been handsome,
sought after, and liked, but who are deteriorating, daily.
A month after his return to Paris, he took cold on coming out of his club,
and had such a bad cough that his medical man ordered him to Nice for the
rest of the winter.
 He reached the station only a few minutes before the departure of the train
on Monday evening, and had barely time to get into a carriage, with only one
other occupant, who was sitting in a corner so wrapped in furs and cloaks
that he could not even make out whether it was a man or a woman, as nothing
of the figure could be seen. When he perceived that he could not find out, he
put on his travelling cap, rolled himself up in his rugs, and stretched out
comfortably to sleep.
He did not wake until the day was breaking, and looked at once at his
fellow-traveller, who had not stirred all night, and seemed still to be sound
asleep.
M. d’Etraille made use of the opportunity to brush his hair and his beard,
and to try to freshen himself up a little generally, for a night’s travel does not
improve one’s appearance when one has attained a certain age.
A great poet has said:
“When we are young, our mornings are triumphant!”
Then we wake up with a cool skin, a bright eye, and glossy hair.
As one grows older one wakes up in a very different condition. Dull eyes,
red, swollen cheeks, dry lips, hair and beard disarranged, impart an old,
fatigued, worn-out look to the face.
The baron opened his travelling case, and improved his looks as much as
possible.
The engine whistled, the train stopped, and his neighbor moved. No doubt
he was awake. They started off again, and then a slanting ray of sunlight
shone into the carriage and on the sleeper, who moved again, shook himself,
and then his face could be seen.
It was a young, fair, pretty, plump woman, and the baron looked at her in
amazement. He did not know what to think. He could really have sworn that
it was his wife, but wonderfully changed for the better: stouter — why she
had grown as stout as he was, only it suited her much better than it did him.
She looked at him calmly, did not seem to recognize him, and then slowly
laid aside her wraps. She had that quiet assurance of a woman who is sure of
herself, who feels that on awaking she is in her full beauty and freshness.
The baron was really bewildered. Was it his wife, or else as like her as
any sister could be? Not having seen her for six years, he might be mistaken.
She yawned, and this gesture betrayed her. She turned and looked at him
again, calmly, indifferently, as if she scarcely saw him, and then looked out
of the window again.
 He was upset and dreadfully perplexed, and kept looking at her sideways.
Yes; it was surely his wife. How could he possibly have doubted it?
There could certainly not be two noses like that, and a thousand recollections
flashed through his mind. He felt the old feeling of the intoxication of love
stealing over him, and he called to mind the sweet odor of her skin, her smile
when she put her arms on to his shoulders, the soft intonations of her voice,
all her graceful, coaxing ways.
But how she had changed and improved! It was she and yet not she. She
seemed riper, more developed, more of a woman, more seductive, more
desirable, adorably desirable.
And this strange, unknown woman, whom he had accidentally met in a
railway carriage, belonged to him; he had only to say to her:
“I insist upon it.”
He had formerly slept in her arms, existed only in her love, and now he
had found her again certainly, but so changed that he scarcely knew her. It
was another, and yet it was she herself. It was some one who had been born
and had formed and grown since he had left her. It was she, indeed; she
whom he had loved, but who was now altered, with a more assured smile
and greater self-possession. There were two women in one, mingling a great
part of what was new and unknown with many sweet recollections of the
past. There was something singular, disturbing, exciting about it — a kind of
mystery of love in which there floated a delicious confusion. It was his wife
in a new body and in new flesh which lips had never pressed.
And he thought that in a few years nearly every thing changes in us; only
the outline can be recognized, and sometimes even that disappears.
The blood, the hair, the skin, all changes and is renewed, and when people
have not seen each other for a long time, when they meet they find each other
totally different beings, although they are the same and bear the same name.
And the heart also can change. Ideas may be modified and renewed, so
that in forty years of life we may, by gradual and constant transformations,
become four or five totally new and different beings.
He dwelt on this thought till it troubled him; it had first taken possession
of him when he surprised her in the princess’ room. He was not the least
angry; it was not the same woman that he was looking at — that thin,
excitable little doll of those days.
What was he to do? How should he address her? and what could he say to
her? Had she recognized him?
 The train stopped again. He got up, bowed, and said: “Bertha, do you
want anything I could bring you?”
She looked at him from head to foot, and answered, without showing the
slightest surprise, or confusion, or anger, but with the most perfect
indifference:
“I do not want anything — thank you.”
He got out and walked up and down the platform a little in order to
recover himself, and, as it were, to recover his senses after a fall. What
should he do now? If he got into another carriage it would look as if he were
running away. Should he be polite or importunate? That would look as if he
were asking for forgiveness. Should he speak as if he were her master? He
would look like a fool, and, besides, he really had no right to do so.
He got in again and took his place.
During his absence she had hastily arranged her dress and hair, and was
now lying stretched out on the seat, radiant, and without showing any
emotion.
He turned to her, and said: “My dear Bertha, since this singular chance
has brought up together after a separation of six years — a quite friendly
separation — are we to continue to look upon each other as irreconcilable
enemies? We are shut up together, tete-a-tete, which is so much the better or
so much the worse. I am not going to get into another carriage, so don’t you
think it is preferable to talk as friends till the end of our journey?”
She answered, quite calmly again:
“Just as you please.”
Then he suddenly stopped, really not knowing what to say; but as he had
plenty of assurance, he sat down on the middle seat, and said:
“Well, I see I must pay my court to you; so much the better. It is, however,
really a pleasure, for you are charming. You cannot imagine how you have
improved in the last six years. I do not know any woman who could give me
that delightful sensation which I experienced just now when you emerged
from your wraps. I really could not have thought such a change possible.”
Without moving her head or looking at him, she said: “I cannot say the
same with regard to you; you have certainly deteriorated a great deal.”
He got red and confused, and then, with a smile of resignation, he said:
“You are rather hard.”
“Why?” was her reply. “I am only stating facts. I don’t suppose you intend
to offer me your love? It must, therefore, be a matter of perfect indifference
to you what I think about you. But I see it is a painful subject, so let us talk of
something else. What have you been doing since I last saw you?”
He felt rather out of countenance, and stammered:
“I? I have travelled, done some shooting, and grown old, as you see. And
you?”
She said, quite calmly: “I have taken care of appearances, as you ordered
me.”
He was very nearly saying something brutal, but he checked himself; and
kissed his wife’s hand:
“And I thank you,” he said.
She was surprised. He was indeed diplomatic, and always master of
himself.
He went on: “As you have acceded to my first request, shall we now talk
without any bitterness?”
She made a little movement of surprise.
“Bitterness? I don’t feel any; you are a complete stranger to me; I am only
trying to keep up a difficult conversation.”
He was still looking at her, fascinated in spite of her harshness, and he felt
seized with a brutal Beside, the desire of the master.
Perceiving that she had hurt his feelings, she said:
“How old are you now? I thought you were younger than you look.”
“I am forty-five”; and then he added: “I forgot to ask after Princesse de
Raynes. Are you still intimate with her?”
She looked at him as if she hated him:
“Yes, I certainly am. She is very well, thank you.”
They remained sitting side by side, agitated and irritated. Suddenly he
said:
“My dear Bertha, I have changed my mind. You are my wife, and I expect
you to come with me to-day. You have, I think, improved both morally and
physically, and I am going to take you back again. I am your husband, and it is
my right to do so.”
She was stupefied, and looked at him, trying to divine his thoughts; but his
face was resolute and impenetrable.
“I am very sorry,” she said, “but I have made other engagements.”
“So much the worse for you,” was his reply. “The law gives me the
power, and I mean to use it.”
 They were nearing Marseilles, and the train whistled and slackened
speed. The baroness rose, carefully rolled up her wraps, and then, turning to
her husband, said:
“My dear Raymond, do not make a bad use of this tete-a tete which I had
carefully prepared. I wished to take precautions, according to your advice,
so that I might have nothing to fear from you or from other people, whatever
might happen. You are going to Nice, are you not?”
“I shall go wherever you go.”
“Not at all; just listen to me, and I am sure that you will leave me in
peace. In a few moments, when we get to the station, you will see the
Princesse de Raynes and Comtesse Henriot waiting for me with their
husbands. I wished them to see as, and to know that we had spent the night
together in the railway carriage. Don’t be alarmed; they will tell it
everywhere as a most surprising fact.
“I told you just now that I had most carefully followed your advice and
saved appearances. Anything else does not matter, does it? Well, in order to
do so, I wished to be seen with you. You told me carefully to avoid any
scandal, and I am avoiding it, for, I am afraid — I am afraid— “
She waited till the train had quite stopped, and as her friends ran up to
open the carriage door, she said:
“I am afraid” — hesitating— “that there is another reason — je suis
enceinte.”
The princess stretched out her arms to embrace her, — and the baroness
said, painting to the baron, who was dumb with astonishment, and was trying
to get at the truth:
“You do not recognize Raymond? He has certainly changed a good deal,
and he agreed to come with me so that I might not travel alone. We take little
trips like this occasionally, like good friends who cannot live together. We
are going to separate here; he has had enough of me already.”
She put out her hand, which he took mechanically, and then she jumped out
on to the platform among her friends, who were waiting for her.
The baron hastily shut the carriage door, for he was too much disturbed to
say a word or come to any determination. He heard his wife’s voice and their
merry laughter as they went away.
He never saw her again, nor did he ever discover whether she had told
him a lie or was speaking the truth.
 THE BLIND MAN

How is it that the sunlight gives us such joy? Why does this radiance when it
falls on the earth fill us with the joy of living? The whole sky is blue, the
fields are green, the houses all white, and our enchanted eyes drink in those
bright colors which bring delight to our souls. And then there springs up in
our hearts a desire to dance, to run, to sing, a happy lightness of thought, a
sort of enlarged tenderness; we feel a longing to embrace the sun.
The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal darkness,
remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gaiety, and, not
understanding what is taking place around them, they continually check their
dogs as they attempt to play.
When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a
young brother or a little sister, if the child says: “It was a very fine day!” the
other answers: “I could notice that it was fine. Loulou wouldn’t keep quiet.”
I knew one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel martyrdoms
that could possibly be conceived.
He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and
mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from
his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, an atrocious
life of misery commenced for him. Dependent on a sister of his, everybody in
the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of strangers. At
every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject of reproach
against him; he was called a drone, a clown, and although his brother-in-law
had taken possession of his portion of the inheritance, he was helped
grudgingly to soup, getting just enough to save him from starving.
His face was very pale and his two big white eyes looked like wafers. He
remained unmoved at all the insults hurled at him, so reserved that one could
not tell whether he felt them.
Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always
treated him unkindly and caring very little for him; for in country places
useless persons are considered a nuisance, and the peasants would be glad to
kill the infirm of their species, as poultry do.
 As soon as he finished his soup he went and sat outside the door in
summer and in winter beside the fireside, and did not stir again all the
evening. He made no gesture, no movement; only his eyelids, quivering from
some nervous affection, fell down sometimes over his white, sightless orbs.
Had he any intellect, any thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own
existence? Nobody cared to inquire.
For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for work
as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his relatives, and he
became a laughingstock, a sort of butt for merriment, a prey to the inborn
ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the brutes who surrounded him.
It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes inspired by his blindness.
And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him, they now converted
his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors and of punishment for the
helpless creature himself.
The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it was
talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the farmhouse
was full of people. Sometimes they placed before his plate, when he was
beginning to eat his soup, some cat or dog. The animal instinctively
perceived the man’s infirmity, and, softly approaching, commenced eating
noiselessly, lapping up the soup daintily; and, when they lapped the food
rather noisily, rousing the poor fellow’s attention, they would prudently
scamper away to avoid the blow of the spoon directed at random by the blind
man!
Then the spectators ranged along the wall would burst out laughing, nudge
each other and stamp their feet on the floor. And he, without ever uttering a
word, would continue eating with his right hand, while stretching out his left
to protect his plate.
Another time they made him chew corks, bits of wood, leaves or even
filth, which he was unable to distinguish.
After this they got tired even of these practical jokes, and the brother-in-
law, angry at having to support him always, struck him, cuffed him
incessantly, laughing at his futile efforts to ward off or return the blows. Then
came a new pleasure — the pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-
men, the servant girls and even every passing vagabond were every moment
giving him cuffs, which caused his eyelashes to twitch spasmodically. He did
not know where to hide himself and remained with his arms always held out
to guard against people coming too close to him.
 At last he was forced to beg.
He was placed somewhere on the high-road on market-days, and as soon
as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he reached out
his hat, stammering:
“Charity, if you please!”
But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring back a
sou.
Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how he
died.
One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it was freezing hard.
His brother-in-law led him one morning a great distance along the high road
in order that he might solicit alms. The blind man was left there all day; and
when night came on, the brother-in-law told the people of his house that he
could find no trace of the mendicant. Then he added:
“Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold and got someone to take
him away. Never fear! he’s not lost. He’ll turn up soon enough tomorrow to
eat the soup.”
Next day he did not come back.
After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he was
dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way along the
road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at random, falling into
ditches, getting up again, without uttering a sound, his sole object being to
find some house where he could take shelter.
But, by degrees, the descending snow made a numbness steal over him,
and his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he sat down in
the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.
The white flakes which fell continuously buried him, so that his body,
quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant accumulation of their
rapidly thickening mass, and nothing was left to indicate the place where he
lay.
His relatives made a pretence of inquiring about him and searching for
him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.
The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of crows,
who were whirling incessantly above the open field, and then descending
like a shower of black rain at the same spot, ever going and coming.
 The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners of the
horizon, and they swooped down with a great cawing into the shining snow,
which they covered like black patches, and in which they kept pecking
obstinately. A young fellow went to see what they were doing and
discovered the body of the blind man, already half devoured, mangled. His
wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long, voracious beaks.
And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly
remembering and pondering over the fate of the beggar who was such an
outcast in life that his horrible death was a relief to all who had known him.
 INDISCRETION

They had loved each other before marriage with a pure and lofty love. They
had first met on the sea-shore. He had thought this young girl charming, as she
passed by with her light-colored parasol and her dainty dress amid the
marine landscape against the horizon. He had loved her, blond and slender, in
these surroundings of blue ocean and spacious sky. He could not distinguish
the tenderness which this budding woman awoke in him from the vague and
powerful emotion which the fresh salt air and the grand scenery of surf and
sunshine and waves aroused in his soul.
She, on the other hand, had loved him because he courted her, because he
was young, rich, kind, and attentive. She had loved him because it is natural
for young girls to love men who whisper sweet nothings to them.
So, for three months, they had lived side by side, and hand in hand. The
greeting which they exchanged in the morning before the bath, in the freshness
of the morning, or in the evening on the sand, under the stars, in the warmth of
a calm night, whispered low, very low, already had the flavor of kisses,
though their lips had never met.
Each dreamed of the other at night, each thought of the other on awaking,
and, without yet having voiced their sentiments, each longer for the other,
body and soul.
After marriage their love descended to earth. It was at first a tireless,
sensuous passion, then exalted tenderness composed of tangible poetry, more
refined caresses, and new and foolish inventions. Every glance and gesture
was an expression of passion.
But, little by little, without even noticing it, they began to get tired of each
other. Love was still strong, but they had nothing more to reveal to each
other, nothing more to learn from each other, no new tale of endearment, no
unexpected outburst, no new way of expressing the well-known, oft-repeated
verb.
They tried, however, to rekindle the dwindling flame of the first love.
Every day they tried some new trick or desperate attempt to bring back to
their hearts the uncooled ardor of their first days of married life. They tried
moonlight walks under the trees, in the sweet warmth of the summer
evenings: the poetry of mist-covered beaches; the excitement of public
festivals.
One morning Henriette said to Paul:
“Will you take me to a cafe for dinner?”
“Certainly, dearie.”
“To some well-known cafe?”
“Of course!”
He looked at her with a questioning glance, seeing that she was thinking of
something which she did not wish to tell.
She went on:
“You know, one of those cafes — oh, how can I explain myself? — a
sporty cafe!”
He smiled: “Of course, I understand — you mean in one of the cafes
which are commonly called bohemian.”
“Yes, that’s it. But take me to one of the big places, one where you are
known, one where you have already supped — no — dined — well, you
know — I — I — oh! I will never dare say it!”
“Go ahead, dearie. Little secrets should no longer exist between us.”
“No, I dare not.”
“Go on; don’t be prudish. Tell me.”
“Well, I — I — I want to be taken for your sweetheart — there! and I
want the boys, who do not know that you are married, to take me for such;
and you too — I want you to think that I am your sweetheart for one hour, in
that place which must hold so many memories for you. There! And I will play
that I am your sweetheart. It’s awful, I know — I am abominably ashamed, I
am as red as a peony. Don’t look at me!”
He laughed, greatly amused, and answered:
“All right, we will go to-night to a very swell place where I am well
known.”
Toward seven o’clock they went up the stairs of one of the big cafes on
the Boulevard, he, smiling, with the look of a conqueror, she, timid, veiled,
delighted. They were immediately shown to one of the luxurious private
dining-rooms, furnished with four large arm-chairs and a red plush couch.
The head waiter entered and brought them the menu. Paul handed it to his
wife.
“What do you want to eat?”
 “I don’t care; order whatever is good.”
After handing his coat to the waiter, he ordered dinner and champagne.
The waiter looked at the young woman and smiled. He took the order and
murmured:
“Will Monsieur Paul have his champagne sweet or dry?”
“Dry, very dry.”
Henriette was pleased to hear that this man knew her husband’s name.
They sat on the couch, side by side, and began to eat.
Ten candles lighted the room and were reflected in the mirrors all around
them, which seemed to increase the brilliancy a thousand-fold. Henriette
drank glass after glass in order to keep up her courage, although she felt dizzy
after the first few glasses. Paul, excited by the memories which returned to
him, kept kissing his wife’s hands. His eyes were sparkling.
She was feeling strangely excited in this new place, restless, pleased, a
little guilty, but full of life. Two waiters, serious, silent, accustomed to
seeing and forgetting everything, to entering the room only when it was
necessary and to leaving it when they felt they were intruding, were silently
flitting hither and thither.
Toward the middle of the dinner, Henriette was well under the influence
of champagne. She was prattling along fearlessly, her cheeks flushed, her
eyes glistening.
“Come, Paul; tell me everything.”
“What, sweetheart?”
“I don’t dare tell you.”
“Go on!”
“Have you loved many women before me?”
He hesitated, a little perplexed, not knowing whether he should hide his
adventures or boast of them.
She continued:
“Oh! please tell me. How many have you loved?”
“A few.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. How do you expect me to know such things?”
“Haven’t you counted them?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you must have loved a good many!”
“Perhaps.”
 “About how many? Just tell me about how many.”
“But I don’t know, dearest. Some years a good many, and some years only
a few.”
“How many a year, did you say?”
“Sometimes twenty or thirty, sometimes only four or five.”
“Oh! that makes more than a hundred in all!”
“Yes, just about.”
“Oh! I think that is dreadful!”
“Why dreadful?”
“Because it’s dreadful when you think of it — all those women — and
always — always the same thing. Oh! it’s dreadful, just the same — more
than a hundred women!”
He was surprised that she should think that dreadful, and answered, with
the air of superiority which men take with women when they wish to make
them understand that they have said something foolish:
“That’s funny! If it is dreadful to have a hundred women, it’s dreadful to
have one.”
“Oh, no, not at all!”
“Why not?”
“Because with one woman you have a real bond of love which attaches
you to her, while with a hundred women it’s not the same at all. There is no
real love. I don’t understand how a man can associate with such women.”
“But they are all right.”
“No, they can’t be!”
“Yes, they are!”
“Oh, stop; you disgust me!”
“But then, why did you ask me how many sweethearts I had had?”
“Because — — “
“That’s no reason!”
“What were they-actresses, little shop-girls, or society women?”
“A few of each.”
“It must have been rather monotonous toward the last.”
“Oh, no; it’s amusing to change.”
She remained thoughtful, staring at her champagne glass. It was full — she
drank it in one gulp; then putting it back on the table, she threw her arms
around her husband’s neck and murmured in his ear:
“Oh! how I love you, sweetheart! how I love you!”
 He threw his arms around her in a passionate embrace. A waiter, who
was just entering, backed out, closing the door discreetly. In about five
minutes the head waiter came back, solemn and dignified, bringing the fruit
for dessert. She was once more holding between her fingers a full glass, and
gazing into the amber liquid as though seeking unknown things. She murmured
in a dreamy voice:
“Yes, it must be fun!”
 THE CAKE

Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her real
name.
She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail of
fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic heart, and
was rarely beautiful. She opened her doors to very few — only to
exceptional people, those who are commonly described as princes of
something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine
claim to intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations. Her
husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband of a comet
is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original idea, that of
creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit of his own, a merit of
the second order, it is true; but he did, in fact, in this fashion, on the days
when his wife held receptions, hold receptions also on his own account. He
had his special set who appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on
him more attention than they did on his brilliant partner.
He had devoted himself to agriculture — to agriculture in the Chamber.
There are in the same way generals in the Chamber — those who are born,
who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office, are all
of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chamber, — viz., in the Admiralty, —
colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied agriculture, had
studied it deeply, indeed, in its relations to the other sciences, to political
economy, to the Fine Arts — we dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of
science, and we even call the horrible railway bridges “works of art.” At
length he reached the point when it was said of him: “He is a man of ability.”
He was quoted in the technical reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting
him appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.
This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.
Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations to his
friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they associated
together, or rather did not — they formed two distinct groups. Madame, with
her escort of artists, academicians, and ministers, occupied a kind of gallery,
furnished and decorated in the style of the Empire. Monsieur generally
withdrew with his agriculturists into a smaller portion of the house used as a
smoking-room and ironically described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of
Agriculture.
The two camps were clearly separate. Monsieur, without jealousy,
moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial hand-
shakings were exchanged; but the Academy entertained infinite contempt for
the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of the princes of science,
of thought, or of anything else, mingled with the agriculturists.
These receptions occasioned little expense — a cup of tea, a cake, that
was all. Monsieur, at an earlier period, had claimed two cakes, one for the
Academy, and one for the agriculturists, but Madame having rightly suggested
that this way of acting seemed to indicate two camps, two receptions, two
parties, Monsieur did not press the matter, so that they used only one cake, of
which Madame Anserre did the honors at the Academy, and which then
passed into the Salon de Agriculture.
Now, this cake was soon, for the Academy, a subject of observation well
calculated to arouse curiosity. Madame Anserre never cut it herself. That
function always fell to the lot of one or other of the illustrious guests. The
particular duty, which was supposed to carry with it honorable distinction,
was performed by each person for a pretty long period, in one case for three
months, scarcely ever for more; and it was noticed that the privilege of
“cutting the cake” carried with it a heap of other marks of superiority — a
sort of royalty, or rather very accentuated viceroyalty.
The reigning cutter spoke in a haughty tone, with an air of marked
command; and all the favors of the mistress of the house were for him alone.
These happy individuals were in moments of intimacy described in
hushed tones behind doors as the “favorites of the cake,” and every change of
favorite introduced into the Academy a sort of revolution. The knife was a
scepter, the pastry an emblem; the chosen ones were congratulated. The
agriculturists never cut the cake. Monsieur himself was always excluded,
although he ate his share.
The cake was cut in succession by poets, by painters, and by novelists. A
great musician had the privilege of measuring the portions of the cake for
some time; an ambassador succeeded him. Sometimes a man less well
known, but elegant and sought after, one of those who are called according to
the different epochs, “true gentleman,” or “perfect knight,” or “dandy,” or
something else, seated himself, in his turn, before the symbolic cake. Each of
them, during this ephemeral reign, exhibited greater consideration toward the
husband; then, when the hour of his fall had arrived, he passed on the knife
toward the other, and mingled once more with the crowd of followers and
admirers of the “beautiful Madame Anserre.”
This state of things lasted a long time; but comets do not always shine
with the same brilliance. Everything gets worn out in society. One would
have said that gradually the eagerness of the cutters grew feebler; they
seemed to hesitate at times when the tray was held out to them; this office,
once so much coveted, became less and less desired. It was retained for a
shorter time; they appeared to be less proud of it.
Madame Anserre was prodigal of smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was
found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The newcomers seemed to decline the
honor. The “old favorites” reappeared one by one like dethroned princes
who have been replaced for a brief spell in power. Then, the chosen ones
became few, very few. For a month (oh, prodigy!) M, Anserre cut open the
cake; then he looked as if he were getting tired of it; and one evening
Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame Anserre, was seen cutting it herself.
But this appeared to be very wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged one
of her guests so strongly to do it that he did not dare to refuse.
The symbol was too well known, however; the guests stared at one
another with scared, anxious faces. To cut the cake was nothing, but the
privileges to which this favor had always given a claim now frightened
people; therefore, the moment the dish made its appearance the academicians
rushed pellmell into the Salon of Agriculture, as if to shelter themselves
behind the husband, who was perpetually smiling. And when Madame
Anserre, in a state of anxiety, presented herself at the door with a cake in one
hand and the knife in the other, they all seemed to form a circle around her
husband as if to appeal to him for protection.
Some years more passed. Nobody cut the cake now; but yielding to an old
inveterate habit, the lady who had always been gallantly called “the beautiful
Madame Anserre” looked out each evening for some devotee to take the
knife, and each time the same movement took place around her, a general
flight, skillfully arranged and full of combined maneuvers that showed great
cleverness, in order to avoid the offer that was rising to her lips.
But, one evening, a young man presented himself at her reception — an
innocent, unsophisticated youth. He knew nothing about the mystery of the
cake; accordingly, when it appeared, and when all the rest ran away, when
Madame Anserre took from the manservant’s hands the dish and the pastry, he
remained quietly by her side.
She thought that perhaps he knew about the matter; she smiled, and in a
tone which showed some emotion, said:
“Will you be kind enough, dear Monsieur, to cut this cake?”
He displayed the utmost readiness, and took off his gloves, flattered at
such an honor being conferred on him.
“Oh, to be sure, Madame, with the greatest pleasure.”
Some distance away in the corner of the gallery, in the frame of the door
which led into the Salon of the Agriculturists, faces which expressed utter
amazement were staring at him. Then, when the spectators saw the newcomer
cutting without any hesitation, they quickly came forward.
An old poet jocosely slapped the neophyte on the shoulder.
“Bravo, young man!” he whispered in his ear.
The others gazed at him with curiosity. Even the husband appeared to be
surprised. As for the young man, he was astonished at the consideration
which they suddenly seemed to show toward him; above all, he failed to
comprehend the marked attentions, the manifest favor, and the species of mute
gratitude which the mistress of the house bestowed on him.
It appears, however, that he eventually found out.
At what moment, in what place, was the revelation made to him? Nobody
could tell; but, when he again presented himself at the reception, he had a
preoccupied air, almost a shamefaced look, and he cast around him a glance
of uneasiness.
The bell rang for tea. The manservant appeared. Madame Anserre, with a
smile, seized the dish, casting a look about her for her young friend; but he
had fled so precipitately that no trace of him could be seen any longer. Then,
she went looking everywhere for him, and ere long she discovered him in the
Salon of the Agriculturists. With his arm locked in that of the husband, he
was consulting that gentleman as to the means employed for destroying
phylloxera.
“My dear Monsieur,” she said to him, “will you be so kind as to cut this
cake for me?”
He reddened to the roots of his hair, and hanging down his head,
stammered out some excuses. Thereupon M. Anserre took pity on him, and
turning toward his wife, said:
 “My dear, you might have the goodness not to disturb us. We are talking
about agriculture. So get your cake cut by Baptiste.”
And since that day nobody has ever cut Madame Anserre’s cake.
 CHÂLI

Admiral de la Vallee, who seemed to be half asleep in his armchair, said in a

voice which sounded like an old woman’s:
“I had a very singular little love adventure once; would you like to hear
it?”
He spoke from the depths of his great chair, with that everlasting dry,
wrinkled smile on his lips, that smile à la Voltaire, which made people take
him for a terrible skeptic.

I was thirty years of age and first lieutenant in the navy, when I was intrusted
with an astronomical expedition to Central India. The English Government
provided me with all the necessary means for carrying out my enterprise, and
I was soon busied with a few followers in that strange, surprising,
prodigious country.
It would take me ten volumes to relate that journey. I went through
wonderfully magnificent regions, and was received by strangely handsome
princes, who entertained me with incredible magnificence. For two months it
seemed to me as if I were walking in a poem, and that I was going about in a
fairy kingdom, on the back of imaginary elephants. In the midst of wild
forests I discovered extraordinary ruins, delicate and chiseled like jewels,
fine as lace and enormous as mountains, those fabulous, divine monuments
which are so graceful that one falls in love with their form like one falls in
love with a woman, and that one feels a physical and sensual pleasure in
looking at them. As Victor Hugo says, “Whilst wide-awake, I was walking in
a dream.”
Towards the end of my journey I reached Ganhard, which was formerly
one of the most prosperous towns in Central India, but is now much decayed
and governed by a wealthy, arbitrary, violent, generous, and cruel prince. His
name is Rajah Maddan, a true Oriental potentate, delicate and barbarous,
affable and sanguinary, combining feminine grace with pitiless ferocity.
 The city lies at the bottom of a valley, on the banks of a little lake which is
surrounded by pagodas, which bathe their walls in the water.
At a distance the city looks like a white spot which grows larger as one
approaches it, and by degrees one discovers the domes and spires, all the
slender and graceful summits of Indian monuments.
At about an hour’s distance from the gates, I met a superbly caparisoned
elephant, surrounded by a guard of honor which the sovereign had sent me,
and I was conducted to the palace with great ceremony.
I should have liked to have taken the time to put on my gala uniform, but
royal impatience would not admit of it. He was anxious to make my
acquaintance, to know what he might expect from me, and then he would see.
I was introduced into a great hall surrounded by galleries, in the midst of
bronze-colored soldiers in splendid uniforms, while all about were standing
men dressed in striking robes studded with precious stones.
I saw a shining mass, a kind of sitting sun reposing on a bench like our
garden benches, without a back; it was the rajah who was waiting for me,
motionless, in a robe of the purest canary color. He had some ten or fifteen
million francs worth of diamonds on him, and by itself, on his forehead
glistened the famous star of Delhi, which has always belonged to the
illustrious dynasty of the Pariharas of Mundore, from whom my host was
descended.
He was a man of about five-and-twenty, who seemed to have some negro
blood in his veins, although he belonged to the purest Hindoo race. He had
large, almost motionless, rather vague eyes, fat lips, a curly beard, low
forehead, and dazzling sharp white teeth, which he frequently showed with a
mechanical smile. He got up and gave me his hand in the English fashion, and
then made me sit down beside him on a bench which was so high that my feet
hardly touched the ground, and I was very uncomfortable on it.
He immediately proposed a tiger hunt for the next day; war and hunting
were his chief occupations, and he could hardly understand how one could
care for anything else. He was evidently fully persuaded that I had only come
all that distance to amuse him a little, and to be the companion of his
pleasures.
As I stood greatly in need of his assistance, I tried to flatter his tastes, and
he was so pleased with me that he immediately wished to show me how his
trained boxers fought, and he led the way into a kind of arena situated within
the palace.
 At his command two naked men appeared, their hands covered with steel
claws. They immediately began to attack each other, trying to strike one
another with this sharp weapon, which left long cuts, from which the blood
flowed freely down their dark skin.
It lasted for a long time, till their bodies were a mass of wounds, and the
combatants were tearing each other’s flesh with this sort of rake made of
pointed blades. One of them had his jaw smashed, while the ear of the other
was split into three pieces.
The prince looked on with ferocious pleasure, uttered grunts of delight,
and imitated all their movements with careless gestures, crying out
constantly:
“Strike, strike hard!”
One fell down unconscious, and had to be carried out of the arena,
covered with blood, while the rajah uttered a sigh of regret because it was
over so soon.
He turned to me to know my opinion; I was disgusted, but I congratulated
him loudly. He then gave orders that I was to be conducted to Couch-Mahal
(the palace of pleasure), where I was to be lodged.
This bijou palace was situated at the extremity of the royal park, and one
of its walls was built into the sacred lake of Vihara. It was square, with three
rows of galleries with colonnades of most beautiful workmanship. At each
angle there were light, lofty or low towers, standing either singly or in pairs:
no two were alike, and they looked like flowers growing out of that graceful
plant of Oriental architecture. All were surmounted by fantastic roofs, like
coquettish ladies’ caps.
In the middle of the edifice a large dome raised its round cupola like a
large white woman’s breast, beside a beautiful clock-tower.
The whole building was covered with sculpture from top to bottom, with
those exquisite arabesques which delight the eye, of motionless processions
of delicate figures whose attitudes and gestures in stone told the story of
Indian manners and customs.
The rooms were lighted by windows with dentelated arches, looking on to
the gardens. On the marble floor were designs of graceful bouquets in onyx,
lapis-lazuli, and agate.
I had scarcely had time to finish my toilet when Haribada, a court
dignitary who was specially charged to communicate between the prince and
me, announced his sovereign’s visit.
 The saffron-colored rajah appeared, again shook hands with me, and
began to tell me a thousand different things, constantly asking me for my
opinion, which I had great difficulty in giving him. Then he wished to show
me the ruins of the former palace at the other extremity of the gardens.
It was a real forest of stones inhabited by a large tribe of apes. On our
approach the males began to run along the walls, making the most hideous
faces at us, while the females ran away, showing their bare rumps, and
carrying off their young in their arms. The rajah shouted with laughter and
pinched my arm to draw my attention, and to testify his own delight, and sat
down in the midst of the ruins, while around us, squatting on the top of the
walls, perching on every eminence, a number of animals with white whiskers
put out their tongues and shook their fists at us.
When he had seen enough of this, the yellow rajah rose and began to walk
sedately on, keeping me always at his side, happy at having shown me such
things on the very day of my arrival, and reminding me that a grand tiger-hunt
was to take place the next day, in my honor.
I was present at it, at a second, a third, at ten, twenty in succession. We
hunted all the animals which the country produces in turn; the panther, the
bear, elephant, antelope, the hippopotamus and the crocodile — what do I
know of, half the beasts in creation I should say. I was disgusted at seeing so
much blood flow, and tired of this monotonous pleasure.
At length the prince’s ardor abated and, at my urgent request, he left me a
little leisure for work, and contented himself by loading me with costly
presents. He sent me jewels, magnificent stuffs, and well-broken animals of
all sorts, which Haribada presented to me with apparently as grave respect
as if I had been the sun himself although he heartily despised me at the bottom
of his heart.
Every day a procession of servants brought me in covered dishes, a
portion of each course that was served at the royal table; every day he
seemed to take an extreme pleasure in getting up some new entertainment for
me — dances by the Bayaderes, jugglers, reviews of the troops, and I was
obliged to pretend to be most delighted with it, so as not to hurt his feelings
when he wished to show me his wonderful country in all its charm and all its
splendor.
As soon as I was left alone for a few moments I either worked or went to
see the monkeys, whose company pleased me a great deal better than that of
their royal master.
 One evening, however, on coming back from a walk, I found Haribada
outside the gate of my palace. He told me in mysterious tones that a gift from
the king was waiting for me in my room, and he said that his master begged
me to excuse him for not having sooner thought of offering me that of which I
had been deprived for such a long time.
After these obscure remarks the ambassador bowed and withdrew.
When I went in I saw six little girls standing against the wall motionless,
side-by-side, like smelts on a skewer. The eldest was perhaps ten and the
youngest eight years old. For the first moment I could not understand why this
girls’ school had taken up its abode in my rooms; then, however, I divined
the prince’s delicate attention: he had made me a present of a harem, and had
chosen it very young from an excess of generosity. There, the more unripe the
fruit is, in the higher estimation it is held.
For some time I remained confused and embarrassed, ashamed in the
presence of these children, who looked at me with great grave eyes which
seemed already to divine what I should want of them.
I did not know what to say to them; I felt inclined to send them back; but
one cannot return the presents of a prince; it would have been a mortal insult.
I was obliged, therefore, to keep them, and to install this troop of children in
my rooms.
They stood motionless, looking at me, waiting for my orders, trying to
read my thoughts in my eyes. Confound such a present! How dreadfully it
was in my way. At last, thinking that I must be looking rather ridiculous, I
asked the eldest her name.
“Châli,” she replied.
This little creature, with her beautiful skin, which was slightly yellow,
like old ivory, was a marvel, a perfect statue, with her face and its long and
severe lines.
I then asked, in order to see what she would reply, and also, perhaps, to
embarrass her:
“What have you come here for?”
She replied, in her soft, harmonious voice:
“I have come to be altogether at my lord’s disposal, and to do whatever he
wishes.”
She was evidently quite resigned.
I put the same question to the youngest, who answered immediately in her
shrill voice:
 “I am here to do whatever you ask me, my master.”
This one was like a little mouse, and was very taking, just as they all
were, so I took her in my arms and kissed her. The others made a movement
to go away, thinking, no doubt, that I had made my choice; but I ordered them
to stay, and sitting down in the Indian fashion, I made them all sit round me,
and began to tell them fairy-tales, for I spoke their language tolerably well.
They listened very attentively, and trembled, wringing their hands in
agony. Poor little things, they were not thinking any longer of the reason why
they were sent to me.
When I had finished my story, I called Latchmân, my confidential servant,
and made him bring sweetmeats and cakes, of which they ate enough to make
themselves ill; then, as I began to find the adventure rather funny, I organized
games to amuse my wives.
One of these diversions had an enormous success. I made a bridge of my
legs, and the six children ran underneath, the smallest beginning and the
tallest always knocking against them a little, because she did not stoop
enough. It made them shout with laughter, and these young voices sounding
beneath the low vaults of my sumptuous palace, seemed to wake it up and to
people it with childlike gaiety, filling it with life.
Next I took great interest in seeing to the sleeping apartments of my
innocent concubines, and in the end I saw them safely locked up under the
surveillance of four female servants, whom the prince had sent me at the
same time in order to take care of my sultanas.
For a week I took the greatest pleasure in acting the papa towards these
living dolls. We had capital games of hide-and-seek, puss-in-the-corner,
&c., which gave them the greatest pleasure, for every day I taught them a new
game, to their intense delight.
My house now seemed to be one large class, and my little friends, dressed
in beautiful silk stuffs, and in materials embroidered with gold and silver, ran
up and down the long galleries and the quiet rooms like little human animals.
At last, one evening, without my knowing exactly how it happened, the
oldest of them, the one called Châli, and who looked so like an ivory statue,
became my wife.
She was an adorable little creature, timid and gentle, who soon got to love
me ardently, with some degree of shame, with hesitation as if afraid of
European justice, with reserve and scruples, and yet with passionate
tenderness. I cherished her as if I had been her father.
 I beg your pardon, ladies; I am going rather too far.
The others continued to play in the palace, like a lot of happy kittens, and
Châli never left me except when I went to the prince.
We passed delicious hours together in the ruins of the old castle, among
the monkeys, who had become our friends.
She used to lie on my knees, and remain there, turning all sorts of things
over in her little sphinx’s head, or perhaps not thinking of anything, retaining
that beautiful, charming, hereditary pose of that noble and dreamy people, the
hieratic pose of the sacred statues.
In a large brass dish I had brought provisions, cakes, fruits. The apes
came nearer and nearer, followed by their young ones, who were more timid;
at last they sat down round us in a circle, without daring to come any nearer,
waiting for me to distribute my delicacies. Then, almost invariably, a male
more daring than the rest would come to me with outstretched hand, like a
beggar, and I would give him something, which he would take to his wife.
All the others immediately began to utter furious cries, cries of rage and
jealousy; and I could not make the terrible racket cease except by throwing
each one his share.
As I was very comfortable in the ruins I had my instruments brought there,
so that I might be able to work. As soon, however, as they saw the copper
fittings on my scientific instruments, the monkeys, no doubt taking them for
some deadly engines, fled on all sides, uttering the most piercing cries.
I often also spent my evenings with Châli on one of the external galleries
that looked on to the lake of Vihara. Without speaking we looked at the bright
moon gliding over the sky and throwing a mantle of trembling silver over the
water, and down there, on the further shore, the row of small pagodas like
elegant mushrooms with their stalks in the water. Taking the thoughtful head
of my little mistress between my hands, I printed a long, soft kiss on her
polished brow, on her great eyes, which were full of the secret of that ancient
and fabulous land, and on her calm lips which opened to my caress. I felt a
confused, powerful, above all, a poetical, sensation, the sensation that I
possessed a whole race in this little girl, that mysterious race from which all
the others seem to have taken their origin.
The prince, however, continued to load me with presents. One day he sent
me a very unexpected object, which excited a passionate admiration in Châli.
It was merely one of those cardboard boxes covered with shells stuck on
outside, and they can be bought at any European seaside resort for a penny or
two. But there it was a jewel beyond price, and no doubt was the first that
had found its way into the kingdom. I put it on a table and left it there,
wondering at the value which was set upon this trumpery article out of a
bazaar.
But Châli never got tired of looking at it, of admiring it ecstatically. From
time to time she would say to me, “May I touch it?” And when I had given
her permission she raised the lid, closed it again with the greatest precaution,
touched the shells very gently, and the contact seemed to give her real
physical pleasure.
However, I had finished my work, and it was time for me to return. I was
a long time in making up my mind, kept back by my tenderness for my little
friend, but at last I was obliged to fix the day of my departure.
The prince got up fresh hunting excursions and fresh wrestling matches,
and after a fortnight of these pleasures I declared that I could stay no longer,
and he gave me my liberty.
My farewell from Châli was heartrending. She wept, lying beside me,
with her head on my breast, shaken with sobs. I did not know how to console
her; my kisses were no good.
All at once an idea struck me, and getting up I went and got the shell-box,
and putting it into her hands, I said, “That is for you; it is yours.”
Then I saw her smile at first. Her whole face was lighted up with internal
joy, with that profound joy when impossible dreams are suddenly realized,
and she embraced me ardently.
All the same, she wept bitterly when I bade her a last farewell.
I gave paternal kisses and cakes to all the rest of my wives, and then I
started.

II

Two years had passed when my duties again called me to Bombay, and,
because I knew the country and the language well, I was left there to
undertake another mission.
I finished what I had to do as quickly as possible, and as I had a
considerable amount of spare time on my hands I determined to go and see
my friend the King of Ganhard and my dear little Châli once more, though I
expected to find her much changed.
 The rajah received me with every demonstration of pleasure, and hardly
left me for a moment during the first day of my visit. At night, however, when
I was alone, I sent for Haribada, and after several misleading questions I
said to him:
“Do you know what has become of little Châli, whom the rajah gave me?”
He immediately assumed a sad and troubled look, and said, in evident
embarrassment:
“We had better not speak of her.”
“Why? She was a dear little woman.”
“She turned out badly, Sir.”
“What — Châli? What has become of her? Where is she?”
“I mean to say that she came to a bad end.”
“A bad end! Is she dead?”
“Yes. She committed a very dreadful action.”
I was very much distressed. I felt my heart beat, and my breast was
oppressed with grief, and insisted on knowing what she had done and what
had happened to her.
The man became more and more embarrassed, and murmured, “You had
better not ask about it.”
“But I want to know.”
“She stole— “
“Who — Châli? What did she steal?”
“Something that belonged to you.”
“To me? What do you mean?”
“The day you left she stole that little box which the prince had given you;
it was found in her hands.”
“What box are you talking about?”
“The box covered with shells.”
“But I gave it to her.”
The Indian looked at me with stupefaction, then replied: “Well, she
declared with the most sacred oaths that you had given it to her, but nobody
could believe that you could have given a king’s present to a slave, and so
the rajah had her punished.”
“How was she punished? What was done to her?”
“She was tied up in a sack, and thrown into the lake from this window,
from the window of the room in which we are, where she had committed the
theft.”
 I felt the most terrible grief that I ever experienced, and I made a sign to
Haribada to go away, so that he might not see my tears; and I spent the night
on the gallery that looked on to the lake, on the gallery where I had so often
held the poor child on my knees.
I pictured to myself her pretty little body lying decomposed in a sack in
the dark waters beneath me, which we had so often looked at together
formerly.
The next day I left again, in spite of the rajah’s entreaties and evident
vexation; and I now still feel as if I had never loved any woman but Châli.
 A FAMILY AFFAIR

The small engine attached to the Neuilly steam-tram whistled as it passed the
Porte Maillot to warn all obstacles to get out of its way and puffed like a
person out of breath as it sent out its steam, its pistons moving rapidly with a
noise as of iron legs running. The train was going along the broad avenue that
ends at the Seine. The sultry heat at the close of a July day lay over the whole
city, and from the road, although there was not a breath of wind stirring, there
arose a white, chalky, suffocating, warm dust, which adhered to the moist
skin, filled the eyes and got into the lungs. People stood in the doorways of
their houses to try and get a breath of air.
The windows of the steam-tram were open and the curtains fluttered in the
wind. There were very few passengers inside, because on warm days people
preferred the outside or the platforms. They consisted of stout women in
peculiar costumes, of those shopkeepers’ wives from the suburbs, who made
up for the distinguished looks which they did not possess by ill-assumed
dignity; of men tired from office-work, with yellow faces, stooped shoulders,
and with one shoulder higher than the other, in consequence of, their long
hours of writing at a desk. Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of
domestic troubles, of constant want of money, disappointed hopes, for they
all belonged to the army of poor, threadbare devils who vegetate
economically in cheap, plastered houses with a tiny piece of neglected
garden on the outskirts of Paris, in the midst of those fields where night soil
is deposited.
A short, corpulent man, with a puffy face, dressed all in black and
wearing a decoration in his buttonhole, was talking to a tall, thin man,
dressed in a dirty, white linen suit, the coat all unbuttoned, with a white
Panama hat on his head. The former spoke so slowly and hesitatingly that it
occasionally almost seemed as if he stammered; he was Monsieur Caravan,
chief clerk in the Admiralty. The other, who had formerly been surgeon on
board a merchant ship, had set up in practice in Courbevoie, where he
applied the vague remnants of medical knowledge which he had retained
after an adventurous life, to the wretched population of that district. His name
was Chenet, and strange rumors were current as to his morality.
Monsieur Caravan had always led the normal life of a man in a
Government office. For the last thirty years he had invariably gone the same
way to his office every morning, and had met the same men going to business
at the same time, and nearly on the same spot, and he returned home every
evening by the same road, and again met the same faces which he had seen
growing old. Every morning, after buying his penny paper at the corner of the
Faubourg Saint Honore, he bought two rolls, and then went to his office, like
a culprit who is giving himself up to justice, and got to his desk as quickly as
possible, always feeling uneasy; as though he were expecting a rebuke for
some neglect of duty of which he might have been guilty.
Nothing had ever occurred to change the monotonous order of his
existence, for no event affected him except the work of his office,
perquisites, gratuities, and promotion. He never spoke of anything but of his
duties, either at the office, or at home — he had married the portionless
daughter of one of his colleagues. His mind, which was in a state of atrophy
from his depressing daily work, had no other thoughts, hopes or dreams than
such as related to the office, and there was a constant source of bitterness that
spoilt every pleasure that he might have had, and that was the employment of
so many naval officials, tinsmiths, as they were called because of their
silver-lace as first-class clerks; and every evening at dinner he discussed the
matter hotly with his wife, who shared his angry feelings, and proved to their
own satisfaction that it was in every way unjust to give places in Paris to
men who ought properly to have been employed in the navy.
He was old now, and had scarcely noticed how his life was passing, for
school had merely been exchanged for the office without any intermediate
transition, and the ushers, at whom he had formerly trembled, were replaced
by his chiefs, of whom he was terribly afraid. When he had to go into the
rooms of these official despots, it made him tremble from head to foot, and
that constant fear had given him a very awkward manner in their presence, a
humble demeanor, and a kind of nervous stammering.
He knew nothing more about Paris than a blind man might know who was
led to the same spot by his dog every day; and if he read the account of any
uncommon events or scandals in his penny paper, they appeared to him like
fantastic tales, which some pressman had made up out of his own head, in
order to amuse the inferior employees. He did not read the political news,
which his paper frequently altered as the cause which subsidized it might
require, for he was not fond of innovations, and when he went through the
Avenue of the Champs-Elysees every evening, he looked at the surging
crowd of pedestrians, and at the stream of carriages, as a traveller might who
has lost his way in a strange country.
As he had completed his thirty years of obligatory service that year, on the
first of January, he had had the cross of the Legion of Honor bestowed upon
him, which, in the semi-military public offices, is a recompense for the
miserable slavery — the official phrase is, loyal services — of unfortunate
convicts who are riveted to their desk. That unexpected dignity gave him a
high and new idea of his own capacities, and altogether changed him. He
immediately left off wearing light trousers and fancy waistcoats, and wore
black trousers and long coats, on which his ribbon, which was very broad,
showed off better. He got shaved every morning, manicured his nails more
carefully, changed his linen every two days, from a legitimate sense of what
was proper, and out of respect for the national Order, of which he formed a
part, and from that day he was another Caravan, scrupulously clean, majestic
and condescending.
At home, he said, “my cross,” at every moment, and he had become so
proud of it, that he could not bear to see men wearing any other ribbon in
their button-holes. He became especially angry on seeing strange orders:
“Which nobody ought to be allowed to wear in France,” and he bore Chenet
a particular grudge, as he met him on a tram-car every evening, wearing a
decoration of one kind or another, white, blue, orange, or green.
The conversation of the two men, from the Arc de Triomphe to Neuilly,
was always the same, and on that day they discussed, first of all, various
local abuses which disgusted them both, and the Mayor of Neuilly received
his full share of their censure. Then, as invariably happens in the company of
medical man Caravan began to enlarge on the chapter of illness, as in that
manner, he hoped to obtain a little gratuitous advice, if he was careful not to
show his hand. His mother had been causing him no little anxiety for some
time; she had frequent and prolonged fainting fits, and, although she was
ninety, she would not take care of herself.
Caravan grew quite tender-hearted when he mentioned her great age, and
more than once asked Doctor Chenet, emphasizing the word doctor —
although he was not fully qualified, being only an Offcier de Sante —
whether he had often met anyone as old as that. And he rubbed his hands with
pleasure; not, perhaps, that he cared very much about seeing the good woman
last forever here on earth, but because the long duration of his mother’s life
was, as it were an earnest of old age for himself, and he continued:
“In my family, we last long, and I am sure that, unless I meet with an
accident, I shall not die until I am very old.”
The doctor looked at him with pity, and glanced for a moment at his
neighbor’s red face, his short, thick neck, his “corporation,” as Chenet called
it to himself, his two fat, flabby legs, and the apoplectic rotundity of the old
official; and raising the white Panama hat from his head, he said with a
snigger:
“I am not so sure of that, old fellow; your mother is as tough as nails, and I
should say that your life is not a very good one.”
This rather upset Caravan, who did not speak again until the tram put them
down at their destination, where the two friends got out, and Chenet asked his
friend to have a glass of vermouth at the Cafe du Globe, opposite, which both
of them were in the habit of frequenting. The proprietor, who was a friend of
theirs, held out to them two fingers, which they shook across the bottles of the
counter; and then they joined three of their friends, who were playing
dominoes, and who had been there since midday. They exchanged cordial
greetings, with the usual question: “Anything new?” And then the three
players continued their game, and held out their hands without looking up,
when the others wished them “Good-night,” and then they both went home to
dinner.
Caravan lived in a small two-story house in Courbevaie, near where the
roads meet; the ground floor was occupied by a hair-dresser. Two bed
rooms, a dining-room and a kitchen, formed the whole of their apartments,
and Madame Caravan spent nearly her whole time in cleaning them up, while
her daughter, Marie-Louise, who was twelve, and her son, Phillip-Auguste,
were running about with all the little, dirty, mischievous brats of the
neighborhood, and playing in the gutter.
Caravan had installed his mother, whose avarice was notorious in the
neighborhood, and who was terribly thin, in the room above them. She was
always cross, and she never passed a day without quarreling and flying into
furious tempers. She would apostrophize the neighbors, who were standing at
their own doors, the coster-mongers, the street-sweepers, and the street-boys,
in the most violent language; and the latter, to have their revenge, used to
follow her at a distance when she went out, and call out rude things after her.
 A little servant from Normandy, who was incredibly giddy and
thoughtless, performed the household work, and slept on the second floor in
the same room as the old woman, for fear of anything happening to her in the
night.
When Caravan got in, his wife, who suffered from a chronic passion for
cleaning, was polishing up the mahogany chairs that were scattered about the
room with a piece of flannel. She always wore cotton gloves, and adorned
her head with a cap ornamented with many colored ribbons, which was
always tilted over one ear; and whenever anyone caught her polishing,
sweeping, or washing, she used to say:
“I am not rich; everything is very simple in my house, but cleanliness is
my luxury, and that is worth quite as much as any other.”
As she was gifted with sound, obstinate, practical common sense, she led
her husband in everything. Every evening during dinner, and afterwards when
they were in their room, they talked over the business of the office for a long
time, and although she was twenty years younger than he was, he confided
everything to her as if she took the lead, and followed her advice in every
matter.
She had never been pretty, and now she had grown ugly; in addition to
that, she was short and thin, while her careless and tasteless way of dressing
herself concealed her few small feminine attractions, which might have been
brought out if she had possessed any taste in dress. Her skirts were always
awry, and she frequently scratched herself, no matter on what part of her
person, totally indifferent as to who might see her, and so persistently, that
anyone who saw her might think that she was suffering from something like
the itch. The only adornments that she allowed herself were silk ribbons,
which she had in great profusion, and of various colors mixed together, in the
pretentious caps which she wore at home.
As soon as she saw her husband she rose and said, as she kissed his
whiskers:
“Did you remember Potin, my dear?”
He fell into a chair, in consternation, for that was the fourth time on which
he had forgotten a commission that he had promised to do for her.
“It is a fatality,” he said; “it is no good for me to think of it all day long,
for I am sure to forget it in the evening.”
But as he seemed really so very sorry, she merely said, quietly:
“You will think of it to-morrow, I dare say. Anything new at the office?”
 “Yes, a great piece of news; another tinsmith has been appointed second
chief clerk.” She became very serious, and said:
“So he succeeds Ramon; this was the very post that I wanted you to have.
And what about Ramon?”
“He retires on his pension.”
She became furious, her cap slid down on her shoulder, and she
continued:
“There is nothing more to be done in that shop now. And what is the name
of the new commissioner?”
“Bonassot.”
She took up the Naval Year Book, which she always kept close at hand,
and looked him up.
“‘Bonassot-Toulon. Born in 1851. Student Commissioner in 1871. Sub-
Commissioner in 1875.’ Has he been to sea?” she continued. At that question
Caravan’s looks cleared up, and he laughed until his sides shook.
“As much as Balin — as much as Baffin, his chief.” And he added an old
office joke, and laughed more than ever:
“It would not even do to send them by water to inspect the Point-du-Jour,
for they would be sick on the penny steamboats on the Seine.”
But she remained as serious as if she had not heard him, and then she said
in a low voice, as she scratched her chin:
“If we only had a Deputy to fall back upon. When the Chamber hears
everything that is going on at the Admiralty, the Minister will be turned out
——“
She was interrupted by a terrible noise on the stairs. Marie-Louise and
Philippe-Auguste, who had just come in from the gutter, were slapping each
other all the way upstairs. Their mother rushed at them furiously, and taking
each of them by an arm she dragged them into the room, shaking them
vigorously; but as soon as they saw their father, they rushed up to him, and he
kissed them affectionately, and taking one of them on each knee, began to talk
to them.
Philippe-Auguste was an ugly, ill-kempt little brat, dirty from head to foot,
with the face of an idiot, and Marie-Louise was already like her mother —
spoke like her, repeated her words, and even imitated her movements. She
also asked him whether there was anything fresh at the office, and he replied
merrily:
 “Your friend, Ramon, who comes and dines here every Sunday, is going to
leave us, little one. There is a new second head-clerk.”
She looked at her father, and with a precocious child’s pity, she said:
“Another man has been put over your head again.”
He stopped laughing, and did not reply, and in order to create a diversion,
he said, addressing his wife, who was cleaning the windows:
“How is mamma, upstairs?”
Madame Caravan left off rubbing, turned round pulled her cap up, as it
had fallen quite on to her back, and said with trembling lips:
“Ah! yes; let us talk about your mother, for she has made a pretty scene.
Just imagine: a short time ago Madame Lebaudin, the hairdresser’s wife,
came upstairs to borrow a packet of starch of me, and, as I was not at home,
your mother chased her out as though she were a beggar; but I gave it to the
old woman. She pretended not to hear, as she always does when one tells her
unpleasant truths, but she is no more deaf than I am, as you know. It is all a
sham, and the proof of it is, that she went up to her own room immediately,
without saying a word.”
Caravan, embarrassed, did not utter a word, and at that moment the little
servant came in to announce dinner. In order to let his mother know, he took a
broom-handle, which always stood in a corner, and rapped loudly on the
ceiling three times, and then they went into the dining-room. Madame
Caravan, junior, helped the soup, and waited for the old woman, but she did
not come, and as the soup was getting cold, they began to eat slowly, and
when their plates were empty, they waited again, and Madame Caravan, who
was furious, attacked her husband:
“She does it on purpose, you know that as well as I do. But you always
uphold her.”
Not knowing which side to take, he sent Marie-Louise to fetch her
grandmother, and he sat motionless, with his eyes cast down, while his wife
tapped her glass angrily with her knife. In about a minute, the door flew open
suddenly, and the child came in again, out of breath and very pale, and said
hurriedly:
“Grandmamma has fallen on the floor.”
Caravan jumped up, threw his table-napkin down, and rushed upstairs,
while his wife, who thought it was some trick of her mother-in-law’s,
followed more slowly, shrugging her shoulders, as if to express her doubt.
When they got upstairs, however, they found the old woman lying at full
length in the middle of the room; and when they turned her over, they saw that
she was insensible and motionless, while her skin looked more wrinkled and
yellow than usual, her eyes were closed, her teeth clenched, and her thin
body was stiff.
Caravan knelt down by her, and began to moan.
“My poor mother! my poor mother!” he said. But the other Madame
Caravan said:
“Bah! She has only fainted again, that is all, and she has done it to prevent
us from dining comfortably, you may be sure of that.”
They put her on the bed, undressed her completely, and Caravan, his wife,
and the servant began to rub her; but, in spite of their efforts, she did not
recover consciousness, so they sent Rosalie, the servant, to fetch Doctor
Chenet. He lived a long way off, on the quay, going towards Suresnes, and so
it was a considerable time before he arrived. He came at last, however, and,
after having looked at the old woman, felt her pulse, and listened for a heart
beat, he said: “It is all over.”
Caravan threw himself on the body, sobbing violently; he kissed his
mother’s rigid face, and wept so that great tears fell on the dead woman’s
face like drops of water, and, naturally, Madame Caravan, junior, showed a
decorous amount of grief, and uttered feeble moans as she stood behind her
husband, while she rubbed her eyes vigorously.
But, suddenly, Caravan raised himself up, with his thin hair in disorder,
and, looking very ugly in his grief, said:
“But — are you sure, doctor? Are you quite sure?”
The doctor stooped over the body, and, handling it with professional
dexterity, as a shopkeeper might do, when showing off his goods, he said:
“See, my dear friend, look at her eye.”
He raised the eyelid, and the old woman’s eye appeared altogether
unaltered, unless, perhaps, the pupil was rather larger, and Caravan felt a
severe shock at the sight. Then Monsieur Chenet took her thin arm, forced the
fingers open, and said, angrily, as if he had been contradicted:
“Just look at her hand; I never make a mistake, you may be quite sure of
that.”
Caravan fell on the bed, and almost bellowed, while his wife, still
whimpering, did what was necessary.
She brought the night-table, on which she spread a towel and placed four
wax candles on it, which she lighted; then she took a sprig of box, which was
hanging over the chimney glass, and put it between the four candles, in a
plate, which she filled with clean water, as she had no holy water. But, after
a moment’s rapid reflection, she threw a pinch of salt into the water, no doubt
thinking she was performing some sort of act of consecration by doing that,
and when she had finished, she remained standing motionless, and the doctor,
who had been helping her, whispered to her:
“We must take Caravan away.”
She nodded assent, and, going up to her husband, who was still on his
knees, sobbing, she raised him up by one arm, while Chenet took him by the
other.
They put him into a chair, and his wife kissed his forehead, and then began
to lecture him. Chenet enforced her words and preached firmness, courage,
and resignation — the very things which are always wanting in such
overwhelming misfortunes — and then both of them took him by the arms
again and led him out.
He was crying like a great child, with convulsive sobs; his arms hanging
down, and his legs weak, and he went downstairs without knowing what he
was doing, and moving his feet mechanically. They put him into the chair
which he always occupied at dinner, in front of his empty soup plate. And
there he sat, without moving, his eyes fixed on his glass, and so stupefied
with grief, that he could not even think.
In a corner, Madame Caravan was talking with the doctor and asking what
the necessary formalities were, as she wanted to obtain practical
information. At last, Monsieur Chenet, who appeared to be waiting for
something, took up his hat and prepared to go, saying that he had not dined
yet; whereupon she exclaimed:
“What! you have not dined? Why, stay here, doctor; don’t go. You shall
have whatever we have, for, of course, you understand that we do not fare
sumptuously.” He made excuses and refused, but she persisted, and said:
“You really must stay; at times like this, people like to have friends near
them, and, besides that, perhaps you will be able to persuade my husband to
take some nourishment; he must keep up his strength.”
The doctor bowed, and, putting down his hat, he said:
“In that case, I will accept your invitation, madame.”
She gave Rosalie, who seemed to have lost her head, some orders, and
then sat down, “to pretend to eat,” as she said, “to keep the doctor company.”
 The soup was brought in again, and Monsieur Chenet took two helpings.
Then there came a dish of tripe, which exhaled a smell of onions, and which
Madame Caravan made up her mind to taste.
“It is excellent,” the doctor said, at which she smiled, and, turning to her
husband, she said:
“Do take a little, my poor Alfred, only just to put something in your
stomach. Remember that you have got to pass the night watching by her!”
He held out his plate, docilely, just as he would have gone to bed, if he
had been told to, obeying her in everything, without resistance and without
reflection, and he ate; the doctor helped himself three times, while Madame
Caravan, from time to time, fished out a large piece at the end of her fork,
and swallowed it with a sort of studied indifference.
When a salad bowl full of macaroni was brought in, the doctor said:
“By Jove! That is what I am very fond of.” And this time, Madame
Caravan helped everybody. She even filled the saucers that were being
scraped by the children, who, being left to themselves, had been drinking
wine without any water, and were now kicking each other under the table.
Chenet remembered that Rossini, the composer, had been very fond of that
Italian dish, and suddenly he exclaimed:
“Why! that rhymes, and one could begin some lines like this:
The Maestro Rossini
Was fond of macaroni.”
Nobody listened to him, however. Madame Caravan, who had suddenly
grown thoughtful, was thinking of all the probable consequences of the event,
while her husband made bread pellets, which he put on the table-cloth, and
looked at with a fixed, idiotic stare. As he was devoured by thirst, he was
continually raising his glass full of wine to his lips, and the consequence was
that his mind, which had been upset by the shock and grief, seemed to
become vague, and his ideas danced about as digestion commenced.
The doctor, who, meanwhile, had been drinking away steadily, was
getting visibly drunk, and Madame Caravan herself felt the reaction which
follows all nervous shocks, and was agitated and excited, and, although she
had drunk nothing but water, her head felt rather confused.
Presently, Chenet began to relate stories of death that appeared comical to
him. For in that suburb of Paris, that is full of people from the provinces, one
finds that indifference towards death which all peasants show, were it even
their own father or mother; that want of respect, that unconscious brutality
which is so common in the country, and so rare in Paris, and he said:
“Why, I was sent for last week to the Rue du Puteaux, and when I went, I
found the patient dead and the whole family calmly sitting beside the bed
finishing a bottle of aniseed cordial, which had been bought the night before
to satisfy the dying man’s fancy.”
But Madame Caravan was not listening; she was continually thinking of
the inheritance, and Caravan was incapable of understanding anything further.
Coffee was presently served, and it had been made very strong to give
them courage. As every cup was well flavored with cognac, it made all their
faces red, and confused their ideas still more. To make matters still worse,
Chenet suddenly seized the brandy bottle and poured out “a drop for each of
them just to wash their mouths out with,” as he termed it, and then, without
speaking any more, overcome in spite of themselves, by that feeling of animal
comfort which alcohol affords after dinner, they slowly sipped the sweet
cognac, which formed a yellowish syrup at the bottom of their cups.
The children had fallen asleep, and Rosalie carried them off to bed.
Caravan, mechanically obeying that wish to forget oneself which possesses
all unhappy persons, helped himself to brandy again several times, and his
dull eyes grew bright. At last the doctor rose to go, and seizing his friend’s
arm, he said:
“Come with me; a little fresh air will do you good. When one is in
trouble, one must not remain in one spot.”
The other obeyed mechanically, put on his hat, took his stick, and went
out, and both of them walked arm-in-arm towards the Seine, in the starlight
night.
The air was warm and sweet, for all the gardens in the neighborhood
were full of flowers at this season of the year, and their fragrance, which is
scarcely perceptible during the day, seemed to awaken at the approach of
night, and mingled with the light breezes which blew upon them in the
darkness.
The broad avenue with its two rows of gas lamps, that extended as far as
the Arc de Triomphe, was deserted and silent, but there was the distant roar
of Paris, which seemed to have a reddish vapor hanging over it. It was a kind
of continual rumbling, which was at times answered by the whistle of a train
in the distance, travelling at full speed to the ocean, through the provinces.
 The fresh air on the faces of the two men rather overcame them at first,
made the doctor lose his equilibrium a little, and increased Caravan’s
giddiness, from which he had suffered since dinner. He walked as if he were
in a dream; his thoughts were paralyzed, although he felt no great grief, for he
was in a state of mental torpor that prevented him from suffering, and he even
felt a sense of relief which was increased by the mildness of the night.
When they reached the bridge, they turned to the right, and got the fresh
breeze from the river, which rolled along, calm and melancholy, bordered by
tall poplar trees, while the stars looked as if they were floating on the water
and were-moving with the current. A slight white mist that floated over the
opposite banks, filled their lungs with a sensation of cold, and Caravan
stopped suddenly, for he was struck by that smell from the water which
brought back old memories to his mind. For, in his mind, he suddenly saw his
mother again, in Picardy, as he had seen her years before, kneeling in front of
their door, and washing the heaps of linen at her side in the stream that ran
through their garden. He almost fancied that he could hear the sound of the
wooden paddle with which she beat the linen in the calm silence of the
country, and her voice, as she called out to him: “Alfred, bring me some
soap.” And he smelled that odor of running water, of the mist rising from the
wet ground, that marshy smell, which he should never forget, and which came
back to him on this very evening on which his mother had died.
He stopped, seized with a feeling of despair. A sudden flash seemed to
reveal to him the extent of his calamity, and that breath from the river plunged
him into an abyss of hopeless grief. His life seemed cut in half, his youth
disappeared, swallowed up by that death. All the former days were over and
done with, all the recollections of his youth had been swept away; for the
future, there would be nobody to talk to him of what had happened in days
gone by, of the people he had known of old, of his own part of the country,
and of his past life; that was a part of his existence which existed no longer,
and the rest might as well end now.
And then he saw “the mother” as she was when young, wearing well-worn
dresses, which he remembered for such a long time that they seemed
inseparable from her; he recollected her movements, the different tones of
her voice, her habits, her predilections, her fits of anger, the wrinkles on her
face, the movements of her thin fingers, and all her well-known attitudes,
which she would never have again, and clutching hold of the doctor, he began
to moan and weep. His thin legs began to tremble, his whole stout body was
shaken by his sobs, all he could say was:
“My mother, my poor mother, my poor mother!”
But his companion, who was still drunk, and who intended to finish the
evening in certain places of bad repute that he frequented secretly, made him
sit down on the grass by the riverside, and left him almost immediately, under
the pretext that he had to see a patient.
Caravan went on crying for some time, and when he had got to the end of
his tears, when his grief had, so to say, run out, he again felt relief, repose
and sudden tranquillity.
The moon had risen, and bathed the horizon in its soft light.
The tall poplar trees had a silvery sheen on them, and the mist on the plain
looked like drifting snow; the river, in which the stars were reflected, and
which had a sheen as of mother-of-pearl, was gently rippled by the wind.
The air was soft and sweet, and Caravan inhaled it almost greedily, and
thought that he could perceive a feeling of freshness, of calm and of
superhuman consolation pervading him.
He actually resisted that feeling of comfort and relief, and kept on saying
to himself: “My poor mother, my poor mother!” and tried to make himself
cry, from a kind of conscientious feeling; but he could not succeed in doing
so any longer, and those sad thoughts, which had made him sob so bitterly a
shore time before, had almost passed away. In a few moments, he rose to go
home, and returned slowly, under the influence of that serene night, and with
a heart soothed in spite of himself.
When he reached the bridge, he saw that the last tramcar was ready to
start, and behind it were the brightly lighted windows of the Cafe du Globe.
He felt a longing to tell somebody of his loss, to excite pity, to make himself
interesting. He put on a woeful face, pushed open the door, and went up to the
counter, where the landlord still was. He had counted on creating a sensation,
and had hoped that everybody would get up and come to him with
outstretched hands, and say: “Why, what is the matter with you?” But nobody
noticed his disconsolate face, so he rested his two elbows on the counter,
and, burying his face in his hands, he murmured: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
The landlord looked at him and said: “Are you ill, Monsieur Caravan?”
“No, my friend,” he replied, “but my mother has just died.”
“Ah!” the other exclaimed, and as a customer at the other end of the
establishment asked for a glass of Bavarian beer, he went to attend to him,
leaving Caravan dumfounded at his want of sympathy.
The three domino players were sitting at the same table which they had
occupied before dinner, totally absorbed in their game, and Caravan went up
to them, in search of pity, but as none of them appeared to notice him he made
up his mind to speak.
“A great misfortune has happened to me since I was here,” he said.
All three slightly raised their heads at the same instant, but keeping their
eyes fixed on the pieces which they held in their hands.
“What do you say?”
“My mother has just died”; whereupon one of them said:
“Oh! the devil,” with that false air of sorrow which indifferent people
assume. Another, who could not find anything to say, emitted a sort of
sympathetic whistle, shaking his head at the same time, and the third turned to
the game again, as if he were saying to himself: “Is that all!”
Caravan had expected some of these expressions that are said to “come
from the heart,” and when he saw how his news was received, he left the
table, indignant at their calmness at their friend’s sorrow, although this
sorrow had stupefied him so that he scarcely felt it any longer. When he got
home his wife was waiting for him in her nightgown, and sitting in a low
chair by the open window, still thinking of the inheritance.
“Undress yourself,” she said; “we can go on talking.”
He raised his head, and looking at the ceiling, said:
“But — there is nobody upstairs.”
“I beg your pardon, Rosalie is with her, and you can go and take her place
at three o’clock in the morning, when you have had some sleep.”
He only partially undressed, however, so as to be ready for anything that
might happen, and after tying a silk handkerchief round his head, he lay down
to rest, and for some time neither of them spoke. Madame Caravan was
thinking.
Her nightcap was adorned with a red bow, and was pushed rather to one
side, as was the way with all the caps she wore, and presently she turned
towards him and said:
“Do you know whether your mother made a will?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then replied:
“I — I do not think so. No, I am sure that she did not.”
His wife looked at him, and she said, in a law, angry tone:
 “I call that infamous; here we have been wearing ourselves out for ten
years in looking after her, and have boarded and lodged her! Your sister
would not have done so much for her, nor I either, if I had known how I was
to be rewarded! Yes, it is a disgrace to her memory! I dare say that you will
tell me that she paid us, but one cannot pay one’s children in ready money for
what they do; that obligation is recognized after death; at any rate, that is how
honorable people act. So I have had all my worry and trouble for nothing!
Oh, that is nice! that is very nice!”
Poor Caravan, who was almost distracted, kept on repeating:
“My dear, my dear, please, please be quiet.”
She grew calmer by degrees, and, resuming her usual voice and manner,
she continued:
“We must let your sister know to-morrow.”
He started, and said:
“Of course we must; I had forgotten all about it; I will send her a telegram
the first thing in the morning.”
“No,” she replied, like a woman who had foreseen everything; “no, do not
send it before ten or eleven o’clock, so that we may have time to turn round
before she comes. It does not take more than two hours to get here from
Charenton, and we can say that you lost your head from grief. If we let her
know in the course of the day, that will be soon enough, and will give us time
to look round.”
Caravan put his hand to his forehead, and, in the came timid voice in
which he always spoke of his chief, the very thought of whom made him
tremble, he said:
“I must let them know at the office.”
“Why?” she replied. “On occasions like this, it is always excusable to
forget. Take my advice, and don’t let him know; your chief will not be able to
say anything to you, and you will put him in a nice fix.
“Oh! yes, that I shall, and he will be in a terrible rage, too, when he
notices my absence. Yes, you are right; it is a capital idea, and when I tell
him that my mother is dead, he will be obliged to hold his tongue.”
And he rubbed his hands in delight at the joke, when he thought of his
chief’s face; while upstairs lay the body of the dead old woman, with the
servant asleep beside it.
But Madame Caravan grew thoughtful, as if she were preoccupied by
something which she did not care to mention, and at last she said:
 “Your mother had given you her clock, had she not — the girl playing at
cup and ball?”
He thought for a moment, and then replied:
“Yes, yes; she said to me (but it was a long time ago, when she first came
here): ‘I shall leave the clock to you, if you look after me well.’”
Madame Caravan was reassured, and regained her serenity, and said:
“Well, then, you must go and fetch it out of her room, for if we get your
sister here, she will prevent us from taking it.”
He hesitated.
“Do you think so?”
That made her angry.
“I certainly think so; once it is in our possession, she will know nothing at
all about where it came from; it belongs to us. It is just the same with the
chest of drawers with the marble top, that is in her room; she gave it me one
day when she was in a good temper. We will bring it down at the same time.”
Caravan, however, seemed incredulous, and said:
“But, my dear, it is a great responsibility!”
She turned on him furiously.
“Oh! Indeed! Will you never change? You would let your children die of
hunger, rather than make a move. Does not that chest of drawers belong to us,
as she gave it to me? And if your sister is not satisfied, let her tell me so, me!
I don’t care a straw for your sister. Come, get up, and we will bring down
what your mother gave us, immediately.”
Trembling and vanquished, he got out of bed and began to put on his
trousers, but she stopped him:
“It is not worth while to dress yourself; your underwear is quite enough. I
mean to go as I am.”
They both left the room in their night clothes, went upstairs quite
noiselessly, opened the door and went into the room, where the four lighted
tapers and the plate with the sprig of box alone seemed to be watching the
old woman in her rigid repose, for Rosalie, who was lying back in the easy
chair with her legs stretched out, her hands folded in her lap, and her head on
one side, was also quite motionless, and was snoring with her mouth wide
open.
Caravan took the clock, which was one of those grotesque objects that
were produced so plentifully under the Empire. A girl in gilt bronze was
holding a cup and ball, and the ball formed the pendulum.
 “Give that to me,” his wife said, “and take the marble slab off the chest of
drawers.”
He put the marble slab on his shoulder with considerable effort, and they
left the room. Caravan had to stoop in the doorway, and trembled as he went
downstairs, while his wife walked backwards, so as to light him, and held
the candlestick in one hand, carrying the clock under the other arm.
When they were in their own room, she heaved a sigh.
“We have got over the worst part of the job,” she said; “so now let us go
and fetch the other things.”
But the bureau drawers were full of the old woman’s wearing apparel,
which they must manage to hide somewhere, and Madame Caravan soon
thought of a plan.
“Go and get that wooden packing case in the vestibule; it is hardly worth
anything, and we may just as well put it here.”
And when he had brought it upstairs they began to fill it. One by one they
took out all the collars, cuffs, chemises, caps, all the well-worn things that
had belonged to the poor woman lying there behind them, and arranged them
methodically in the wooden box in such a manner as to deceive Madame
Braux, the deceased woman’s other child, who would be coming the next
day.
When they had finished, they first of all carried the bureau drawers
downstairs, and the remaining portion afterwards, each of them holding an
end, and it was some time before they could make up their minds where it
would stand best; but at last they decided upon their own room, opposite the
bed, between the two windows, and as soon as it was in its place Madame
Caravan filled it with her own things. The clock was placed on the chimney-
piece in the dining-room, and they looked to see what the effect was, and
were both delighted with it and agreed that nothing could be better. Then they
retired, she blew out the candle, and soon everybody in the house was
asleep.
It was broad daylight when. Caravan opened his eyes again. His mind was
rather confused when he woke up, and he did not clearly remember what had
happened for a few minutes; when he did, he felt a weight at his heart, and
jumped out of bed, almost ready to cry again.
He hastened to the room overhead, where Rosalie was still sleeping in the
same position as the night before, not having awakened once. He sent her to
do her work, put fresh tapers in the place of those that had burnt out, and then
he looked at his mother, revolving in his brain those apparently profound
thoughts, those religious and philosophical commonplaces which trouble
people of mediocre intelligence in the presence of death.
But, as his wife was calling him, he went downstairs. She had written out
a list of what had to be done during the morning, and he was horrified when
he saw the memorandum:
1. Report the death at the mayor’s office. 2. See the doctor who had
attended her. 3. Order the coffin. 4. Give notice at the church. 5. Go to the
undertaker. 6. Order the notices of her death at the printer’s. 7. Go to the
lawyer. 8. Telegraph the news to all the family.
Besides all this, there were a number of small commissions; so he took
his hat and went out. As the news had spread abroad, Madame Caravan’s
female friends and neighbors soon began to come in and begged to be
allowed to see the body. There had been a scene between husband and wife
at the hairdresser’s on the ground floor about the matter, while a customer
was being shaved. The wife, who was knitting steadily, said: “Well, there is
one less, and as great a miser as one ever meets with. I certainly did not care
for her; but, nevertheless, I must go and have a look at her.”
The husband, while lathering his patient’s chin, said: “That is another
queer fancy! Nobody but a woman would think of such a thing. It is not
enough for them to worry you during life, but they cannot even leave you at
peace when you are dead:” But his wife, without being in the least
disconcerted, replied: “The feeling is stronger than I am, and I must go. It has
been on me since the morning. If I were not to see her, I should think about it
all my life; but when I have had a good look at her, I shall be satisfied.”
The knight of the razor shrugged his shoulders and remarked in a low
voice to the gentleman whose cheek he was scraping: “I just ask you, what
sort of ideas do you think these confounded females have? I should not amuse
myself by going to see a corpse!” But his wife had heard him and replied
very quietly: “But it is so, it is so.” And then, putting her knitting on the
counter, she went upstairs to the first floor, where she met two other
neighbors, who had just come, and who were discussing the event with
Madame Caravan, who was giving them the details, and they all went
together to the death chamber. The four women went in softly, and, one after
the other, sprinkled the bed clothes with the salt water, knelt down, made the
sign of the cross while they mumbled a prayer. Then they rose from their
knees and looked for some time at the corpse with round, wide-open eyes
and mouths partly open, while the daughter-in-law of the dead woman, with
her handkerchief to her face, pretended to be sobbing piteously.
When she turned about to walk away whom should she perceive standing
close to the door but Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste, who were
curiously taking stock of all that was going on. Then, forgetting her pretended
grief, she threw herself upon them with uplifted hands, crying out in a furious
voice, “Will you get out of this, you horrid brats!”
Ten minutes later, going upstairs again with another contingent of
neighbors, she prayed, wept profusely, performed all her duties, and found
once more her two children, who had followed her upstairs. She again boxed
their ears soundly, but the next time she paid no heed to them, and at each
fresh arrival of visitors the two urchins always followed in the wake,
kneeling down in a corner and imitating slavishly everything they saw their
mother do.
When the afternoon came the crowds of inquisitive people began to
diminish, and soon there were no more visitors. Madame Caravan, returning
to her own apartments, began to make the necessary preparations for the
funeral ceremony, and the deceased was left alone.
The window of the room was open. A torrid heat entered, along with
clouds of dust; the flames of the four candles were flickering beside the
immobile corpse, and upon the cloth which covered the face, the closed eyes,
the two stretched-out hands, small flies alighted, came, went and careered up
and down incessantly, being the only companions of the old woman for the
time being.
Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste, however, had now left the house and
were running up and down the street. They were soon surrounded by their
playmates, by little girls especially, who were older and who were much
more interested in all the mysteries of life, asking questions as if they were
grown people.
“Then your grandmother is dead?” “Yes, she died yesterday evening.”
“What does a dead person look like?”
Then Marie began to explain, telling all about the candles, the sprig of box
and the face of the corpse. It was not long before great curiosity was aroused
in the minds of all the children, and they asked to be allowed to go upstairs to
look at the departed.
Marie-Louise at once organized a first expedition, consisting of five girls
and two boys — the biggest and the most courageous. She made them take off
their shoes so that they might not be discovered. The troupe filed into the
house and mounted the stairs as stealthily as an army of mice.
Once in the chamber, the little girl, imitating her mother, regulated the
ceremony. She solemnly walked in advance of her comrades, went down on
her knees, made the sign of the cross, moved her lips as in prayer, rose,
sprinkled the bed, and while the children, all crowded together, were
approaching — frightened and curious and eager to look at the face and
hands of the deceased — she began suddenly to simulate sobbing and to bury
her eyes in her little handkerchief. Then, becoming instantly consoled, on
thinking of the other children who were downstairs waiting at the door, she
ran downstairs followed by the rest, returning in a minute with another group,
then a third; for all the little ragamuffins of the countryside, even to the little
beggars in rags, had congregated in order to participate in this new pleasure;
and each time she repeated her mother’s grimaces with absolute perfection.
At length, however, she became tired. Some game or other drew the
children away from the house, and the old grandmother was left alone,
forgotten suddenly by everybody.
The room was growing dark, and upon the dry and rigid features of the
corpse the fitful flames of the candles cast patches of light.
Towards 8 o’clock Caravan ascended to the chamber of death, closed the
windows and renewed the candles. He was now quite composed on entering
the room, accustomed already to regard the corpse as though it had been there
for months. He even went the length of declaring that, as yet, there were no
signs of decomposition, making this remark just at the moment when he and
his wife were about to sit down at table. “Pshaw!” she responded, “she is
now stark and stiff; she will keep for a year.”
The soup was eaten in silence. The children, who had been left to
themselves all day, now worn out by fatigue, were sleeping soundly on their
chairs, and nobody ventured to break the silence.
Suddenly the flame of the lamp went down. Madame Caravan immediately
turned up the wick, a hollow sound ensued, and the light went out. They had
forgotten to buy oil. To send for it now to the grocer’s would keep back the
dinner, and they began to look for candles, but none were to be found except
the tapers which had been placed upon the table upstairs in the death
chamber.
Madame Caravan, always prompt in her decisions, quickly despatched
Marie-Louise to fetch two, and her return was awaited in total darkness.
 The footsteps of the girl who had ascended the stairs were distinctly
heard. There was silence for a few seconds and then the child descended
precipitately. She threw open the door and in a choking voice murmured:
“Oh! papa, grandmamma is dressing herself!”
Caravan bounded to his feet with such precipitance that his chair fell over
against the wall. He stammered out: “You say? . . . . What are you saying?”
But Marie-Louise, gasping with emotion, repeated: “Grand — grand —
grandmamma is putting on her clothes, she is coming downstairs.”
Caravan rushed boldly up the staircase, followed by his wife,
dumfounded; but he came to a standstill before the door of the second floor,
overcome with terror, not daring to enter. What was he going to see?
Madame Caravan, more courageous, turned the handle of the door and
stepped forward into the room.
The old woman was standing up. In awakening from her lethargic sleep,
before even regaining full consciousness, in turning upon her side and raising
herself on her elbow, she had extinguished three of the candles which burned
near the bed. Then, gaining strength, she got off the bed and began to look for
her clothes. The absence of her chest of drawers had at first worried her, but,
after a little, she had succeeded in finding her things at the bottom of the
wooden box, and was now quietly dressing. She emptied the plateful of
water, replaced the sprig of box behind the looking-glass, and arranged the
chairs in their places, and was ready to go downstairs when there appeared
before her her son and daughter-in-law.
Caravan rushed forward, seized her by the hands, embraced her with tears
in his eyes, while his wife, who was behind him, repeated in a hypocritical
tone of voice: “Oh, what a blessing! oh, what a blessing!”
But the old woman, without being at all moved, without even appearing to
understand, rigid as a statue, and with glazed eyes, simply asked: “Will
dinner soon be ready?”
He stammered out, not knowing what he said:
“Oh, yes, mother, we have been waiting for you.”
And with an alacrity unusual in him, he took her arm, while Madame
Caravan, the younger, seized the candle and lighted them downstairs, walking
backwards in front of them, step by step, just as she had done the previous
night for her husband, who was carrying the marble.
On reaching the first floor, she almost ran against people who were
ascending the stairs. It was the Charenton family, Madame Braux, followed
by her husband.
The wife, tall and stout, with a prominent stomach, opened wide her
terrified eyes and was ready to make her escape. The husband, a socialist
shoemaker, a little hairy man, the perfect image of a monkey, murmured quite
unconcerned: “Well, what next? Is she resurrected?”
As soon as Madame Caravan recognized them, she made frantic gestures
to them; then, speaking aloud, she said: “Why, here you are! What a pleasant
surprise!”
But Madame Braux, dumfounded, understood nothing. She responded in a
low voice: “It was your telegram that brought us; we thought that all was
over.”
Her husband, who was behind her, pinched her to make her keep silent.
He added with a sly laugh, which his thick beard concealed: “It was very
kind of you to invite us here. We set out post haste,” which remark showed
the hostility which had for a long time reigned between the households. Then,
just as the old woman reached the last steps, he pushed forward quickly and
rubbed his hairy face against her cheeks, shouting in her ear, on account of
her deafness: “How well you look, mother; sturdy as usual, hey!”
Madame Braux, in her stupefaction at seeing the old woman alive, whom
they all believed to be dead, dared not even embrace her; and her enormous
bulk blocked up the passageway and hindered the others from advancing. The
old woman, uneasy and suspicious, but without speaking, looked at everyone
around her; and her little gray eyes, piercing and hard, fixed themselves now
on one and now on the other, and they were so full of meaning that the
children became frightened.
Caravan, to explain matters, said: “She has been somewhat ill, but she is
better now; quite well, indeed, are you not, mother?”
Then the good woman, continuing to walk, replied in a husky voice, as
though it came from a distance: “It was syncope. I heard you all the while.”
An embarrassing silence followed. They entered the dining-room, and in a
few minutes all sat down to an improvised dinner.
Only M. Braux had retained his self-possession. His gorilla features
grinned wickedly, while he let fall some words of double meaning which
painfully disconcerted everyone.
But the door bell kept ringing every second, and Rosalie, distracted, came
to call Caravan, who rushed out, throwing down his napkin. His brother-in-
law even asked him whether it was not one of his reception days, to which he
stammered out in answer: “No, only a few packages; nothing more.”
A parcel was brought in, which he began to open carelessly, and the
mourning announcements with black borders appeared unexpectedly.
Reddening up to the very eyes, he closed the package hurriedly and pushed it
under his waistcoat.
His mother had not seen it! She was looking intently at her clock which
stood on the mantelpiece, and the embarrassment increased in midst of a
dead silence. Turning her wrinkled face towards her daughter, the old
woman, in whose eyes gleamed malice, said: “On Monday you must take me
away from here, so that I can see your little girl. I want so much to see her.”
Madame Braux, her features all beaming, exclaimed: “Yes, mother, that I
will,” while Madame Caravan, the younger, who had turned pale, was ready
to faint with annoyance. The two men, however, gradually drifted into
conversation and soon became embroiled in a political discussion. Braux
maintained the most revolutionary and communistic doctrines, his eyes
glowing, and gesticulating and throwing about his arms. “Property, sir,” he
said, “is a robbery perpetrated on the working classes; the land is the
common property of every man; hereditary rights are an infamy and a
disgrace.” But here he suddenly stopped, looking as if he had just said
something foolish, then added in softer tones: “But this is not the proper
moment to discuss such things.”
The door was opened and Dr. Chenet appeared. For a moment he seemed
bewildered, but regaining his usual smirking expression of countenance, he
jauntily approached the old woman and said: “Aha! mamma; you are better
to-day. Oh! I never had any doubt but you would come round again; in fact, I
said to myself as I was mounting the staircase, ‘I have an idea that I shall find
the old lady on her feet once more’;” and as he patted her gently on the back:
“Ah! she is as solid as the Pont-Neuf, she will bury us all; see if she does
not.”
He sat down, accepted the coffee that was offered him, and soon began to
join in the conversation of the two men, backing up Braux, for he himself had
been mixed up in the Commune.
The old woman, now feeling herself fatigued, wished to retire. Caravan
rushed forward. She looked him steadily in the eye and said: “You, you must
carry my clock and chest of drawers upstairs again without a moment’s
delay.” “Yes, mamma,” he replied, gasping; “yes, I will do so.” The old
woman then took the arm of her daughter and withdrew from the room. The
two Caravans remained astounded, silent, plunged in the deepest despair,
while Braux rubbed his hands and sipped his coffee gleefully.
Suddenly Madame Caravan, consumed with rage, rushed at him,
exclaiming: “You are a thief, a footpad, a cur! I would spit in your face! I —
I — would — — “ She could find nothing further to say, suffocating as she
was with rage, while he went on sipping his coffee with a smile.
His wife returning just then, Madame Caravan attacked her sister-in-law,
and the two women — the one with her enormous bulk, the other epileptic
and spare, with changed voices and trembling hands flew at one another with
words of abuse.
Chenet and Braux now interposed, and the latter, taking his better half by
the shoulders, pushed her out of the door before him, shouting: “Go on, you
slut; you talk too much”; and the two were heard in the street quarrelling until
they disappeared from sight.
M. Chenet also took his departure, leaving the Caravans alone, face to
face. The husband fell back on his chair, and with the cold sweat standing out
in beads on his temples, murmured: “What shall I say to my chief to-
morrow?”
 BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER’S CORPSE

OR

THE SMILE OF SCHOPENHAUER

He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him each day, about two
o’clock, sitting beneath the hotel windows on a bench in the promenade,
looking out on the calm sea. He remained for some time without moving, in
the heat of the sun, gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now and
then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with beclouded summits that shut
in Mentone; then, with a very slow movement, he would cross his long legs,
so thin that they seemed like two bones, around which fluttered the cloth of
his trousers, and he would open a book, always the same book. And then he
did not stir any more, but read on, read on with his eye and his mind; all his
wasting body seemed to read, all his soul plunged, lost, disappeared, in this
book, up to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got
up and reentered the hotel.
He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in his
own room, and spoke to nobody.
A vague, curiosity attracted me to him. One day, I sat down by his side,
having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of Musset’s
poems.
And I began to look through “Rolla.”
Suddenly, my neighbor said to me, in good French:
“Do you know German, monsieur?”
“Not at all, monsieur.”
“I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I could have
lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable thing — this book which I
hold in my hand.”
“What is it, pray?”
“It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand.
All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting.”
 I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms
incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the
greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.
And Musset’s verses arose in my memory:
“Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?”
And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm
of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose
influence is henceforth ineffaceable.
Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be
enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain
and of his disenchantment.
A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals
and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls,
killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the
illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted
by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted
everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their
own souls particles of his thought.
“So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?” I said to
the German.
He smiled sadly.
“Up to the time of his death, monsieur.”
And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came near
him.
He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a glimpse of
this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the midst of his disciples,
dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking and tearing to
pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a dog tears with one bite of
his teeth the tissues with which he plays.
He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
astonished and terrified: “I thought I had spent an hour with the devil.”
Then he added:
“He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even after
his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it that is not generally known, if it
would interest you.”
And he began, in a languid voice, interrupted by frequent fits of coughing.
“Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in
turn, two by two, till morning.
“He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy. Two
wax candles were burning on the stand by the bedside.
“It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our
comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we
came and sat down at the foot of the bed.
“The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew
so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us that
he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak. His thought, or rather
his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more than ever in the
atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him. His domination
seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead. A feeling of
mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.
“The bodies of these men disappear, but they themselves remain; and in
the night which follows the cessation of their heart’s pulsation I assure you,
monsieur, they are terrifying.
“And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like jets of
flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown Life.
“‘It seems to me that he is going to speak,’ said my comrade. And we
stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face, with its
eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed, on the point
of fainting. I faltered:
“‘I don’t know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you I am not
well.’
“And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from
the corpse.
“Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining room,
and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.
“I took one of the wax candles which burned on the stand, and I left the
second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end of the adjoining
apartment, in such a position that we could see the bed and the corpse,
clearly revealed by the light.
 “But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his
immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was flitting
around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful odor of the decomposed body
came toward us and penetrated us, sickening and indefinable.
“Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound,
came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him, and
we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something white pass
across the bed, fall on the carpet, and vanish under an armchair.
“We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything, distracted
by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at each other. We
were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed fiercely enough to have raised the
clothing on our chests. I was the first to speak:
“‘Did you see?’
“‘Yes, I saw.’
“‘Can it be that he is not dead?’
“‘Why, when the body is putrefying?’
“‘What are we to do?’
“My companion said in a hesitating tone:
“‘We must go and look.’
“I took our wax candle and entered first, glancing into all the dark corners
in the large apartment. Nothing was moving now, and I approached the bed.
But I stood transfixed with stupor and fright:
“Schopenhauer was no longer laughing! He was grinning in a horrible
fashion, with his lips pressed together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I
stammered out:
“‘He is not dead!’
“But the terrible odor ascended to my nose and stifled me. And I no longer
moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, terrified as if in the presence of an
apparition.
“Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his glance, and
saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the bed, standing out
white on the dark carpet, and open as if to bite, Schopenhauer’s set of
artificial teeth.
“The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out of
the mouth.
“I was really frightened that day, monsieur.”
 And as the sun was sinking toward the glittering sea, the consumptive
German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the hotel.
 MISS HARRIET

There were seven of us on a drag, four women and three men; one of the
latter sat on the box seat beside the coachman. We were ascending, at a
snail’s pace, the winding road up the steep cliff along the coast.
Setting out from Etretat at break of day in order to visit the ruins of
Tancarville, we were still half asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the
morning. The women especially, who were little accustomed to these early
excursions, half opened and closed their eyes every moment, nodding their
heads or yawning, quite insensible to the beauties of the dawn.
It was autumn. On both sides of the road stretched the bare fields,
yellowed by the stubble of wheat and oats which covered the soil like a
beard that had been badly shaved. The moist earth seemed to steam. Larks
were singing high up in the air, while other birds piped in the bushes.
The sun rose at length in front of us, bright red on the plane of the horizon,
and in proportion as it ascended, growing clearer from minute to minute, the
country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself like a young girl leaving
her bed in her white robe of vapor. The Comte d’Etraille, who was seated on
the box, cried:
“Look! look! a hare!” and he extended his arm toward the left, pointing to
a patch of clover. The animal scurried along, almost hidden by the clover,
only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across a furrow, stopped,
started off again at full speed, changed its course, stopped anew, uneasy,
spying out every danger, uncertain what route to take, when suddenly it began
to run with great bounds, disappearing finally in a large patch of beet-root.
All the men had waked up to watch the course of the animal.
Rene Lamanoir exclaimed:
“We are not at all gallant this morning,” and; regarding his neighbor, the
little Baroness de Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to her in a
low tone: “You are thinking of your husband, baroness. Reassure yourself; he
will not return before Saturday, so you have still four days.”
She answered with a sleepy smile:
“How stupid you are!” Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: “Now, let
somebody say something to make us laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have
the reputation of having had more love affairs than the Due de Richelieu, tell
us a love story in which you have played a part; anything you like.”
Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very
strong, very proud of his physique and very popular with women, took his
long white beard in his hand and smiled. Then, after a few moments’
reflection, he suddenly became serious.
“Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for I am going to relate to you the
saddest love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my friends
may ever pass through a similar experience.
“I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of
Normandy. I call ‘pillaging’ wandering about, with a knapsack on one’s
back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching
landscapes. I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky
wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any kind,
without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the morrow.
One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save his fancy,
without any counsellor save his eyes. One stops because a running brook
attracts one, because the smell of potatoes frying tickles one’s olfactories on
passing an inn. Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides one in
his choice or the roguish glance of the servant at an inn. Do not despise me
for my affection for these rustics. These girls have a soul as well as senses,
not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips; while their hearty and willing
kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love is always love, come whence it
may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go
away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be
despised.
“I have had rendezvous in ditches full of primroses, behind the cow stable
and in barns among the straw, still warm from the heat of the day. I have
recollections of coarse gray cloth covering supple peasant skin and regrets
for simple, frank kisses, more delicate in their unaffected sincerity than the
subtle favors of charming and distinguished women.
“But what one loves most amid all these varied adventures is the country,
the woods, the rising of the sun, the twilight, the moonlight. These are, for the
painter, honeymoon trips with Nature. One is alone with her in that long and
quiet association. You go to sleep in the fields, amid marguerites and
poppies, and when you open your eyes in the full glare of the sunlight you
descry in the distance the little village with its pointed clock tower which
sounds the hour of noon.
“You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out at the foot of an
oak, amid a growth of tall, slender weeds, glistening with life. You go down
on your knees, bend forward and drink that cold, pellucid water which wets
your mustache and nose; you drink it with a physical pleasure, as though you
kissed the spring, lip to lip. Sometimes, when you find a deep hole along the
course of these tiny brooks, you plunge in quite naked, and you feel on your
skin, from head to foot, as it were, an icy and delicious caress, the light and
gentle quivering of the stream.
“You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the edge of ponds, inspired when
the sun is setting in an ocean of blood-red clouds and casts red reflections or
the river. And at night, under the moon, which passes across the vault of
heaven, you think of a thousand strange things which would never have
occurred to your mind under the brilliant light of day.
“So, in wandering through the same country where we, are this year, I
came to the little village of Benouville, on the cliff between Yport and
Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast as straight as a
wall, with its projecting chalk cliffs descending perpendicularly into the sea.
I had walked since early morning on the short grass, smooth and yielding as a
carpet, that grows on the edge of the cliff. And, singing lustily, I walked with
long strides, looking sometimes at the slow circling flight of a gull with its
white curved wings outlined on the blue sky, sometimes at the brown sails of
a fishing bark on the green sea. In short, I had passed a happy day, a day of
liberty and of freedom from care.
“A little farmhouse where travellers were lodged was pointed out to me,
a kind of inn, kept by a peasant woman, which stood in the centre of a
Norman courtyard surrounded by a double row of beeches.
“Leaving the coast, I reached the hamlet, which was hemmed in by great
trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.
“She was an old, wrinkled and stern peasant woman, who seemed always
to receive customers under protest, with a kind of defiance.
“It was the month of May. The spreading apple trees covered the court
with a shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon people and
upon the grass.
“I said: ‘Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?’
“Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:
 “‘That depends; everything is let, but all the same I can find out.”
“In five minutes we had come to an agreement, and I deposited my bag
upon the earthen floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a
table and a washbowl. The room looked into the large, smoky kitchen, where
the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm and the landlady,
who was a widow.
“I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman was making a
chicken fricassee for dinner in the large fireplace in which hung the iron pot,
black with smoke.
“‘You have travellers, then, at the present time?’ said I to her.
“She answered in an offended tone of voice:
“‘I have a lady, an English lady, who has reached years of maturity. She
occupies the other room.’
“I obtained, by means of an extra five sous a day, the privilege of dining
alone out in the yard when the weather was fine.
“My place was set outside the door, and I was beginning to gnaw the lean
limbs of the Normandy chicken, to drink the clear cider and to munch the
hunk of white bread, which was four days old but excellent.
“Suddenly the wooden gate which gave on the highway was opened, and a
strange lady directed her steps toward the house. She was very thin, very tall,
so tightly enveloped in a red Scotch plaid shawl that one might have
supposed she had no arms, if one had not seen a long hand appear just above
the hips, holding a white tourist umbrella. Her face was like that of a mummy,
surrounded with curls of gray hair, which tossed about at every step she took
and made me think, I know not why, of a pickled herring in curl papers.
Lowering her eyes, she passed quickly in front of me and entered the house.
“That singular apparition cheered me. She undoubtedly was my neighbor,
the English lady of mature age of whom our hostess had spoken.
“I did not see her again that day. The next day, when I had settled myself
to commence painting at the end of that beautiful valley which you know and
which extends as far as Etretat, I perceived, on lifting my eyes suddenly,
something singular standing on the crest of the cliff, one might have said a
pole decked out with flags. It was she. On seeing me, she suddenly
disappeared. I reentered the house at midday for lunch and took my seat at the
general table, so as to make the acquaintance of this odd character. But she
did not respond to my polite advances, was insensible even to my little
attentions. I poured out water for her persistently, I passed her the dishes
with great eagerness. A slight, almost imperceptible, movement of the head
and an English word, murmured so low that I did not understand it, were her
only acknowledgments.
“I ceased occupying myself with her, although she had disturbed my
thoughts.
“At the end of three days I knew as much about her as did Madame
Lecacheur herself.
“She was called Miss Harriet. Seeking out a secluded village in which to
pass the summer, she had been attracted to Benouville some six months
before and did not seem disposed to leave it. She never spoke at table, ate
rapidly, reading all the while a small book of the Protestant propaganda. She
gave a copy of it to everybody. The cure himself had received no less than
four copies, conveyed by an urchin to whom she had paid two sous
commission. She said sometimes to our hostess abruptly, without preparing
her in the least for the declaration:
“‘I love the Saviour more than all. I admire him in all creation; I adore
him in all nature; I carry him always in my heart.’
“And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her tracts
which were destined to convert the universe.
“In, the village she was not liked. In fact, the schoolmaster having
pronounced her an atheist, a kind of stigma attached to her. The cure, who
had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded:
“‘She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and I
believe her to be a person of pure morals.’
“These words, ‘atheist,’ ‘heretic,’ words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this
English woman was rich and that she had passed her life in travelling through
every country in the world because her family had cast her off. Why had her
family cast her off? Because of her impiety, of course!
“She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles; one of those
opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many; one of those good
and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d’hote of every hotel in
Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of
the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias
their manners of petrified vestals, their indescribable toilets and a certain
odor of india-rubber which makes one believe that at night they are slipped
into a rubber casing.
 “Whenever I caught sight of one of these individuals in a hotel I fled like
the birds who see a scarecrow in a field.
“This woman, however, appeared so very singular that she did not
displease me.
“Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not rustic,
felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic declarations of the old
maid. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a term of contempt
that rose to her lips, called forth by I know not what confused and mysterious
mental ratiocination. She said: ‘That woman is a demoniac.’ This epithet,
applied to that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly
droll. I myself never called her anything now but ‘the demoniac,’
experiencing a singular pleasure in pronouncing aloud this word on
perceiving her.
“One day I asked Mother Lecacheur: ‘Well, what is our demoniac about
to-day?’
“To which my rustic friend replied with a shocked air:
“‘What do you think, sir? She picked up a toad which had had its paw
crushed and carried it to her room and has put it in her washbasin and
bandaged it as if it were a man. If that is not profanation I should like to
know what is!’
“On another occasion, when walking along the shore she bought a large
fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the sea again.
The sailor from whom she had bought it, although she paid him handsomely,
now began to swear, more exasperated, indeed, than if she had put her hand
into his pocket and taken his money. For more than a month he could not
speak of the circumstance without becoming furious and denouncing it as an
outrage. Oh, yes! She was indeed a demoniac, this Miss Harriet, and Mother
Lecacheur must have had an inspiration in thus christening her.
“The stable boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa
in his youth, entertained other opinions. He said with a roguish air: ‘She is an
old hag who has seen life.’
“If the poor woman had but known!
“The little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but I was
never able to understand why. Probably her only reason was that she was a
stranger, of another race; of a different tongue and of another religion. She
was, in fact, a demoniac!
 “She passed her time wandering about the country, adoring and seeking
God in nature. I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of bushes.
Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed aside the
branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused at having been
found thus, fixing on me terrified eyes like those of an owl surprised in open
day.
“Sometimes, when I was working among the rocks, I would suddenly
descry her on the edge of the cliff like a lighthouse signal. She would be
gazing in rapture at the vast sea glittering in the sunlight and the boundless
sky with its golden tints. Sometimes I would distinguish her at the end of the
valley, walking quickly with her elastic English step, and I would go toward
her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see her illuminated visage, her
dried-up, ineffable features, which seemed to glow with inward and
profound happiness.
“I would often encounter her also in the corner of a field, sitting on the
grass under the shadow of an apple tree, with her little religious booklet
lying open on her knee while she gazed out at the distance.
“I could not tear myself away from that quiet country neighborhood, to
which I was attached by a thousand links of love for its wide and peaceful
landscape. I was happy in this sequestered farm, far removed from
everything, but in touch with the earth, the good, beautiful, green earth. And
— must I avow it? — there was, besides, a little curiosity which retained me
at the residence of Mother Lecacheur. I wished to become acquainted a little
with this strange Miss Harriet and to know what transpires in the solitary
souls of those wandering old English women.
“We became acquainted in a rather singular manner. I had just finished a
study which appeared to me to be worth something, and so it was, as it sold
for ten thousand francs fifteen years later. It was as simple, however, as two
and two make four and was not according to academic rules. The whole right
side of my canvas represented a rock, an enormous rock, covered with sea-
wrack, brown, yellow and red, across which the sun poured like a stream of
oil. The light fell upon the rock as though it were aflame without the sun,
which was at my back, being visible. That was all. A first bewildering study
of blazing, gorgeous light.
“On the left was the sea, not the blue sea, the slate-colored sea, but a sea
of jade, greenish, milky and solid beneath the deep-colored sky.
 “I was so pleased with my work that I danced from sheer delight as I
carried it back to the inn. I would have liked the whole world to see it at
once. I can remember that I showed it to a cow that was browsing by the
wayside, exclaiming as I did so: ‘Look at that, my old beauty; you will not
often see its like again.’
“When I had reached the house I immediately called out to Mother
Lecacheur, shouting with all my might:
“‘Hullo, there! Mrs. Landlady, come here and look at this.’
“The rustic approached and looked at my work with her stupid eyes which
distinguished nothing and could not even tell whether the picture represented
an ox or a house.
“Miss Harriet just then came home, and she passed behind me just as I
was holding out my canvas at arm’s length, exhibiting it to our landlady. The
demoniac could not help but see it, for I took care to exhibit the thing in such
a way that it could not escape her notice. She stopped abruptly and stood
motionless, astonished. It was her rock which was depicted, the one which
she climbed to dream away her time undisturbed.
“She uttered a British ‘Aoh,’ which was at once so accentuated and so
flattering that I turned round to her, smiling, and said:
“‘This is my latest study, mademoiselle.’
“She murmured rapturously, comically and tenderly:
“‘Oh! monsieur, you understand nature as a living thing.’
“I colored and was more touched by that compliment than if it had come
from a queen. I was captured, conquered, vanquished. I could have embraced
her, upon my honor.
“I took my seat at table beside her as usual. For the first time she spoke,
thinking aloud:
“‘Oh! I do love nature.’
“I passed her some bread, some water, some wine. She now accepted
these with a little smile of a mummy. I then began to talk about the scenery.
“After the meal we rose from the table together and walked leisurely
across the courtyard; then, attracted doubtless by the fiery glow which the
setting sun cast over the surface of the sea, I opened the gate which led to the
cliff, and we walked along side by side, as contented as two persons might
be who have just learned to understand and penetrate each other’s motives
and feelings.
 “It was one of those warm, soft evenings which impart a sense of ease to
flesh and spirit alike. All is enjoyment, everything charms. The balmy air,
laden with the perfume of grasses and the smell of seaweed, soothes the
olfactory sense with its wild fragrance, soothes the palate with its sea savor,
soothes the mind with its pervading sweetness.
“We were now walking along the edge of the cliff, high above the
boundless sea which rolled its little waves below us at a distance of a
hundred metres. And we drank in with open mouth and expanded chest that
fresh breeze, briny from kissing the waves, that came from the ocean and
passed across our faces.
“Wrapped in her plaid shawl, with a look of inspiration as she faced the
breeze, the English woman gazed fixedly at the great sun ball as it descended
toward the horizon. Far off in the distance a three-master in full sail was
outlined on the blood-red sky and a steamship, somewhat nearer, passed
along, leaving behind it a trail of smoke on the horizon. The red sun globe
sank slowly lower and lower and presently touched the water just behind the
motionless vessel, which, in its dazzling effulgence, looked as though framed
in a flame of fire. We saw it plunge, grow smaller and disappear, swallowed
up by the ocean.
“Miss Harriet gazed in rapture at the last gleams of the dying day. She
seemed longing to embrace the sky, the sea, the whole landscape.
“She murmured: ‘Aoh! I love — I love’ I saw a tear in her eye. She
continued: ‘I wish I were a little bird, so that I could mount up into the
firmament.’
“She remained standing as I had often before seen her, perched on the
cliff, her face as red as her shawl. I should have liked to have sketched her in
my album. It would have been a caricature of ecstasy.
“I turned away so as not to laugh.
“I then spoke to her of painting as I would have done to a fellow artist,
using the technical terms common among the devotees of the profession. She
listened attentively, eagerly seeking to divine the meaning of the terms, so as
to understand my thoughts. From time to time she would exclaim:
“‘Oh! I understand, I understand. It is very interesting.’
“We returned home.
“The next day, on seeing me, she approached me, cordially holding out her
hand; and we at once became firm friends.
 “She was a good creature who had a kind of soul on springs, which
became enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium like all women who
are spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be preserved in a pickle of
innocence, but her heart still retained something very youthful and
inflammable. She loved both nature and animals with a fervor, a love like old
wine fermented through age, with a sensuous love that she had never
bestowed on men.
“One thing is certain, that the sight of a bitch nursing her puppies, a mare
roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird’s nest full of young ones,
screaming, with their open mouths and their enormous heads, affected her
perceptibly.
“Poor, solitary, sad, wandering beings! I love you ever since I became
acquainted with Miss Harriet.
“I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but
dare not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in the morning
with my knapsack on my back, she would accompany me in silence as far as
the end of the village, evidently struggling to find words with which to begin
a conversation. Then she would leave me abruptly and walk away quickly
with her springy step.
“One day, however, she plucked up courage:
“I would like to see how you paint pictures. Are you willing? I have been
very curious.’
“And she blushed as if she had said something very audacious.
“I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had begun a large
picture.
“She remained standing behind me, following all my gestures with
concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing perhaps that she was
disturbing me, she said: ‘Thank you,’ and walked away.
“But she soon became more friendly, and accompanied me every day, her
countenance exhibiting visible pleasure. She carried her camp stool under
her arm, not permitting me to carry it. She would remain there for hours,
silent and motionless, following with her eyes the point of my brush, in its
every movement. When I obtained unexpectedly just the effect I wanted by a
dash of color put on with the palette knife, she involuntarily uttered a little
‘Ah!’ of astonishment, of joy, of admiration. She had the most tender respect
for my canvases, an almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a
part of nature’s work divine. My studies appeared to her a kind of religious
pictures, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of converting
me.
“Oh, he was a queer, good-natured being, this God of hers! He was a sort
of village philosopher without any great resources and without great power,
for she always figured him to herself as inconsolable over injustices
committed under his eyes, as though he were powerless to prevent them.
“She was, however, on excellent terms with him, affecting even to be the
confidante of his secrets and of his troubles. She would say:
“‘God wills’ or ‘God does not will,’ just like a sergeant announcing to a
recruit: ‘The colonel has commanded.’
“At the bottom of her heart she deplored my ignorance of the intentions of
the Eternal, which she endeavored to impart to me.
“Almost every day I found in my pockets, in my hat when I lifted it from
the ground, in my paintbox, in my polished shoes, standing in front of my
door in the morning, those little pious tracts which she no doubt, received
directly from Paradise.
“I treated her as one would an old friend, with unaffected cordiality. But I
soon perceived that she had changed somewhat in her manner, though, for a
while, I paid little attention to it.
“When I was painting, whether in my valley or in some country lane, I
would see her suddenly appear with her rapid, springy walk. She would then
sit down abruptly, out of breath, as though she had been running or were
overcome by some profound emotion. Her face would be red, that English
red which is denied to the people of all other countries; then, without any
reason, she would turn ashy pale and seem about to faint away. Gradually,
however, her natural color would return and she would begin to speak.
“Then, without warning, she would break off in the middle of a sentence,
spring up from her seat and walk away so rapidly and so strangely that I was
at my wits’ ends to discover whether I had done or said anything to displease
or wound her.
“I finally came to the conclusion that those were her normal manners,
somewhat modified no doubt in my honor during the first days of our
acquaintance.
“When she returned to the farm, after walking for hours on the windy
coast, her long curls often hung straight down, as if their springs had been
broken. This had hitherto seldom given her any concern, and she would come
to dinner without embarrassment all dishevelled by her sister, the breeze.
 “But now she would go to her room and arrange the untidy locks, and
when I would say, with familiar gallantry, which, however, always offended
her:
“‘You are as beautiful as a star to-day, Miss Harriet,’ a blush would
immediately rise to her cheeks, the blush of a young girl, of a girl of fifteen.
“Then she would suddenly become quite reserved and cease coming to
watch me paint. I thought, ‘This is only a fit of temper; it will blow over.’
But it did not always blow over, and when I spoke to her she would answer
me either with affected indifference or with sullen annoyance.
“She became by turns rude, impatient and nervous. I never saw her now
except at meals, and we spoke but little. I concluded at length that I must have
offended her in some way, and, accordingly, I said to her one evening:
“‘Miss Harriet, why is it that you do not act toward me as formerly? What
have I done to displease you? You are causing me much pain!’
“She replied in a most comical tone of anger:
“‘I am just the same with you as formerly. It is not true, not true,’ and she
ran upstairs and shut herself up in her room.
“Occasionally she would look at me in a peculiar manner. I have often
said to myself since then that those who are condemned to death must look
thus when they are informed that their last day has come. In her eye there
lurked a species of insanity, an insanity at once mystical and violent; and
even more, a fever, an aggravated longing, impatient and impotent, for the
unattained and unattainable.
“Nay, it seemed to me there was also going on within her a struggle in
which her heart wrestled with an unknown force that she sought to master,
and even, perhaps, something else. But what do I know? What do I know?
“It was indeed a singular revelation.
“For some time I had commenced to work, as soon as daylight appeared,
on a picture the subject of which was as follows:
“A deep ravine, enclosed, surmounted by two thickets of trees and vines,
extended into the distance and was lost, submerged in that milky vapor, in
that cloud like cotton down that sometimes floats over valleys at daybreak.
And at the extreme end of that heavy, transparent fog one saw, or, rather,
surmised, that a couple of human beings were approaching, a human couple,
a youth and a maiden, their arms interlaced, embracing each other, their
heads inclined toward each other, their lips meeting.
 “A first ray of the sun, glistening through the branches, pierced that fog of
the dawn, illuminated it with a rosy reflection just behind the rustic lovers,
framing their vague shadows in a silvery background. It was well done; yes,
indeed, well done.
“I was working on the declivity which led to the Valley of Etretat. On this
particular morning I had, by chance, the sort of floating vapor which I
needed. Suddenly something rose up in front of me like a phantom; it was
Miss Harriet. On seeing me she was about to flee. But I called after her,
saying: ‘Come here, come here, mademoiselle. I have a nice little picture for
you.’
“She came forward, though with seeming reluctance. I handed her my
sketch. She said nothing, but stood for a long time, motionless, looking at it,
and suddenly she burst into tears. She wept spasmodically, like men who
have striven hard to restrain their tears, but who can do so no longer and
abandon themselves to grief, though still resisting. I sprang to my feet, moved
at the sight of a sorrow I did not comprehend, and I took her by the hand with
an impulse of brusque affection, a true French impulse which acts before it
reflects.
“She let her hands rest in mine for a few seconds, and I felt them quiver as
if all her nerves were being wrenched. Then she withdrew her hands
abruptly, or, rather, snatched them away.
“I recognized that tremor, for I had felt it, and I could not be deceived. Ah!
the love tremor of a woman, whether she be fifteen or fifty years of age,
whether she be of the people or of society, goes so straight to my heart that I
never have any hesitation in understanding it!
“Her whole frail being had trembled, vibrated, been overcome. I knew it.
She walked away before I had time to say a word, leaving me as surprised as
if I had witnessed a miracle and as troubled as if I had committed a crime.
“I did not go in to breakfast. I went to take a turn on the edge of the cliff,
feeling that I would just as lief weep as laugh, looking on the adventure as
both comic and deplorable and my position as ridiculous, believing her
unhappy enough to go insane.
“I asked myself what I ought to do. It seemed best for me to leave the
place, and I immediately resolved to do so.
“Somewhat sad and perplexed, I wandered about until dinner time and
entered the farmhouse just when the soup had been served up.
 “I sat down at the table as usual. Miss Harriet was there, eating away
solemnly, without speaking to any one, without even lifting her eyes. Her
manner and expression were, however, the same as usual.
“I waited patiently till the meal had been finished, when, turning toward
the landlady, I said: ‘Well, Madame Lecacheur, it will not be long now
before I shall have to take my leave of you.’
“The good woman, at once surprised and troubled, replied in her
drawling voice: ‘My dear sir, what is it you say? You are going to leave us
after I have become so accustomed to you?’
“I glanced at Miss Harriet out of the corner of my eye. Her countenance
did not change in the least. But Celeste, the little servant, looked up at me.
She was a fat girl, of about eighteen years of age, rosy, fresh, as strong as a
horse, and possessing the rare attribute of cleanliness. I had kissed her at odd
times in out-of-the-way corners, after the manner of travellers — nothing
more.
“The dinner being at length over, I went to smoke my pipe under the apple
trees, walking up and down from one end of the enclosure to the other. All
the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange discovery of the
morning, that passionate and grotesque attachment for me, the recollections
which that revelation had suddenly called up, recollections at once charming
and perplexing, perhaps also that look which the servant had cast on me at
the announcement of my departure — all these things, mixed up and
combined, put me now in a reckless humor, gave me a tickling sensation of
kisses on the lips and in my veins a something which urged me on to commit
some folly.
“Night was coming on, casting its dark shadows under the trees, when I
descried Celeste, who had gone to fasten up the poultry yard at the other end
of the enclosure. I darted toward her, running so noiselessly that she heard
nothing, and as she got up from closing the small trapdoor by which the
chickens got in and out, I clasped her in my arms and rained on her coarse,
fat face a shower of kisses. She struggled, laughing all the time, as she was
accustomed to do in such circumstances. Why did I suddenly loose my grip of
her? Why did I at once experience a shock? What was it that I heard behind
me?
“It was Miss Harriet, who had come upon us, who had seen us and who
stood in front of us motionless as a spectre. Then she disappeared in the
darkness.
 “I was ashamed, embarrassed, more desperate at having been thus
surprised by her than if she had caught me committing some criminal act.
“I slept badly that night. I was completely unnerved and haunted by sad
thoughts. I seemed to hear loud weeping, but in this I was no doubt deceived.
Moreover, I thought several times that I heard some one walking up and
down in the house and opening the hall door.
“Toward morning I was overcome by fatigue and fell asleep. I got up late
and did not go downstairs until the late breakfast, being still in a bewildered
state, not knowing what kind of expression to put on.
“No one had seen Miss Harriet. We waited for her at table, but she did not
appear. At length Mother Lecacheur went to her room. The English woman
had gone out. She must have set out at break of day, as she was wont to do, in
order to see the sun rise.
“Nobody seemed surprised at this, and we began to eat in silence.
“The weather was hot, very hot, one of those broiling, heavy days when
not a leaf stirs. The table had been placed out of doors, under an apple tree,
and from time to time Sapeur had gone to the cellar to draw a jug of cider,
everybody was so thirsty. Celeste brought the dishes from the kitchen, a
ragout of mutton with potatoes, a cold rabbit and a salad. Afterward she
placed before us a dish of strawberries, the first of the season.
“As I wished to wash and freshen these, I begged the servant to go and
draw me a pitcher of cold water.
“In about five minutes she returned, declaring that the well was dry. She
had lowered the pitcher to the full extent of the cord and had touched the
bottom, but on drawing the pitcher up again it was empty. Mother Lecacheur,
anxious to examine the thing for herself, went and looked down the hole. She
returned, announcing that one could see clearly something in the well,
something altogether unusual. But this no doubt was bundles of straw, which
a neighbor had thrown in out of spite.
“I wished to look down the well also, hoping I might be able to clear up
the mystery, and I perched myself close to the brink. I perceived indistinctly a
white object. What could it be? I then conceived the idea of lowering a
lantern at the end of a cord. When I did so the yellow flame danced on the
layers of stone and gradually became clearer. All four of us were leaning
over the opening, Sapeur and Celeste having now joined us. The lantern
rested on a black-and-white indistinct mass, singular, incomprehensible.
Sapeur exclaimed:
 “‘It is a horse. I see the hoofs. It must have got out of the meadow during
the night and fallen in headlong.’
“But suddenly a cold shiver froze me to the marrow. I first recognized a
foot, then a leg sticking up; the whole body and the other leg were completely
under water.
“I stammered out in a loud voice, trembling so violently that the lantern
danced hither and thither over the slipper:
“‘It is a woman! Who-who-can it be? It is Miss Harriet!’
“Sapeur alone did not manifest horror. He had witnessed many such
scenes in Africa.
“Mother Lecacheur and Celeste began to utter piercing screams and ran
away.
“But it was necessary to recover the corpse of the dead woman. I attached
the young man securely by the waist to the end of the pulley rope and
lowered him very slowly, watching him disappear in the darkness. In one
hand he held the lantern and a rope in the other. Soon I recognized his voice,
which seemed to come from the centre of the earth, saying:
“‘Stop!’
“I then saw him fish something out of the water. It was the other leg. He
then bound the two feet together and shouted anew:
“‘Haul up!’
“I began to wind up, but I felt my arms crack, my muscles twitch, and I
was in terror lest I should let the man fall to the bottom. When his head
appeared at the brink I asked:
“‘Well?’ as if I expected he had a message from the drowned woman.
“We both got on the stone slab at the edge of the well and from opposite
sides we began to haul up the body.
“Mother Lecacheur and Celeste watched us from a distance, concealed
from view behind the wall of the house. When they saw issuing from the hole
the black slippers and white stockings of the drowned person they
disappeared.
“Sapeur seized the ankles, and we drew up the body of the poor woman.
The head was shocking to look at, being bruised and lacerated, and the long
gray hair, out of curl forevermore, hanging down tangled and disordered.
“‘In the name of all that is holy! how lean she is,’ exclaimed Sapeur in a
contemptuous tone.
 “We carried her into the room, and as the women did not put in an
appearance I, with the assistance of the stable lad, dressed the corpse for
burial.
“I washed her disfigured face. Under the touch of my finger an eye was
slightly opened and regarded me with that pale, cold look, that terrible look
of a corpse which seems to come from the beyond. I braided as well as I
could her dishevelled hair and with my clumsy hands arranged on her head a
novel and singular coiffure. Then I took off her dripping wet garments,
baring, not without a feeling of shame, as though I had been guilty of some
profanation, her shoulders and her chest and her long arms, as slim as the
twigs of a tree.
“I next went to fetch some flowers, poppies, bluets, marguerites and fresh,
sweet-smelling grass with which to strew her funeral couch.
“I then had to go through the usual formalities, as I was alone to attend to
everything. A letter found in her pocket, written at the last moment, requested
that her body be buried in the village in which she had passed the last days of
her life. A sad suspicion weighed on my heart. Was it not on my account that
she wished to be laid to rest in this place?
“Toward evening all the female gossips of the locality came to view the
remains of the defunct, but I would not allow a single person to enter. I
wanted to be alone, and I watched beside her all night.
“I looked at the corpse by the flickering light of the candles, at this
unhappy woman, unknown to us all, who had died in such a lamentable
manner and so far away from home. Had she left no friends, no relations
behind her? What had her infancy been? What had been her life? Whence had
she come thither alone, a wanderer, lost like a dog driven from home? What
secrets of sufferings and of despair were sealed up in that unprepossessing
body, in that poor body whose outward appearance had driven from her all
affection, all love?
“How many unhappy beings there are! I felt that there weighed upon that
human creature the eternal injustice of implacable nature! It was all over
with her, without her ever having experienced, perhaps, that which sustains
the greatest outcasts to wit, the hope of being loved once! Otherwise why
should she thus have concealed herself, fled from the face of others? Why did
she love everything so tenderly and so passionately, everything living that
was not a man?
 “I recognized the fact that she believed in a God, and that she hoped to
receive compensation from the latter for all the miseries she had endured.
She would now disintegrate and become, in turn, a plant. She would blossom
in the sun, the cattle would browse on her leaves, the birds would bear away
the seeds, and through these changes she would become again human flesh.
But that which is called the soul had been extinguished at the bottom of the
dark well. She suffered no longer. She had given her life for that of others yet
to come.
“Hours passed away in this silent and sinister communion with the dead.
A pale light at length announced the dawn of a new day; then a red ray
streamed in on the bed, making a bar of light across the coverlet and across
her hands. This was the hour she had so much loved. The awakened birds
began to sing in the trees.
“I opened the window to its fullest extent and drew back the curtains that
the whole heavens might look in upon us, and, bending over the icy corpse, I
took in my hands the mutilated head and slowly, without terror or disgust, I
imprinted a kiss, a long kiss, upon those lips which had never before been
kissed.”
Leon Chenal remained silent. The women wept. We heard on the box seat
the Count d’Atraille blowing his nose from time to time. The coachman alone
had gone to sleep. The horses, who no longer felt the sting of the whip, had
slackened their pace and moved along slowly. The drag, hardly advancing at
all, seemed suddenly torpid, as if it had been freighted with sorrow.
[Miss Harriet appeared in Le Gaulois, July 9, 1883, under the title
of Miss Hastings. The story was later revised, enlarged; and partly
reconstructed. This is what De Maupassant wrote to Editor Havard
March 15, 1884, in an unedited letter, in regard to the title of the
story that was to give its name to the volume:

“I do not believe that Hastings is a bad name, inasmuch as it is

known all over the world, and recalls the greatest facts in English
history. Besides, Hastings is as much a name as Duval is with us.

“The name Cherbuliez selected, Miss Revel, is no more like an

English name than like a Turkish name. But here is another name as
English as Hastings, and more euphonious; it is Miss Harriet.
I will ask you therefore to substitute Harriet for Hastings.”
It was in regard to this very tittle that De Maupassant had a
disagreement with Audran and Boucheron director of the Bouffes
Parisiens in October, 1890 They had given this title to an operetta
about to be played at the Bouffes. It ended however, by their
ceding to De Maupassant, and the title of the operetta was changed
to Miss Helyett.]
 LITTLE LOUISE ROQUE

OR

THE CASE OF LOUISE ROQUE

The former soldier, Mederic Rompel, familiarly called Mederic by the
country folks, left the post office of Roily-le-Tors at the usual hour. After
passing through the village with his long stride, he cut across the meadows of
Villaume and reached the bank of the Brindille, following the path along the
water’s edge to the village of Carvelin, where he commenced to deliver his
letters. He walked quickly, following the course of the narrow river, which
frothed, murmured and boiled in its grassy bed beneath an arch of willows.
Mederic went on without stopping, with only this thought in his mind: “My
first letter is for the Poivron family, then I have one for Monsieur Renardet;
so I must cross the wood.”
His blue blouse, fastened round his waist by a black leather belt, moved
in a quick, regular fashion above the green hedge of willow trees, and his
stout stick of holly kept time with his steady tread.
He crossed the Brindille on a bridge consisting of a tree trunk, with a
handrail of rope, fastened at either end to a stake driven into the ground.
The wood, which belonged to Monsieur Renardet, the mayor of Carvelin
and the largest landowner in the district, consisted of huge old trees, straight
as pillars and extending for about half a league along the left bank of the
stream which served as a boundary to this immense dome of foliage.
Alongside the water large shrubs had grown up in the sunlight, but under the
trees one found nothing but moss, thick, soft and yielding, from which arose,
in the still air, an odor of dampness and of dead wood.
Mederic slackened his pace, took off his black cap adorned with red lace
and wiped his forehead, for it was by this time hot in the meadows, though it
was not yet eight o’clock in the morning.
He had just recovered from the effects of the heat and resumed his quick
pace when he noticed at the foot of a tree a knife, a child’s small knife. When
he picked it up he discovered a thimble and also a needlecase not far away.
Having taken up these objects, he thought: “I’ll entrust them to the mayor,”
and he resumed his journey, but now he kept his eyes open, expecting to find
something else.
All of a sudden he stopped short, as if he had struck against a wooden
barrier. Ten paces in front of him lay stretched on her back on the moss a
little girl, perfectly nude, her face covered with a handkerchief. She was
about twelve years old.
Meredic advanced on tiptoe, as if he apprehended some danger, and he
glanced toward the spot uneasily.
What was this? No doubt she was asleep. Then he reflected that a person
does not go to sleep naked at half-past seven in the morning under the cool
trees. So, then, she must be dead, and he must be face to face with a crime. At
this thought a cold shiver ran through his frame, although he was an old
soldier. And then a murder was such a rare thing in the country, and, above
all, the murder of a child, that he could not believe his eyes. But she had no
wound-nothing save a spot of blood on her leg. How, then, had she been
killed?
He stopped close to her and gazed at her, while he leaned on his stick.
Certainly he must know her, for he knew all the inhabitants of the district; but,
not being able to get a look at her face, he could not guess her name. He
stooped forward in order to take off the handkerchief which covered her
face, then paused, with outstretched hand, restrained by an idea that occurred
to him.
Had he the right to disarrange anything in the condition of the corpse
before the official investigation? He pictured justice to himself as a kind of
general whom nothing escapes and who attaches as much importance to a lost
button as to the stab of a knife in the stomach. Perhaps under this
handkerchief evidence could be found to sustain a charge of murder; in fact,
if such proof were there it might lose its value if touched by an awkward
hand.
Then he raised himself with the intention of hastening toward the mayor’s
residence, but again another thought held him back. If the little girl were still
alive, by any chance, he could not leave her lying there in this way. He sank
on his knees very gently, a little distance from her, through precaution, and
extended his hand toward her foot. It was icy cold, with the terrible coldness
of death which leaves us no longer in doubt. The letter carrier, as he touched
her, felt his heart in his mouth, as he said himself afterward, and his mouth
parched. Rising up abruptly, he rushed off under the trees toward Monsieur
Renardet’s house.
He walked on faster than ever, with his stick under his arm, his hands
clenched and his head thrust forward, while his leathern bag, filled with
letters and newspapers, kept flapping at his side.
The mayor’s residence was at the end of the wood which served as a
park, and one side of it was washed by the Brindille.
It was a big square house of gray stone, very old, and had stood many a
siege in former days, and at the end of it was a huge tower, twenty metres
high, rising out of the water.
From the top of this fortress one could formerly see all the surrounding
country. It was called the Fox’s tower, without any one knowing exactly why;
and from this appellation, no doubt, had come the name Renardet, borne by
the owners of this fief, which had remained in the same family, it was said,
for more than two hundred years. For the Renardets formed part of the upper
middle class, all but noble, to be met with so often in the province before the
Revolution.
The postman dashed into the kitchen, where the servants were taking
breakfast, and exclaimed:
“Is the mayor up? I want to speak to him at once.”
Mederic was recognized as a man of standing and authority, and they
understood that something serious had happened.
As soon as word was brought to Monsieur Renardet, he ordered the
postman to be sent up to him. Pale and out of breath, with his cap in his hand,
Mederic found the mayor seated at a long table covered with scattered
papers.
He was a large, tall man, heavy and red-faced, strong as an ox, and was
greatly liked in the district, although of an excessively violent disposition.
Almost forty years old and a widower for the past six months, he lived on his
estate like a country gentleman. His choleric temperament had often brought
him into trouble from which the magistrates of Roily-le-Tors, like indulgent
and prudent friends, had extricated him. Had he not one day thrown the
conductor of the diligence from the top of his seat because he came near
running over his retriever, Micmac? Had he not broken the ribs of a
gamekeeper who abused him for having, gun in hand, passed through a
neighbor’s property? Had he not even caught by the collar the sub-prefect,
who stopped over in the village during an administrative circuit, called by
Monsieur Renardet an electioneering circuit, for he was opposed to the
government, in accordance with family traditions.
The mayor asked:
“What’s the matter now, Mederic?”
“I found a little girl dead in your wood.”
Renardet rose to his feet, his face the color of brick.
“What do you say — a little girl?”
“Yes, m’sieu, a little girl, quite naked, on her back, with blood on her,
dead — quite dead!”
The mayor gave vent to an oath:
“By God, I’d make a bet it is little Louise Roque! I have just learned that
she did not go home to her mother last night. Where did you find her?”
The postman described the spot, gave full details and offered to conduct
the mayor to the place.
But Renardet became brusque:
“No, I don’t need you. Send the watchman, the mayor’s secretary and the
doctor to me at once, and resume your rounds. Quick, quick, go and tell them
to meet me in the wood.”
The letter carrier, a man used to discipline, obeyed and withdrew, angry
and grieved at not being able to be present at the investigation.
The mayor, in his turn, prepared to go out, took his big soft hat and paused
for a few seconds on the threshold of his abode. In front of him stretched a
wide sward, in which were three large beds of flowers in full bloom, one
facing the house and the others at either side of it. Farther on the outlying
trees of the wood rose skyward, while at the left, beyond the Brindille,
which at that spot widened into a pond, could be seen long meadows, an
entirely green flat sweep of country, intersected by trenches and hedges of
pollard willows.
To the right, behind the stables, the outhouses and all the buildings
connected with the property, might be seen the village, which was wealthy,
being mainly inhabited by cattle breeders.
Renardet slowly descended the steps in front of his house, and, turning to
the left, gained the water’s edge, which he followed at a slow pace, his hand
behind his back. He walked on, with bent head, and from time to time
glanced round in search of the persons he had sent for.
 When he stood beneath the trees he stopped, took off his hat and wiped his
forehead as Mederic had done, for the burning sun was darting its fiery rays
on the earth. Then the mayor resumed his journey, stopped once more and
retraced his steps. Suddenly, stooping down, he steeped his handkerchief in
the stream that glided along at his feet and spread it over his head, under his
hat. Drops of water flowed down his temples over his ears, which were
always purple, over his strong red neck, and made their way, one after the
other, under his white shirt collar.
As nobody had appeared, he began tapping with his foot, then he called
out:
“Hello! Hello!”
A voice at his right answered:
“Hello! Hello!”
And the doctor appeared under the trees. He was a thin little man, an ex-
military surgeon, who passed in the neighborhood for a very skillful
practitioner. He limped, having been wounded while in the service, and had
to use a stick to assist him in walking.
Next came the watchman and the mayor’s secretary, who, having been sent
for at the same time, arrived together. They looked scared, and hurried
forward, out of breath, walking and running alternately to hasten their
progress, and moving their arms up and down so vigorously that they seemed
to do more work with them than with their legs.
Renardet said to the doctor:
“You know what the trouble is about?”
“Yes, a child found dead in the wood by Mederic.”
“That’s quite correct. Come on!”
They walked along, side by side, followed by the two men.
Their steps made no sound on the moss. Their eyes were gazing ahead in
front of them.
Suddenly the doctor, extending his arm, said:
“See, there she is!”
Far ahead of them under the trees they saw something white on which the
sun gleamed down through the branches. As they approached they gradually
distinguished a human form lying there, its head toward the river, the face
covered and the arms extended as though on a crucifix.
“I am fearfully warm,” said the mayor, and stooping down, he again
soaked his handkerchief in the water and placed it round his forehead.
 The doctor hastened his steps, interested by the discovery. As soon as they
were near the corpse, he bent down to examine it without touching it. He had
put on his pince-nez, as one does in examining some curious object, and
turned round very quietly.
He said, without rising:
“Violated and murdered, as we shall prove presently. This little girl,
moreover, is almost a woman — look at her throat.”
The doctor lightly drew away the handkerchief which covered her face,
which looked black, frightful, the tongue protruding, the eyes bloodshot. He
went on:
“By heavens! She was strangled the moment the deed was done.”
He felt her neck.
“Strangled with the hands without leaving any special trace, neither the
mark of the nails nor the imprint of the fingers. Quite right. It is little Louise
Roque, sure enough!”
He carefully replaced the handkerchief.
“There’s nothing for me to do. She’s been dead for the last hour at least.
We must give notice of the matter to the authorities.”
Renardet, standing up, with his hands behind his back, kept staring with a
stony look at the little body exposed to view on the grass. He murmured:
“What a wretch! We must find the clothes.”
The doctor felt the hands, the arms, the legs. He said:
“She had been bathing no doubt. They ought to be at the water’s edge.”
The mayor thereupon gave directions:
“Do you, Principe” (this was his secretary), “go and find those clothes for
me along the stream. You, Maxime” (this was the watchman), “hurry on
toward Rouy-le-Tors and bring with you the magistrate with the gendarmes.
They must be here within an hour. You understand?”
The two men started at once, and Renardet said to the doctor:
“What miscreant could have done such a deed in this part of the country?”
The doctor murmured:
“Who knows? Any one is capable of that. Every one in particular and
nobody in general. No matter, it must be some prowler, some workman out of
employment. Since we have become a Republic we meet only this kind of
person along the roads.”
Both of them were Bonapartists.
The mayor went on:
 “Yes, it can only be a stranger, a passer-by, a vagabond without hearth or
home.”
The doctor added, with the shadow of a smile on his face:
“And without a wife. Having neither a good supper nor a good bed, he
became reckless. You can’t tell how many men there may be in the world
capable of a crime at a given moment. Did you know that this little girl had
disappeared?”
And with the end of his stick he touched one after the other the stiffened
fingers of the corpse, resting on them as on the keys of a piano.
“Yes, the mother came last night to look for me about nine o’clock, the
child not having come home at seven to supper. We looked for her along the
roads up to midnight, but we did not think of the wood. However, we needed
daylight to carry out a thorough search.”
“Will you have a cigar?” said the doctor.
“Thanks, I don’t care to smoke. This thing affects me so.”
They remained standing beside the corpse of the young girl, so pale on the
dark moss. A big blue fly was walking over the body with his lively, jerky
movements. The two men kept watching this wandering speck.
The doctor said:
“How pretty it is, a fly on the skin! The ladies of the last century had good
reason to paste them on their faces. Why has this fashion gone out?”
The mayor seemed not to hear, plunged as he was in deep thought.
But, all of a sudden, he turned round, surprised by a shrill noise. A
woman in a cap and blue apron was running toward them under the trees. It
was the mother, La Roque. As soon as she saw Renardet she began to shriek:
“My little girl! Where’s my little girl?” so distractedly that she did not
glance down at the ground. Suddenly she saw the corpse, stopped short,
clasped her hands and raised both her arms while she uttered a sharp,
heartrending cry — the cry of a wounded animal. Then she rushed toward the
body, fell on her knees and snatched away the handkerchief that covered the
face. When she saw that frightful countenance, black and distorted, she rose
to her feet with a shudder, then sinking to the ground, face downward, she
pressed her face against the ground and uttered frightful, continuous screams
on the thick moss.
Her tall, thin frame, with its close-clinging dress, was palpitating, shaken
with spasms. One could see her bony ankles and her dried-up calves covered
with coarse blue stockings shaking horribly. She was digging the soil with
her crooked fingers, as though she were trying to make a hole in which to
hide herself.
The doctor, much affected, said in a low tone:
“Poor old woman!”
Renardet felt a strange sensation. Then he gave vent to a sort of loud
sneeze, and, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, he began to weep
internally, coughing, sobbing and blowing his nose noisily.
He stammered:
“Damn — damn — damned pig to do this! I would like to seem him
guillotined.”
Principe reappeared with his hands empty. He murmured:
“I have found nothing, M’sieu le Maire, nothing at all anywhere.”
The mayor, alarmed, replied in a thick voice, drowned in tears:
“What is that you could not find?”
“The little girl’s clothes.”
“Well — well — look again, and find them — or you’’ll have to answer
to me.”
The man, knowing that the mayor would not brook opposition, set forth
again with hesitating steps, casting a timid side glance at the corpse.
Distant voices were heard under the trees, a confused sound, the noise of
an approaching crowd, for Mederic had, in the course of his rounds, carried
the news from door to door. The people of the neighborhood, dazed at first,
had gossiped about it in the street, from one threshold to another. Then they
gathered together. They talked over, discussed and commented on the event
for some minutes and had now come to see for themselves.
They arrived in groups, a little faltering and uneasy through fear of the
first impression of such a scene on their minds. When they saw the body they
stopped, not daring to advance, and speaking low. Then they grew bolder,
went on a few steps, stopped again, advanced once more, and presently
formed around the dead girl, her mother, the doctor and Renardet a close
circle, restless and noisy, which crowded forward at the sudden impact of
newcomers. And now they touched the corpse. Some of them even bent down
to feel it with their fingers. The doctor kept them back. But the mayor, waking
abruptly out of his torpor, flew into a rage, and seizing Dr. Labarbe’s stick,
flung himself on his townspeople, stammering:
“Clear out — clear out — you pack of brutes — clear out!”
 And in a second the crowd of sightseers had fallen back two hundred
paces.
Mother La Roque had risen to a sitting posture and now remained
weeping, with her hands clasped over her face.
The crowd was discussing the affair, and young lads’ eager eyes curiously
scrutinized this nude young form. Renardet perceived this, and, abruptly
taking off his coat, he flung it over the little girl, who was entirely hidden
from view beneath the large garment.
The secretary drew near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a
continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of the tall trees.
The mayor, in his shirt sleeves, remained standing, with his stick in his
hands, in a fighting attitude. He seemed exasperated by this curiosity on the
part of the people and kept repeating:
“If one of you come nearer I’ll break his head just as I would a dog’s.”
The peasants were greatly afraid of him. They held back. Dr. Labarbe,
who was smoking, sat down beside La Roque and spoke to her in order to
distract her attention. The old woman at once removed her hands from her
face and replied with a flood of tearful words, emptying her grief in copious
talk. She told the whole story of her life, her marriage, the death of her man, a
cattle drover, who had been gored to death, the infancy of her daughter, her
wretched existence as a widow without resources and with a child to
support. She had only this one, her little Louise, and the child had been killed
— killed in this wood. Then she felt anxious to see her again, and, dragging
herself on her knees toward the corpse, she raised up one corner of the
garment that covered her; then she let it fall again and began wailing once
more. The crowd remained silent, eagerly watching all the mother’s gestures.
But suddenly there was a great commotion at the cry of “The gendarmes!
the gendarmes!”
Two gendarmes appeared in the distance, advancing at a rapid trot,
escorting their captain and a little gentleman with red whiskers, who was
bobbing up and down like a monkey on a big white mare.
The watchman had just found Monsieur Putoin, the magistrate, at the
moment when he was mounting his horse to take his daily ride, for he posed
as a good horseman, to the great amusement of the officers.
He dismounted, along with the captain, and pressed the hands of the mayor
and the doctor, casting a ferret-like glance on the linen coat beneath which
lay the corpse.
 When he was made acquainted with all the facts, he first gave orders to
disperse the crowd, whom the gendarmes drove out of the wood, but who
soon reappeared in the meadow and formed a hedge, a big hedge of excited
and moving heads, on the other side of the stream.
The doctor, in his turn, gave explanations, which Renardet noted down in
his memorandum book. All the evidence was given, taken down and
commented on without leading to any discovery. Maxime, too, came back
without having found any trace of the clothes.
This disappearance surprised everybody; no one could explain it except
on the theory of theft, and as her rags were not worth twenty sous, even this
theory was inadmissible.
The magistrate, the mayor, the captain and the doctor set to work
searching in pairs, putting aside the smallest branch along the water.
Renardet said to the judge:
“How does it happen that this wretch has concealed or carried away the
clothes, and has thus left the body exposed, in sight of every one?”
The other, crafty and sagacious, answered:
“Ha! ha! Perhaps a dodge? This crime has been committed either by a
brute or by a sly scoundrel. In any case, we’ll easily succeed in finding him.”
The noise of wheels made them turn their heads round. It was the deputy
magistrate, the doctor and the registrar of the court who had arrived in their
turn. They resumed their search, all chatting in an animated fashion.
Renardet said suddenly:
“Do you know that you are to take luncheon with me?”
Every one smilingly accepted the invitation, and the magistrate, thinking
that the case of little Louise Roque had occupied enough attention for one
day, turned toward the mayor.
“I can have the body brought to your house, can I not? You have a room in
which you can keep it for me till this evening?”
The other became confused and stammered:
“Yes — no — no. To tell the truth, I prefer that it should not come into my
house on account of — on account of my servants, who are already talking
about ghosts in — in my tower, in the Fox’s tower. You know — I could no
longer keep a single one. No — I prefer not to have it in my house.”
The magistrate began to smile.
“Good! I will have it taken at once to Roily for the legal examination.”
And, turning to his deputy, he said:
 “I can make use of your trap, can I not?”
“Yes, certainly.”
They all came back to the place where the corpse lay. Mother La Roque,
now seated beside her daughter, was holding her hand and was staring right
before her with a wandering, listless eye.
The two doctors endeavored to lead her away, so that she might not
witness the dead girl’s removal, but she understood at once what they wanted
to do, and, flinging herself on the body, she threw both arms round it. Lying
on top of the corpse, she exclaimed:
“You shall not have it — it’s mine — it’s mine now. They have killed her
for me, and I want to keep her — you shall not have her — — “
All the men, affected and not knowing how to act, remained standing
around her. Renardet fell on his knees and said to her:
“Listen, La Roque, it is necessary, in order to find out who killed her.
Without this, we could not find out. We must make a search for the man in
order to punish him. When we have found him we’ll give her up to you. I
promise you this.”
This explanation bewildered the woman, and a feeling of hatred
manifested itself in her distracted glance.
“So then they’ll arrest him?”
“Yes, I promise you that.”
She rose up, deciding to let them do as they liked, but when the captain
remarked:
“It is surprising that her clothes were not found,” a new idea, which she
had not previously thought of, abruptly entered her mind, and she asked:
“Where are her clothes? They’re mine. I want them. Where have they been
put?”
They explained to her that they had not been found. Then she demanded
them persistently, crying and moaning.
“They’re mine — I want them. Where are they? I want them!”
The more they tried to calm her the more she sobbed and persisted in her
demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the clothes,
as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched being to
whom a piece of silver represents a fortune as through maternal tenderness.
And when the little body, rolled up in blankets which had been brought out
from Renardet’s house, had disappeared in the vehicle, the old woman
standing under the trees, sustained by the mayor and the captain, exclaimed:
 “I have nothing, nothing, nothing in the world, not even her little cap —
her little cap.”
The cure, a young priest, had just arrived. He took it on himself to
accompany the mother, and they went away together toward the village. The
mother’s grief was modified by the sugary words of the clergyman, who
promised her a thousand compensations. But she kept repeating: “If I had
only her little cap.” This idea now dominated every other.
Renardet called from the distance:
“You will lunch with us, Monsieur l’Abbe — in an hour’s time.”
The priest turned his head round and replied:
“With pleasure, Monsieur le Maire. I’ll be with you at twelve.”
And they all directed their steps toward the house, whose gray front, with
the large tower built on the edge of the Brindille, could be seen through the
branches.
The meal lasted a long time. They talked about the crime. Everybody was
of the same opinion. It had been committed by some tramp passing there by
mere chance while the little girl was bathing.
Then the magistrates returned to Rouy, announcing that they would return
next day at an early hour. The doctor and the cure went to their respective
homes, while Renardet, after a long walk through the meadows, returned to
the wood, where he remained walking till nightfall with slow steps, his
hands behind his back.
He went to bed early and was still asleep next morning when the
magistrate entered his room. He was rubbing his hands together with a self-
satisfied air.
“Ha! ha! You are still sleeping! Well, my dear fellow, we have news this
morning.”
The mayor sat up in his bed.
“What, pray?”
“Oh! Something strange. You remember well how the mother clamored
yesterday for some memento of her daughter, especially her little cap? Well,
on opening her door this morning she found on the threshold her child’s two
little wooden shoes. This proves that the crime was perpetrated by some one
from the district, some one who felt pity for her. Besides, the postman,
Mederic, brought me the thimble, the knife and the needle case of the dead
girl. So, then, the man in carrying off the clothes to hide them must have let
fall the articles which were in the pocket. As for me, I attach special
importance to the wooden shoes, as they indicate a certain moral culture and
a faculty for tenderness on the part of the assassin. We will, therefore, if you
have no objection, go over together the principal inhabitants of your district.”
The mayor got up. He rang for his shaving water and said:
“With pleasure, but it will take some time, and we may begin at once.”
M. Putoin sat astride a chair.
Renardet covered his chin with a white lather while he looked at himself
in the glass. Then he sharpened his razor on the strop and continued:
“The principal inhabitant of Carvelin bears the name of Joseph Renardet,
mayor, a rich landowner, a rough man who beats guards and coachmen— “
The examining magistrate burst out laughing.
“That’s enough. Let us pass on to the next.”
“The second in importance is Pelledent, his deputy, a cattle breeder, an
equally rich landowner, a crafty peasant, very sly, very close-fisted on every
question of money, but incapable in my opinion of having perpetrated such a
crime.”
“Continue,” said M. Putoin.
Renardet, while proceeding with his toilet, reviewed the characters of all
the inhabitants of Carvelin. After two hours’ discussion their suspicions
were fixed on three individuals who had hitherto borne a shady reputation —
a poacher named Cavalle, a fisherman named Paquet, who caught trout and
crabs, and a cattle drover named Clovis. II
The search for the perpetrator of the crime lasted all summer, but he was
not discovered. Those who were suspected and arrested easily proved their
innocence, and the authorities were compelled to abandon the attempt to
capture the criminal.
But this murder seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular
manner. There remained in every one’s mind a disquietude, a vague fear, a
sensation of mysterious terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of
discovering any trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange
finding of the wooden shoes in front of La Roque’s door the day after the
crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the investigation, that
he was still, doubtless, living in the village, possessed all minds and seemed
to brood over the neighborhood like a constant menace.
The wood had also become a dreaded spot, a place to be avoided and
supposed to be haunted.
 Formerly the inhabitants went there to spend every Sunday afternoon.
They used to sit down on the moss at the feet of the huge tall trees or walk
along the water’s edge watching the trout gliding among the weeds. The
boy’s used to play bowls, hide-and-seek and other games where the ground
had been cleared and levelled, and the girls, in rows of four or five, would
trip along, holding one another by the arms and screaming songs with their
shrill voices. Now nobody ventured there for fear of finding some corpse
lying on the ground.
Autumn arrived, the leaves began to fall from the tall trees, whirling round
and round to the ground, and the sky could be seen through the bare branches.
Sometimes, when a gust of wind swept over the tree tops, the slow,
continuous rain suddenly grew heavier and became a rough storm that
covered the moss with a thick yellow carpet that made a kind of creaking
sound beneath one’s feet.
And the sound of the falling leaves seemed like a wail and the leaves
themselves like tears shed by these great, sorrowful trees, that wept in the
silence of the bare and empty wood, this dreaded and deserted wood where
wandered lonely the soul, the little soul of little Louise Roque.
The Brindille, swollen by the storms, rushed on more quickly, yellow and
angry, between its dry banks, bordered by two thin, bare, willow hedges.
And here was Renardet suddenly resuming his walks under the trees.
Every day, at sunset, he came out of his house, descended the front steps
slowly and entered the wood in a dreamy fashion, with his hands in his
pockets, and paced over the damp soft moss, while a legion of rooks from all
the neighboring haunts came thither to rest in the tall trees and then flew off
like a black cloud uttering loud, discordant cries.
Night came on, and Renardet was still strolling slowly under the trees;
then, when the darkness prevented him from walking any longer, he would go
back to the house and sink into his armchair in front of the glowing hearth,
stretching his damp feet toward the fire.
One morning an important bit of news was circulated through the district;
the mayor was having his wood cut down.
Twenty woodcutters were already at work. They had commenced at the
corner nearest to the house and worked rapidly in the master’s presence.
And each day the wood grew thinner, losing its trees, which fell down one
by one, as an army loses its soldiers.
 Renardet no longer walked up, and down. He remained from morning till
night, contemplating, motionless, with his hands behind his back, the slow
destruction of his wood. When a tree fell he placed his foot on it as if it were
a corpse. Then he raised his eyes to the next with a kind of secret, calm
impatience, as if he expected, hoped for something at the end of this
slaughter.
Meanwhile they were approaching the place where little Louise Roque
had been found. They came to it one evening in the twilight.
As it was dark, the sky being overcast, the woodcutters wanted to stop
their work, putting off till next day the fall of an enormous beech tree, but the
mayor objected to this and insisted that they should at once lop and cut down
this giant, which had sheltered the crime.
When the lopper had laid it bare and the woodcutters had sapped its base,
five men commenced hauling at the rope attached to the top.
The tree resisted; its powerful trunk, although notched to the centre, was
as rigid as iron. The workmen, all together, with a sort of simultaneous
motion,’ strained at the rope, bending backward and uttering a cry which
timed and regulated their efforts.
Two woodcutters standing close to the giant remained with axes in their
grip, like two executioners ready to strike once more, and Renardet,
motionless, with his hand on the trunk, awaited the fall with an uneasy,
nervous feeling.
One of the men said to him:
“You are too near, Monsieur le Maire. When it falls it may hurt you.”
He did not reply and did not move away. He seemed ready to catch the
beech tree in his open arms and to cast it on the ground like a wrestler.
All at once, at the base of the tall column of wood there was a rent which
seemed to run to the top, like a painful shock; it bent slightly, ready to fall,
but still resisting. The men, in a state of excitement, stiffened their arms,
renewed their efforts with greater vigor, and, just as the tree came crashing
down, Renardet suddenly made a forward step, then stopped, his shoulders
raised to receive the irresistible shock, the mortal shock which would crush
him to the earth.
But the beech tree, having deviated a little, only rubbed against his loins,
throwing him on his face, five metres away.
The workmen dashed forward to lift him up. He had already arisen to his
knees, stupefied, with bewildered eyes and passing his hand across his
forehead, as if he were awaking from an attack of madness.
When he had got to his feet once more the men, astonished, questioned
him, not being able to understand what he had done. He replied in faltering
tones that he had been dazed for a moment, or, rather, he had been thinking of
his childhood days; that he thought he would have time to run under the tree,
just as street boys rush in front of vehicles driving rapidly past; that he had
played at danger; that for the past eight days he felt this desire growing
stronger within him, asking himself each time a tree began to fall whether he
could pass beneath it without being touched. It was a piece of stupidity, he
confessed, but every one has these moments of insanity and these temptations
to boyish folly.
He made this explanation in a slow tone, searching for his words, and
speaking in a colorless tone.
Then he went off, saying:
“Till to-morrow, my friends-till to-morrow.”
As soon as he got back to his room he sat down at his table which his
lamp lighted up brightly, and, burying his head in his hands, he began to cry.
He remained thus for a long time, then wiped his eyes, raised his head and
looked at the clock. It was not yet six o’clock.
He thought:
“I have time before dinner.”
And he went to the door and locked it. He then came back, and, sitting
down at his table, pulled out the middle drawer. Taking from it a revolver, he
laid it down on his papers in full view. The barrel of the firearm glittered,
giving out gleams of light.
Renardet gazed at it for some time with the uneasy glance of a drunken
man. Then he rose and began to pace up and down the room.
He walked from one end of the apartment to the other, stopping from time
to time, only to pace up and down again a moment afterward. Suddenly he
opened the door of his dressing-room, steeped a towel in the water pitcher
and moistened his forehead, as he had done on the morning of the crime.
Then he, began walking up and down again. Each time he passed the table
the gleaming revolver attracted his glance, tempted his hand, but he kept
watching the clock and reflected:
“I have still time.”
It struck half-past six. Then he took up the revolver, opened his mouth
wide with a frightful grimace and stuck the barrel into it as if he wanted to
swallow it. He remained in this position for some seconds without moving,
his finger on the trigger. Then, suddenly seized with a shudder of horror, he
dropped the pistol on the carpet.
He fell back on his armchair, sobbing:
“I cannot. I dare not! My God! my God! How can I have the courage to
kill myself?’”
There was a knock at the door. He rose up, bewildered. A servant said:
“Monsieur’s dinner is ready.”
He replied:
“All right. I’m coming down.”
Then he picked up the revolver, locked it up again in the drawer and
looked at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece to see whether his face
did not look too much troubled. It was as red as usual, a little redder
perhaps. That was all. He went down and seated himself at table.
He ate slowly, like a man who wants to prolong the meal, who does not
want to be alone.
Then he smoked several pipes in the hall while the table was being
cleared. After that he went back to his room.
As soon as he had locked himself in he looked, under the bed, opened all
the closets, explored every corner, rummaged through all the furniture. Then
he lighted the candles on the mantelpiece, and, turning round several times,
ran his eye all over the apartment with an anguish of terror that distorted his
face, for he knew well that he would see her, as he did every night — little
Louise Roque, the little girl he had attacked and afterward strangled.
Every night the odious vision came back again. First he seemed to hear a
kind of roaring sound, such as is made by a threshing machine or the distant
passage of a train over a bridge. Then he commenced to gasp, to suffocate,
and he had to unbutton his collar and his belt. He moved about to make his
blood circulate, he tried to read, he attempted to sing. It was in vain. His
thoughts, in spite of himself, went back to the day of the murder and made
him begin it all over again in all its most secret details, with all the violent
emotions he had experienced from the first minute to the last.
He had felt on rising that morning, the morning of the horrible day, a little
dizziness and headache, which he attributed to the heat, so that he remained
in his room until breakfast time.
After the meal he had taken a siesta, then, toward the close of the
afternoon, he had gone out to breathe the fresh, soothing breeze under the
trees in the wood.
But, as soon as he was outside, the heavy, scorching air of the plain
oppressed him still more. The sun, still high in the heavens, poured down on
the parched soil waves of burning light. Not a breath of wind stirred the
leaves. Every beast and bird, even the grasshoppers, were silent. Renardet
reached the tall trees and began to walk over the moss where the Brindille
produced a slight freshness of the air beneath the immense roof of branches.
But he felt ill at ease. It seemed to him that an unknown, invisible hand was
strangling him, and he scarcely thought of anything, having usually few ideas
in his head. For the last three months only one thought haunted him, the
thought of marrying again. He suffered from living alone, suffered from it
morally and physically. Accustomed for ten years past to feeling a woman
near him, habituated to her presence every moment, he had need, an
imperious and perplexing need of such association. Since Madame
Renardet’s death he had suffered continually without knowing why, he had
suffered at not feeling her dress brushing past him, and, above all, from no
longer being able to calm and rest himself in her arms. He had been scarcely
six months a widower and he was already looking about in the district for
some young girl or some widow he might marry when his period of mourning
was at an end.
He had a chaste soul, but it was lodged in a powerful, herculean body, and
carnal imaginings began to disturb his sleep and his vigils. He drove them
away; they came back again; and he murmured from time to time, smiling at
himself:
“Here I am, like St. Anthony.”
Having this special morning had several of these visions, the desire
suddenly came into his breast to bathe in the Brindille in order to refresh
himself and cool his blood.
He knew of a large deep pool, a little farther down, where the people of
the neighborhood came sometimes to take a dip in summer. He went there.
Thick willow trees hid this clear body of water where the current rested
and went to sleep for a while before starting on its way again. Renardet, as
he appeared, thought he heard a light sound, a faint plashing which was not
that of the stream on the banks. He softly put aside the leaves and looked. A
little girl, quite naked in the transparent water, was beating the water with
both hands, dancing about in it and dipping herself with pretty movements.
She was not a child nor was she yet a woman. She was plump and
developed, while preserving an air of youthful precocity, as of one who had
grown rapidly. He no longer moved, overcome with surprise, with desire,
holding his breath with a strange, poignant emotion. He remained there, his
heart beating as if one of his sensuous dreams had just been realized, as if an
impure fairy had conjured up before him this young creature, this little rustic
Venus, rising from the eddies of the stream as the real Venus rose from the
waves of the sea.
Suddenly the little girl came out of the water, and, without seeing him,
came over to where he stood, looking for her clothes in order to dress
herself. As she approached gingerly, on account of the sharp-pointed stones,
he felt himself pushed toward her by an irresistible force, by a bestial
transport of passion, which stirred his flesh, bewildered his mind and made
him tremble from head to foot.
She remained standing some seconds behind the willow tree which
concealed him from view. Then, losing his reason entirely, he pushed aside
the branches, rushed on her and seized her in his arms. She fell, too terrified
to offer any resistance, too terror-stricken to cry out. He seemed possessed,
not understanding what he was doing.
He woke from his crime as one wakes from a nightmare. The child burst
out weeping.
“Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!” he said. “I’ll give you money.”
But she did not hear him and went on sobbing.
“Come now, hold your tongue! Do hold your tongue! Keep quiet!” he
continued.
She kept shrieking as she tried to free herself. He suddenly realized that
he was ruined, and he caught her by the neck to stop her mouth from uttering
these heartrending, dreadful screams. As she continued to struggle with the
desperate strength of a being who is seeking to fly from death, he pressed his
enormous hands on the little throat swollen with screaming, and in a few
seconds he had strangled her, so furiously did he grip her. He had not
intended to kill her, but only to make her keep quiet.
Then he stood up, overwhelmed with horror.
She lay before him, her face bleeding and blackned. He was about to rush
away when there sprang up in his agitated soul the mysterious and undefined
instinct that guides all beings in the hour of danger.
He was going to throw the body into the water, but another impulse drove
him toward the clothes, which he made into a small package. Then, as he had
a piece of twine in his pocket, he tied it up and hid it in a deep portion of the
stream, beneath the trunk of a tree that overhung the Brindille.
Then he went off at a rapid pace, reached the meadows, took a wide turn
in order to show himself to some peasants who dwelt some distance away at
the opposite side of the district, and came back to dine at the usual hour,
telling his servants all that was supposed to have happened during his walk.
He slept, however, that night; he slept with a heavy, brutish sleep like the
sleep of certain persons condemned to death. He did not open his eyes until
the first glimmer of dawn, and he waited till his usual hour for riding, so as
to excite no suspicion.
Then he had to be present at the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did so
like a somnambulist, in a kind of vision which showed him men and things as
in a dream, in a cloud of intoxication, with that sense of unreality which
perplexes the mind at the time of the greatest catastrophes.
But the agonized cry of Mother Roque pierced his heart. At that moment
he had felt inclined to cast himself at the old woman’s feet and to exclaim:
“I am the guilty one!”
But he had restrained himself. He went back, however, during the night to
fish up the dead girl’s wooden shoes, in order to place them on her mother’s
threshold.
As long as the inquiry lasted, as long as it was necessary to lead justice
astray he was calm, master of himself, crafty and smiling. He discussed
quietly with the magistrates all the suppositions that passed through their
minds, combated their opinions and demolished their arguments. He even
took a keen and mournful pleasure in disturbing their investigations, in
embroiling their ideas, in showing the innocence of those whom they
suspected.
But as soon as the inquiry was abandoned he became gradually nervous,
more excitable than he had been before, although he mastered his irritability.
Sudden noises made him start with fear; he shuddered at the slightest thing
and trembled sometimes from head to foot when a fly alighted on his
forehead. Then he was seized with an imperious desire for motion, which
impelled him to take long walks and to remain up whole nights pacing up and
down his room.
It was not that he was goaded by remorse. His brutal nature did not lend
itself to any shade of sentiment or of moral terror. A man of energy and even
of violence, born to make war, to ravage conquered countries and to
massacre the vanquished, full of the savage instincts of the hunter and the
fighter, he scarcely took count of human life. Though he respected the Church
outwardly, from policy, he believed neither in God nor the devil, expecting
neither chastisement nor recompense for his acts in another life. His sole
belief was a vague philosophy drawn from all the ideas of the encyclopedists
of the last century, and he regarded religion as a moral sanction of the law,
the one and the other having been invented by men to regulate social
relations. To kill any one in a duel, or in war, or in a quarrel, or by accident,
or for the sake of revenge, or even through bravado would have seemed to
him an amusing and clever thing and would not have left more impression on
his mind than a shot fired at a hare; but he had experienced a profound
emotion at the murder of this child. He had, in the first place, perpetrated it in
the heat of an irresistible gust of passion, in a sort of tempest of the senses
that had overpowered his reason. And he had cherished in his heart, in his
flesh, on his lips, even to the very tips of his murderous fingers a kind of
bestial love, as well as a feeling of terrified horror, toward this little girl
surprised by him and basely killed. Every moment his thoughts returned to
that horrible scene, and, though he endeavored to drive this picture from his
mind, though he put it aside with terror, with disgust, he felt it surging through
his soul, moving about in him, waiting incessantly for the moment to
reappear.
Then, as evening approached, he was afraid of the shadow falling around
him. He did not yet know why the darkness seemed frightful to him, but he
instinctively feared it, he felt that it was peopled with terrors. The bright
daylight did not lend itself to fears. Things and beings were visible then, and
only natural things and beings could exhibit themselves in the light of day.
But the night, the impenetrable night, thicker than walls and empty; the
infinite night, so black, so vast, in which one might brush against frightful
things; the night, when one feels that a mysterious terror is wandering,
prowling about, appeared to him to conceal an unknown threatening danger,
close beside him.
What was it?
He knew ere long. As he sat in his armchair, rather late one evening when
he could not sleep, he thought he saw the curtain of his window move. He
waited, uneasily, with beating heart. The drapery did not stir; then, all of a
sudden, it moved once more. He did not venture to rise; he no longer
ventured to breathe, and yet he was brave. He had often fought, and he would
have liked to catch thieves in his house.
Was it true that this curtain did move? he asked himself, fearing that his
eyes had deceived him. It was, moreover, such a slight thing, a gentle flutter
of drapery, a kind of trembling in its folds, less than an undulation caused by
the wind.
Renardet sat still, with staring eyes and outstretched neck. He sprang to
his feet abruptly, ashamed of his fear, took four steps, seized the drapery with
both hands and pulled it wide apart. At first he saw nothing but darkened
glass, resembling plates of glittering ink. The night, the vast, impenetrable
night, stretched beyond as far as the invisible horizon. He remained standing
in front of this illimitable shadow, and suddenly he perceived a light, a
moving light, which seemed some distance away.
Then he put his face close to the window pane, thinking that a person
looking for crabs might be poaching in the Brindille, for it was past midnight,
and this light rose up at the edge of the stream, under the trees. As he was not
yet able to see clearly, Renardet placed his hands over his eyes, and
suddenly this light became an illumination, and he beheld little Louise Roque
naked and bleeding on the moss. He recoiled, frozen with horror, knocked
over his chair and fell over on his back. He remained there some minutes in
anguish of mind; then he sat up and began to reflect. He had had a
hallucination — that was all, a hallucination due to the fact that a night
marauder was walking with a lantern in his hand near the water’s edge. What
was there astonishing, besides, in the circumstance that the recollection of his
crime should sometimes bring before him the vision of the dead girl?
He rose from the ground, swallowed a glass of wine and sat down again.
He was thinking:
“What am I to do if this occurs again?”
And it would occur; he felt it; he was sure of it. Already his glance was
drawn toward the window; it called him; it attracted him. In order to avoid
looking at it, he turned his chair round. Then he took a book and tried to read,
but it seemed to him that he presently heard something stirring behind him,
and he swung round his armchair on one foot.
The curtain was moving again; unquestionably, it moved this time. He
could no longer have any doubt about it.
He rushed forward and grasped it so violently that he pulled it down with
its pole. Then he eagerly glued his face to the glass. He saw nothing. All was
black outside, and he breathed with the joy of a man whose life has just been
saved.
Then he went back to his chair and sat down again, but almost
immediately he felt a longing to look out once more through the window.
Since the curtain had fallen down, the window made a sort of gap,
fascinating and terrible, on the dark landscape. In order not to yield to this
dangerous temptation, he undressed, blew out the light and closed his eyes.
Lying on his back motionless, his skin warm and moist, he awaited sleep.
Suddenly a great gleam of light flashed across his eyelids. He opened them,
believing that his dwelling was on fire. All was black as before, and he
leaned on his elbow to try to distinguish the window which had still for him
an unconquerable attraction. By dint of, straining his eyes he could perceive
some stars, and he rose, groped his way across the room, discovered the
panes with his outstretched hands, and placed his forehead close to them.
There below, under the trees, lay the body of the little girl gleaming like
phosphorus, lighting up the surrounding darkness.
Renardet uttered a cry and rushed toward his bed, where he lay till
morning, his head hidden under the pillow.
From that moment his life became intolerable. He passed his days in
apprehension of each succeeding night, and each night the vision came back
again. As soon as he had locked himself up in his room he strove to resist it,
but in vain. An irresistible force lifted him up and pushed him against the
window, as if to call the phantom, and he saw it at once, lying first in the spot
where the crime was committed in the position in which it had been found.
Then the dead girl rose up and came toward him with little steps just as
the child had done when she came out of the river. She advanced quietly,
passing straight across the grass and over the bed of withered flowers. Then
she rose up in the air toward Renardet’s window. She came toward him as
she had come on the day of the crime. And the man recoiled before the
apparition — he retreated to his bed and sank down upon it, knowing well
that the little one had entered the room and that she now was standing behind
the curtain, which presently moved. And until daybreak he kept staring at this
curtain with a fixed glance, ever waiting to see his victim depart.
But she did not show herself any more; she remained there behind the
curtain, which quivered tremulously now and then.
And Renardet, his fingers clutching the clothes, squeezed them as he had
squeezed the throat of little Louise Roque.
 He heard the clock striking the hours, and in the stillness the pendulum
kept ticking in time with the loud beating of his heart. And he suffered, the
wretched man, more than any man had ever suffered before.
Then, as soon as a white streak of light on the ceiling announced the
approaching day, he felt himself free, alone at last, alone in his room; and he
went to sleep. He slept several hours — a restless, feverish sleep in which
he retraced in dreams the horrible vision of the past night.
When he went down to the late breakfast he felt exhausted as after unusual
exertion, and he scarcely ate anything, still haunted as he was by the fear of
what he had seen the night before.
He knew well, however, that it was not an apparition, that the dead do not
come back, and that his sick soul, his soul possessed by one thought alone, by
an indelible remembrance, was the only cause of his torture, was what
brought the dead girl back to life and raised her form before his eyes, on
which it was ineffaceably imprinted. But he knew, too, that there was no
cure, that he would never escape from the savage persecution of his memory,
and he resolved to die rather than to endure these tortures any longer.
Then he thought of how he would kill himself, It must be something simple
and natural, which would preclude the idea of suicide. For he clung to his
reputation, to the name bequeathed to him by his ancestors; and if his death
awakened any suspicion people’s thoughts might be, perhaps, directed
toward the mysterious crime, toward the murderer who could not be found,
and they would not hesitate to accuse him of the crime.
A strange idea came into his head, that of allowing himself to be crushed
by the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little Louise Roque. So he
determined to have the wood cut down and to simulate an accident. But the
beech tree refused to crush his ribs.
Returning to his house, a prey to utter despair, he had snatched up his
revolver, and then did not dare to fire it.
The dinner bell summoned him. He could eat nothing, and he went upstairs
again. And he did not know what to do. Now that he had escaped the first
time, he felt himself a coward. Presently he would be ready, brave, decided,
master of his courage and of his resolution; now he was weak and feared
death as much as he did the dead girl.
He faltered:
“I dare not venture it again — I dare not venture it.”
 Then he glanced with terror, first at the revolver on the table and next at
the curtain which hid his window. It seemed to him, moreover, that something
horrible would occur as soon as his life was ended. Something? What? A
meeting with her, perhaps. She was watching for him; she was waiting for
him; she was calling him; and it was in order to seize him in her turn, to draw
him toward the doom that would avenge her, and to lead him to die, that she
appeared thus every night.
He began to cry like a child, repeating:
“I will not venture it again — I will not venture it.”
Then he fell on his knees and murmured:
“My God! my God!” without believing, nevertheless, in God. And he no
longer dared, in fact, to look at his window, where he knew the apparition
was hiding, nor at his table, where his revolver gleamed. When he had risen
up he said:
“This cannot last; there must be an end of it”
The sound of his voice in the silent room made a chill of fear pass through
his limbs, but as he could not bring himself to come to a determination, as he
felt certain that his finger would always refuse to pull the trigger of his
revolver, he turned round to hide his head under the bedclothes and began to
reflect.
He would have to find some way in which he could force himself to die,
to play some trick on himself which would not permit of any hesitation on his
part, any delay, any possible regrets. He envied condemned criminals who
are led to the scaffold surrounded by soldiers. Oh! if he could only beg of
some one to shoot him; if after confessing his crime to a true friend who
would never divulge it he could procure death at his hand. But from whom
could he ask this terrible service? From whom? He thought of all the people
he knew. The doctor? No, he would talk about it afterward, most probably.
And suddenly a fantastic idea entered his mind. He would write to the
magistrate, who was on terms of close friendship with him, and would
denounce himself as the perpetrator of the crime. He would in this letter
confess everything, revealing how his soul had been tortured, how he had
resolved to die, how he had hesitated about carrying out his resolution and
what means he had employed to strengthen his failing courage. And in the
name of their old friendship he would implore of the other to destroy the
letter as soon as he had ascertained that the culprit had inflicted justice on
himself. Renardet could rely on this magistrate; he knew him to be true,
discreet, incapable of even an idle word. He was one of those men who have
an inflexible conscience, governed, directed, regulated by their reason alone.
Scarcely had he formed this project when a strange feeling of joy took
possession of his heart. He was calm now. He would write his letter slowly,
then at daybreak he would deposit it in the box nailed to the outside wall of
his office; then he would ascend his tower to watch for the postman’s arrival;
and when the man in the blue blouse had gone away, he would cast himself
head foremost on the rocks on which the foundations rested, He would take
care to be seen first by the workmen who had cut down his wood. He could
climb to the projecting stone which bore the flagstaff displayed on festivals,
He would smash this pole with a shake and carry it along with him as he fell.
Who would suspect that it was not an accident? And he would be killed
outright, owing to his weight and the height of the tower.
Presently he got out of bed, went over to the table and began to write. He
omitted nothing, not a single detail of the crime, not a single detail of the
torments of his heart, and he ended by announcing that he had passed sentence
on himself, that he was going to execute the criminal, and begged his friend,
his old friend, to be careful that there should never be any stain on his
memory.
When he had finished this letter he saw that the day had dawned.
He closed, sealed it and wrote the address. Then he descended with light
steps, hurried toward the little white box fastened to the outside wall in the
corner of the farmhouse, and when he had thrown into it this letter, which
made his hand tremble, he came back quickly, drew the bolts of the great
door and climbed up to his tower to wait for the passing of the postman, who
was to bear away his death sentence.
He felt self-possessed now. Liberated! Saved!
A cold dry wind, an icy wind passed across his face. He inhaled it
eagerly with open mouth, drinking in its chilling kiss. The sky was red, a
wintry red, and all the plain, whitened with frost, glistened under the first
rays of the sun, as if it were covered with powdered glass.
Renardet, standing up, his head bare, gazed at the vast tract of country
before him, the meadows to the left and to the right the village whose
chimneys were beginning to smoke in preparation for the morning meal. At
his feet he saw the Brindille flowing amid the rocks, where he would soon
be crushed to death. He felt new life on that beautiful frosty morning. The
light bathed him, entered his being like a new-born hope. A thousand
recollections assailed him, recollections of similar mornings, of rapid walks
on the hard earth which rang beneath his footsteps, of happy days of shooting
on the edges of pools where wild ducks sleep. All the good things that he
loved, the good things of existence, rushed to his memory, penetrated him
with fresh desires, awakened all the vigorous appetites of his active,
powerful body.
And he was about to die! Why? He was going to kill himself stupidly
because he was afraid of a shadow-afraid of nothing! He was still rich and in
the prime of life. What folly! All he needed was distraction, absence, a
voyage in order to forget.
This night even he had not seen the little girl because his mind was
preoccupied and had wandered toward some other subject. Perhaps he
would not see her any more? And even if she still haunted him in this house,
certainly she would not follow him elsewhere! The earth was wide, the
future was long.
Why should he die?
His glance travelled across the meadows, and he perceived a blue spot in
the path which wound alongside the Brindille. It was Mederic coming to
bring letters from the town and to carry away those of the village.
Renardet gave a start, a sensation of pain shot through his breast, and he
rushed down the winding staircase to get back his letter, to demand it back
from the postman. Little did it matter to him now whether he was seen, He
hurried across the grass damp from the light frost of the previous night and
arrived in front of the box in the corner of the farmhouse exactly at the same
time as the letter carrier.
The latter had opened the little wooden door and drew forth the four
papers deposited there by the inhabitants of the locality.
Renardet said to him:
“Good-morrow, Mederic.”
“Good-morrow, Monsieur le Maire.”
“I say, Mederic, I threw a letter into the box that I want back again. I came
to ask you to give it back to me.”
“That’s all right, Monsieur le Maire — you’ll get it.”
And the postman raised his eyes. He stood petrified at the sight of
Renardet’s face. The mayor’s cheeks were purple, his eyes were anxious and
sunken, with black circles round them, his hair was unbrushed, his beard
untrimmed, his necktie unfastened. It was evident that he had not been in bed.
 The postman asked:
“Are you ill, Monsieur le Maire?”
The other, suddenly comprehending that his appearance must be unusual,
lost countenance and faltered:
“Oh! no-oh! no. Only I jumped out of bed to ask you for this letter. I was
asleep. You understand?”
He said in reply:
“What letter?”
“The one you are going to give back to me.”
Mederic now began to hesitate. The mayor’s attitude did not strike him as
natural. There was perhaps a secret in that letter, a political secret. He knew
Renardet was not a Republican, and he knew all the tricks and chicanery
employed at elections.
He asked:
“To whom is it addressed, this letter of yours?”
“To Monsieur Putoin, the magistrate — you know, my friend, Monsieur
Putoin!”
The postman searched through the papers and found the one asked for.
Then he began looking at it, turning it round and round between his fingers,
much perplexed, much troubled by the fear of either committing a grave
offence or of making an enemy of the mayor.
Seeing his hesitation, Renardet made a movement for the purpose of
seizing the letter and snatching it away from him. This abrupt action
convinced Mederic that some important secret was at stake and made him
resolve to do his duty, cost what it may.
So he flung the letter into his bag and fastened it up, with the reply:
“No, I can’t, Monsieur le Maire. As long as it is for the magistrate, I
can’t.”
A dreadful pang wrung Renardet’s heart and he murmured:
“Why, you know me well. You are even able to recognize my handwriting.
I tell you I want that paper.”
“I can’t.”
“Look here, Mederic, you know that I’m incapable of deceiving you — I
tell you I want it.”
“No, I can’t.”
A tremor of rage passed through Renardet’s soul.
 “Damn it all, take care! You know that I never trifle and that I could get
you out of your job, my good fellow, and without much delay, either, And
then, I am the mayor of the district, after all; and I now order you to give me
back that paper.”
The postman answered firmly:
“No, I can’t, Monsieur le Maire.”
Thereupon Renardet, losing his head, caught hold of the postman’s arms in
order to take away his bag; but, freeing himself by a strong effort, and
springing backward, the letter carrier raised his big holly stick. Without
losing his temper, he said emphatically:
“Don’t touch me, Monsieur le Maire, or I’ll strike. Take care, I’m only
doing my duty!”
Feeling that he was lost, Renardet suddenly became humble, gentle,
appealing to him like a whimpering child:
“Look here, look here, my friend, give me back that letter and I’ll
recompense you — I’ll give you money. Stop! stop! I’ll give you a hundred
francs, you understand — a hundred francs!”
The postman turned on his heel and started on his journey.
Renardet followed him, out of breath, stammering:
“Mederic, Mederic, listen! I’ll give you a thousand francs, you understand
— a thousand francs.”
The postman still went on without giving any answer.
Renardet went on:
“I’ll make your fortune, you understand — whatever you wish — fifty
thousand francs — fifty thousand francs for that letter! What does it matter to
you? You won’t? Well, a hundred thousand — I say — a hundred thousand
francs. Do you understand? A hundred thousand francs — a hundred thousand
francs.”
The postman turned back, his face hard, his eye severe:
“Enough of this, or else I’ll repeat to the magistrate everything you have
just said to me.”
Renardet stopped abruptly. It was all over. He turned back and rushed
toward his house, running like a hunted animal.
Then, in his turn, Mederic stopped and watched his flight with
stupefaction. He saw the mayor reenter his house, and he waited still, as if
something astonishing were about to happen.
 In fact, presently the tall form of Renardet appeared on the summit of the
Fox’s tower. He ran round the platform like a madman. Then he seized the
flagstaff and shook it furiously without succeeding in breaking it; then, all of
a sudden, like a diver, with his two hands before him, he plunged into space.
Mederic rushed forward to his assistance. He saw the woodcutters going
to work and called out to them, telling them an accident had occurred. At the
foot of the walls they found a bleeding body, its head crushed on a rock. The
Brindille surrounded this rock, and over its clear, calm waters could be seen
a long red thread of mingled brains and blood.
 THE DONKEY

There was not a breath of air stirring; a heavy mist was lying over the river.
It was like a layer of cotton placed on the water. The banks themselves were
indistinct, hidden behind strange fogs. But day was breaking and the hill was
becoming visible. In the dawning light of day the plaster houses began to
appear like white spots. Cocks were crowing in the barnyard.
On the other side of the river, hidden behind the fogs, just opposite Frette,
a slight noise from time to time broke the dead silence of the quiet morning.
At times it was an indistinct plashing, like the cautious advance of a boat,
then again a sharp noise like the rattle of an oar and then the sound of
something dropping in the water. Then silence.
Sometimes whispered words, coming perhaps from a distance, perhaps
from quite near, pierced through these opaque mists. They passed by like
wild birds which have slept in the rushes and which fly away at the first light
of day, crossing the mist and uttering a low and timid sound which wakes
their brothers along the shores.
Suddenly along the bank, near the village, a barely perceptible shadow
appeared on the water. Then it grew, became more distinct and, coming out
of the foggy curtain which hung over the river, a flatboat, manned by two
men, pushed up on the grass.
The one who was rowing rose and took a pailful of fish from the bottom
of the boat, then he threw the dripping net over his shoulder. His companion,
who had not made a motion, exclaimed: “Say, Mailloche, get your gun and
see if we can’t land some rabbit along the shore.”
The other one answered: “All right. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Then he
disappeared, in order to hide their catch.
The man who had stayed in the boat slowly filled his pipe and lighted it.
His name was Labouise, but he was called Chicot, and was in partnership
with Maillochon, commonly called Mailloche, to practice the doubtful and
undefined profession of junk-gatherers along the shore.
They were a low order of sailors and they navigated regularly only in the
months of famine. The rest of the time they acted as junk-gatherers. Rowing
about on the river day and night, watching for any prey, dead or alive,
poachers on the water and nocturnal hunters, sometimes ambushing venison
in the Saint-Germain forests, sometimes looking for drowned people and
searching their clothes, picking up floating rags and empty bottles; thus did
Labouise and Maillochon live easily.
At times they would set out on foot about noon and stroll along straight
ahead. They would dine in some inn on the shore and leave again side by
side. They would remain away for a couple of days; then one morning they
would be seen rowing about in the tub which they called their boat.
At Joinville or at Nogent some boatman would be looking for his boat,
which had disappeared one night, probably stolen, while twenty or thirty
miles from there, on the Oise, some shopkeeper would be rubbing his hands,
congratulating himself on the bargain he had made when he bought a boat the
day before for fifty francs, which two men offered him as they were passing.
Maillochon reappeared with his gun wrapped up in rags. He was a man of
forty or fifty, tall and thin, with the restless eye of people who are worried by
legitimate troubles and of hunted animals. His open shirt showed his hairy
chest, but he seemed never to have had any more hair on his face than a short
brush of a mustache and a few stiff hairs under his lower lip. He was bald
around the temples. When he took off the dirty cap that he wore his scalp
seemed to be covered with a fluffy down, like the body of a plucked chicken.
Chicot, on the contrary, was red, fat, short and hairy. He looked like a raw
beefsteak. He continually kept his left eye closed, as if he were aiming at
something or at somebody, and when people jokingly cried to him, “Open
your eye, Labouise!” he would answer quietly: “Never fear, sister, I open it
when there’s cause to.”
He had a habit of calling every one “sister,” even his scavenger
companion.
He took up the oars again, and once more the boat disappeared in the
heavy mist, which was now turned snowy white in the pink-tinted sky.
“What kind of lead did you take, Maillochon?” Labouise asked.
“Very small, number nine; that’s the best for rabbits.”
They were approaching the other shore so slowly, so quietly that no noise
betrayed them. This bank belongs to the Saint-Germain forest and is the
boundary line for rabbit hunting. It is covered with burrows hidden under the
roots of trees, and the creatures at daybreak frisk about, running in and out of
the holes.
 Maillochon was kneeling in the bow, watching, his gun hidden on the
floor. Suddenly he seized it, aimed, and the report echoed for some time
throughout the quiet country.
Labouise, in a few strokes, touched the beach, and his companion,
jumping to the ground, picked up a little gray rabbit, not yet dead.
Then the boat once more disappeared into the fog in order to get to the
other side, where it could keep away from the game wardens.
The two men seemed to be riding easily on the water. The weapon had
disappeared under the board which served as a hiding place and the rabbit
was stuffed into Chicot’s loose shirt.
After about a quarter of an hour Labouise asked: “Well, sister, shall we
get one more?”
“It will suit me,” Maillochon answered.
The boat started swiftly down the current. The mist, which was hiding
both shores, was beginning to rise. The trees could be barely perceived, as
through a veil, and the little clouds of fog were floating up from the water.
When they drew near the island, the end of which is opposite Herblay, the
two men slackened their pace and began to watch. Soon a second rabbit was
killed.
Then they went down until they were half way to Conflans. Here they
stopped their boat, tied it to a tree and went to sleep in the bottom of it.
From time to time Labouise would sit up and look over the horizon with
his open eye. The last of the morning mist had disappeared and the large
summer sun was climbing in the blue sky.
On the other side of the river the vineyard-covered hill stretched out in a
semicircle. One house stood out alone at the summit. Everything was silent.
Something was moving slowly along the tow-path, advancing with
difficulty. It was a woman dragging a donkey. The stubborn, stiff-jointed
beast occasionally stretched out a leg in answer to its companion’s efforts,
and it proceeded thus, with outstretched neck and ears lying flat, so slowly
that one could not tell when it would ever be out of sight.
The woman, bent double, was pulling, turning round occasionally to strike
the donkey with a stick.
As soon as he saw her, Labouise exclaimed: “Say, Mailloche!”
Mailloche answered: “What’s the matter?”
“Want to have some fun?”
“Of course!”
 “Then hurry, sister; we’re going to have a laugh.”
Chicot took the oars. When he had crossed the river he stopped opposite
the woman and called:
“Hey, sister!”
The woman stopped dragging her donkey and looked.
Labouise continued: “What are you doing — going to the locomotive
show?”
The woman made no reply. Chicot continued:
“Say, your trotter’s prime for a race. Where are you taking him at that
speed?”
At last the woman answered: “I’m going to Macquart, at Champioux, to
have him killed. He’s worthless.”
Labouise answered: “You’re right. How much do you think Macquart will
give you for him?”
The woman wiped her forehead on the back of her hand and hesitated,
saying: “How do I know? Perhaps three francs, perhaps four.”
Chicot exclaimed: “I’ll give you five francs and your errand’s done!
How’s that?”
The woman considered the matter for a second and then exclaimed:
“Done!”
The two men landed. Labouise grasped the animal by the bridle.
Maillochon asked in surprise:
“What do you expect to do with that carcass?”
Chicot this time opened his other eye in order to express his gaiety. His
whole red face was grinning with joy. He chuckled: “Don’t worry, sister.
I’ve got my idea.”
He gave five francs to the woman, who then sat down by the road to see
what was going to happen. Then Labouise, in great humor, got the gun and
held it out to Maillochon, saying: “Each one in turn; we’re going after big
game, sister. Don’t get so near or you’ll kill it right away! You must make the
pleasure last a little.”
He placed his companion about forty paces from the victim. The ass,
feeling itself free, was trying to get a little of the tall grass, but it was so
exhausted that it swayed on its legs as if it were about to fall.
Maillochon aimed slowly and said: “A little pepper for the ears; watch,
Ghicot!” And he fired.
 The tiny shot struck the donkey’s long ears and he began to shake them in
order to get rid of the stinging sensation. The two men were doubled up with
laughter and stamped their feet with joy. The woman, indignant, rushed
forward; she did not want her donkey to be tortured, and she offered to return
the five francs. Labouise threatened her with a thrashing and pretended to roll
up his sleeves. He had paid, hadn’t he? Well, then, he would take a shot at
her skirts, just to show that it didn’t hurt. She went away, threatening to call
the police. They could hear her protesting indignantly and cursing as she
went her way.
Maillochon held out the gun to his comrade, saying: “It’s your turn,
Chicot.”
Labouise aimed and fired. The donkey received the charge in his thighs,
but the shot was so small and came from such a distance that he thought he
was being stung by flies, for he began to thrash himself with his tail.
Labouise sat down to laugh more comfortably, while Maillochon reloaded
the weapon, so happy that he seemed to sneeze into the barrel. He stepped
forward a few paces, and, aiming at the same place that his friend had shot
at, he fired again. This time the beast started, tried to kick and turned its
head. At last a little blood was running. It had been wounded and felt a sharp
pain, for it tried to run away with a slow, limping, jerky gallop.
Both men darted after the beast, Maillochon with a long stride, Labouise
with the short, breathless trot of a little man. But the donkey, tired out, had
stopped, and, with a bewildered look, was watching his two murderers
approach. Suddenly he stretched his neck and began to bray.
Labouise, out of breath, had taken the gun. This time he walked right up
close, as he did not wish to begin the chase over again.
When the poor beast had finished its mournful cry, like a last call for help,
the man called: “Hey, Mailloche! Come here, sister; I’m going to give him
some medicine.” And while the other man was forcing the animal’s mouth
open, Chicot stuck the barrel of his gun down its throat, as if he were trying
to make it drink a potion. Then he said: “Look out, sister, here she goes!”
He pressed the trigger. The donkey stumbled back a few steps, fell down,
tried to get up again and finally lay on its side and closed its eyes: The whole
body was trembling, its legs were kicking as if it were, trying to run. A
stream of blood was oozing through its teeth. Soon it stopped moving. It was
dead.
 The two men went along, laughing. It was over too quickly; they had not
had their money’s worth. Maillochon asked: “Well, what are we going to do
now?”
Labouise answered: “Don’t worry, sister. Get the thing on the boat; we’re
going to have some fun when night comes.”
They went and got the boat. The animal’s body was placed on the bottom,
covered with fresh grass, and the two men stretched out on it and went to
sleep.
Toward noon Labouise drew a bottle of wine, some bread and butter and
raw onions from a hiding place in their muddy, worm-eaten boat, and they
began to eat.
When the meal was over they once more stretched out on the dead donkey
and slept. At nightfall Labouise awoke and shook his comrade, who was
snoring like a buzzsaw. “Come on, sister,” he ordered.
Maillochon began to row. As they had plenty of time they went up the
Seine slowly. They coasted along the reaches covered with water-lilies, and
the heavy, mud-covered boat slipped over the lily pads and bent the flowers,
which stood up again as soon as they had passed.
When they reached the wall of the Eperon, which separates the Saint-
Germain forest from the Maisons-Laffitte Park, Labouise stopped his
companion and explained his idea to him. Maillochon was moved by a
prolonged, silent laugh.
They threw into the water the grass which had covered the body, took the
animal by the feet and hid it behind some bushes. Then they got into their boat
again and went to Maisons-Laffitte.
The night was perfectly black when they reached the wine shop of old
man Jules. As soon as the dealer saw them he came up, shook hands with
them and sat down at their table. They began to talk of one thing and another.
By eleven o’clock the last customer had left and old man Jules winked at
Labouise and asked: “Well, have you got any?”
Labouise made a motion with his head and answered: “Perhaps so,
perhaps not!”
The dealer insisted: “Perhaps you’ve not nothing but gray ones?”
Chicot dug his hands into his flannel shirt, drew out the ears of a rabbit
and declared: “Three francs a pair!”
Then began a long discussion about the price. Two francs sixty-five and
the two rabbits were delivered. As the two men were getting up to go, old
man Jules, who had been watching them, exclaimed:
“You have something else, but you won’t say what.”
Labouise answered: “Possibly, but it is not for you; you’re too stingy.”
The man, growing eager, kept asking: “What is it? Something big? Perhaps
we might make a deal.”
Labouise, who seemed perplexed, pretended to consult Maillochon with a
glance. Then he answered in a slow voice: “This is how it is. We were in the
bushes at Eperon when something passed right near us, to the left, at the end
of the wall. Mailloche takes a shot and it drops. We skipped on account of
the game people. I can’t tell you what it is, because I don’t know. But it’s big
enough. But what is it? If I told you I’d be lying, and you know, sister,
between us everything’s above-board.”
Anxiously the man asked: “Think it’s venison?”
Labouise answered: “Might be and then again it might not! Venison? —
uh! uh! — might be a little big for that! Mind you, I don’t say it’s a doe,
because I don’t know, but it might be.”
Still the dealer insisted: “Perhaps it’s a buck?”
Labouise stretched out his hand, exclaiming: “No, it’s not that! It’s not a
buck. I should have seen the horns. No, it’s not a buck!”
“Why didn’t you bring it with you?” asked the man.
“Because, sister, from now on I sell from where I stand. Plenty of people
will buy. All you have to do is to take a walk over there, find the thing and
take it. No risk for me.”
The innkeeper, growing suspicious, exclaimed “Supposing he wasn’t
there!”
Labouise once more raised his hand and said:
“He’s there, I swear! — first bush to the left. What it is, I don’t know. But
it’s not a buck, I’m positive. It’s for you to find out what it is. Twenty-five
francs, cash down!”
Still the man hesitated: “Couldn’t you bring it?”
Maillochon exclaimed: “No, indeed! You know our price! Take it or leave
it!”
The dealer decided: “It’s a bargain for twenty francs!”
And they shook hands over the deal.
Then he took out four big five-franc pieces from the cash drawer, and the
two friends pocketed the money. Labouise arose, emptied his glass and left.
As he was disappearing in the shadows he turned round to exclaim: “It isn’t a
buck. I don’t know what it is! — but it’s there. I’ll give you back your money
if you find nothing!”
And he disappeared in the darkness. Maillochon, who was following him,
kept punching him in the back to express his joy.
 MOIRON

As we were still talking about Pranzini, M. Maloureau, who had been

attorney general under the Empire, said: “Oh! I formerly knew a very curious
affair, curious for several reasons, as you will see.
“I was at that time imperial attorney in one of the provinces. I had to take
up the case which has remained famous under the name of the Moiron case.
“Monsieur Moiron, who was a teacher in the north of France, enjoyed an
excellent reputation throughout the whole country. He was a person of
intelligence, quiet, very religious, a little taciturn; he had married in the
district of Boislinot, where he exercised his profession. He had had three
children, who had died of consumption, one after the other. From this time he
seemed to bestow upon the youngsters confided to his care all the tenderness
of his heart. With his own money he bought toys for his best scholars and for
the good boys; he gave them little dinners and stuffed them with delicacies,
candy and cakes: Everybody loved this good man with his big heart, when
suddenly five of his pupils died, in a strange manner, one after the other. It
was supposed that there was an epidemic due to the condition of the water,
resulting from drought; they looked for the causes without being able to
discover them, the more so that the symptoms were so peculiar. The children
seemed to be attacked by a feeling of lassitude; they would not eat, they
complained of pains in their stomachs, dragged along for a short time, and
died in frightful suffering.
“A post-mortem examination was held over the last one, but nothing was
discovered. The vitals were sent to Paris and analyzed, and they revealed the
presence of no toxic substance.
“For a year nothing new developed; then two little boys, the best scholars
in the class, Moiron’s favorites, died within four days of each other. An
examination of the bodies was again ordered, and in both of them were
discovered tiny fragments of crushed glass. The conclusion arrived at was
that the two youngsters must imprudently have eaten from some carelessly
cleaned receptacle. A glass broken over a pail of milk could have produced
this frightful accident, and the affair would have been pushed no further if
Moiron’s servant had not been taken sick at this time. The physician who was
called in noticed the same symptoms he had seen in the children. He
questioned her and obtained the admission that she had stolen and eaten some
candies that had been bought by the teacher for his scholars.
“On an order from the court the schoolhouse was searched, and a closet
was found which was full of toys and dainties destined for the children.
Almost all these delicacies contained bits of crushed glass or pieces of
broken needles!
“Moiron was immediately arrested; but he seemed so astonished and
indignant at the suspicion hanging over him that he was almost released. How
ever, indications of his guilt kept appearing, and baffled in my mind my first
conviction, based on his excellent reputation, on his whole life, on the
complete absence of any motive for such a crime.
“Why should this good, simple, religious man have killed little children,
and the very children whom he seemed to love the most, whom he spoiled
and stuffed with sweet things, for whom he spent half his salary in buying
toys and bonbons?
“One must consider him insane to believe him guilty of this act. Now,
Moiron seemed so normal, so quiet, so rational and sensible that it seemed
impossible to adjudge him insane.
“However, the proofs kept growing! In none of the candies that were
bought at the places where the schoolmaster secured his provisions could the
slightest trace of anything suspicious be found.
“He then insisted that an unknown enemy must have opened his cupboard
with a false key in order to introduce the glass and the needles into the
eatables. And he made up a whole story of an inheritance dependent on the
death of a child, determined on and sought by some peasant, and promoted
thus by casting suspicions on the schoolmaster. This brute, he claimed, did
not care about the other children who were forced to die as well.
“The story was possible. The man appeared to be so sure of himself and
in such despair that we should undoubtedly have acquitted him,
notwithstanding the charges against him, if two crushing discoveries had not
been made, one after the other.
“The first one was a snuffbox full of crushed glass; his own snuffbox,
hidden in the desk where he kept his money!
“He explained this new find in an acceptable manner, as the ruse of the
real unknown criminal. But a mercer from Saint-Marlouf came to the
presiding judge and said that a gentleman had several times come to his store
to buy some needles; and he always asked for the thinnest needles he could
find, and would break them to see whether they pleased him. The man was
brought forward in the presence of a dozen or more persons, and immediately
recognized Moiron. The inquest revealed that the schoolmaster had indeed
gone into Saint-Marlouf on the days mentioned by the tradesman.
“I will pass over the terrible testimony of children on the choice of
dainties and the care which he took to have them eat the things in his
presence, and to remove the slightest traces.
“Public indignation demanded capital punishment, and it became more
and more insistent, overturning all objections.
“Moiron was condemned to death, and his appeal was rejected. Nothing
was left for him but the imperial pardon. I knew through my father that the
emperor would not grant it.
“One morning, as I was working in my study, the visit of the prison
almoner was announced. He was an old priest who knew men well and
understood the habits of criminals. He seemed troubled, ill at ease, nervous.
After talking for a few minutes about one thing and another, he arose and said
suddenly: ‘If Moiron is executed, monsieur, you will have put an innocent
man to death.’
“Then he left without bowing, leaving me behind with the deep
impression made by his words. He had pronounced them in such a sincere
and solemn manner, opening those lips, closed and sealed by the secret of
confession, in order to save a life.
“An hour later I left for Paris, and my father immediately asked that I be
granted an audience with the emperor.
“The following day I was received. His majesty was working in a little
reception room when we were introduced. I described the whole case, and I
was just telling about the priest’s visit when a door opened behind the
sovereign’s chair and the empress, who supposed he was alone, appeared.
His majesty, Napoleon, consulted her. As soon as she had heard the matter,
she exclaimed: ‘This man must be pardoned. He must, since he is innocent.’
“Why did this sudden conviction of a religious woman cast a terrible
doubt in my mind?
“Until then I had ardently desired a change of sentence. And now I
suddenly felt myself the toy, the dupe of a cunning criminal who had
employed the priest and confession as a last means of defence.
 “I explained my hesitancy to their majesties. The emperor remained
undecided, urged on one side by his natural kindness and held back on the
other by the fear of being deceived by a criminal; but the empress, who was
convinced that the priest had obeyed a divine inspiration, kept repeating:
‘Never mind! It is better to spare a criminal than to kill an innocent man!’
Her advice was taken. The death sentence was commuted to one of hard
labor.
“A few years later I heard that Moiron had again been called to the
emperor’s attention on account of his exemplary conduct in the prison at
Toulon and was now employed as a servant by the director of the
penitentiary.
“For a long time I heard nothing more of this man. But about two years
ago, while I was spending a summer near Lille with my cousin, De Larielle, I
was informed one evening, just as we were sitting down to dinner, that a
young priest wished to speak to me.
“I had him shown in and he begged me to come to a dying man who
desired absolutely to see me. This had often happened to me in my long
career as a magistrate, and, although I had been set aside by the Republic, I
was still often called upon in similar circumstances. I therefore followed the
priest, who led me to a miserable little room in a large tenement house.
“There I found a strange-looking man on a bed of straw, sitting with his
back against the wall, in order to get his breath. He was a sort of skeleton,
with dark, gleaming eyes.
“As soon as he saw me, he murmured: ‘Don’t you recognize me?’
“‘No.’
“‘I am Moiron.’
“I felt a shiver run through me, and I asked ‘The schoolmaster?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘How do you happen to be here?’
“‘The story is too long. I haven’t time to tell it. I was going to die — and
that priest was brought to me — and as I knew that you were here I sent for
you. It is to you that I wish to confess — since you were the one who once
saved my life.’
“His hands clutched the straw of his bed through the sheet and he
continued in a hoarse, forcible and low tone: ‘You see — I owe you the truth
— I owe it to you — for it must be told to some one before I leave this earth.
“‘It is I who killed the children — all of them. I did it — for revenge!
 “‘Listen. I was an honest, straightforward, pure man — adoring God —
this good Father — this Master who teaches us to love, and not the false
God, the executioner, the robber, the murderer who governs the earth. I had
never done any harm; I had never committed an evil act. I was as good as it
is possible to be, monsieur.
“‘I married and had children, and I loved them as no father or mother ever
loved their children. I lived only for them. I was wild about them. All three
of them died! Why? why? What had I done? I was rebellious, furious; and
suddenly my eyes were opened as if I were waking up out of a sleep. I
understood that God is bad. Why had He killed my children? I opened my
eyes and saw that He loves to kill. He loves only that, monsieur. He gives
life but to destroy it! God, monsieur, is a murderer! He needs death every
day. And He makes it of every variety, in order the better to be amused. He
has invented sickness and accidents in order to give Him diversion all
through the months and the years; and when He grows tired of this, He has
epidemics, the plague, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, everything possible!
But this does not satisfy Him; all these things are too similar; and so from
time to time He has wars, in order to see two hundred thousand soldiers
killed at once, crushed in blood and in the mud, blown apart, their arms and
legs torn off, their heads smashed by bullets, like eggs that fall on the ground.
“‘But this is not all. He has made men who eat each other. And then, as
men become better than He, He has made beasts, in order to see men hunt
them, kill them and eat them. That is not all. He has made tiny little animals
which live one day, flies who die by the millions in one hour, ants which we
are continually crushing under our feet, and so many, many others that we
cannot even imagine. And all these things are continually killing each other
and dying. And the good Lord looks on and is amused, for He sees
everything, the big ones as well as the little ones, those who are in the drops
of water and those in the other firmaments. He watches them and is amused.
Wretch!
“‘Then, monsieur, I began to kill children played a trick on Him. He did
not get those. It was not He, but I! And I would have killed many others, but
you caught me. There!
“‘I was to be executed. I! How He would have laughed! Then I asked for
a priest, and I lied. I confessed to him. I lied and I lived.
“‘Now, all is over. I can no longer escape from Him. I no longer fear Him,
monsieur; I despise Him too much.’
 “This poor wretch was frightful to see as he lay there gasping, opening an
enormous mouth in order to utter words which could scarcely be heard, his
breath rattling, picking at his bed and moving his thin legs under a grimy
sheet as though trying to escape.
“Oh! The mere remembrance of it is frightful!
“‘You have nothing more to say?’ I asked.
“‘No, monsieur.’
“‘Then, farewell.’
“‘Farewell, monsieur, till some day — — ‘
“I turned to the ashen-faced priest, whose dark outline stood out against
the wall, and asked: ‘Are you going to stay here, Monsieur l’Abbe?’
“‘Yes.’
“Then the dying man sneered: ‘Yes, yes, He sends His vultures to the
corpses.’
“I had had enough of this. I opened the door and ran away.”
 A PARRICIDE

The lawyer had presented a plea of insanity. How could anyone explain this
strange crime otherwise?
One morning, in the grass near Chatou, two bodies had been found, a man
and a woman, well known, rich, no longer young and married since the
preceding year, the woman having been a widow for three years before.
They were not known to have enemies; they had not been robbed. They
seemed to have been thrown from the roadside into the river, after having
been struck, one after the other, with a long iron spike.
The investigation revealed nothing. The boatmen, who had been
questioned, knew nothing. The matter was about to be given up, when a
young carpenter from a neighboring village, Georges Louis, nicknamed “the
Bourgeois,” gave himself up.
To all questions he only answered this:
“I had known the man for two years, the woman for six months. They often
had me repair old furniture for them, because I am a clever workman.”
And when he was asked:
“Why did you kill them?”
He would obstinately answer:
“I killed them because I wanted to kill them.”
They could get nothing more out of him.
This man was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, put out to nurse and then
abandoned. He had no other name than Georges Louis, but as on growing up
he became particularly intelligent, with the good taste and native refinement
which his acquaintances did not have, he was nicknamed “the Bourgeois,”
and he was never called otherwise. He had become remarkably clever in the
trade of a carpenter, which he had taken up. He was also said to be a
socialist fanatic, a believer in communistic and nihilistic doctrines, a great
reader of bloodthirsty novels, an influential political agitator and a clever
orator in the public meetings of workmen or of farmers.
His lawyer had pleaded insanity.
 Indeed, how could one imagine that this workman should kill his best
customers, rich and generous (as he knew), who in two years had enabled
him to earn three thousand francs (his books showed it)? Only one
explanation could be offered: insanity, the fixed idea of the unclassed
individual who reeks vengeance on two bourgeois, on all the bourgeoisie,
and the lawyer made a clever allusion to this nickname of “The Bourgeois,”
given throughout the neighborhood to this poor wretch. He exclaimed:
“Is this irony not enough to unbalance the mind of this poor wretch, who
has neither father nor mother? He is an ardent republican. What am I saying?
He even belongs to the same political party, the members of which, formerly
shot or exiled by the government, it now welcomes with open arms this party
to which arson is a principle and murder an ordinary occurrence.
“These gloomy doctrines, now applauded in public meetings, have ruined
this man. He has heard republicans — even women, yes, women — ask for
the blood of M. Gambetta, the blood of M. Grevy; his weakened mind gave
way; he wanted blood, the blood of a bourgeois!
“It is not he whom you should condemn, gentlemen; it is the Commune!”
Everywhere could be heard murmurs of assent. Everyone felt that the
lawyer had won his case. The prosecuting attorney did not oppose him.
Then the presiding judge asked the accused the customary question:
“Prisoner, is there anything that you wish to add to your defense?”
The man stood up.
He was a short, flaxen blond, with calm, clear, gray eyes. A strong, frank,
sonorous voice came from this frail-looking boy and, at the first words,
quickly changed the opinion which had been formed of him.
He spoke loud in a declamatory manner, but so distinctly that every word
could be understood in the farthest corners of the big hall:
“Your honor, as I do not wish to go to an insane asylum, and as I even
prefer death to that, I will tell everything.
“I killed this man and this woman because they were my parents.
“Now, listen, and judge me.
“A woman, having given birth to a boy, sent him out, somewhere, to a
nurse. Did she even know where her accomplice carried this innocent little
being, condemned to eternal misery, to the shame of an illegitimate birth; to
more than that — to death, since he was abandoned and the nurse, no longer
receiving the monthly pension, might, as they often do, let him die of hunger
and neglect!
 “The woman who nursed me was honest, better, more noble, more of a
mother than my own mother. She brought me up. She did wrong in doing her
duty. It is more humane to let them die, these little wretches who are cast
away in suburban villages just as garbage is thrown away.
“I grew up with the indistinct impression that I was carrying some burden
of shame. One day the other children called me a ‘b — — ‘. They did not
know the meaning of this word, which one of them had heard at home. I was
also ignorant of its meaning, but I felt the sting all the same.
“I was, I may say, one of the cleverest boys in the school. I would have
been a good man, your honor, perhaps a man of superior intellect, if my
parents had not committed the crime of abandoning me.
“This crime was committed against me. I was the victim, they were the
guilty ones. I was defenseless, they were pitiless. Their duty was to love me,
they rejected me.
“I owed them life — but is life a boon? To me, at any rate, it was a
misfortune. After their shameful desertion, I owed them only vengeance. They
committed against me the most inhuman, the most infamous, the most
monstrous crime which can be committed against a human creature.
“A man who has been insulted, strikes; a man who has been robbed, takes
back his own by force. A man who has been deceived, played upon, tortured,
kills; a man who has been slapped, kills; a man who has been dishonored,
kills. I have been robbed, deceived, tortured, morally slapped, dishonored,
all this to a greater degree than those whose anger you excuse.
“I revenged myself, I killed. It was my legitimate right. I took their happy
life in exchange for the terrible one which they had forced on me.
“You will call me parricide! Were these people my parents, for whom I
was an abominable burden, a terror, an infamous shame; for whom my birth
was a calamity and my life a threat of disgrace? They sought a selfish
pleasure; they got an unexpected child. They suppressed the child. My turn
came to do the same for them.
“And yet, up to quite recently, I was ready to love them.
“As I have said, this man, my father, came to me for the first time two
years ago. I suspected nothing. He ordered two pieces of furniture. I found
out, later on, that, under the seal of secrecy, naturally, he had sought
information from the priest.
“He returned often. He gave me a lot of work and paid me well.
Sometimes he would even talk to me of one thing or another. I felt a growing
affection for him.
“At the beginning of this year he brought with him his wife, my mother.
When she entered she was trembling so that I thought her to be suffering from
some nervous disease. Then she asked for a seat and a glass of water. She
said nothing; she looked around abstractedly at my work and only answered
‘yes’ and ‘no,’ at random, to all the questions which he asked her. When she
had left I thought her a little unbalanced.
“The following month they returned. She was calm, self-controlled. That
day they chattered for a long time, and they left me a rather large order. I saw
her three more times, without suspecting anything. But one day she began to
talk to me of my life, of my childhood, of my parents. I answered: ‘Madame,
my parents were wretches who deserted me.’ Then she clutched at her heart
and fell, unconscious. I immediately thought: ‘She is my mother!’ but I took
care not to let her notice anything. I wished to observe her.
“I, in turn, sought out information about them. I learned that they had been
married since last July, my mother having been a widow for only three years.
There had been rumors that they had loved each other during the lifetime of
the first husband, but there was no proof of it. I was the proof — the proof
which they had at first hidden and then hoped to destroy.
“I waited. She returned one evening, escorted as usual by my father. That
day she seemed deeply moved, I don’t know why. Then, as she was leaving,
she said to me: ‘I wish you success, because you seem to me to be honest and
a hard worker; some day you will undoubtedly think of getting married. I
have come to help you to choose freely the woman who may suit you. I was
married against my inclination once and I know what suffering it causes.
Now I am rich, childless, free, mistress of my fortune. Here is your dowry.’
“She held out to me a large, sealed envelope.
“I looked her straight in the eyes and then said: ‘Are you my mother?’
“She drew back a few steps and hid her face in her hands so as not to see
me. He, the man, my father, supported her in his arms and cried out to me:
‘You must be crazy!’
“I answered: ‘Not in the least. I know that you are my parents. I cannot be
thus deceived. Admit it and I will keep the secret; I will bear you no ill will;
I will remain what I am, a carpenter.’
“He retreated towards the door, still supporting his wife who was
beginning to sob. Quickly I locked the door, put the key in my pocket and
continued: ‘Look at her and dare to deny that she is my mother.’
 “Then he flew into a passion, very pale, terrified at the thought that the
scandal, which had so far been avoided, might suddenly break out; that their
position, their good name, their honor might all at once be lost. He
stammered out: ‘You are a rascal, you wish to get money from us! That’s the
thanks we get for trying to help such common people!’
“My mother, bewildered, kept repeating: ‘Let’s get out of here, let’s get
out!’
“Then, when he found the door locked, he exclaimed: ‘If you do not open
this door immediately, I will have you thrown into prison for blackmail and
assault!’
“I had remained calm; I opened the door and saw them disappear in the
darkness.
“Then I seemed to have been suddenly orphaned, deserted, pushed to the
wall. I was seized with an overwhelming sadness, mingled with anger,
hatred, disgust; my whole being seemed to rise up in revolt against the
injustice, the meanness, the dishonor, the rejected love. I began to run, in
order to overtake them along the Seine, which they had to follow in order to
reach the station of Chaton.
“I soon caught up with them. It was now pitch dark. I was creeping up
behind them softly, that they might not hear me. My mother was still crying.
My father was saying: ‘It’s all your own fault. Why did you wish to see him?
It was absurd in our position. We could have helped him from afar, without
showing ourselves. Of what use are these dangerous visits, since we can’t
recognize him?’
“Then I rushed up to them, beseeching. I cried:
“‘You see! You are my parents. You have already rejected me once; would
you repulse me again?’
“Then, your honor, he struck me. I swear it on my honor, before the law
and my country. He struck me, and as I seized him by the collar, he drew from
his pocket a revolver.
“The blood rushed to my head, I no longer knew what I was doing, I had
my compass in my pocket; I struck him with it as often as I could.
“Then she began to cry: ‘Help! murder!’ and to pull my beard. It seems
that I killed her also. How do I know what I did then?
“Then, when I saw them both lying on the ground, without thinking, I threw
them into the Seine.
“That’s all. Now sentence me.”
 The prisoner sat down. After this revelation the case was carried over to
the following session. It comes up very soon. If we were jurymen, what
would we do with this parricide?
 BERTHA

Dr. Bonnet, my old friend — one sometimes has friends older than one’s self
— had often invited me to spend some time with him at Riom, and, as I did
not know Auvergne, I made up my mind to visit him in the summer of 1876.
I arrived by the morning train, and the first person I saw on the platform
was the doctor. He was dressed in a gray suit, and wore a soft, black, wide-
brimmed, high-crowned felt hat, narrow at the top like a chimney pot, a hat
which hardly any one except an Auvergnat would wear, and which reminded
one of a charcoal burner. Dressed like that, the doctor had the appearance of
an old young man, with his spare body under his thin coat, and his large head
covered with white hair.
He embraced me with that evident pleasure which country people feel
when they meet long-expected friends, and, stretching out his arm, he said
proudly:
“This is Auvergne!” I saw nothing before me except a range of mountains,
whose summits, which resembled truncated cones, must have been extinct
volcanoes.
Then, pointing to the name of the station, he said:
“Riom, the fatherland of magistrates, the pride of the magistracy, and
which ought rather to be the fatherland of doctors.”
“Why?” I, asked.
“Why?” he replied with a laugh. “If you transpose the letters, you have the
Latin word ‘mori’, to die. That is the reason why I settled here, my young
friend.”
And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off, rubbing his hands.
As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee, he made me go and see the
town. I admired the druggist’s house, and the other noted houses, which were
all black, but as pretty as bric-a-brac, with their facades of sculptured stone.
I admired the statue of the Virgin, the patroness of butchers, and he told me an
amusing story about this, which I will relate some other time, and then Dr.
Bonnet said to me:
 “I must beg you to excuse me for a few minutes while I go and see a
patient, and then I will take you to Chatel-Guyon, so as to show you the
general aspect of the town, and all the mountain chain of the Puy-de-Dome
before lunch. You can wait for me outside; I shall only go upstairs and come
down immediately.”
He left me outside one of those old, gloomy, silent, melancholy houses,
which one sees in the provinces, and this one appeared to look particularly
sinister, and I soon discovered the reason. All the large windows on the first
floor were boarded half way up. The upper part of them alone could be
opened, as if one had wished to prevent the people who were locked up in
that huge stone box from looking into the street.
When the doctor came down again, I told him how it struck me, and he
replied:
“You are quite right; the poor creature who is living there must never see
what is going on outside. She is a madwoman, or rather an idiot, what you
Normans would call a Niente. It is a miserable story, but a very singular
pathological case at the same time. Shall I tell you?”
I begged him to do so, and he continued:
“Twenty years ago the owners of this house, who were my patients, had a
daughter who was like all other girls, but I soon discovered that while her
body became admirably developed, her intellect remained stationary.
“She began to walk very early, but she could not talk. At first I thought she
was deaf, but I soon discovered that, although she heard perfectly, she did not
understand anything that was said to her. Violent noises made her start and
frightened her, without her understanding how they were caused.
“She grew up into a superb woman, but she was dumb, from an absolute
want of intellect. I tried all means to introduce a gleam of intelligence into
her brain, but nothing succeeded. I thought I noticed that she knew her nurse,
though as soon as she was weaned, she failed to recognize her mother. She
could never pronounce that word which is the first that children utter and the
last which soldiers murmur when they are dying on the field of battle. She
sometimes tried to talk, but she produced nothing but incoherent sounds.
“When the weather was fine, she laughed continually, and emitted low
cries which might be compared to the twittering of birds; when it rained she
cried and moaned in a mournful, terrifying manner, which sounded like the
howling of a dog before a death occurs in a house.
 “She was fond of rolling on the grass, as young animals do, and of running
about madly, and she would clap her hands every morning, when the sun
shone into her room, and would insist, by signs, on being dressed as quickly
as possible, so that she might get out.
“She did not appear to distinguish between people, between her mother
and her nurse, or between her father and me, or between the coachman and
the cook. I particularly liked her parents, who were very unhappy on her
account, and went to see them nearly every day. I dined with them quite
frequently, which enabled me to remark that Bertha (they had called her
Bertha) seemed to recognize the various dishes, and to prefer some to others.
At that time she was twelve years old, but as fully formed in figure as a girl
of eighteen, and taller than I was. Then the idea struck me of developing her
greediness, and by this means of cultivating some slight power of
discrimination in her mind, and to force her, by the diversity of flavors, if not
to reason, at any rate to arrive at instinctive distinctions, which would of
themselves constitute a kind of process that was necessary to thought. Later
on, by appealing to her passions, and by carefully making use of those which
could serve our purpose, we might hope to obtain a kind of reaction on her
intellect, and by degrees increase the unconscious action of her brain.
“One day I put two plates before her, one of soup, and the other of very
sweet vanilla cream. I made her taste each of them successively, and then I
let her choose for herself, and she ate the plate of cream. In a short time I
made her very greedy, so greedy that it appeared as if the only idea she had
in her head was the desire for eating. She perfectly recognized the various
dishes, and stretched out her hands toward those that she liked, and took hold
of them eagerly, and she used to cry when they were taken from her. Then I
thought I would try and teach her to come to the dining-room when the dinner
bell rang. It took a long time, but I succeeded in the end. In her vacant
intellect a vague correlation was established between sound and taste, a
correspondence between the two senses, an appeal from one to the other, and
consequently a sort of connection of ideas — if one can call that kind of
instinctive hyphen between two organic functions an idea — and so I carried
my experiments further, and taught her, with much difficulty, to recognize
meal times by the clock.
“It was impossible for me for a long time to attract her attention to the
hands, but I succeeded in making her remark the clockwork and the striking
apparatus. The means I employed were very simple; I asked them not to have
the bell rung for lunch, and everybody got up and went into the dining-room
when the little brass hammer struck twelve o’clock, but I found great
difficulty in making her learn to count the strokes. She ran to the door each
time she heard the clock strike, but by degrees she learned that all the strokes
had not the same value as far as regarded meals, and she frequently fixed her
eyes, guided by her ears, on the dial of the clock.
“When I noticed that, I took care every day at twelve, and at six o’clock,
to place my fingers on the figures twelve and six, as soon as the moment she
was waiting for had arrived, and I soon noticed that she attentively followed
the motion of the small brass hands, which I had often turned in her presence.
“She had understood! Perhaps I ought rather to say that she had grasped
the idea. I had succeeded in getting the knowledge, or, rather, the sensation,
of the time into her, just as is the case with carp, who certainly have no
clocks, when they are fed every day exactly at the same time.
“When once I had obtained that result all the clocks and watches in the
house occupied her attention almost exclusively. She spent her time in
looking at them, listening to them, and in waiting for meal time, and once
something very funny happened. The striking apparatus of a pretty little Louis
XVI clock that hung at the head of her bed having got out of order, she
noticed it. She sat for twenty minutes with her eyes on the hands, waiting for
it to strike ten, but when the hands passed the figure she was astonished at not
hearing anything; so stupefied was she, indeed, that she sat down, no doubt
overwhelmed by a feeling of violent emotion such as attacks us in the face of
some terrible catastrophe. And she had the wonderful patience to wait until
eleven o’clock in order to see what would happen, and as she naturally heard
nothing, she was suddenly either seized with a wild fit of rage at having been
deceived and imposed upon by appearances, or else overcome by that fear
which some frightened creature feels at some terrible mystery, and by the
furious impatience of a passionate individual who meets with some obstacle;
she took up the tongs from the fireplace and struck the clock so violently that
she broke it to pieces in a moment.
“It was evident, therefore, that her, brain did act and calculate, obscurely
it is true, and within very restricted limits, for I could never succeed in
making her distinguish persons as she distinguished the time; and to stir her
intellect, it was necessary to appeal to her passions, in the material sense of
the word, and we soon had another, and alas! a very terrible proof of this!
 “She had grown up into a splendid girl, a perfect type of a race, a sort of
lovely and stupid Venus. She was sixteen, and I have rarely seen such
perfection of form, such suppleness and such regular features. I said she was
a Venus; yes, a fair, stout, vigorous Venus, with large, bright, vacant eyes,
which were as blue as the flowers of the flax plant; she had a large mouth
with full lips, the mouth of a glutton, of a sensualist, a mouth made for kisses.
Well, one morning her father came into my consulting room with a strange
look on his face, and, sitting down without even replying to my greeting, he
said:
“‘I want to speak to you about a very serious matter. Would it be possible
— would it be possible for Bertha to marry?’
“‘Bertha to marry! Why, it is quite impossible!’
“‘Yes, I know, I know,’ he replied. ‘But reflect, doctor. Don’t you think —
perhaps — we hoped — if she had children — it would be a great shock to
her, but a great happiness, and — who knows whether maternity might not
rouse her intellect?’
“I was in a state of great perplexity. He was right, and it was possible that
such a new situation, and that wonderful instinct of maternity, which beats in
the hearts of the lower animals as it does in the heart of a woman, which
makes the hen fly at a dog’s jaws to defend her chickens, might bring about a
revolution, an utter change in her vacant mind, and set the motionless
mechanism of her thoughts in motion. And then, moreover, I immediately
remembered a personal instance. Some years previously I had owned a
spaniel bitch who was so stupid that I could do nothing with her, but when
she had had puppies she became, if not exactly intelligent, yet almost like
many other dogs who had not been thoroughly broken.
“As soon as I foresaw the possibility of this, the wish to get Bertha
married grew in me, not so much out of friendship for her and her poor
parents as from scientific curiosity. What would happen? It was a singular
problem. I said in reply to her father:
“‘Perhaps you are right. You might make the attempt, but you will never
find a man to consent to marry her.’
“‘I have found somebody,’ he said, in a low voice.
“I was dumfounded, and said: ‘Somebody really suitable? Some one of
your own rank and position in society?’
“‘Decidedly,’ he replied.
“‘Oh! And may I ask his name?’
 “‘I came on purpose to tell you, and to consult you. It is Monsieur Gaston
du Boys de Lucelles.’
“I felt inclined to exclaim: ‘The wretch!’ but I held my tongue, and after a
few moments’ silence I said:
“‘Oh! Very good. I see nothing against it.’
“The poor man shook me heartily by the hand.
“‘She is to be married next month,’ he said.
“Monsieur Gaston du Boys de Lucelles was a scapegrace of good family,
who, after having spent all that he had inherited from his father, and having
incurred debts in all kinds of doubtful ways, had been trying to discover
some other means of obtaining money, and he had discovered this method. He
was a good-looking young fellow, and in capital health, but fast; one of that
odious race of provincial fast men, and he appeared to me to be as suitable
as anyone, and could be got rid of later by making him an allowance. He
came to the house to pay his addresses and to strut about before the idiot girl,
who, however, seemed to please him. He brought her flowers, kissed her
hands, sat at her feet, and looked at her with affectionate eyes; but she took
no notice of any of his attentions, and did not make any distinction between
him and the other persons who were about her.
“However, the marriage took place, and you may guess how my curiosity
was aroused. I went to see Bertha the next day to try and discover from her
looks whether any feelings had been awakened in her, but I found her just the
same as she was every day, wholly taken up with the clock and dinner, while
he, on the contrary, appeared really in love, and tried to rouse his wife’s
spirits and affection by little endearments and such caresses as one bestows
on a kitten. He could think of nothing better.
“I called upon the married couple pretty frequently, and I soon perceived
that the young woman knew her husband, and gave him those eager looks
which she had hitherto only bestowed on sweet dishes.
“She followed his movements, knew his step on the stairs or in the
neighboring rooms, clapped her hands when he came in, and her face was
changed and brightened by the flames of profound happiness and of desire.
“She loved him with her whole body and with all her soul to the very
depths of her poor, weak soul, and with all her heart, that poor heart of some
grateful animal. It was really a delightful and innocent picture of simple
passion, of carnal and yet modest passion, such as nature had implanted in
mankind, before man had complicated and disfigured it by all the various
shades of sentiment. But he soon grew tired of this ardent, beautiful, dumb
creature, and did not spend more than an hour during the day with her,
thinking it sufficient if he came home at night, and she began to suffer in
consequence. She used to wait for him from morning till night with her eyes
on the clock; she did not even look after the meals now, for he took all his
away from home, Clermont, Chatel-Guyon, Royat, no matter where, as long
as he was not obliged to come home.
“She began to grow thin; every other thought, every other wish, every
other expectation, and every confused hope disappeared from her mind, and
the hours during which she did not see him became hours of terrible suffering
to her. Soon he ceased to come home regularly of nights; he spent them with
women at the casino at Royat and did not come home until daybreak. But she
never went to bed before he returned. She remained sitting motionless in an
easy-chair, with her eyes fixed on the hands of the clock, which turned so
slowly and regularly round the china face on which the hours were painted.
“She heard the trot of his horse in the distance and sat up with a start, and
when he came into the room she got up with the movements of an automaton
and pointed to the clock, as if to say: ‘Look how late it is!’
“And he began to be afraid of this amorous and jealous, half-witted
woman, and flew into a rage, as brutes do; and one night he even went so far
as to strike her, so they sent for me. When I arrived she was writhing and
screaming in a terrible crisis of pain, anger, passion, how do I know what?
Can one tell what goes on in such undeveloped brains?
“I calmed her by subcutaneous injections of morphine, and forbade her to
see that man again, for I saw clearly that marriage would infallibly kill her
by degrees.
“Then she went mad! Yes, my dear friend, that idiot went mad. She is
always thinking of him and waiting for him; she waits for him all day and
night, awake or asleep, at this very moment, ceaselessly. When I saw her
getting thinner and thinner, and as she persisted in never taking her eyes off
the clocks, I had them removed from the house. I thus made it impossible for
her to count the hours, and to try to remember, from her indistinct
reminiscences, at what time he used to come home formerly. I hope to destroy
the recollection of it in time, and to extinguish that ray of thought which I
kindled with so much difficulty.
“The other day I tried an experiment. I offered her my watch; she took it
and looked at it for some time; then she began to scream terribly, as if the
sight of that little object had suddenly awakened her memory, which was
beginning to grow indistinct. She is pitiably thin now, with hollow and
glittering eyes, and she walks up and down ceaselessly, like a wild beast in
its cage; I have had gratings put on the windows, boarded them up half way,
and have had the seats fixed to the floor so as to prevent her from looking to
see whether he is coming.
“Oh! her poor parents! What a life they must lead!”
We had got to the top of the hill, and the doctor turned round and said to
me:
“Look at Riom from here.”
The gloomy town looked like some ancient city. Behind it a green,
wooded plain studded with towns and villages, and bathed in a soft blue
haze, extended until it was lost in the distance. Far away, on my right, there
was a range of lofty mountains with round summits, or else cut off flat, as if
with a sword, and the doctor began to enumerate the villages, towns and
hills, and to give me the history of all of them. But I did not listen to him; I
was thinking of nothing but the madwoman, and I only saw her. She seemed
to be hovering over that vast extent of country like a mournful ghost, and I
asked him abruptly:
“What has become of the husband?”
My friend seemed rather surprised, but after a few moments’ hesitation, he
replied:
“He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they made him, and is quite
happy; he leads a very fast life.”
As we were slowly going back, both of us silent and rather low-spirited,
an English dogcart, drawn by a thoroughbred horse, came up behind us and
passed us rapidly. The doctor took me by the arm.
“There he is,” he said.
I saw nothing except a gray felt hat, cocked over one ear above a pair of
broad shoulders, driving off in a cloud of dust.
 THE PATRON

We never dreamed of such good fortune! The son of a provincial bailiff, Jean
Marin had come, as do so many others, to study law in the Quartier Latin. In
the various beer-houses that he had frequented he had made friends with
several talkative students who spouted politics as they drank their beer. He
had a great admiration for them and followed them persistently from cafe to
cafe, even paying for their drinks when he had the money.
He became a lawyer and pleaded causes, which he lost. However, one
morning he read in the papers that one of his former comrades of the Quartier
had just been appointed deputy.
He again became his faithful hound, the friend who does the drudgery, the
unpleasant tasks, for whom one sends when one has need of him and with
whom one does not stand on ceremony. But it chanced through some
parliamentary incident that the deputy became a minister. Six months later
Jean Marin was appointed a state councillor.
He was so elated with pride at first that he lost his head. He would walk
through the streets just to show himself off, as though one could tell by his
appearance what position he occupied. He managed to say to the
shopkeepers as soon as he entered a store, bringing it in somehow in the
course of the most insignificant remarks and even to the news vendors and
the cabmen:
“I, who am a state councillor— “
Then, in consequence of his position as well as for professional reasons
and as in duty bound through being an influential and generous man, he felt an
imperious need of patronizing others. He offered his support to every one on
all occasions and with unbounded generosity.
When he met any one he recognized on the boulevards he would advance
to meet them with a charmed air, would take their hand, inquire after their
health, and, without waiting for any questions, remark:
“You know I am state councillor, and I am entirely at your service. If I can
be of any use to you, do not hesitate to call on me. In my position one has
great influence.”
 Then he would go into some cafe with the friend he had just met and ask
for a pen and ink and a sheet of paper. “Just one, waiter; it is to write a letter
of recommendation.”
And he wrote ten, twenty, fifty letters of recommendation a day. He wrote
them to the Cafe Americain, to Bignon’s, to Tortoni’s, to the Maison Doree,
to the Cafe Riche, to the Helder, to the Cafe Anglais, to the Napolitain,
everywhere, everywhere. He wrote them to all the officials of the republican
government, from the magistrates to the ministers. And he was happy,
perfectly happy.
One morning as he was starting out to go to the council it began to rain. He
hesitated about taking a cab, but decided not to do so and set out on foot.
The rain came down in torrents, swamping the sidewalks and inundating
the streets. M. Marin was obliged to take shelter in a doorway. An old priest
was standing there — an old priest with white hair. Before he became a
councillor M. Marin did not like the clergy. Now he treated them with
consideration, ever since a cardinal had consulted him on an important
matter. The rain continued to pour down in floods and obliged the two men to
take shelter in the porter’s lodge so as to avoid getting wet. M. Marin, who
was always itching to talk so as to let people know who he was, remarked:
“This is horrible weather, Monsieur l’Abbe.”
The old priest bowed:
“Yes indeed, sir, it is very unpleasant when one comes to Paris for only a
few days.”
“Ah! You come from the provinces?”
“Yes, monsieur. I am only passing through on my journey.”
“It certainly is very disagreeable to have rain during the few days one
spends in the capital. We officials who stay here the year round, we think
nothing of it.”
The priest did not reply. He was looking at the street where the rain
seemed to be falling less heavily. And with a sudden resolve he raised his
cassock just as women raise their skirts in stepping across water.
M. Marin, seeing him start away, exclaimed:
“You will get drenched, Monsieur l’Abbe. Wait a few moments longer; the
rain will be over.”
The good man stopped irresistibly and then said:
“But I am in a great hurry. I have an important engagement.”
M. Marin seemed quite worried.
 “But you will be absolutely drenched. Might I ask in which direction you
are going?”
The priest appeared to hesitate. Then he said:
“I am going in the direction of the Palais Royal.”
“In that case, if you will allow me, Monsieur l’Abbe, I will offer you the
shelter of my umbrella: As for me, I am going to the council. I am a
councillor of state.”
The old priest raised his head and looked at his neighbor and then
exclaimed:
“I thank you, monsieur. I shall be glad to accept your offer.”
M. Marin then took his arm and led him away. He directed him, watched
over him and advised him.
“Be careful of that stream, Monsieur l’Abbe. And be very careful about
the carriage wheels; they spatter you with mud sometimes from head to foot.
Look out for the umbrellas of the people passing by; there is nothing more
dangerous to the eyes than the tips of the ribs. Women especially are
unbearable; they pay no heed to where they are going and always jab you in
the face with the point of their parasols or umbrellas. And they never move
aside for anybody. One would suppose the town belonged to them. They
monopolize the pavement and the street. It is my opinion that their education
has been greatly neglected.”
And M. Marin laughed.
The priest did not reply. He walked along, slightly bent over, picking his
steps carefully so as not to get mud on his boots or his cassock.
M. Marin resumed:
“I suppose you have come to Paris to divert your mind a little?”
The good man replied:
“No, I have some business to attend to.”
“Ali! Is it important business? Might I venture to ask what it is? If I can be
of any service to you, you may command me.”
The priest seemed embarrassed. He murmured:
“Oh, it is a little personal matter; a little difficulty with — with my
bishop. It would not interest you. It is a matter of internal regulation — an
ecclesiastical affair.”
M. Marin was eager.
“But it is precisely the state council that regulates all those things. In that
case, make use of me.”
 “Yes, monsieur, it is to the council that I am going. You are a thousand
times too kind. I have to see M. Lerepere and M. Savon and also perhaps M.
Petitpas.”
M. Marin stopped short.
“Why, those are my friends, Monsieur l’Abbe, my best friends, excellent
colleagues, charming men. I will speak to them about you, and very highly.
Count upon me.”
The cure thanked him, apologizing for troubling him, and stammered out a
thousand grateful promises.
M. Marin was enchanted.
“Ah, you may be proud of having made a stroke of luck, Monsieur l’Abbe.
You will see — you will see that, thanks to me, your affair will go along
swimmingly.”
They reached the council hall. M. Marin took the priest into his office,
offered him a chair in front of the fire and sat down himself at his desk and
began to write.
“My dear colleague, allow me to recommend to you most highly a
venerable and particularly worthy and deserving priest, M. L’Abbe — — “
He stopped and asked:
“Your name, if you please?”
“L’Abbe Ceinture.”
“M. l’Abbe Ceinture, who needs your good office in a little matter which
he will communicate to you.
“I am pleased at this incident which gives me an opportunity, my dear
colleague — — “
And he finished with the usual compliments.
When he had written the three letters he handed them to his protege, who
took his departure with many protestations of gratitude.
M. Marin attended to some business and then went home, passed the day
quietly, slept well, woke in a good humor and sent for his newspapers.
The first he opened was a radical sheet. He read:
“OUR CLERGY AND OUR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
“We shall never make an end of enumerating the misdeeds of the clergy. A
certain priest, named Ceinture, convicted of conspiracy against the present
government, accused of base actions to which we will not even allude,
suspected besides of being a former Jesuit, metamorphosed into a simple
priest, suspended by a bishop for causes that are said to be unmentionable
and summoned to Paris to give an explanation of his conduct, has found an
ardent defender in the man named Marin, a councillor of state, who was not
afraid to give this frocked malefactor the warmest letters of recommendation
to all the republican officials, his colleagues.
“We call the, attention of the ministry to the unheard of attitude of this
councillor of state — — “
M. Marin bounded out of bed, dressed himself and hastened to his
colleague, Petitpas, who said to him:
“How now? You were crazy to recommend to me that old conspirator!”
M. Marin, bewildered, stammered out:
“Why no — you see — I was deceived. He looked such an honest man.
He played me a trick — a disgraceful trick! I beg that you will sentence him
severely, very severely. I am going to write. Tell me to whom I should write
about having him punished. I will go and see the attorney-general and the
archbishop of Paris — yes, the archbishop.”
And seating himself abruptly at M. Petitpas’ desk, he wrote:
“Monseigneur, I have the honor to bring to your grace’s notice the fact that
I have recently been made a victim of the intrigues and lies of a certain Abbe
Ceinture, who imposed on my kind-heartedness.
“Deceived by the representations of this ecclesiastic, I was led — — “
Then, having signed and sealed his letter, he turned to his colleague and
exclaimed:
“See here; my dear friend, let this be a warning to you never to
recommend any one again.”
 THE DOOR

“Bah!” exclaimed Karl Massouligny, “the question of complaisant husbands

is a difficult one. I have seen many kinds, and yet I am unable to give an
opinion about any of them. I have often tried to determine whether they are
blind, weak or clairvoyant. I believe that there are some which belong to
each of these categories.
“Let us quickly pass over the blind ones. They cannot rightly be called
complaisant, since they do not know, but they are good creatures who cannot
see farther than their nose. It is a curious and interesting thing to notice the
ease with which men and women can, be deceived. We are taken in by the
slightest trick of those who surround us, by our children, our friends, our
servants, our tradespeople. Humanity is credulous, and in order to discover
deceit in others, we do not display one-tenth the shrewdness which we use
when we, in turn, wish to deceive some one else.
“Clairvoyant husbands may be divided into three classes: Those who
have some interest, pecuniary, ambitious or otherwise, in their wife’s having
love affairs. These ask only to safeguard appearances as much as possible,
and they are satisfied.
“Next come those who get angry. What a beautiful novel one could write
about them!
“Finally the weak ones! Those who are afraid of scandal.
“There are also those who are powerless, or, rather, tired, who flee from
the duties of matrimony through fear of ataxia or apoplexy, who are satisfied
to see a friend run these risks.
“But I once met a husband of a rare species, who guarded against the
common accident in a strange and witty manner.
“In Paris I had made the acquaintance of an elegant, fashionable couple.
The woman, nervous, tall, slender, courted, was supposed to have had many
love adventures. She pleased me with her wit, and I believe that I pleased
her also. I courted her, a trial courting to which she answered with evident
provocations. Soon we got to tender glances, hand pressures, all the little
gallantries which precede the final attack.
 “Nevertheless, I hesitated. I consider that, as a rule, the majority of
society intrigues, however short they may be, are not worth the trouble which
they give us and the difficulties which may arise. I therefore mentally
compared the advantages and disadvantages which I might expect, and I
thought I noticed that the husband suspected me.
“One evening, at a ball, as I was saying tender things to the young woman
in a little parlor leading from the big hall where the dancing was going on, I
noticed in a mirror the reflection of some one who was watching me. It was
he. Our looks met and then I saw him turn his head and walk away.
“I murmured: ‘Your husband is spying on us.’
“She seemed dumbfounded and asked: ‘My husband?’
“‘Yes, he has been watching us for some time:
“‘Nonsense! Are you sure?’
“‘Very sure.’
“‘How strange! He is usually extraordinarily pleasant to all my. friends.’
“‘Perhaps he guessed that I love you!’
“‘Nonsense! You are not the first one to pay attention to me. Every woman
who is a little in view drags behind her a herd of admirers.’
“‘Yes. But I love you deeply.’
“‘Admitting that that is true, does a husband ever guess those things?’
“‘Then he is not jealous?’
“‘No-no!’
“She thought for an instant and then continued: ‘No. I do not think that I
ever noticed any jealousy on his part.’
“‘Has he never-watched you?’
“‘No. As I said, he is always agreeable to my friends.’
“From that day my courting became much more assiduous. The woman did
not please me any more than before, but the probable jealousy of her husband
tempted me greatly.
“As for her, I judged her coolly and clearly. She had a certain worldly
charm, due to a quick, gay, amiable and superficial mind, but no real, deep
attraction. She was, as I have already said, an excitable little being, all on the
surface, with rather a showy elegance. How can I explain myself? She was
an ornament, not a home.
“One day, after taking dinner with her, her husband said to me, just as I
was leaving: ‘My dear friend’ (he now called me ‘friend’), ‘we soon leave
for the country. It is a great pleasure to my wife and myself to entertain
people whom we like. We would be very pleased to have you spend a month
with us. It would be very nice of you to do so.’
“I was dumbfounded, but I accepted.
“A month later I arrived at their estate of Vertcresson, in Touraine. They
were waiting for me at the station, five miles from the chateau. There were
three of them, she, the husband and a gentleman unknown to me, the Comte de
Morterade, to whom I was introduced. He appeared to be delighted to make
my acquaintance, and the strangest ideas passed through my mind while we
trotted along the beautiful road between two hedges. I was saying to myself:
‘Let’s see, what can this mean? Here is a husband who cannot doubt that his
wife and I are on more than friendly terms, and yet he invites me to his house,
receives me like an old friend and seems to say: “Go ahead, my friend, the
road is clear!”’
“Then I am introduced to a very pleasant gentleman, who seems already to
have settled down in the house, and — and who is perhaps trying to get out of
it, and who seems as pleased at my arrival as the husband himself.
“Is it some former admirer who wishes to retire? One might think so. But,
then, would these two men tacitly have come to one of these infamous little
agreements so common in society? And it is proposed to me that I should
quietly enter into the pact and carry it out. All hands and arms are held out to
me. All doors and hearts are open to me.
“And what about her? An enigma. She cannot be ignorant of everything.
However — however — Well, I cannot understand it.
“The dinner was very gay and cordial. On leaving the table the husband
and his friend began to play cards, while I went out on the porch to look at
the moonlight with madame. She seemed to be greatly affected by nature, and
I judged that the moment for my happiness was near. That evening she was
really delightful. The country had seemed to make her more tender. Her long,
slender waist looked pretty on this stone porch beside a great vase in which
grew some flowers. I felt like dragging her out under the trees, throwing
myself at her feet and speaking to her words of love.
“Her husband’s voice called ‘Louise!’
“‘Yes, dear.’
“‘You are forgetting the tea.’
“‘I’ll go and see about it, my friend.’
“We returned to the house, and she gave us some tea. When the two men
had finished playing cards, they were visibly tired. I had to go to my room. I
did not get to sleep till late, and then I slept badly.
“An excursion was decided upon for the following afternoon, and we
went in an open carriage to visit some ruins. She and I were in the back of
the vehicle and they were opposite us, riding backward. The conversation
was sympathetic and agreeable. I am an orphan, and it seemed to me as
though I had just found my family, I felt so at home with them.
“Suddenly, as she had stretched out her foot between her husband’s legs,
he murmured reproachfully: ‘Louise, please don’t wear out your old shoes
yourself. There is no reason for being neater in Paris than in the country.’
“I lowered my eyes. She was indeed wearing worn-out shoes, and I
noticed that her stockings were not pulled up tight.
“She had blushed and hidden her foot under her dress. The friend was
looking out in the distance with an indifferent and unconcerned look.
“The husband offered me a cigar, which I accepted. For a few days it was
impossible for me to be alone with her for two minutes; he was with us
everywhere. He was delightful to me, however.
“One morning he came to get me to take a walk before breakfast, and the
conversation happened to turn on marriage. I spoke a little about solitude and
about how charming life can be made by the affection of a woman. Suddenly
he interrupted me, saying: ‘My friend, don’t talk about things you know
nothing about. A woman who has no other reason for loving you will not love
you long. All the little coquetries which make them so exquisite when they do
not definitely belong to us cease as soon as they become ours. And then —
the respectable women — that is to say our wives — are — are not — in
fact do not understand their profession of wife. Do you understand?’
“He said no more, and I could not guess his thoughts.
“Two days after this conversation he called me to his room quite early, in
order to show me a collection of engravings. I sat in an easy chair opposite
the big door which separated his apartment from his wife’s, and behind this
door I heard some one walking and moving, and I was thinking very little of
the engravings, although I kept exclaiming: ‘Oh, charming! delightful!
exquisite!’
“He suddenly said: ‘Oh, I have a beautiful specimen in the next room. I’ll
go and get it.’
“He ran to the door quickly, and both sides opened as though for a
theatrical effect.
 “In a large room, all in disorder, in the midst of skirts, collars, waists
lying around on the floor, stood a tall, dried-up creature. The lower part of
her body was covered with an old, worn-out silk petticoat, which was
hanging limply on her shapeless form, and she was standing in front of a
mirror brushing some short, sparse blond hairs. Her arms formed two acute
angles, and as she turned around in astonishment I saw under a common
cotton chemise a regular cemetery of ribs, which were hidden from the
public gaze by well-arranged pads.
“The husband uttered a natural exclamation and came back, closing the
doors, and said: ‘Gracious! how stupid I am! Oh, how thoughtless! My wife
will never forgive me for that!’
“I already felt like thanking him. I left three days later, after cordially
shaking hands with the two men and kissing the lady’s fingers. She bade me a
cold good-by.”
Karl Massouligny was silent. Some one asked: “But what was the
friend?”
“I don’t know — however — however he looked greatly distressed to see
me leaving so soon.”
 A SALE

The defendants, Cesaire-Isidore Brument and Prosper-Napoleon Cornu,

appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Seine-Inferieure, on a charge of
attempted murder, by drowning, of Mme. Brument, lawful wife of the first of
the aforenamed.
The two prisoners sat side by side on the traditional bench. They were
two peasants; the first was small and stout, with short arms, short legs, and a
round head with a red pimply face, planted directly on his trunk, which was
also round and short, and with apparently no neck. He was a raiser of pigs
and lived at Cacheville-la-Goupil, in the district of Criquetot.
Cornu (Prosper-Napoleon) was thin, of medium height, with enormously
long arms. His head was on crooked, his jaw awry, and he squinted. A blue
blouse, as long as a shirt, hung down to his knees, and his yellow hair, which
was scanty and plastered down on his head, gave his face a worn-out, dirty
look, a dilapidated look that was frightful. He had been nicknamed “the cure”
because he could imitate to perfection the chanting in church, and even the
sound of the serpent. This talent attracted to his cafe — for he was a saloon
keeper at Criquetot — a great many customers who preferred the “mass at
Cornu” to the mass in church.
Mme. Brument, seated on the witness bench, was a thin peasant woman
who seemed to be always asleep. She sat there motionless, her hands crossed
on her knees, gazing fixedly before her with a stupid expression.
The judge continued his interrogation.
“Well, then, Mme. Brument, they came into your house and threw you into
a barrel full of water. Tell us the details. Stand up.”
She rose. She looked as tall as a flag pole with her cap which looked like
a white skull cap. She said in a drawling tone:
“I was shelling beans. Just then they came in. I said to myself, ‘What is the
matter with them? They do not seem natural, they seem up to some mischief.’
They watched me sideways, like this, especially Cornu, because he squints. I
do not like to see them together, for they are two good-for-nothings when they
are in company. I said: ‘What do you want with me?’ They did not answer. I
had a sort of mistrust — — “
The defendant Brument interrupted the witness hastily, saying:
“I was full.”
Then Cornu, turning towards his accomplice said in the deep tones of an
organ:
“Say that we were both full, and you will be telling no lie.”
The judge, severely:
“You mean by that that you were both drunk?”
Brument: “There can be no question about it.”
Cornu: “That might happen to anyone.”
The judge to the victim: “Continue your testimony, woman Brument.”
“Well, Brument said to me, ‘Do you wish to earn a hundred sous?’ ‘Yes,’ I
replied, seeing that a hundred sous are not picked up in a horse’s tracks. Then
he said: ‘Open your eyes and do as I do,’ and he went to fetch the large
empty barrel which is under the rain pipe in the corner, and he turned it over
and brought it into my kitchen, and stuck it down in the middle of the floor,
and then he said to me: ‘Go and fetch water until it is full.’
“So I went to the pond with two pails and carried water, and still more
water for an hour, seeing that the barrel was as large as a vat, saving your
presence, m’sieu le president.
“All this time Brument and Cornu were drinking a glass, and then another
glass, and then another. They were finishing their drinks when I said to them:
‘You are full, fuller than this barrel.’ And Brument answered me. ‘Do not
worry, go on with your work, your turn will come, each one has his share.’ I
paid no attention to what he said as he was full.
“When the barrel was full to the brim, I said: ‘There, that’s done.’
“And then Cornu gave me a hundred sous, not Brument, Cornu; it was
Cornu gave them to me. And Brument said: ‘Do you wish to earn a hundred
sous more?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, for I am not accustomed to presents like that. Then
he said: ‘Take off your clothes!
“‘Take off my clothes?’
“‘Yes,’ he said.
“‘How many shall I take off?’
“‘If it worries you at all, keep on your chemise, that won’t bother us.’
“A hundred sous is a hundred sous, and I have to undress myself; but I did
not fancy undressing before those two good-for-nothings. I took off my cap,
and then my jacket, and then my skirt, and then my sabots. Brument said,
‘Keep on your stockings, also; we are good fellows.’
“And Cornu said, too, ‘We are good fellows.’
“So there I was, almost like mother Eve. And they got up from their
chairs, but could not stand straight, they were so full, saving your presence,
M’sieu le president.
“I said to myself: ‘What are they up to?’
“And Brument said: ‘Are you ready?’
“And Cornu said: ‘I’m ready!’
“And then they took me, Brument by the head, and Cornu by the feet, as
one might take, for instance, a sheet that has been washed. Then I began to
bawl.
“And Brument said: ‘Keep still, wretched creature!’
“And they lifted me up in the air and put me into the barrel, which was full
of water, so that I had a check of the circulation, a chill to my very insides.
“And Brument said: ‘Is that all?’
“Cornu said: ‘That is all.’
“Brument said: ‘The head is not in, that will make a difference in the
measure.’
“Cornu said: ‘Put in her head.’
“And then Brument pushed down my head as if to drown me, so that the
water ran into my nose, so that I could already see Paradise. And he pushed
it down, and I disappeared.
“And then he must have been frightened. He pulled me out and said: ‘Go
and get dry, carcass.’
“As for me, I took to my heels and ran as far as M. le cure’s. He lent me a
skirt belonging to his servant, for I was almost in a state of nature, and he
went to fetch Maitre Chicot, the country watchman who went to Criquetot to
fetch the police who came to my house with me.
“Then we found Brument and Cornu fighting each other like two rams.
“Brument was bawling: ‘It isn’t true, I tell you that there is at least a cubic
metre in it. It is the method that was no good.’
“Cornu bawled: ‘Four pails, that is almost half a cubic metre. You need
not reply, that’s what it is.’
“The police captain put them both under arrest. I have no more to tell.”
She sat down. The audience in the court room laughed. The jurors looked
at one another in astonishment. The judge said:
 “Defendant Cornu, you seem to have been the instigator of this infamous
plot. What have you to say?”
And Cornu rose in his turn.
“Judge,” he replied, “I was full.”
The Judge answered gravely:
“I know it. Proceed.”
“I will. Well, Brument came to my place about nine o’clock, and ordered
two drinks, and said: ‘There’s one for you, Cornu.’ I sat down opposite him
and drank, and out of politeness, I offered him a glass. Then he returned the
compliment and so did I, and so it went on from glass to glass until noon,
when we were full.
“Then Brument began to cry. That touched me. I asked him what was the
matter. He said: ‘I must have a thousand francs by Thursday.’ That cooled me
off a little, you understand. Then he said to me all at once: ‘I will sell you my
wife.’
“I was full, and I was a widower. You understand, that stirred me up. I did
not know his wife, but she was a woman, wasn’t she? I asked him: ‘How
much would you sell her for?’
“He reflected, or pretended to reflect. When one is full one is not very
clear-headed, and he replied: ‘I will sell her by the cubic metre.’
“That did not surprise me, for I was as drunk as he was, and I knew what
a cubic metre is in my business. It is a thousand litres, that suited me.
“But the price remained to be settled. All depends on the quality. I said:
‘How much do you want a cubic metre?’
“He answered: ‘Two thousand francs.’
“I gave a bound like a rabbit, and then I reflected that a woman ought not
to measure more than three hundred litres. So I said: ‘That’s too dear.’
“He answered: ‘I cannot do it for less. I should lose by it.’
“You understand, one is not a dealer in hogs for nothing. One understands
one’s business. But, if he is smart, the seller of bacon, I am smarter, seeing
that I sell them also. Ha, Ha, Ha! So I said to him: ‘If she were new, I would
not say anything, but she has been married to you for some time, so she is not
as fresh as she was. I will give you fifteen hundred francs a cubic metre, not
a sou more. Will that suit you?’
“He answered: ‘That will do. That’s a bargain!’
“I agreed, and we started out, arm in arm. We must help each other in this
world.
 “But a fear came to me: ‘How can you measure her unless you put her into
the liquid?’
“Then he explained his idea, not without difficulty for he was full. He said
to me: ‘I take a barrel, and fill it with water to the brim. I put her in it. All the
water that comes out we will measure, that is the way to fix it.’
“I said: ‘I see, I understand. But this water that overflows will run away;
how are you going to gather it up?’
“Then he began stuffing me and explained to me that all we should have to
do would be to refill the barrel with the water his wife had displaced as
soon as she should have left. All the water we should pour in would be the
measure. I supposed about ten pails; that would be a cubic metre. He isn’t a
fool, all the same, when he is drunk, that old horse.
“To be brief, we reached his house and I took a look at its mistress. A
beautiful woman she certainly was not. Anyone can see her, for there she is. I
said to myself: ‘I am disappointed, but never mind, she will be of value;
handsome or ugly, it is all the same, is it not, monsieur le president?’ And
then I saw that she was as thin as a rail. I said to myself: ‘She will not
measure four hundred litres.’ I understand the matter, it being in liquids.
“She told you about the proceeding. I even let her keep on her chemise
and stockings, to my own disadvantage.
“When that was done she ran away. I said: ‘Look out, Brument! she is
escaping.’
“He replied: ‘Do not be afraid. I will catch her all right. She will have to
come back to sleep, I will measure the deficit.’
“We measured. Not four pailfuls. Ha, Ha, Ha!”
The witness began to laugh so persistently that a gendarme was obliged to
punch him in the back. Having quieted down, he resumed:
“In short, Brument exclaimed: ‘Nothing doing, that is not enough.’ I
bawled and bawled, and bawled again, he punched me, I hit back. That
would have kept on till the Day of judgment, seeing we were both drunk.
“Then came the gendarmes! They swore at us, they took us off to prison. I
want damages.”
He sat down.
Brument confirmed in every particular the statements of his accomplice.
The jury, in consternation, retired to deliberate.
At the end of an hour they returned a verdict of acquittal for the
defendants, with some severe strictures on the dignity of marriage, and
establishing the precise limitations of business transactions.
Brument went home to the domestic roof accompanied by his wife.
Cornu went back to his business.
 THE IMPOLITE SEX

Madame de X. to Madame de L.

ETRETAT, Friday.
My Dear Aunt:
I am coming to see you without anyone knowing it. I shall be at Les
Fresnes on the 2d of September, the day before the hunting season opens, as I
do not want to miss it, so that I may tease these gentlemen. You are too good,
aunt, and you will allow them, as you usually do when there are no strange
guests, to come to table, under pretext of fatigue, without dressing or shaving
for the occasion.
They are delighted, of course, when I am not present. But I shall be there
and will hold a review, like a general, at dinner time; and, if I find a single
one of them at all careless in dress, no matter how little, I mean to send them
down to the kitchen with the servants.
The men of to-day have so little consideration for others and so little good
manners that one must be always severe with them. We live indeed in an age
of vulgarity. When they quarrel, they insult each other in terms worthy of
longshoremen, and, in our presence, they do not conduct themselves even as
well as our servants. It is at the seaside that you see this most clearly. They
are to be found there in battalions, and you can judge them in the lump. Oh!
what coarse beings they are!
Just imagine, in a train, a gentleman who looked well, as I thought at first
sight, thanks to his tailor, carefully took off his boots in order to put on a pair
of old shoes! Another, an old man who was probably some wealthy upstart
(these are the most ill-bred), while sitting opposite to me, had the delicacy to
place his two feet on the seat quite close to me. This is a positive fact.
At the watering-places the vulgarity is unrestrained. I must here make one
admission — that my indignation is perhaps due to the fact that I am not
accustomed to associate, as a rule, with the sort of people one comes across
here, for I should be less shocked by their manners if I had the opportunity of
observing them oftener. In the office of the hotel I was nearly thrown down
by a young man who snatched the key over my head. Another knocked against
me so violently without begging my pardon or lifting his hat, coming away
from a ball at the Casino, that it gave me a pain in the chest. It is the same
way with all of them. Watch them addressing ladies on the terrace; they
scarcely ever bow. They merely raise their hands to their headgear. But,
indeed, as they are all more or less bald, it is the best plan.
But what exasperates and disgusts me particularly is the liberty they take
of talking in public, without any kind of precaution, about the most revolting
adventures. When two men are together, they relate to each other, in the
broadest language and with the most abominable comments really horrible
stories, without caring in the slightest degree whether a woman’s ear is
within reach of their voices. Yesterday, on the beach, I was forced to leave
the place where I was sitting in order not to be any longer the involuntary
confidante of an obscene anecdote, told in such immodest language that I felt
just as humiliated as indignant at having heard it. Would not the most
elementary good-breeding teach them to speak in a lower tone about such
matters when we are near at hand. Etretat is, moreover, the country of gossip
and scandal. From five to seven o’clock you can see people wandering about
in quest of scandal, which they retail from group to group. As you remarked
to me, my dear aunt, tittle-tattle is the mark of petty individuals and petty
minds. It is also the consolation of women who are no longer loved or sought
after. It is enough for me to observe the women who are fondest of gossiping
to be persuaded that you are quite right.
The other day I was present at a musical evening at the Casino, given by a
remarkable artist, Madame Masson, who sings in a truly delightful manner. I
took the opportunity of applauding the admirable Coquelin, as well as two
charming vaudeville performers, M —— and Meillet. I met, on this
occasion, all the bathers who were at the beach. It is no great distinction this
year.
Next day I went to lunch at Yport. I noticed a tall man with a beard,
coming out of a large house like a castle. It was the painter, Jean Paul
Laurens. He is not satisfied apparently with imprisoning the subjects of his
pictures, he insists on imprisoning himself.
Then I found myself seated on the shingle close to a man still young, of
gentle and refined appearance, who was reading poetry. But he read it with
such concentration, with such passion, I may say, that he did not even raise
his eyes towards me. I was somewhat astonished and asked the proprietor of
the baths, without appearing to be much concerned, the name of this
gentleman. I laughed to myself a little at this reader of rhymes; he seemed
behind the age, for a man. This person, I thought, must be a simpleton. Well,
aunt, I am now infatuated about this stranger. Just fancy, his name is Sully
Prudhomme! I went back and sat down beside him again so as to get a good
look at him. His face has an expression of calmness and of penetration.
Somebody came to look for him, and I heard his voice, which is sweet and
almost timid. He would certainly not tell obscene stories aloud in public or
knock up against ladies without apologizing. He is assuredly a man of
refinement, but his refinement is of an almost morbid, sensitive character, I
will try this winter to get an introduction to him.
I have no more news, my dear aunt, and I must finish this letter in
haste, as the mail will soon close. I kiss your hands and your cheeks.
Your devoted niece,
BERTHE DE X.
P. S. — I should add, however, by way of justification of French
politeness, that our fellow-countrymen are, when travelling, models of good
manners in comparison with the abominable English, who seem to have been
brought up in a stable, so careful are they not to discommode themselves in
any way, while they always discommode their neighbors.
Madame de L. to Madame de X.

LES FRESNES, Saturday.

My Dear Child:
Many of the things you have said to me are very sensible, but that does not
prevent you from being wrong. Like you, I used formerly to feel very
indignant at the impoliteness of men, who, as I supposed, constantly treated
me with neglect; but, as I grew older and reflected on everything, putting
aside coquetry, and observing things without taking any part in them myself, I
perceived this much — that if men are not always polite, women are always
indescribably rude.
We imagine that we should be permitted to do anything, my darling, and at
the same time we consider that we have a right to the utmost respect, and in
the most flagrant manner we commit actions devoid of that elementary good-
breeding of which you speak so feelingly.
I find, on the contrary, that men consider us much more than we consider
them. Besides, darling, men must needs be, and are, what we make them. In a
state of society, where women are all true gentlewomen, all men would
become gentlemen.
Come now; just observe and reflect.
Look at two women meeting in the street. What an attitude each assumes
towards the other! What disparaging looks! What contempt they throw into
each glance! How they toss their heads while they inspect each other to find
something to condemn! And, if the footpath is narrow, do you think one
woman would make room for another, or would beg pardon as she sweeps
by? Never! When two men jostle each other by accident in some narrow
lane, each of them bows and at the same time gets out of the other’s way,
while we women press against each other stomach to stomach, face to face,
insolently staring each other out of countenance.
Look at two women who are acquaintances meeting on a staircase outside
the door of a friend’s drawing-room, one of them just leaving, the other about
to go in. They begin to talk to each other and block up all the landing. If
anyone happens to be coming up behind them, man or woman, do you imagine
that they will put themselves half an inch out of their way? Never! never!
I was waiting myself, with my watch in my hands, one day last winter at a
certain drawing-room door. And, behind me, two gentlemen were also
waiting without showing any readiness, as I did, to lose their temper. The
reason was that they had long grown accustomed to our unconscionable
insolence.
The other day, before leaving Paris, I went to dine with no less a person
than your husband, in the Champs Elysees, in order to enjoy the fresh air.
Every table was occupied. The waiter asked us to wait and there would soon
be a vacant table.
At that moment I noticed an elderly lady of noble figure, who, having paid
for her dinner, seemed on the point of going away. She saw me, scanned me
from head to foot, and did not budge. For more than a quarter of an hour she
sat there, immovable, putting on her gloves, and calmly staring at those who
were waiting like myself. Now, two young men who were just finishing their
dinner, having seen me in their turn, hastily summoned the waiter, paid what
they owed, and at once offered me their seats, even insisting on standing
while waiting for their change. And, bear in mind, my fair niece, that I am no
longer pretty, like you, but old and white-haired.
It is we, you see, who should be taught politeness, and the task would be
such a difficult one that Hercules himself would not be equal to it. You speak
to me about Etretat and about the people who indulged in “tittle-tattle” along
the beach of that delightful watering-place. It is a spot now lost to me, a thing
of the past, but I found much amusement therein days gone by.
There were only a few of us, people in good society, really good society,
and a few artists, and we all fraternized. We paid little attention to gossip in
those days.
As we had no monotonous Casino, where people only gather for show,
where they whisper, where they dance stupidly, where they succeed in
thoroughly boring one another, we sought some other way of passing our
evenings pleasantly. Now, just guess what came into the head of one of our
husbands? Nothing less than to go and dance each night in one of the farm-
houses in the neighborhood.
We started out in a group with a street-organ, generally played by Le
Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton nightcap on his head. Two men carried
lanterns. We followed in procession, laughing and chattering like a pack of
fools.
We woke up the farmer and his servant-maids and farm hands. We got
them to make onion soup (horror!), and we danced under the apple trees, to
the sound of the barrel-organ. The cocks waking up began to crow in the
darkness of the out-houses; the horses began prancing on the straw of their
stables. The cool air of the country caressed our cheeks with the smell of
grass and of new-mown hay.
How long ago it is! How long ago it is! It is thirty years since then!
I do not want you, my darling, to come for the opening of the hunting
season. Why spoil the pleasure of our friends by inflicting on them
fashionable toilettes on this day of vigorous exercise in the country?
This is the way, child, that men are spoiled. I embrace you. Your old
aunt,
GENEVIEVE DE L.
 A WEDDING GIFT

For a long time Jacques Bourdillere had sworn that he would never marry,
but he suddenly changed his mind. It happened suddenly, one summer, at the
seashore.
One morning as he lay stretched out on the sand, watching the women
coming out of the water, a little foot had struck him by its neatness and
daintiness. He raised his eyes and was delighted with the whole person,
although in fact he could see nothing but the ankles and the head emerging
from a flannel bathrobe carefully held closed. He was supposed to be
sensual and a fast liver. It was therefore by the mere grace of the form that he
was at first captured. Then he was held by the charm of the young girl’s
sweet mind, so simple and good, as fresh as her cheeks and lips.
He was presented to the family and pleased them. He immediately fell
madly in love. When he saw Berthe Lannis in the distance, on the long
yellow stretch of sand, he would tingle to the roots of his hair. When he was
near her he would become silent, unable to speak or even to think, with a
kind of throbbing at his heart, and a buzzing in his ears, and a bewilderment
in his mind. Was that love?
He did not know or understand, but he had fully decided to have this child
for his wife.
Her parents hesitated for a long time, restrained by the young man’s bad
reputation. It was said that he had an old sweetheart, one of these binding
attachments which one always believes to be broken off and yet which
always hold.
Besides, for a shorter or longer period, he loved every woman who came
within reach of his lips.
Then he settled down and refused, even once, to see the one with whom he
had lived for so long. A friend took care of this woman’s pension and
assured her an income. Jacques paid, but he did not even wish to hear of her,
pretending even to ignore her name. She wrote him letters which he never
opened. Every week he would recognize the clumsy writing of the abandoned
woman, and every week a greater anger surged within him against her, and he
would quickly tear the envelope and the paper, without opening it, without
reading one single line, knowing in advance the reproaches and complaints
which it contained.
As no one had much faith in his constancy, the test was prolonged through
the winter, and Berthe’s hand was not granted him until the spring. The
wedding took place in Paris at the beginning of May.
The young couple had decided not to take the conventional wedding trip,
but after a little dance for the younger cousins, which would not be prolonged
after eleven o’clock, in order that this day of lengthy ceremonies might not be
too tiresome, the young pair were to spend the first night in the parental home
and then, on the following morning, to leave for the beach so dear to their
hearts, where they had first known and loved each other.
Night had come, and the dance was going on in the large parlor. ‘The two
had retired into a little Japanese boudoir hung with bright silks and dimly
lighted by the soft rays of a large colored lantern hanging from the ceiling
like a gigantic egg. Through the open window the fresh air from outside
passed over their faces like a caress, for the night was warm and calm, full
of the odor of spring.
They were silent, holding each other’s hands and from time to time
squeezing them with all their might. She sat there with a dreamy look, feeling
a little lost at this great change in her life, but smiling, moved, ready to cry,
often also almost ready to faint from joy, believing the whole world to be
changed by what had just happened to her, uneasy, she knew not why, and
feeling her whole body and soul filled with an indefinable and delicious
lassitude.
He was looking at her persistently with a fixed smile. He wished to speak,
but found nothing to say, and so sat there, expressing all his ardor by
pressures of the hand. From time to time he would murmur: “Berthe!” And
each time she would raise her eyes to him with a look of tenderness; they
would look at each other for a second and then her look, pierced and
fascinated by his, would fall.
They found no thoughts to exchange. They had been left alone, but
occasionally some of the dancers would cast a rapid glance at them, as
though they were the discreet and trusty witnesses of a mystery.
A door opened and a servant entered, holding on a tray a letter which a
messenger had just brought. Jacques, trembling, took this paper,
overwhelmed by a vague and sudden fear, the mysterious terror of swift
misfortune.
He looked for a longtime at the envelope, the writing on which he did not
know, not daring to open it, not wishing to read it, with a wild desire to put it
in his pocket and say to himself: “I’ll leave that till to-morrow, when I’m far
away!” But on one corner two big words, underlined, “Very urgent,” filled
him with terror. Saying, “Please excuse me, my dear,” he tore open the
envelope. He read the paper, grew frightfully pale, looked over it again, and,
slowly, he seemed to spell it out word for word.
When he raised his head his whole expression showed how upset he was.
He stammered: “My dear, it’s — it’s from my best friend, who has had a very
great misfortune. He has need of me immediately — for a matter of life or
death. Will you excuse me if I leave you for half an hour? I’ll be right back.”
Trembling and dazed, she stammered: “Go, my dear!” not having been his
wife long enough to dare to question him, to demand to know. He
disappeared. She remained alone, listening to the dancing in the neighboring
parlor.
He had seized the first hat and coat he came to and rushed downstairs
three steps at a time. As he was emerging into the street he stopped under the
gas-jet of the vestibule and reread the letter. This is what it said:
SIR: A girl by the name of Ravet, an old sweetheart of yours, it
seems, has just given birth to a child that she says is yours. The
mother is about to die and is begging for you. I take the liberty to
write and ask you if you can grant this last request to a woman who
seems to be very unhappy and worthy of pity.
Yours truly, DR. BONNARD.
When he reached the sick-room the woman was already on the point of
death. He did not recognize her at first. The doctor and two nurses were
taking care of her. And everywhere on the floor were pails full of ice and
rags covered with blood. Water flooded the carpet; two candles were
burning on a bureau; behind the bed, in a little wicker crib, the child was
crying, and each time it would moan the mother, in torture, would try to
move, shivering under her ice bandages.
She was mortally wounded, killed by this birth. Her life was flowing from
her, and, notwithstanding the ice and the care, the merciless hemorrhage
continued, hastening her last hour.
 She recognized Jacques and wished to raise her arms. They were so weak
that she could not do so, but tears coursed down her pallid cheeks. He
dropped to his knees beside the bed, seized one of her hands and kissed it
frantically. Then, little by little, he drew close to the thin face, which started
at the contact. One of the nurses was lighting them with a candle, and the
doctor was watching them from the back of the room.
Then she said in a voice which sounded as though it came from a distance:
“I am going to die, dear. Promise to stay to the end. Oh! don’t leave me now.
Don’t leave me in my last moments!”
He kissed her face and her hair, and, weeping, he murmured: “Do not be
uneasy; I will stay.”
It was several minutes before she could speak again, she was so weak.
She continued: “The little one is yours. I swear it before God and on my soul.
I swear it as I am dying! I have never loved another man but you — promise
to take care of the child.”
He was trying to take this poor pain-racked body in his arms. Maddened
by remorse and sorrow, he stammered: “I swear to you that I will bring him
up and love him. He shall never leave me.”
Then she tried to kiss Jacques. Powerless to lift her head, she held out her
white lips in an appeal for a kiss. He approached his lips to respond to this
piteous entreaty.
As soon as she felt a little calmer, she murmured: “Bring him here and let
me see if you love him.”
He went and got the child. He placed him gently on the bed between them,
and the little one stopped crying. She murmured: “Don’t move any more!”
And he was quiet. And he stayed there, holding in his burning hand this other
hand shaking in the chill of death, just as, a while ago, he had been holding a
hand trembling with love. From time to time he would cast a quick glance at
the clock, which marked midnight, then one o’clock, then two.
The physician had returned. The two nurses, after noiselessly moving
about the room for a while, were now sleeping on chairs. The child was
asleep, and the mother, with eyes shut, appeared also to be resting.
Suddenly, just as pale daylight was creeping in behind the curtains, she
stretched out her arms with such a quick and violent motion that she almost
threw her baby on the floor. A kind of rattle was heard in her throat, then she
lay on her back motionless, dead.
The nurses sprang forward and declared: “All is over!”
 He looked once more at this woman whom he had so loved, then at the
clock, which pointed to four, and he ran away, forgetting his overcoat, in the
evening dress, with the child in his arms.
After he had left her alone the young wife had waited, calmly enough at
first, in the little Japanese boudoir. Then, as she did not see him return, she
went back to the parlor with an indifferent and calm appearance, but terribly
anxious. When her mother saw her alone she asked: “Where is your
husband?” She answered: “In his room; he is coming right back.”
After an hour, when everybody had questioned her, she told about the
letter, Jacques’ upset appearance and her fears of an accident.
Still they waited. The guests left; only the nearest relatives remained. At
midnight the bride was put to bed, sobbing bitterly. Her mother and two
aunts, sitting around the bed, listened to her crying, silent and in despair. The
father had gone to the commissary of police to see if he could obtain some
news.
At five o’clock a slight noise was heard in the hall. A door was softly
opened and closed. Then suddenly a little cry like the mewing of a cat was
heard throughout the silent house.
All the women started forward and Berthe sprang ahead of them all,
pushing her way past her aunts, wrapped in a bathrobe.
Jacques stood in the middle of the room, pale and out of breath, holding an
infant in his arms. The four women looked at him, astonished; but Berthe,
who had suddenly become courageous, rushed forward with anguish in her
heart, exclaiming: “What is it? What’s the matter?”
He looked about him wildly and answered shortly:
“I — I have a child and the mother has just died.”
And with his clumsy hands he held out the screaming infant.
Without saying a word, Berthe seized the child, kissed it and hugged it to
her. Then she raised her tear-filled eyes to him, asking: “Did you say that the
mother was dead?” He answered: “Yes — just now — in my arms. I had
broken with her since summer. I knew nothing. The physician sent for me.”
Then Berthe murmured: “Well, we will bring up the little one.”
 FEAR

We went up on deck after dinner. Before us the Mediterranean lay without a

ripple and shimmering in the moonlight. The great ship glided on, casting
upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the
dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and
beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much
brilliancy that one could have called it boiling moonlight.
There were six or eight of us silent with admiration and gazing toward
far-away Africa whither we were going. The commandant, who was smoking
a cigar with us, brusquely resumed the conversation begun at dinner.
“Yes, I was afraid then. My ship remained for six hours on that rock,
beaten by the wind and with a great hole in the side. Luckily we were picked
up toward evening by an English coaler which sighted us.”
Then a tall man of sunburned face and grave demeanor, one of those men
who have evidently traveled unknown and far-away lands, whose calm eye
seems to preserve in its depths something of the foreign scenes it has
observed, a man that you are sure is impregnated with courage, spoke for the
first time.
“You say, commandant, that you were afraid. I beg to disagree with you.
You are in error as to the meaning of the word and the nature of the sensation
that you experienced. An energetic man is never afraid in the presence of
urgent danger. He is excited, aroused, full of anxiety, but fear is something
quite different.”
The commandant laughed and answered: “Bah! I assure you that I was
afraid.”
Then the man of the tanned countenance addressed us deliberately as
follows:
“Permit me to explain. Fear — and the boldest men may feel fear — is
something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the
soul, a terrible spasm of brain and heart, the very memory of which brings a
shudder of anguish, but when one is brave he feels it neither under fire nor in
the presence of sure death nor in the face of any well-known danger. It
springs up under certain abnormal conditions, under certain mysterious
influences in the presence of vague peril. Real fear is a sort of reminiscence
of fantastic terror of the past. A man who believes in ghosts and imagines he
sees a specter in the darkness must feel fear in all its horror.
“As for me I was overwhelmed with fear in broad daylight about ten years
ago and again one December night last winter.
“Nevertheless, I have gone through many dangers, many adventures which
seemed to promise death. I have often been in battle. I have been left for dead
by thieves. In America I was condemned as an insurgent to be hanged, and off
the coast of China have been thrown into the sea from the deck of a ship.
Each time I thought I was lost I at once decided upon my course of action
without regret or weakness.
“That is not fear.
“I have felt it in Africa, and yet it is a child of the north. The sunlight
banishes it like the mist. Consider this fact, gentlemen. Among the Orientals
life has no value; resignation is natural. The nights are clear and empty of the
somber spirit of unrest which haunts the brain in cooler lands. In the Orient
panic is known, but not fear.
“Well, then! Here is the incident that befell me in Africa.
“I was crossing the great sands to the south of Onargla. It is one of the
most curious districts in the world. You have seen the solid continuous sand
of the endless ocean strands. Well, imagine the ocean itself turned to sand in
the midst of a storm. Imagine a silent tempest with motionless billows of
yellow dust. They are high as mountains, these uneven, varied surges, rising
exactly like unchained billows, but still larger, and stratified like watered
silk. On this wild, silent, and motionless sea, the consuming rays of the
tropical sun are poured pitilessly and directly. You have to climb these
streaks of red-hot ash, descend again on the other side, climb again, climb,
climb without halt, without repose, without shade. The horses cough, sink to
their knees and slide down the sides of these remarkable hills.
“We were a couple of friends followed by eight spahis and four camels
with their drivers. We were no longer talking, overcome by heat, fatigue, and
a thirst such as had produced this burning desert. Suddenly one of our men
uttered a cry. We all halted, surprised by an unsolved phenomenon known
only to travelers in these trackless wastes.
“Somewhere, near us, in an indeterminable direction, a drum was rolling,
the mysterious drum of the sands. It was beating distinctly, now with greater
resonance and again feebler, ceasing, then resuming its uncanny roll.
“The Arabs, terrified, stared at one another, and one said in his language:
‘Death is upon us.’ As he spoke, my companion, my friend, almost a brother,
dropped from his horse, falling face downward on the sand, overcome by a
sunstroke.
“And for two hours, while I tried in vain to save him, this weird drum
filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent and incomprehensible tone,
and I felt lay hold of my bones fear, real fear, hideous fear, in the presence of
this beloved corpse, in this hole scorched by the sun, surrounded by four
mountains of sand, and two hundred leagues from any French settlement,
while echo assailed our ears with this furious drum beat.
“On that day I realized what fear was, but since then I have had another,
and still more vivid experience— “
The commandant interrupted the speaker:
“I beg your pardon, but what was the drum?”
The traveler replied:
“I cannot say. No one knows. Our officers are often surprised by this
singular noise and attribute it generally to the echo produced by a hail of
grains of sand blown by the wind against the dry and brittle leaves of weeds,
for it has always been noticed that the phenomenon occurs in proximity to
little plants burned by the sun and hard as parchment. This sound seems to
have been magnified, multiplied, and swelled beyond measure in its progress
through the valleys of sand, and the drum therefore might be considered a sort
of sound mirage. Nothing more. But I did not know that until later.
“I shall proceed to my second instance.
“It was last winter, in a forest of the Northeast of France. The sky was so
overcast that night came two hours earlier than usual. My guide was a
peasant who walked beside me along the narrow road, under the vault of fir
trees, through which the wind in its fury howled. Between the tree tops, I saw
the fleeting clouds, which seemed to hasten as if to escape some object of
terror. Sometimes in a fierce gust of wind the whole forest bowed in the
same direction with a groan of pain, and a chill laid hold of me, despite my
rapid pace and heavy clothing.
“We were to sup and sleep at an old gamekeeper’s house not much farther
on. I had come out for hunting.
“My guide sometimes raised his eyes and murmured: ‘Ugly weather!’
Then he told me about the people among whom we were to spend the night.
The father had killed a poacher, two years before, and since then had been
gloomy and behaved as though haunted by a memory. His two sons were
married and lived with him.
“The darkness was profound. I could see nothing before me nor around me
and the mass of overhanging interlacing trees rubbed together, filling the night
with an incessant whispering. Finally I saw a light and soon my companion
was knocking upon a door. Sharp women’s voices answered us, then a man’s
voice, a choking voice, asked, ‘Who goes there?’ My guide gave his name.
We entered and beheld a memorable picture.
“An old man with white hair, wild eyes, and a loaded gun in his hands,
stood waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen, while two stalwart youths,
armed with axes, guarded the door. In the somber corners I distinguished two
women kneeling with faces to the wall.
“Matters were explained, and the old man stood his gun against the wall,
at the same time ordering that a room be prepared for me. Then, as the
women did not stir: ‘Look you, monsieur,’ said he, ‘two years ago this night I
killed a man, and last year he came back to haunt me. I expect him again to-
night.’
“Then he added in a tone that made me smile:
“‘And so we are somewhat excited.’
“I reassured him as best I could, happy to have arrived on that particular
evening and to witness this superstitious terror. I told stories and almost
succeeded in calming the whole household.
“Near the fireplace slept an old dog, mustached and almost blind, with his
head between his paws, such a dog as reminds you of people you have
known.
“Outside, the raging storm was beating against the little house, and
suddenly through a small pane of glass, a sort of peep-window placed near
the door, I saw in a brilliant flash of lightning a whole mass of trees thrashed
by the wind.
“In spite of my efforts, I realized that terror was laying hold of these
people, and each time that I ceased to speak, all ears listened for distant
sounds. Annoyed at these foolish fears, I was about to retire to my bed, when
the old gamekeeper suddenly leaped from his chair, seized his gun and
stammered wildly: ‘There he is, there he is! I hear him!’ The two women
again sank upon their knees in the corner and hid their faces, while the sons
took up the axes. I was going to try to pacify them once more, when the
sleeping dog awakened suddenly and, raising his head and stretching his
neck, looked at the fire with his dim eyes and uttered one of those mournful
howls which make travelers shudder in the darkness and solitude of the
country. All eyes were focused upon him now as he rose on his front feet, as
though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at something invisible,
unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling all over. The
gamekeeper with livid face cried: ‘He scents him! He scents him! He was
there when I killed him.’ The two women, terrified, began to wail in concert
with the dog.
“In spite of myself, cold chills ran down my spine. This vision of the
animal at such a time and place, in the midst of these startled people, was
something frightful to witness.
“Then for an hour the dog howled without stirring; he howled as though in
the anguish of a nightmare; and fear, horrible fear came over me. Fear of
what? How can I say? It was fear, and that is all I know.
“We remained motionless and pale, expecting something awful to happen.
Our ears were strained and our hearts beat loudly while the slightest noise
startled us. Then the beast began to walk around the room, sniffing at the
walls and growling constantly. His maneuvers were driving us mad! Then the
countryman, who had brought me thither, in a paroxysm of rage, seized the
dog, and carrying him to a door, which opened into a small court, thrust him
forth.
“The noise was suppressed and we were left plunged in a silence still
more terrible. Then suddenly we all started. Some one was gliding along the
outside wall toward the forest; then he seemed to be feeling of the door with
a trembling hand; then for two minutes nothing was heard and we almost lost
our minds. Then he returned, still feeling along the wall, and scratched lightly
upon the door as a child might do with his finger nails. Suddenly a face
appeared behind the glass of the peep-window, a white face with eyes
shining like those of the cat tribe. A sound was heard, an indistinct plaintive
murmur.
“Then there was a formidable burst of noise in the kitchen. The old
gamekeeper had fired and the two sons at once rushed forward and
barricaded the window with the great table, reinforcing it with the buffet.
“I swear to you that at the shock of the gun’s discharge, which I did not
expect, such an anguish laid hold of my heart, my soul, and my very body that
I felt myself about to fall, about to die from fear.
 “We remained there until dawn, unable to move, in short, seized by an
indescribable numbness of the brain.
“No one dared to remove the barricade until a thin ray of sunlight
appeared through a crack in the back room.
“At the base of the wall and under the window, we found the old dog lying
dead, his skull shattered by a ball.
“He had escaped from the little court by digging a hole under a fence.”
The dark-visaged man became silent, then he added:
“And yet on that night I incurred no danger, but I should rather again pass
through all the hours in which I have confronted the most terrible perils than
the one minute when that gun was discharged at the bearded head in the
window.”
 THE RELIC

“To the Abbe Louis d’Ennemare, at Soissons.

“My Dear Abbe.
“My marriage with your cousin is broken off in the most stupid way, all on
account of an idiotic trick which I almost involuntarily played my intended.
In my perplexity I turn to you, my old school chum, for you may be able to
help me out of the difficulty. If you can, I shall be grateful to you until I die.
“You know Gilberte, or, rather, you think you know her, but do we ever
understand women? All their opinions, their ideas, their creeds, are a
surprise to us. They are all full of twists and turns, cf the unforeseen, of
unintelligible arguments, of defective logic and of obstinate ideas, which
seem final, but which they alter because a little bird came and perched on the
window ledge.
“I need not tell you that your cousin is very religious, as she was brought
up by the White (or was it the Black?) Ladies at Nancy. You know that better
than I do, but what you perhaps do not know is, that she is just as excitable
about other matters as she is about religion. Her head flies away, just as a
leaf is whirled away by the wind; and she is a true woman, or, rather, girl,
for she is moved or made angry in a moment, starting off at a gallop in
affection, just as she does in hatred, and returning in the same manner; and
she is pretty — as you know, and more charming than I can say — as you
will never know.
“Well, we became engaged, and I adored her, as I adore her still, and she
appeared to love me.
“One evening, I received a telegram summoning me to Cologne for a
consultation, which might be followed by a serious and difficult operation,
and as I had to start the next morning, I went to wish Gilberte good-by, and
tell her why I could not dine with them on Wednesday, but would do so on
Friday, the day of my return. Ah! Beware of Fridays, for I assure you they are
unlucky!
“When I told her that I had to go to Germany, I saw that her eyes filled
with tears, but when I said I should be back very soon, she clapped her
hands, and said:
“‘I am very glad you are going, then! You must bring me back something; a
mere trifle, just a souvenir, but a souvenir that you have chosen for me. You
must guess what I should like best, do you hear? And then I shall see whether
you have any imagination.’
“She thought for a few moments, and then added:
“‘I forbid you to spend more than twenty francs on it. I want it for the
intention, and for a remembrance of your penetration, and not for its intrinsic
value:
“And then, after another moment’s silence, she said, in a low voice, and
with downcast eyes:
“‘If it costs you nothing in money, but is something very ingenious and
pretty, I will — I will kiss you.’
“The next day I was in Cologne. It was a case of a terrible accident,
which had plunged a whole family into despair, and a difficult amputation
was necessary. They lodged me in the house; I might say, they almost locked
me up, and I saw nobody but people in tears, who almost deafened me with
their lamentations; I operated on a man who appeared to be in a moribund
state, and who nearly died under my hands, and with whom I remained two
nights; and then, when I saw that there was a chance of his recovery, I drove
to the station. I had, however, made a mistake in the trains, and I had an hour
to wait, and so I wandered about the streets, still thinking of my poor patient,
when a man accosted me. I do not know German, and he was totally ignorant
of French, but at last I made out that he was offering me some relics. I thought
of Gilberte, for I knew her fanatical devotion, and here was my present ready
to hand, so I followed the man into a shop where religious objects were for
sale, and I bought a small piece of a bone of one of the Eleven Thousand
Virgins.
“The pretended relic was inclosed in a charming old silver box, and that
determined my choice, and, putting my purchase into my pocket, I went to the
railway station, and so on to Paris.
“As soon as I got home, I wished to examine my purchase again, and on
taking hold of it, I found that the box was open, and the relic missing! I
searched in vain in my pocket, and turned it inside out; the small bit of bone,
which was no bigger than half a pin, had disappeared.
“You know, my dear little Abbe, that my faith is not very fervent, but, as
my friend, you are magnanimous enough to put up with my lukewarmness, and
to leave me alone, and to wait for the future, so you say. But I absolutely
disbelieve in the relics of secondhand dealers in piety, and you share my
doubts in that respect. Therefore, the loss of that bit of sheep’s carcass did
not grieve me, and I easily procured a similar fragment, which I carefully
fastened inside my jewel-box, and then I went to see my intended.
“As soon as she saw me, she ran up to me, smiling and eager, and, said to
me:
“‘What have you brought me?’
“I pretended to have forgotten, but she did not believe me, and I made her
beg, and even beseech me. But when I saw that she was devoured by
curiosity, I gave her the sacred silver box. She appeared overjoyed.
“‘A relic! Oh! A relic!’
“And she kissed the box passionately, so that I was ashamed of my
deception. She was not quite satisfied, however, and her uneasiness soon
turned to terrible fear, and looking straight into my eyes, she said:
“‘Are you sure-that it is genuine?’
“‘Absolutely certain.’
“‘How can you be so certain?’
“I was trapped; for to say that I had bought it of a man in the streets would
be my destruction. What was I to say? A wild idea struck me, and I said, in a
low, mysterious voice:
“‘I stole it for you.’
“She looked at me with astonishment and delight in her large eyes.
“‘Oh! You stole it? Where?’
“‘In the cathedral; in the very shrine of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.’
“Her heart beat with pleasure, and she murmured:
“‘Oh! Did you really do that-for me? Tell me-all about it!’
“That was the climax; I could not retract what I had said. I made up a
fanciful story; with precise details: I had given the custodian of the building a
hundred francs to be allowed to go about the building by myself; the shrine
was being repaired, but I happened to be there at the breakfast hour of the
workmen and clergy; by removing a small panel, I had been enabled to seize
a small piece of bone (oh! so small), among a quantity of others (I said a
quantity, as I thought of the amount that the remains of the skeletons of eleven
thousand virgins must produce). Then I went to a goldsmith’s and bought a
casket worthy of the relic; and I was not sorry to let her know that the silver
box cost me five hundred francs.
 “But she did not think of that; she listened to me, trembling, in an ecstasy,
and whispering: ‘How I love you!’ she threw herself into my arms.
“Just note this: I had committed sacrilege for her sake. I had committed a
theft; I had violated a church; I had violated a shrine; violated and stolen holy
relics, and for that she adored me, thought me perfect, tender, divine. Such is
woman, my dear Abbe, every woman.
“For two months I was the most admirable of lovers. In her room, she had
made a kind of magnificent chapel in which to keep this bit of mutton chop,
which, as she thought, had made me commit that divine love-crime, and she
worked up her religious enthusiasm in front of it every morning and evening.
I had asked her to keep the matter secret, for fear, as I said, that I might be
arrested, condemned, and given over to Germany, and she kept her promise.
“Well, at the beginning of the summer, she was seized with an irresistible
desire to see the scene of my exploit, and she teased her father so persistently
(without telling him her secret reason), that he took her to Cologne, but
without telling me of their trip, according to his daughter’s wish.
“I need not tell you that I had not seen the interior of the cathedral. I do not
know where the tomb (if there be a tomb) of the Eleven Thousand Virgins is;
and then, it appears, it is unapproachable, alas!
“A week afterward, I received ten lines, breaking off our engagement, and
then an explanatory letter from her father, whom she had, somewhat late,
taken into her confidence.
“At the sight of the shrine, she had suddenly seen through my trickery and
my lie, and at the same time discovered my real innocence of any crime.
Having asked the keeper of the relics whether any robbery had been
committed, the man began to laugh, and pointed out to them how impossible
such a crime was. But, from the moment that I had not plunged my profane
hand into venerable relics, I was no longer worthy of my fair-haired,
sensitive betrothed.
“I was forbidden the house; I begged and prayed in vain; nothing could
move the fair devotee, and I became ill from grief. Well, last week, her
cousin, Madame d’Arville, who is your cousin also, sent me word that she
should like to see me, and when I called, she told me on what conditions I
might obtain my pardon, and here they are. I must bring her a relic, a real,
authentic relic of some virgin and martyr, certified to be such by our Holy
Father, the Pope, and I am going mad from embarrassment and anxiety.
 “I will go to Rome, if needful, but I cannot call on the Pope unexpectedly,
to tell him my stupid misadventure; and, besides, I doubt whether they allow
private individuals to have relics. Could not you give me an introduction to
some cardinal, or even to some French prelate who possesses some remains
of a female saint? Or, perhaps, you may have the precious object she wants in
your collection?
“Help me out of my difficulty, my dear Abbe, and I promise you that I will
be converted ten years sooner than I otherwise should be!
“Madame d’Arville, who takes the matter seriously, said to me the other
day:
“‘Poor Gilberte will never marry.’
“My dear old schoolmate, will you allow your cousin to die the victim of
a stupid piece of subterfuge on my part? Pray prevent her from being virgin
eleven thousand and one.
“Pardon me, I am unworthy, but I embrace you, and love you with all my
heart.
“Your old friend,
“HENRI FONTAL.”
 THE MORIBUND

The warm autumn sun was beating down on the farmyard. Under the grass,
which had been cropped close by the cows, the earth soaked by recent rains,
was soft and sank in under the feet with a soggy noise, and the apple trees,
loaded with apples, were dropping their pale green fruit in the dark green
grass.
Four young heifers, tied in a line, were grazing and at times looking
toward the house and lowing. The fowls made a colored patch on the dung-
heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while two
roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they were
calling with a loud clucking.
The wooden gate opened and a man entered. He might have been forty
years old, but he looked at least sixty, wrinkled, bent, walking slowly,
impeded by the weight of heavy wooden shoes full of straw. His long arms
hung down on both sides of his body. When he got near the farm a yellow cur,
tied at the foot of an enormous pear tree, beside a barrel which served as his
kennel, began at first to wag his tail and then to bark for joy. The man cried:
“Down, Finot!”
The dog was quiet.
A peasant woman came out of the house. Her large, flat, bony body was
outlined under a long woollen jacket drawn in at the waist. A gray skirt, too
short, fell to the middle of her legs, which were encased in blue stockings.
She, too, wore wooden shoes, filled with straw. The white cap, turned
yellow, covered a few hairs which were plastered to the scalp, and her
brown, thin, ugly, toothless face had that wild, animal expression which is
often to be found on the faces of the peasants.
The man asked:
“How is he gettin’ along?”
The woman answered:
“The priest said it’s the end — that he will never live through the night.”
Both of them went into the house.
 After passing through the kitchen, they entered a low, dark room, barely
lighted by one window, in front of which a piece of calico was hanging. The
big beams, turned brown with age and smoke, crossed the room from one
side to the other, supporting the thin floor of the garret, where an army of rats
ran about day and night.
The moist, lumpy earthen floor looked greasy, and, at the back of the
room, the bed made an indistinct white spot. A harsh, regular noise, a
difficult, hoarse, wheezing breathing, like the gurgling of water from a broken
pump, came from the darkened couch where an old man, the father of the
peasant woman, was dying.
The man and the woman approached the dying man and looked at him with
calm, resigned eyes.
The son-in-law said:
“I guess it’s all up with him this time; he will not last the night.”
The woman answered:
“He’s been gurglin’ like that ever since midday.” They were silent. The
father’s eyes were closed, his face was the color of the earth and so dry that
it looked like wood. Through his open mouth came his harsh, rattling breath,
and the gray linen sheet rose and fell with each respiration.
The son-in-law, after a long silence, said:
“There’s nothing more to do; I can’t help him. It’s a nuisance, just the
same, because the weather is good and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
His wife seemed annoyed at this idea. She reflected a few moments and
then said:
“He won’t be buried till Saturday, and that will give you all day
tomorrow.”
The peasant thought the matter over and answered:
“Yes, but to-morrow I’ll have to invite the people to the funeral. That
means five or six hours to go round to Tourville and Manetot, and to see
everybody.”
The woman, after meditating two or three minutes, declared:
“It isn’t three o’clock yet. You could begin this evening and go all round
the country to Tourville. You can just as well say that he’s dead, seem’ as
he’s as good as that now.”
The man stood perplexed for a while, weighing the pros and cons of the
idea. At last he declared:
“Well, I’ll go!”
 He was leaving the room, but came back after a minute’s hesitation:
“As you haven’t got anythin’ to do you might shake down some apples to
bake and make four dozen dumplings for those who come to the funeral, for
one must have something to cheer them. You can light the fire with the wood
that’s under the shed. It’s dry.”
He left the room, went back into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, took
out a six-pound loaf of bread, cut off a slice, and carefully gathered the
crumbs in the palm of his hand and threw them into his mouth, so as not to
lose anything. Then, with the end of his knife, he scraped out a little salt
butter from the bottom of an earthen jar, spread it on his bread and began to
eat slowly, as he did everything.
He recrossed the farmyard, quieted the dog, which had started barking
again, went out on the road bordering on his ditch, and disappeared in the
direction of Tourville.
As soon as she was alone, the woman began to work. She uncovered the
meal-bin and made the dough for the dumplings. She kneaded it a long time,
turning it over and over again, punching, pressing, crushing it. Finally she
made a big, round, yellow-white ball, which she placed on the corner of the
table.
Then she went to get her apples, and, in order not to injure the tree with a
pole, she climbed up into it by a ladder. She chose the fruit with care, only
taking the ripe ones, and gathering them in her apron.
A voice called from the road:
“Hey, Madame Chicot!”
She turned round. It was a neighbor, Osime Favet, the mayor, on his way
to fertilize his fields, seated on the manure-wagon, with his feet hanging over
the side. She turned round and answered:
“What can I do for you, Maitre Osime?”
“And how is the father?”
She cried:
“He is as good as dead. The funeral is Saturday at seven, because there’s
lots of work to be done.”
The neighbor answered:
“So! Good luck to you! Take care of yourself.”
To his kind remarks she answered:”
“Thanks; the same to you.”
And she continued picking apples.
 When she went back to the house, she went over to look at her father,
expecting to find him dead. But as soon as she reached the door she heard his
monotonous, noisy rattle, and, thinking it a waste of time to go over to him,
she began to prepare her dumplings. She wrapped up the fruit, one by one, in
a thin layer of paste, then she lined them up on the edge of the table. When
she had made forty-eight dumplings, arranged in dozens, one in front of the
other, she began to think of preparing supper, and she hung her kettle over the
fire to cook potatoes, for she judged it useless to heat the oven that day, as
she had all the next day in which to finish the preparations.
Her husband returned at about five. As soon as he had crossed the
threshold he asked:
“Is it over?”
She answered:
“Not yet; he’s still gurglin’.”
They went to look at him. The old man was in exactly the same condition.
His hoarse rattle, as regular as the ticking of a clock, was neither quicker nor
slower. It returned every second, the tone varying a little, according as the air
entered or left his chest.
His son-in-law looked at him and then said:
“He’ll pass away without our noticin’ it, just like a candle.”
They returned to the kitchen and started to eat without saying a word.
When they had swallowed their soup, they ate another piece of bread and
butter. Then, as soon as the dishes were washed, they returned to the dying
man.
The woman, carrying a little lamp with a smoky wick, held it in front of
her father’s face. If he had not been breathing, one would certainly have
thought him dead.
The couple’s bed was hidden in a little recess at the other end of the
room. Silently they retired, put out the light, closed their eyes, and soon two
unequal snores, one deep and the other shriller, accompanied the
uninterrupted rattle of the dying man.
The rats ran about in the garret.
The husband awoke at the first streaks of dawn. His father-in-law was
still alive. He shook his wife, worried by the tenacity of the old man.
“Say, Phemie, he don’t want to quit. What would you do?”
He knew that she gave good advice.
She answered:
 “You needn’t be afraid; he can’t live through the day. And the mayor won’t
stop our burying him to-morrow, because he allowed it for Maitre Renard’s
father, who died just during the planting season.”
He was convinced by this argument, and left for the fields.
His wife baked the dumplings and then attended to her housework.
At noon the old man was not dead. The people hired for the day’s work
came by groups to look at him. Each one had his say. Then they left again for
the fields.
At six o’clock, when the work was over, the father was still breathing. At
last his son-in-law was frightened.
“What would you do now, Phemie?”
She no longer knew how to solve the problem. They went to the mayor.
He promised that he would close his eyes and authorize the funeral for the
following day. They also went to the health officer, who likewise promised,
in order to oblige Maitre Chicot, to antedate the death certificate. The man
and the woman returned, feeling more at ease.
They went to bed and to sleep, just as they did the preceding day, their
sonorous breathing blending with the feeble breathing of the old man.
When they awoke, he was not yet dead.
Then they began to be frightened. They stood by their father, watching him
with distrust, as though he had wished to play them a mean trick, to deceive
them, to annoy them on purpose, and they were vexed at him for the time
which he was making them lose.
The son-in-law asked:
“What am I goin’ to do?”
She did not know. She answered:
“It certainly is annoying!”
The guests who were expected could not be notified. They decided to
wait and explain the case to them.
Toward a quarter to seven the first ones arrived. The women in black,
their heads covered with large veils, looking very sad. Then men, ill at ease
in their homespun coats, were coming forward more slowly, in couples,
talking business.
Maitre Chicot and his wife, bewildered, received them sorrowfully, and
suddenly both of them together began to cry as they approached the first
group. They explained the matter, related their difficulty, offered chairs,
bustled about, tried to make excuses, attempting to prove that everybody
would have done as they did, talking continually and giving nobody a chance
to answer.
They were going from one person to another:
“I never would have thought it; it’s incredible how he can last this long!”
The guests, taken aback, a little disappointed, as though they had missed
an expected entertainment, did not know what to do, some remaining seated
others standing. Several wished to leave. Maitre Chicot held them back:
“You must take something, anyhow! We made some dumplings; might as
well make use of ‘em.”
The faces brightened at this idea. The yard was filling little by little; the
early arrivals were telling the news to those who had arrived later.
Everybody was whispering. The idea of the dumplings seemed to cheer
everyone up.
The women went in to take a look at the dying man. They crossed
themselves beside the bed, muttered a prayer and went out again. The men,
less anxious for this spectacle, cast a look through the window, which had
been opened.
Madame Chicot explained her distress:
“That’s how he’s been for two days, neither better nor worse. Doesn’t he
sound like a pump that has gone dry?”
When everybody had had a look at the dying man, they thought of the
refreshments; but as there were too many people for the kitchen to hold, the
table was moved out in front of the door. The four dozen golden dumplings,
tempting and appetizing, arranged in two big dishes, attracted the eyes of all.
Each one reached out to take his, fearing that there would not be enough. But
four remained over.
Maitre Chicot, his mouth full, said:
“Father would feel sad if he were to see this. He loved them so much
when he was alive.”
A big, jovial peasant declared:
“He won’t eat any more now. Each one in his turn.”
This remark, instead of making the guests sad, seemed to cheer them up. It
was their turn now to eat dumplings.
Madame Chicot, distressed at the expense, kept running down to the cellar
continually for cider. The pitchers were emptied in quick succession. The
company was laughing and talking loud now. They were beginning to shout as
they do at feasts.
 Suddenly an old peasant woman who had stayed beside the dying man,
held there by a morbid fear of what would soon happen to herself, appeared
at the window and cried in a shrill voice:
“He’s dead! he’s dead!”
Everybody was silent. The women arose quickly to go and see. He was
indeed dead. The rattle had ceased. The men looked at each other, looking
down, ill at ease. They hadn’t finished eating the dumplings. Certainly the
rascal had not chosen a propitious moment. The Chicots were no longer
weeping. It was over; they were relieved.
They kept repeating:
“I knew it couldn’t ‘last. If he could only have done it last night, it would
have saved us all this trouble.”
Well, anyhow, it was over. They would bury him on Monday, that was all,
and they would eat some more dumplings for the occasion.
The guests went away, talking the matter over, pleased at having had the
chance to see him and of getting something to eat.
And when the husband and wife were alone, face to face, she said, her
face distorted with grief:
“We’ll have to bake four dozen more dumplings! Why couldn’t he have
made up his mind last night?”
The husband, more resigned, answered:
“Well, we’ll not have to do this every day.”
 THE GAMEKEEPER

It was after dinner, and we were talking about adventures and accidents
which happened while out shooting.
An old friend, known to all of us, M. Boniface, a great sportsman and a
connoisseur of wine, a man of wonderful physique, witty and gay, and
endowed with an ironical and resigned philosophy, which manifested itself
in caustic humor, and never in melancholy, suddenly exclaimed:
“I know a story, or rather a tragedy, which is somewhat peculiar. It is not
at all like those which one hears of usually, and I have never told it, thinking
that it would interest no one.
“It is not at all sympathetic. I mean by that, that it does not arouse the kind
of interest which pleases or which moves one agreeably.
“Here is the story:
“I was then about thirty-five years of age, and a most enthusiastic
sportsman.
“In those days I owned a lonely bit of property in the neighborhood of
Jumieges, surrounded by forests and abounding in hares and rabbits. I was
accustomed to spending four or five days alone there each year, there not
being room enough to allow of my bringing a friend with me.
“I had placed there as gamekeeper, an old retired gendarme, a good man,
hot-tempered, a severe disciplinarian, a terror to poachers and fearing
nothing. He lived all alone, far from the village, in a little house, or rather
hut, consisting of two rooms downstairs, with kitchen and store-room, and
two upstairs. One of them, a kind of box just large enough to accommodate a
bed, a cupboard and a chair, was reserved for my use.
“Old man Cavalier lived in the other one. When I said that he was alone
in this place, I was wrong. He had taken his nephew with him, a young scamp
about fourteen years old, who used to go to the village and run errands for the
old man.
“This young scapegrace was long and lanky, with yellow hair, so light that
it resembled the fluff of a plucked chicken, so thin that he seemed bald.
Besides this, he had enormous feet and the hands of a giant.
 “He was cross-eyed, and never looked at anyone. He struck me as being
in the same relation to the human race as ill-smelling beasts are to the animal
race. He reminded me of a polecat.
“He slept in a kind of hole at the top of the stairs which led to the two
rooms.
“But during my short sojourns at the Pavilion — so I called the hut —
Marius would give up his nook to an old woman from Ecorcheville, called
Celeste, who used to come and cook for me, as old man Cavalier’s stews
were not sufficient for my healthy appetite.
“You now know the characters and the locality. Here is the story:
“It was on the fifteenth of October, 1854 — I shall remember that date as
long as I live.
“I left Rouen on horseback, followed by my dog Bock, a big Dalmatian
hound from Poitou, full-chested and with a heavy jaw, which could retrieve
among the bushes like a Pont-Andemer spaniel.
“I was carrying my satchel slung across my back and my gun diagonally
across my chest. It was a cold, windy, gloomy day, with clouds scurrying
across the sky.
“As I went up the hill at Canteleu, I looked over the broad valley of the
Seine, the river winding in and out along its course as far as the eye could
see. To the right the towers of Rouen stood out against the sky, and to the left
the landscape was bounded by the distant slopes covered with trees. Then I
crossed the forest of Roumare and, toward five o’clock, reached the
Pavilion, where Cavalier and Celeste were expecting me.
“For ten years I had appeared there at the same time, in the same manner;
and for ten years the same faces had greeted me with the same words:
“‘Welcome, master! We hope your health is good.’
“Cavalier had hardly changed. He withstood time like an old tree; but
Celeste, especially in the past four years, had become unrecognizable.
“She was bent almost double, and, although still active, when she walked
her body was almost at right angles to her legs.
“The old woman, who was very devoted to me, always seemed affected at
seeing me again, and each time, as I left, she would say:
“‘This may be the last time, master.’
“The sad, timid farewell of this old servant, this hopeless resignation to
the inevitable fate which was not far off for her, moved me strangely each
year.
 “I dismounted, and while Cavalier, whom I had greeted, was leading my
horse to the little shed which served as a stable, I entered the kitchen, which
also served as dining-room, followed by Celeste.
“Here the gamekeeper joined us. I saw at first glance that something was
the matter. He seemed preoccupied, ill at ease, worried.
“I said to him:
“‘Well, Cavalier, is everything all right?’
“He muttered:
“‘Yes and no. There are things I don’t like.’
“I asked:
“‘What? Tell me about it.’
“But he shook his head.
“‘No, not yet, monsieur. I do not wish to bother you with my little troubles
so soon after your arrival.’
“I insisted, but he absolutely refused to give me any information before
dinner. From his expression, I could tell that it was something very serious.
“Not knowing what to say to him, I asked:
“‘How about game? Much of it this year?’
“‘Oh, yes! You’ll find all you want. Thank heaven, I looked out for that.’
“He said this with so much seriousness, with such sad solemnity, that it
was really almost funny. His big gray mustache seemed almost ready to drop
from his lips.
“Suddenly I remembered that I had not yet seen his nephew.
“‘Where is Marius? Why does he not show himself?’
“The gamekeeper started, looking me suddenly in the face:
“Well, monsieur, I had rather tell you the whole business right away; it’s
on account of him that I am worrying.’
“‘Ah! Well, where is he?’
“‘Over in the stable, monsieur. I was waiting for the right time to bring
him out.’
“‘What has he done?’
“‘Well, monsieur — — ‘
“The gamekeeper, however, hesitated, his voice altered and shaky, his
face suddenly furrowed by the deep lines of an old man.
“He continued slowly:
“‘Well, I found out, last winter, that someone was poaching in the woods
of Roseraies, but I couldn’t seem to catch the man. I spent night after night on
the lookout for him. In vain. During that time they began poaching over by
Ecorcheville. I was growing thin from vexation. But as for catching the
trespasser, impossible! One might have thought that the rascal was
forewarned of my plans.
“‘But one day, while I was brushing Marius’ Sunday trousers, I found
forty cents in his pocket. Where did he get it?
“‘I thought the matter over for about a week, and I noticed that he used to
go out; he would leave the house just as I was coming home to go to bed —
yes, monsieur.
“‘Then I started to watch him, without the slightest suspicion of the real
facts. One morning, just after I had gone to bed before him, I got right up
again, and followed him. For shadowing a man, there is nobody like me,
monsieur.
“‘And I caught him, Marius, poaching on your land, monsieur; he my
nephew, I your keeper!
“‘The blood rushed to my head, and I almost killed him on the spot, I hit
him so hard. Oh! yes, I thrashed him all right. And I promised him that he
would get another beating from my hand, in your presence, as an example.
“‘There! I have grown thin from sorrow. You know how it is when one is
worried like that. But tell me, what would you have done? The boy has no
father or mother, and I am the last one of his blood; I kept him, I couldn’t
drive him out, could I?
“‘I told him that if it happened again I would have no more pity for him,
all would be over. There! Did I do right, monsieur?’
“I answered, holding out my hand:
“‘You did well, Cavalier; you are an honest man.’
“He rose.
“‘Thank you, monsieur. Now I am going to fetch him. I must give him his
thrashing, as an example.’
“I knew that it was hopeless to try and turn the old man from his idea. I
therefore let him have his own way.
“He got the rascal and brought him back by the ear.
“I was seated on a cane chair, with the solemn expression of a judge.
“Marius seemed to have grown; he was homelier even than the year
before, with his evil, sneaking expression.
“His big hands seemed gigantic.
“His uncle pushed him up to me, and, in his soldierly voice, said:
 “‘Beg the gentleman’s pardon.’
“The boy didn’t say a word.
“Then putting one arm round him, the former gendarme lifted him right off
the ground, and began to whack him with such force that I rose to stop the
blows.
“The boy was now howling: ‘Mercy! mercy! mercy! I promise — — ‘
“Cavalier put him back on the ground and forced him to his knees:
“‘Beg for pardon,’ he said.
“With eyes lowered, the scamp murmured:
“‘I ask for pardon!’
“Then his uncle lifted him to his feet, and dismissed him with a cuff which
almost knocked him down again.
“He made his escape, and I did not see him again that evening.
“Cavalier appeared overwhelmed.’
“‘He is a bad egg,’ he said.
“And throughout the whole dinner, he kept repeating:
“‘Oh! that worries me, monsieur, that worries me.’
“I tried to comfort him, but in vain.
“I went to bed early, so that I might start out at daybreak.
“My dog was already asleep on the floor, at the foot of my bed, when I put
out the light.
“I was awakened toward midnight by the furious barking of my dog Bock.
I immediately noticed that my room was full of smoke. I jumped out of bed,
struck a light, ran to the door and opened it. A cloud of flames burst in. The
house was on fire.
“I quickly closed the heavy oak door and, drawing on my trousers, I first
lowered the dog through the window, by means of a rope made of my sheets;
then, having thrown out the rest of my clothes, my game-bag and my gun, I in
turn escaped the same way.
“I began to shout with all my might: ‘Cavalier! Cavalier! Cavalier!’
“But the gamekeeper did not wake up. He slept soundly like an old
gendarme.
“However, I could see through the lower windows that the whole ground-
floor was nothing but a roaring furnace; I also noticed that it had been filled
with straw to make it burn readily.
“Somebody must purposely have set fire to the place!
“I continued shrieking wildly: ‘Cavalier!’
 “Then the thought struck me that the smoke might be suffocating him. An
idea came to me. I slipped two cartridges into my gun, and shot straight at his
window.
“The six panes of glass shattered into the room in a cloud of glass. This
time the old man had heard me, and he appeared, dazed, in his nightshirt,
bewildered by the glare which illumined the whole front of his ‘house.
“I cried to him:
“‘Your house is on fire! Escape through the window! Quick! Quick!’
“The flames were coming out through all the cracks downstairs, were
licking along the wall, were creeping toward him and going to surround him.
He jumped and landed on his feet, like a cat.
“It was none too soon. The thatched roof cracked in the middle, right over
the staircase, which formed a kind of flue for the fire downstairs; and an
immense red jet jumped up into the air, spreading like a stream of water and
sprinkling a shower of sparks around the hut. In a few seconds it was nothing
but a pool of flames.
“Cavalier, thunderstruck, asked:
“‘How did the fire start?’
“I answered:
“‘Somebody lit it in the kitchen.’
“He muttered:
“‘Who could have started the fire?’
“And I, suddenly guessing, answered:
“‘Marius!’
“The old man understood. He stammered:
“‘Good God! That is why he didn’t return.’
“A terrible thought flashed through my mind. I cried:
“‘And Celeste! Celeste!’
“He did not answer. The house caved in before us, forming only an
enormous, bright, blinding brazier, an awe-inspiring funeral-pile, where the
poor woman could no longer be anything but a glowing ember, a glowing
ember of human flesh.
“We had not heard a single cry.
“As the fire crept toward the shed, I suddenly bethought me of my horse,
and Cavalier ran to free it.
“Hardly had he opened the door of the stable, when a supple, nimble body
darted between his legs, and threw him on his face. It was Marius, running
for all he was worth.
“The man was up in a second. He tried to run after the wretch, but, seeing
that he could not catch him, and maddened by an irresistible anger, yielding
to one of those thoughtless impulses which we cannot foresee or prevent, he
picked up my gun, which was lying on the ground. near him, put it to his
shoulder, and, before I could make a motion, he pulled the trigger without
even noticing whether or not the weapon was loaded.
“One of the cartridges which I had put in to announce the fire was still
intact, and the charge caught the fugitive right in the back, — throwing him
forward on the ground, bleeding profusely. He immediately began to claw the
earth with his hands and with his knees, as though trying to run on all fours
like a rabbit who has been mortally wounded, and sees the hunter
approaching.
“I rushed forward to the boy, but I could already hear the death-rattle. He
passed away before the fire was extinguished, without having said a word.
“Cavalier, still in his shirt, his legs bare, was standing near us,
motionless, dazed.
“When the people from the village arrived, my gamekeeper was taken
away, like an insane man.
“I appeared at the trial as witness, and related the facts in detail, without
changing a thing. Cavalier was acquitted. He disappeared that very day,
leaving the country.
“I have never seen him since.
“There, gentlemen, that is my story.”
 THE STORY OF A FARM GIRL

PART I

As the weather was very fine, the people on the farm had hurried through
their dinner and had returned to the fields.
The servant, Rose, remained alone in the large kitchen, where the fire was
dying out on the hearth beneath the large boiler of hot water. From time to
time she dipped out some water and slowly washed her dishes, stopping
occasionally to look at the two streaks of light which the sun threw across the
long table through the window, and which showed the defects in the glass.
Three venturesome hens were picking up the crumbs under the chairs,
while the smell of the poultry yard and the warmth from the cow stall came in
through the half-open door, and a cock was heard crowing in the distance.
When she had finished her work, wiped down the table, dusted the
mantelpiece and put the plates on the high dresser close to the wooden clock
with its loud tick-tock, she drew a long breath, as she felt rather oppressed,
without exactly knowing why. She looked at the black clay walls, the rafters
that were blackened with smoke and from which hung spiders’ webs, smoked
herrings and strings of onions, and then she sat down, rather overcome by the
stale odor from the earthen floor, on which so many things had been
continually spilled and which the heat brought out. With this there was
mingled the sour smell of the pans of milk which were set out to raise the
cream in the adjoining dairy.
She wanted to sew, as usual, but she did not feel strong enough, and so she
went to the door to get a mouthful of fresh air, which seemed to do her good.
The fowls were lying on the steaming dunghill; some of them were
scratching with one claw in search of worms, while the cock stood up
proudly in their midst. When he crowed, the cocks in all the neighboring
farmyards replied to him, as if they were uttering challenges from farm to
farm.
The girl looked at them without thinking, and then she raised her eyes and
was almost dazzled at the sight of the apple trees in blossom. Just then a colt,
full of life and friskiness, jumped over the ditches and then stopped suddenly,
as if surprised at being alone.
She also felt inclined to run; she felt inclined to move and to stretch her
limbs and to repose in the warm, breathless air. She took a few undecided
steps and closed her eyes, for she was seized with a feeling of animal
comfort, and then she went to look for eggs in the hen loft. There were
thirteen of them, which she took in and put into the storeroom; but the smell
from the kitchen annoyed her again, and she went out to sit on the grass for a
time.
The farmyard, which was surrounded by trees, seemed to be asleep. The
tall grass, amid which the tall yellow dandelions rose up like streaks of
yellow light, was of a vivid, fresh spring green. The apple trees cast their
shade all round them, and the thatched roofs, on which grew blue and yellow
irises, with their sword-like leaves, steamed as if the moisture of the stables
and barns were coming through the straw. The girl went to the shed, where
the carts and buggies were kept. Close to it, in a ditch, there was a large
patch of violets, whose fragrance was spread abroad, while beyond the slope
the open country could be seen, where grain was growing, with clumps of
trees in places, and groups of laborers here and there, who looked as small
as dolls, and white horses like toys, who were drawing a child’s cart, driven
by a man as tall as one’s finger.
She took up a bundle of straw, threw it into the ditch and sat down upon it.
Then, not feeling comfortable, she undid it, spread it out and lay down upon
it at full length on her back, with both arms under her head and her legs
stretched out.
Gradually her eyes closed, and she was falling into a state of delightful
languor. She was, in fact, almost asleep when she felt two hands on her
bosom, and she sprang up at a bound. It was Jacques, one of the farm
laborers, a tall fellow from Picardy, who had been making love to her for a
long time. He had been herding the sheep, and, seeing her lying down in the
shade, had come up stealthily and holding his breath, with glistening eyes and
bits of straw in his hair.
He tried to kiss her, but she gave him a smack in the face, for she was as
strong as he, and he was shrewd enough to beg her pardon; so they sat down
side by side and talked amicably. They spoke about the favorable weather, of
their master, who was a good fellow, then of their neighbors, of all the
people in the country round, of themselves, of their village, of their youthful
days, of their recollections, of their relations, who had left them for a long
time, and it might be forever. She grew sad as she thought of it, while he,
with one fixed idea in his head, drew closer to her.
“I have not seen my mother for a long time,” she said. “It is very hard to
be separated like that,” and she directed her looks into the distance, toward
the village in the north which she had left.
Suddenly, however, he seized her by the neck and kissed her again, but she
struck him so violently in the face with her clenched fist that his nose began
to bleed, and he got up and laid his head against the stem of a tree. When she
saw that, she was sorry, and going up to him, she said: “Have I hurt you?”
He, however, only laughed. “No, it was a mere nothing; only she had hit him
right on the middle of the nose. What a devil!” he said, and he looked at her
with admiration, for she had inspired him with a feeling of respect and of a
very different kind of admiration which was the beginning of a real love for
that tall, strong wench. When the bleeding had stopped, he proposed a walk,
as he was afraid of his neighbor’s heavy hand, if they remained side by side
like that much longer; but she took his arm of her own accord, in the avenue,
as if they had been out for an evening’s walk, and said: “It is not nice of you
to despise me like that, Jacques.” He protested, however. No, he did not
despise her. He was in love with her, that was all.
“So you really want to marry me?” she asked.
He hesitated and then looked at her sideways, while she looked straight
ahead of her. She had fat, red cheeks, a full bust beneath her cotton jacket;
thick, red lips; and her neck, which was almost bare, was covered with small
beads of perspiration. He felt a fresh access of desire, and, putting his lips to
her ear, he murmured: “Yes, of course I do.”
Then she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him till they were both
out of breath. From that moment the eternal story of love began between
them. They plagued one another in corners; they met in the moonlight beside
the haystack and gave each other bruises on the legs, under the table, with
their heavy nailed boots. By degrees, however, Jacques seemed to grow tired
of her; he avoided her, scarcely spoke to her, and did not try any longer to
meet her alone, which made her sad and anxious; and soon she found that she
was enceinte.
At first she was in a state of consternation, but then she got angry, and her
rage increased every day because she could not meet him, as he avoided her
most carefully. At last, one night, when every one in the farmhouse was
asleep, she went out noiselessly in her petticoat, with bare feet, crossed the
yard and opened the door of the stable where Jacques was lying in a large
box of straw above his horses. He pretended to snore when he heard her
coming, but she knelt down by his side and shook him until he sat up.
“What do you want?” he then asked her. And with clenched teeth, and
trembling with anger, she replied: “I want — I want you to marry me, as you
promised.” But he only laughed and replied: “Oh! if a man were to marry all
the girls with whom he has made a slip, he would have more than enough to
do.”
Then she seized him by the throat, threw him or his back, so that he could
not get away from her, and, half strangling him, she shouted into his face:
“I am enceinte, do you hear? I am enceinte!”
He gasped for breath, as he was almost choked, and so they remained,
both of them, motionless and without speaking, in the dark silence, which
was only broken by the noise made by a horse as he, pulled the hay out of the
manger and then slowly munched it.
When Jacques found that she was the stronger, he stammered out: “Very
well, I will marry you, as that is the case.” But she did not believe his
promises. “It must be at once,” she said. “You must have the banns put up.”
“At once,” he replied. “Swear solemnly that you will.” He hesitated for a
few moments and then said: “I swear it, by Heaven!”
Then she released her grasp and went away without another word.
She had no chance of speaking to him for several days; and, as the stable
was now always locked at night, she was afraid to make any noise, for fear
of creating a scandal. One morning, however, she saw another man come in
at dinner time, and she said: “Has Jacques left?” “Yes;” the man replied; “I
have got his place.”
This made her tremble so violently that she could not take the saucepan off
the fire; and later, when they were all at work, she went up into her room and
cried, burying her head in the bolster, so that she might not be heard. During
the day, however, she tried to obtain some information without exciting any
suspicion, but she was so overwhelmed by the thoughts of her misfortune that
she fancied that all the people whom she asked laughed maliciously. All she
learned, however, was that he had left the neighborhood altogether.
 PART II

Then a cloud of constant misery began for her. She worked mechanically,
without thinking of what she was doing, with one fixed idea in her head:
“Suppose people were to know.”
This continual feeling made her so incapable of reasoning that she did not
even try to think of any means of avoiding the disgrace that she knew must
ensue, which was irreparable and drawing nearer every day, and which was
as sure as death itself. She got up every morning long before the others and
persistently tried to look at her figure in a piece of broken looking-glass,
before which she did her hair, as she was very anxious to know whether
anybody would notice a change in her, and, during the day, she stopped
working every few minutes to look at herself from top to toe, to see whether
her apron did not look too short.
The months went on, and she scarcely spoke now, and when she was
asked a question, did not appear to understand; but she had a frightened look,
haggard eyes and trembling hands, which made her master say to her
occasionally: “My poor girl, how stupid you have grown lately.”
In church she hid behind a pillar, and no longer ventured to go to
confession, as she feared to face the priest, to whom she attributed
superhuman powers, which enabled him to read people’s consciences; and at
meal times the looks of her fellow servants almost made her faint with mental
agony; and she was always fancying that she had been found out by the
cowherd, a precocious and cunning little lad, whose bright eyes seemed
always to be watching her.
One morning the postman brought her a letter, and as she had never
received one in her life before she was so upset by it that she was obliged to
sit down. Perhaps it was from him? But, as she could not read, she sat
anxious and trembling with that piece of paper, covered with ink, in her hand.
After a time, however, she put it into her pocket, as she did not venture to
confide her secret to any one. She often stopped in her work to look at those
lines written at regular intervals, and which terminated in a signature,
imagining vaguely that she would suddenly discover their meaning, until at
last, as she felt half mad with impatience and anxiety, she went to the
schoolmaster, who told her to sit down and read to her as follows:
 “MY DEAR DAUGHTER: I write to tell you that I am very ill. Our
neighbor, Monsieur Dentu, begs you to come, if you can.
“From your affectionate mother,
“CESAIRE DENTU, Deputy Mayor.”
She did not say a word and went away, but as soon as she was alone her
legs gave way under her, and she fell down by the roadside and remained
there till night.
When she got back, she told the farmer her bad news, and he allowed her
to go home for as long as she liked, and promised to have her work done by a
charwoman and to take her back when she returned.
Her mother died soon after she got there, and the next day Rose gave birth
to a seven-months child, a miserable little skeleton, thin enough to make
anybody shudder, and which seemed to be suffering continually, to judge
from the painful manner in which it moved its poor little hands, which were
as thin as a crab’s legs; but it lived for all that. She said she was married, but
could not be burdened with the child, so she left it with some neighbors, who
promised to take great care of it, and she went back to the farm.
But now in her heart, which had been wounded so long, there arose
something like brightness, an unknown love for that frail little creature which
she had left behind her, though there was fresh suffering in that very love,
suffering which she felt every hour and every minute, because she was parted
from her child. What pained her most, however, was the mad longing to kiss
it, to press it in her arms, to feel the warmth of its little body against her
breast. She could not sleep at night; she thought of it the whole day long, and
in the evening, when her work was done, she would sit in front of the fire and
gaze at it intently, as people do whose thoughts are far away.
They began to talk about her and to tease-her about her lover. They asked
her whether he was tall, handsome and rich. When was the wedding to be
and the christening? And often she ran away to cry by herself, for these
questions seemed to hurt her like the prick of a pin; and, in order to forget
their jokes, she began to work still more energetically, and, still thinking of
her child, she sought some way of saving up money for it, and determined to
work so that her master would be obliged to raise her wages.
By degrees she almost monopolized the work and persuaded him to get rid
of one servant girl, who had become useless since she had taken to working
like two; she economized in the bread, oil and candles; in the corn, which
they gave to the chickens too extravagantly, and in the fodder for the horses
and cattle, which was rather wasted. She was as miserly about her master’s
money as if it had been her own; and, by dint of making good bargains, of
getting high prices for all their produce, and by baffling the peasants’ tricks
when they offered anything for sale, he, at last, entrusted her with buying and
selling everything, with the direction of all the laborers, and with the
purchase of provisions necessary for the household; so that, in a short time,
she became. indispensable to him. She kept such a strict eye on everything
about her that, under her direction, the farm prospered wonderfully, and for
five miles around people talked of “Master Vallin’s servant,” and the farmer
himself said everywhere: “That girl is worth more than her weight in gold.”
But time passed by, and her wages remained the same. Her hard work was
accepted as something that was due from every good servant, and as a mere
token of good will; and she began to think rather bitterly that if the farmer
could put fifty or a hundred crowns extra into the bank every month, thanks to
her, she was still only earning her two hundred francs a year, neither more
nor less; and so she made up her mind to ask for an increase of wages. She
went to see the schoolmaster three times about it, but when she got there, she
spoke about something else. She felt a kind of modesty in asking for money,
as if it were something disgraceful; but, at last, one day, when the farmer was
having breakfast by himself in the kitchen, she said to him, with some
embarrassment, that she wished to speak to him particularly. He raised his
head in surprise, with both his hands on the table, holding his knife, with its
point in the air, in one, and a piece of bread in the other, and he looked
fixedly at, the girl, who felt uncomfortable under his gaze, but asked for a
week’s holiday, so that she might get away, as she was not very well. He
acceded to her request immediately, and then added, in some embarrassment
himself:
“When you come back, I shall have something to say to you myself.”

PART III

The child was nearly eight months old, and she did not recognize it. It had
grown rosy and chubby all over, like a little roll of fat. She threw herself on
it, as if it had been some prey, and kissed it so violently that it began to
scream with terror; and then she began to cry herself, because it did not know
her, and stretched out its arms to its nurse as soon as it saw her. But the next
day it began to know her, and laughed when it saw her, and she took it into
the fields, and ran about excitedly with it, and sat down under the shade of
the trees; and then, for the first time in her life, she opened her heart to
somebody, although he could not understand her, and told him her troubles;
how hard her work was, her anxieties and her hopes, and she quite tired the
child with the violence of her caresses.
She took the greatest pleasure in handling it, in washing and dressing it,
for it seemed to her that all this was the confirmation of her maternity; and
she would look at it, almost feeling surprised ‘that it was hers, and would
say to herself in a low voice as she danced it in her arms: “It is my baby, it’s
my baby.”
She cried all the way home as she returned to the farm and had scarcely
got in before her master called her into his room; and she went, feeling
astonished and nervous, without knowing why.
“Sit down there,” he said. She sat down, and for some moments they
remained side by side, in some embarrassment, with their arms hanging at
their sides, as if they did not know what to do with them, and looking each
other in the face, after the manner of peasants.
The farmer, a stout, jovial, obstinate man of forty-five, who had lost two
wives, evidently felt embarrassed, which was very unusual with him; but, at
last, he made up his mind, and began to speak vaguely, hesitating a little, and
looking out of the window as he talked. “How is it, Rose,” he said, “that you
have never thought of settling in life?” She grew as pale as death, and, seeing
that she gave him no answer, he went on: “You are a good, steady, active and
economical girl; and a wife like you would make a man’s fortune.”
She did not move, but looked frightened; she did not even try to
comprehend his meaning, for her thoughts were in a whirl, as if at the
approach of some great danger; so, after waiting for a few seconds, he went
on: “You see, a farm without a mistress can never succeed, even with a
servant like you.” Then he stopped, for he did not know what else to say, and
Rose looked at him with the air of a person who thinks that he is face to face
with a murderer and ready to flee at the slightest movement he may make; but,
after waiting for about five minutes, he asked her: “Well, will it suit you?”
“Will what suit me, master?” And he said quickly: “Why, to marry me, by
Heaven!”
 She jumped up, but fell back on her chair, as if she had been struck, and
there she remained motionless, like a person who is overwhelmed by some
great misfortune. At last the farmer grew impatient and said: “Come, what
more do you want?” She looked at him, almost in terror, then suddenly the
tears came into her eyes and she said twice in a choking voice: “I cannot, I
cannot!” “Why not?” he asked. “Come, don’t be silly; I will give you until
tomorrow to think it over.”
And he hurried out of the room, very glad to have got through with the
matter, which had troubled him a good deal, for he had no doubt that she
would the next morning accept a proposal which she could never have
expected and which would be a capital bargain for him, as he thus bound a
woman to his interests who would certainly bring him more than if she had
the best dowry in the district.
Neither could there be any scruples about an unequal match between them,
for in the country every one is very nearly equal; the farmer works with his
laborers, who frequently become masters in their turn, and the female
servants constantly become the mistresses of the establishments without its
making any change in their life or habits.
Rose did not go to bed that night. She threw herself, dressed as she was,
on her bed, and she had not even the strength to cry left in her, she was so
thoroughly dumfounded. She remained quite inert, scarcely knowing that she
had a body, and without being at all able to collect her thoughts, though, at
moments, she remembered something of what had happened, and then she
was frightened at the idea of what might happen. Her terror increased, and
every time the great kitchen clock struck the hour she broke out in a
perspiration from grief. She became bewildered, and had the nightmare; her
candle went out, and then she began to imagine that some one bad cast a spell
over her, as country people so often imagine, and she felt a mad inclination to
run away, to escape and to flee before her misfortune, like a ship scudding
before the wind. An owl hooted; she shivered, sat up, passed her hands over
her face, her hair, and all over her body, and then she went downstairs, as if
she were walking in her sleep. When she got into the yard she stooped down,
so as not to be seen by any prowling scamp, for the moon, which was setting,
shed a bright light over the fields. Instead of opening the gate she scrambled
over the fence, and as soon as she was outside she started off. She went on
straight before her, with a quick, springy trot, and from time to time she
unconsciously uttered a piercing cry. Her long shadow accompanied her, and
now and then some night bird flew over her head, while the dogs in the
farmyards barked as they heard her pass; one even jumped over the ditch, and
followed her and tried to bite her, but she turned round and gave such a
terrible yell that the frightened animal ran back and cowered in silence in its
kennel.
The stars grew dim, and the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The
girl was worn out and panting; and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she
stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any farther; but she saw a pond in
the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the
reflection of this new day, and she limped on slowly with her hand on her
heart, in order to dip both her feet in it. She sat down on a tuft of grass, took
off her heavy shoes, which were full of dust, pulled off her stockings and
plunged her legs into the still water, from which bubbles were rising here
and there.
A feeling of delicious coolness pervaded her from head to foot, and
suddenly, while she was looking fixedly at the deep pool, she was seized
with dizziness, and with a mad longing to throw herself into it. All her
sufferings would be over in there, over forever. She no longer thought of her
child; she only wanted peace, complete rest, and to sleep forever, and she got
up with raised arms and took two steps forward. She was in the water up to
her thighs, and she was just about to throw her self in when sharp, pricking
pains in her ankles made her jump back, and she uttered a cry of despair, for,
from her knees to the tips of her feet, long black leeches were sucking her
lifeblood, and were swelling as they adhered to her flesh. She did not dare to
touch them, and screamed with horror, so that her cries of despair attracted a
peasant, who was driving along at some distance, to the spot. He pulled off
the leeches one by one, applied herbs to the wounds, and drove the girl to her
master’s farm in his gig.
She was in bed for a fortnight, and as she was sitting outside the door on
the first morning that she got up, the farmer suddenly came and planted
himself before her. “Well,” he said, “I suppose the affair is settled isn’t it?”
She did not reply at first, and then, as he remained standing and looking at her
intently with his piercing eyes, she said with difficulty: “No, master, I
cannot.” He immediately flew into a rage.
“You cannot, girl; you cannot? I should just like to know the reason why?”
She began to cry, and repeated: “I cannot.” He looked at her, and then
exclaimed angrily: “Then I suppose you have a lover?” “Perhaps that is it,”
she replied, trembling with shame.
The man got as red as a poppy, and stammered out in a rage: “Ah! So you
confess it, you slut! And pray who is the fellow? Some penniless, half-
starved ragamuffin, without a roof to his head, I suppose? Who is it, I say?”
And as she gave him no answer, he continued: “Ah! So you will not tell me.
Then I will tell you; it is Jean Baudu?”— “No, not he,” she exclaimed. “Then
it is Pierre Martin?”— “Oh! no, master.”
And he angrily mentioned all the young fellows in the neighborhood,
while she denied that he had hit upon the right one, and every moment wiped
her eyes with the corner of her blue apron. But he still tried to find it out,
with his brutish obstinacy, and, as it were, scratching at her heart to discover
her secret, just as a terrier scratches at a hole to try and get at the animal
which he scents inside it. Suddenly, however, the man shouted: “By George!
It is Jacques, the man who was here last year. They used to say that you were
always talking together, and that you thought about getting married.”
Rose was choking, and she grew scarlet, while her tears suddenly stopped
and dried up on her cheeks, like drops of water on hot iron, and she
exclaimed: “No, it is not he, it is not he!” “Is that really a fact?” asked the
cunning peasant, who partly guessed the truth; and she replied, hastily: “I
will swear it; I will swear it to you— “ She tried to think of something by
which to swear, as she did not venture to invoke sacred things, but he
interrupted her: “At any rate, he used to follow you into every corner and
devoured you with his eyes at meal times. Did you ever give him your
promise, eh?”
This time she looked her master straight in the face. “No, never, never; I
will solemnly swear to you that if he were to come to-day and ask me to
marry him I would have nothing to do with him.” She spoke with such an air
of sincerity that the farmer hesitated, and then he continued, as if speaking to
himself: “What, then? You have not had a misfortune, as they call it, or it
would have been known, and as it has no consequences, no girl would refuse
her master on that account. There must be something at the bottom of it,
however.”
She could say nothing; she had not the strength to speak, and he asked her
again: “You will not?” “I cannot, master,” she said, with a sigh, and he turned
on his heel.
 She thought she had got rid of him altogether and spent the rest of the day
almost tranquilly, but was as exhausted as if she had been turning the
thrashing machine all day in the place of the old white horse, and she went to
bed as soon as she could and fell asleep immediately. In the middle of the
night, however, two hands touching the bed woke her. She trembled with fear,
but immediately recognized the farmer’s voice, when he said to her: “Don’t
be frightened, Rose; I have come to speak to you.” She was surprised at first,
but when he tried to take liberties with her she understood and began to
tremble violently, as she felt quite alone in the darkness, still heavy from
sleep, and quite unprotected, with that man standing near her. She certainly
did not consent, but she resisted carelessly struggling against that instinct
which is always strong in simple natures and very imperfectly protected by
the undecided will of inert and gentle races. She turned her head now to the
wall, and now toward the room, in order to avoid the attentions which the
farmer tried to press on her, but she was weakened by fatigue, while he
became brutal, intoxicated by desire.
They lived together as man and wife, and one morning he said to her: “I
have put up our banns, and we will get married next month.”
She did not reply, for what could she say? She did not resist, for what
could she do?

PART IV

She married him. She felt as if she were in a pit with inaccessible sides from
which she could never get out, and all kinds of misfortunes were hanging
over her head, like huge rocks, which would fall on the first occasion. Her
husband gave her the impression of a man whom she had robbed, and who
would find it out some day or other. And then she thought of her child, who
was the cause of her misfortunes, but who was also the cause of all her
happiness on earth, and whom she went to see twice a year, though she came
back more unhappy each time.
But she gradually grew accustomed to her life, her fears were allayed, her
heart was at rest, and she lived with an easier mind, though still with some
vague fear floating in it. And so years went on, until the child was six. She
was almost happy now, when suddenly the farmer’s temper grew very bad.
For two or three years he seemed to have been nursing some secret
anxiety, to be troubled by some care, some mental disturbance, which was
gradually increasing. He remained sitting at table after dinner, with his head
in his hands, sad and devoured by sorrow. He always spoke hastily,
sometimes even brutally, and it even seemed as if he had a grudge against his
wife, for at times he answered her roughly, almost angrily.
One day, when a neighbor’s boy came for some eggs, and she spoke rather
crossly to him, as she was very busy, her husband suddenly came in and said
to her in his unpleasant voice: “If that were your own child you would not
treat him so.” She was hurt and did not reply, and then she went back into the
house, with all her grief awakened afresh; and at dinner the farmer neither
spoke to her nor looked at her, and he seemed to hate her, to despise her, to
know something about the affair at last. In consequence she lost her
composure, and did not venture to remain alone with him after the meal was
over, but left the room and hastened to the church.
It was getting dusk; the narrow nave was in total darkness, but she heard
footsteps in the choir, for the sacristan was preparing the tabernacle lamp for
the night. That spot of trembling light, which was lost in the darkness of the
arches, looked to Rose like her last hope, and with her eyes fixed on it, she
fell on her knees. The chain rattled as the little lamp swung up into the air,
and almost immediately the small bell rang out the Angelus through the
increasing mist. She went up to him, as he was going out.
“Is Monsieur le Cure at home?” she asked. “Of course he is; this is his
dinnertime.” She trembled as she rang the bell of the parsonage. The priest
was just sitting down to dinner, and he made her sit down also. “Yes, yes, I
know all about it; your husband has mentioned the matter to me that brings
you here.” The poor woman nearly fainted, and the priest continued: “What
do you want, my child?” And he hastily swallowed several spoonfuls of
soup, some of which dropped on to his greasy cassock. But Rose did not
venture to say anything more, and she got up to go, but the priest said:
“Courage.”
And she went out and returned to the farm without knowing what she was
doing. The farmer was waiting for her, as the laborers had gone away during
her absence, and she fell heavily at his feet, and, shedding a flood of tears,
she said to him: “What have you got against me?”
 He began to shout and to swear: “What have I got against you? That I have
no children, by — . When a man takes a wife it is not that they may live alone
together to the end of their days. That is what I have against you. When a cow
has no calves she is not worth anything, and when a woman has no children
she is also not worth anything.”
She began to cry, and said: “It is not my fault! It is not my fault!” He grew
rather more gentle when he heard that, and added: “I do not say that it is, but
it is very provoking, all the same.”

PART V

From that day forward she had only one thought: to have a child another
child; she confided her wish to everybody, and, in consequence of this, a
neighbor told her of an infallible method. This was, to make her husband
drink a glass of water with a pinch of ashes in it every evening. The farmer
consented to try it, but without success; so they said to each other: “Perhaps
there are some secret ways?” And they tried to find out. They were told of a
shepherd who lived ten leagues off, and so Vallin one day drove off to
consult him. The shepherd gave him a loaf on which he had made some
marks; it was kneaded up with herbs, and each of them was to eat a piece of
it, but they ate the whole loaf without obtaining any results from it.
Next, a schoolmaster unveiled mysteries and processes of love which
were unknown in the country, but infallible, so he declared; but none of them
had the desired effect. Then the priest advised them to make a pilgrimage to
the shrine at Fecamp. Rose went with the crowd and prostrated herself in the
abbey, and, mingling her prayers with the coarse desires of the peasants
around her, she prayed that she might be fruitful a second time; but it was in
vain, and then she thought that she was being punished for her first fault, and
she was seized by terrible grief. She was wasting away with sorrow; her
husband was also aging prematurely, and was wearing himself out in useless
hopes.
Then war broke out between them; he called her names and beat her. They
quarrelled all day long, and when they were in their room together at night he
flung insults and obscenities at her, choking with rage, until one night, not
being able to think of any means of making her suffer more he ordered her to
get up and go and stand out of doors in the rain until daylight. As she did not
obey him, he seized her by the neck and began to strike her in the face with
his fists, but she said nothing and did not move. In his exasperation he knelt
on her stomach, and with clenched teeth, and mad with rage, he began to beat
her. Then in her despair she rebelled, and flinging him against the wall with a
furious gesture, she sat up, and in an altered voice she hissed: “I have had a
child, I have had one! I had it by Jacques; you know Jacques. He promised to
marry me, but he left this neighborhood without keeping his word.”
The man was thunderstruck and could hardly speak, but at last he
stammered out: “What are you saying? What are you saying?” Then she began
to sob, and amid her tears she continued: “That was the reason why I did not
want to marry you. I could not tell you, for you would have left me without
any bread for my child. You have never had any children, so you cannot
understand, you cannot understand!”
He said again, mechanically, with increasing surprise: “You have a child?
You have a child?”
“You took me by force, as I suppose you know? I did not want to marry
you,” she said, still sobbing.
Then he got up, lit the candle, and began to walk up and down, with his
arms behind him. She was cowering on the bed and crying, and suddenly he
stopped in front of her, and said: “Then it is my fault that you have no
children?” She gave him no answer, and he began to walk up and down
again, and then, stopping again, he continued: “How old is your child?” “Just
six,” she whispered. “Why did you not tell me about it?” he asked. “How
could I?” she replied, with a sigh.
He remained standing, motionless. “Come, get up,” he said. She got up
with some difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the floor, he
suddenly began to laugh with the hearty laugh of his good days, and, seeing
how surprised she was, he added: “Very well, we will go and fetch the child,
as you and I can have none together.”
She was so scared that if she had had the strength she would assuredly
have run away, but the farmer rubbed his hands and said: “I wanted to adopt
one, and now we have found one. I asked the cure about an orphan some time
ago.”
Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated wife on both
cheeks, and shouted out, as though she could not hear him: “Come along,
mother, we will go and see whether there is any soup left; I should not mind a
plateful.”
She put on her petticoat and they went downstairs; and While she was
kneeling in front of the fireplace and lighting the fire under the saucepan, he
continued to walk up and down the kitchen with long strides, repeating:
“Well, I am really glad of this; I am not saying it for form’s sake, but I am
glad, I am really very glad.”
 THE WRECK

It was yesterday, the 31st of December.

I had just finished breakfast with my old friend Georges Garin when the
servant handed him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.
Georges said:
“Will you excuse me?”
“Certainly.”
And so he began to read the letter, which was written in a large English
handwriting, crossed and recrossed in every direction. He read them slowly,
with serious attention and the interest which we only pay to things which
touch our hearts.
Then he put the letter on the mantelpiece and said:
“That was a curious story! I’ve never told you about it, I think. Yet it was
a sentimental adventure, and it really happened to me. That was a strange
New Year’s Day, indeed! It must have been twenty years ago, for I was then
thirty and am now fifty years old.
“I was then an inspector in the Maritime Insurance Company, of which I
am now director. I had arranged to pass New Year’s Day in Paris — since it
is customary to make that day a fete — when I received a letter from the
manager, asking me to proceed at once to the island of Re, where a three-
masted vessel from Saint-Nazaire, insured by us, had just been driven
ashore. It was then eight o’clock in the morning. I arrived at the office at ten
to get my advices, and that evening I took the express, which put me down in
La Rochelle the next day, the 31st of December.
“I had two hours to wait before going aboard the boat for Re. So I made a
tour of the town. It is certainly a queer city, La Rochelle, with strong
characteristics of its own streets tangled like a labyrinth, sidewalks running
under endless arcaded galleries like those of the Rue de Rivoli, but low,
mysterious, built as if to form a suitable setting for conspirators and making a
striking background for those old-time wars, the savage heroic wars of
religion. It is indeed the typical old Huguenot city, conservative, discreet,
with no fine art to show, with no wonderful monuments, such as make Rouen;
but it is remarkable for its severe, somewhat sullen look; it is a city of
obstinate fighters, a city where fanaticism might well blossom, where the
faith of the Calvinists became enthusiastic and which gave birth to the plot of
the ‘Four Sergeants.’
“After I had wandered for some time about these curious streets, I went
aboard the black, rotund little steamboat which was to take me to the island
of Re. It was called the Jean Guiton. It started with angry puffings, passed
between the two old towers which guard the harbor, crossed the roadstead
and issued from the mole built by Richelieu, the great stones of which can be
seen at the water’s edge, enclosing the town like a great necklace. Then the
steamboat turned to the right.
“It was one of those sad days which give one the blues, tighten the heart
and take away all strength and energy and force-a gray, cold day, with a
heavy mist which was as wet as rain, as cold as frost, as bad to breathe as
the steam of a wash-tub.
“Under this low sky of dismal fog the shallow, yellow, sandy sea of all
practically level beaches lay without a wrinkle, without a movement, without
life, a sea of turbid water, of greasy water, of stagnant water. The Jean
Guiton passed over it, rolling a little from habit, dividing the smooth, dark
blue water and leaving behind a few waves, a little splashing, a slight swell,
which soon calmed down.
“I began to talk to the captain, a little man with small feet, as round as his
boat and rolling in the same manner. I wanted some details of the disaster on
which I was to draw up a report. A great square-rigged three-master, the
Marie Joseph, of Saint-Nazaire, had gone ashore one night in a hurricane on
the sands of the island of Re.
“The owner wrote us that the storm had thrown the ship so far ashore that
it was impossible to float her and that they had to remove everything which
could be detached with the utmost possible haste. Nevertheless I must
examine the situation of the wreck, estimate what must have been her
condition before the disaster and decide whether all efforts had been used to
get her afloat. I came as an agent of the company in order to give
contradictory testimony, if necessary, at the trial.
“On receipt of my report, the manager would take what measures he might
think necessary to protect our interests.
“The captain of the Jean Guiton knew all about the affair, having been
summoned with his boat to assist in the attempts at salvage.
 “He told me the story of the disaster. The Marie Joseph, driven by a
furious gale lost her bearings completely in the night, and steering by chance
over a heavy foaming sea— ‘a milk-soup sea,’ said the captain — had gone
ashore on those immense sand banks which make the coasts of this country
look like limitless Saharas when the tide is low.
“While talking I looked around and ahead. Between the ocean and the
lowering sky lay an open space where the eye could see into the distance. We
were following a coast. I asked:
“‘Is that the island of Re?’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“And suddenly the captain stretched his right hand out before us, pointed
to something almost imperceptible in the open sea, and said:
“‘There’s your ship!’
“‘The Marie Joseph!’
“‘Yes.’
“I was amazed. This black, almost imperceptible speck, which looked to
me like a rock, seemed at least three miles from land.
“I continued:
“‘But, captain, there must be a hundred fathoms of water in that place.’
“He began to laugh.
“‘A hundred fathoms, my child! Well, I should say about two!’
“He was from Bordeaux. He continued:
“‘It’s now nine-forty, just high tide. Go down along the beach with your
hands in your pockets after you’ve had lunch at the Hotel du Dauphin, and I’ll
wager that at ten minutes to three, or three o’clock, you’ll reach the wreck
without wetting your feet, and have from an hour and three-quarters to two
hours aboard of her; but not more, or you’ll be caught. The faster the sea goes
out the faster it comes back. This coast is as flat as a turtle! But start away at
ten minutes to five, as I tell you, and at half-past seven you will be again
aboard of the Jean Guiton, which will put you down this same evening on the
quay at La Rochelle.’
“I thanked the captain and I went and sat down in the bow of the steamer
to get a good look at the little city of Saint-Martin, which we were now
rapidly approaching.
“It was just like all small seaports which serve as capitals of the barren
islands scattered along the coast — a large fishing village, one foot on sea
and one on shore, subsisting on fish and wild fowl, vegetables and shell-fish,
radishes and mussels. The island is very low and little cultivated, yet it
seems to be thickly populated. However, I did not penetrate into the interior.
“After breakfast I climbed across a little promontory, and then, as the tide
was rapidly falling, I started out across the sands toward a kind of black rock
which I could just perceive above the surface of the water, out a
considerable distance.
“I walked quickly over the yellow plain. It was elastic, like flesh and
seemed to sweat beneath my tread. The sea had been there very lately. Now I
perceived it at a distance, escaping out of sight, and I no longer could
distinguish the line which separated the sands from ocean. I felt as though I
were looking at a gigantic supernatural work of enchantment. The Atlantic
had just now been before me, then it had disappeared into the sands, just as
scenery disappears through a trap; and I was now walking in the midst of a
desert. Only the feeling, the breath of the salt-water, remained in me. I
perceived the smell of the wrack, the smell of the sea, the good strong smell
of sea coasts. I walked fast; I was no longer cold. I looked at the stranded
wreck, which grew in size as I approached, and came now to resemble an
enormous shipwrecked whale.
“It seemed fairly to rise out of the ground, and on that great, flat, yellow
stretch of sand assumed wonderful proportions. After an hour’s walk I at last
reached it. It lay upon its side, ruined and shattered, its broken bones
showing as though it were an animal, its bones of tarred wood pierced with
great bolts. The sand had already invaded it, entering it by all the crannies,
and held it and refused to let it go. It seemed to have taken root in it. The bow
had entered deep into this soft, treacherous beach, while the stern, high in air,
seemed to cast at heaven, like a cry of despairing appeal, the two white
words on the black planking, Marie Joseph.
“I climbed upon this carcass of a ship by the lowest side; then, having
reached the deck, I went below. The daylight, which entered by the stove-in
hatches and the cracks in the sides, showed me dimly long dark cavities full
of demolished woodwork. They contained nothing but sand, which served as
foot-soil in this cavern of planks.
“I began to take some notes about the condition of the ship. I was seated
on a broken empty cask, writing by the light of a great crack, through which I
could perceive the boundless stretch of the strand. A strange shivering of
cold and loneliness ran over my skin from time to time, and I would often
stop writing for a moment to listen to the mysterious noises in the derelict:
the noise of crabs scratching the planking with their crooked claws; the noise
of a thousand little creatures of the sea already crawling over this dead body
or else boring into the wood.
“Suddenly, very near me, I heard human voices. I started as though I had
seen a ghost. For a second I really thought I was about to see drowned men
rise from the sinister depths of the hold, who would tell me about their death.
At any rate, it did not take me long to swing myself on deck. There, standing
by the bows, was a tall Englishman with three young misses. Certainly they
were a good deal more frightened at seeing this sudden apparition on the
abandoned three-master than I was at seeing them. The youngest girl turned
and ran, the two others threw their arms round their father. As for him, he
opened his mouth — that was the only sign of emotion which he showed.
“Then, after several seconds, he spoke:
“‘Mosieu, are you the owner of this ship?’
“‘I am.’
“‘May I go over it?’
“‘You may.’
“Then he uttered a long sentence in English, in which I only distinguished
the word ‘gracious,’ repeated several times.
“As he was looking for a place to climb up I showed him the easiest way,
and gave him a hand. He climbed up. Then we helped up the three girls, who
had now quite recovered their composure. They were charming, especially
the oldest, a blonde of eighteen, fresh as a flower, and very dainty and pretty!
Ah, yes! the pretty Englishwomen have indeed the look of tender sea fruit.
One would have said of this one that she had just risen out of the sands and
that her hair had kept their tint. They all, with their exquisite freshness, make
you think of the delicate colors of pink sea-shells and of shining pearls
hidden in the unknown depths of the ocean.
“She spoke French a little better than her father and acted as interpreter. I
had to tell all about the shipwreck, and I romanced as though I had been
present at the catastrophe. Then the whole family descended into the interior
of the wreck. As soon as they had penetrated into this sombre, dimly lit
cavity they uttered cries of astonishment and admiration. Suddenly the father
and his three daughters were holding sketch-books in their hands, which they
had doubtless carried hidden somewhere in their heavy weather-proof
clothes, and were all beginning at once to make pencil sketches of this
melancholy and weird place.
 “They had seated themselves side by side on a projecting beam, and the
four sketch-books on the eight knees were being rapidly covered with little
black lines which were intended to represent the half-opened hulk of the
Marie Joseph.
“I continued to inspect the skeleton of the ship, and the oldest girl talked
to me while she worked.
“They had none of the usual English arrogance; they were simple honest
hearts of that class of continuous travellers with which England covers the
globe. The father was long and thin, with a red face framed in white
whiskers, and looking like a living sandwich, a piece of ham carved like a
face between two wads of hair. The daughters, who had long legs like young
storks, were also thin-except the oldest. All three were pretty, especially the
tallest.
“She had such a droll way of speaking, of laughing, of understanding and
of not understanding, of raising her eyes to ask a question (eyes blue as the
deep ocean), of stopping her drawing a moment to make a guess at what you
meant, of returning once more to work, of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ — that I could
have listened and looked indefinitely.
“Suddenly she murmured:
“‘I hear a little sound on this boat.’
“I listened and I immediately distinguished a low, steady, curious sound. I
rose and looked out of the crack and gave a scream. The sea had come up to
us; it would soon surround us!
“We were on deck in an instant. It was too late. The water circled us
about and was running toward the coast at tremendous speed. No, it did not
run, it glided, crept, spread like an immense, limitless blot. The water was
barely a few centimeters deep, but the rising flood had gone so far that we no
longer saw the vanishing line of the imperceptible tide.
“The Englishman wanted to jump. I held him back. Flight was impossible
because of the deep places which we had been obliged to go round on our
way out and into which we should fall on our return.
“There was a minute of horrible anguish in our hearts. Then the little
English girl began to smile and murmured:
“‘It is we who are shipwrecked.’
“I tried to laugh, but fear held me, a fear which was cowardly and horrid
and base and treacherous like the tide. All the danger which we ran appeared
to me at once. I wanted to shriek: ‘Help!’ But to whom?
 “The two younger girls were clinging to their father, who looked in
consternation at the measureless sea which hedged us round about.
“The night fell as swiftly as the ocean rose — a lowering, wet, icy night.
“I said:
“‘There’s nothing to do but to stay on the ship:
“The Englishman answered:
“‘Oh, yes!’
“And we waited there a quarter of an hour, half an hour, indeed I don’t
know how long, watching that creeping water growing deeper as it swirled
around us, as though it were playing on the beach, which it had regained.
“One of the young girls was cold, and we went below to shelter ourselves
from the light but freezing wind that made our skins tingle.
“I leaned over the hatchway. The ship was full of water. So we had to
cower against the stern planking, which shielded us a little.
“Darkness was now coming on, and we remained huddled together. I felt
the shoulder of the little English girl trembling against mine, her teeth
chattering from time to time. But I also felt the gentle warmth of her body
through her ulster, and that warmth was as delicious to me as a kiss. We no
longer spoke; we sat motionless, mute, cowering down like animals in a
ditch when a hurricane is raging. And, nevertheless, despite the night, despite
the terrible and increasing danger, I began to feel happy that I was there, glad
of the cold and the peril, glad of the long hours of darkness and anguish that I
must pass on this plank so near this dainty, pretty little girl.
“I asked myself, ‘Why this strange sensation of well-being and of joy?’
“Why! Does one know? Because she was there? Who? She, a little
unknown English girl? I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all
that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself
for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that
the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace
which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which
intoxicates one like wine?
“Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks
constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a
man and a woman face to face?
“The silence of the darkness became terrible, the stillness of the sky
dreadful, because we could hear vaguely about us a slight, continuous sound,
the sound of the rising tide and the monotonous plashing of the water against
the ship.
“Suddenly I heard the sound of sobs. The youngest of the girls was crying.
Her father tried to console her, and they began to talk in their own tongue,
which I did not understand. I guessed that he was reassuring her and that she
was still afraid.
“I asked my neighbor:
“‘You are not too cold, are you, mademoiselle?’
“‘Oh, yes. I am very cold.’
“I offered to give her my cloak; she refused it.
“But I had taken it off and I covered her with it against her will. In the
short struggle her hand touched mine. It made a delicious thrill run through
my body.
“For some minutes the air had been growing brisker, the dashing of the
water stronger against the flanks of the ship. I raised myself; a great gust of
wind blew in my face. The wind was rising!
“The Englishman perceived this at the same time that I did and said
simply:
“‘This is bad for us, this — — ‘
“Of course it was bad, it was certain death if any breakers, however
feeble, should attack and shake the wreck, which was already so shattered
and disconnected that the first big sea would carry it off.
“So our anguish increased momentarily as the squalls grew stronger and
stronger. Now the sea broke a little, and I saw in the darkness white lines
appearing and disappearing, lines of foam, while each wave struck the Marie
Joseph and shook her with a short quiver which went to our hearts.
“The English girl was trembling. I felt her shiver against me. And I had a
wild desire to take her in my arms.
“Down there, before and behind us, to the left and right, lighthouses were
shining along the shore — lighthouses white, yellow and red, revolving like
the enormous eyes of giants who were watching us, waiting eagerly for us to
disappear. One of them in especial irritated me. It went out every thirty
seconds and it lit up again immediately. It was indeed an eye, that one, with
its lid incessantly lowered over its fiery glance.
“From time to time the Englishman struck a match to see the hour; then he
put his watch back in his pocket. Suddenly he said to me, over the heads of
his daughters, with tremendous gravity:
 “‘I wish you a happy New Year, Mosieu.’
“It was midnight. I held out my hand, which he pressed. Then he said
something in English, and suddenly he and his daughters began to sing ‘God
Save the Queen,’ which rose through the black and silent air and vanished
into space.
“At first I felt a desire to laugh; then I was seized by a powerful, strange
emotion.
“It was something sinister and superb, this chant of the shipwrecked, the
condemned, something like a prayer and also like something grander,
something comparable to the ancient ‘Ave Caesar morituri te salutant.’
“When they had finished I asked my neighbor to sing a ballad alone,
anything she liked, to make us forget our terrors. She consented, and
immediately her clear young voice rang out into the night. She sang something
which was doubtless sad, because the notes were long drawn out and
hovered, like wounded birds, above the waves.
“The sea was rising now and beating upon our wreck. As for me, I thought
only of that voice. And I thought also of the sirens. If a ship had passed near
by us what would the sailors have said? My troubled spirit lost itself in the
dream! A siren! Was she not really a siren, this daughter of the sea, who had
kept me on this worm-eaten ship and who was soon about to go down with
me deep into the waters?
“But suddenly we were all five rolling on the deck, because the Marie
Joseph had sunk on her right side. The English girl had fallen upon me, and
before I knew what I was doing, thinking that my last moment was come, I
had caught her in my arms and kissed her cheek, her temple and her hair.
“The ship did not move again, and we, we also, remained motionless.
“The father said, ‘Kate!’ The one whom I was holding answered ‘Yes’
and made a movement to free herself. And at that moment I should have
wished the ship to split in two and let me fall with her into the sea.
“The Englishman continued:
“‘A little rocking; it’s nothing. I have my three daughters safe.’
“Not having seen the oldest, he had thought she was lost overboard!
“I rose slowly, and suddenly I made out a light on the sea quite close to
us. I shouted; they answered. It was a boat sent out in search of us by the
hotelkeeper, who had guessed at our imprudence.
“We were saved. I was in despair. They picked us up off our raft and they
brought us back to Saint-Martin.
 “The Englishman began to rub his hand and murmur:
“‘A good supper! A good supper!’
“We did sup. I was not gay. I regretted the Marie Joseph.
“We had to separate the next day after much handshaking and many
promises to write. They departed for Biarritz. I wanted to follow them.
“I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we had
passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and
incomprehensible a man sometimes is!
“Two years passed without my hearing a word from them. Then I received
a letter from New York. She was married and wrote to tell me. And since
then we write to each other every year, on New Year’s Day. She tells me
about her life, talks of her children, her sisters, never of her husband! Why?
Ah! why? And as for me, I only talk of the Marie Joseph. That was perhaps
the only woman I have ever loved — no — that I ever should have loved.
Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then — and then — all
passes. She must be old now; I should not know her. Ah! she of the bygone
time, she of the wreck! What a creature! Divine! She writes me her hair is
white. That caused me terrible pain. Ah! her yellow hair. No, my English girl
exists no longer. How sad it all is!”
 THEODULE SABOT’S CONFESSION

When Sabot entered the inn at Martinville it was a signal for laughter. What a
rogue he was, this Sabot! There was a man who did not like priests, for
instance! Oh, no, oh, no! He did not spare them, the scamp.
Sabot (Theodule), a master carpenter, represented liberal thought in
Martinville. He was a tall, thin, than, with gray, cunning eyes, and thin lips,
and wore his hair plastered down on his temples. When he said: “Our holy
father, the pope” in a certain manner, everyone laughed. He made a point of
working on Sunday during the hour of mass. He killed his pig each year on
Monday in Holy Week in order to have enough black pudding to last till
Easter, and when the priest passed by, he always said by way of a joke:
“There goes one who has just swallowed his God off a salver.”
The priest, a stout man and also very tall, dreaded him on account of his
boastful talk which attracted followers. The Abbe Maritime was a politic
man, and believed in being diplomatic. There had been a rivalry between
them for ten years, a secret, intense, incessant rivalry. Sabot was municipal
councillor, and they thought he would become mayor, which would inevitably
mean the final overthrow of the church.
The elections were about to take place. The church party was shaking in
its shoes in Martinville.
One morning the cure set out for Rouen, telling his servant that he was
going to see the archbishop. He returned in two days with a joyous,
triumphant air. And everyone knew the following day that the chancel of the
church was going to be renovated. A sum of six hundred francs had been
contributed by the archbishop out of his private fund. All the old pine pews
were to be removed, and replaced by new pews made of oak. It would be a
big carpentering job, and they talked about it that very evening in all the
houses in the village.
Theodule Sabot was not laughing.
When he went through the village the following morning, the neighbors,
friends and enemies, all asked him, jokingly:
“Are you going to do the work on the chancel of the church?”
 He could find nothing to say, but he was furious, he was good and angry.
Ill-natured people added:
“It is a good piece of work; and will bring in not less than two or three
per cent. profit.”
Two days later, they heard that the work of renovation had been entrusted
to Celestin Chambrelan, the carpenter from Percheville. Then this was
denied, and it was said that all the pews in the church were going to be
changed. That would be well worth the two thousand francs that had been
demanded of the church administration.
Theodule Sabot could not sleep for thinking about it. Never, in all the
memory of man, had a country carpenter undertaken a similar piece of work.
Then a rumor spread abroad that the cure felt very grieved that he had to give
this work to a carpenter who was a stranger in the community, but that
Sabot’s opinions were a barrier to his being entrusted with the job.
Sabot knew it well. He called at the parsonage just as it was growing
dark. The servant told him that the cure was at church. He went to the church.
Two attendants on the altar of the Virgin, two soar old maids, were
decorating the altar for the month of Mary, under the direction of the priest,
who stood in the middle of the chancel with his portly paunch, directing the
two women who, mounted on chairs, were placing flowers around the
tabernacle.
Sabot felt ill at ease in there, as though he were in the house of his greatest
enemy, but the greed of gain was gnawing at his heart. He drew nearer,
holding his cap in his hand, and not paying any attention to the “demoiselles
de la Vierge,” who remained standing startled, astonished, motionless on
their chairs.
He faltered:
“Good morning, monsieur le cure.”
The priest replied without looking at him, all occupied as he was with the
altar:
“Good morning, Mr. Carpenter.”
Sabot, nonplussed, knew not what to say next. But after a pause he
remarked:
“You are making preparations?”
Abbe Maritime replied:
“Yes, we are near the month of Mary.”
 “Why, why,” remarked Sabot and then was silent. He would have liked to
retire now without saying anything, but a glance at the chancel held him back.
He saw sixteen seats that had to be remade, six to the right and eight to the
left, the door of the sacristy occupying the place of two. Sixteen oak seats,
that would be worth at most three hundred francs, and by figuring carefully
one might certainly make two hundred francs on the work if one were not
clumsy.
Then he stammered out:
“I have come about the work.”
The cure appeared surprised. He asked:
“What work?”
“The work to be done,” murmured Sabot, in dismay.
Then the priest turned round and looking him straight in the eyes, said:
“Do you mean the repairs in the chancel of my church?”
At the tone of the abbe, Theodule Sabot felt a chill run down his back and
he once more had a longing to take to his heels. However, he replied humbly:
“Why, yes, monsieur le cure.”
Then the abbe folded his arms across his large stomach and, as if filled
with amazement, said:
“Is it you — you — you, Sabot — who have come to ask me for this . . .
You — the only irreligious man in my parish! Why, it would be a scandal, a
public scandal! The archbishop would give me a reprimand, perhaps transfer
me.”
He stopped a few seconds, for breath, and then resumed in a calmer tone:
“I can understand that it pains you to see a work of such importance entrusted
to a carpenter from a neighboring parish. But I cannot do otherwise, unless
— but no — it is impossible — you would not consent, and unless you did,
never.”
Sabot now looked at the row of benches in line as far as the entrance
door. Christopher, if they were going to change all those!
And he asked:
“What would you require of me? Tell me.”
The priest, in a firm tone replied:
“I must have an extraordinary token of your good intentions.”
“I do not say — I do not say; perhaps we might come to an
understanding,” faltered Sabot.
 “You will have to take communion publicly at high mass next Sunday,”
declared the cure.
The carpenter felt he was growing pale, and without replying, he asked:
“And the benches, are they going to be renovated?”
The abbe replied with confidence:
“Yes, but later on.”
Sabot resumed:
“I do not say, I do not say. I am not calling it off, I am consenting to
religion, for sure. But what rubs me the wrong way is, putting it in practice;
but in this case I will not be refractory.”
The attendants of the Virgin, having got off their chairs had concealed
themselves behind the altar; and they listened pale with emotion.
The cure, seeing he had gained the victory, became all at once very
friendly, quite familiar.
“That is good, that is good. That was wisely said, and not stupid, you
understand. You will see, you will see.”
Sabot smiled and asked with an awkward air:
“Would it not be possible to put off this communion just a trifle?”
But the priest replied, resuming his severe expression:
“From the moment that the work is put into your hands, I want to be
assured of your conversion.”
Then he continued more gently:
“You will come to confession to-morrow; for I must examine you at least
twice.”
“Twice?” repeated Sabot.
“Yes.”
The priest smiled.
“You understand perfectly that you must have a general cleaning up, a
thorough cleansing. So I will expect you to-morrow.”
The carpenter, much agitated, asked:
“Where do you do that?”
“Why — in the confessional.”
“In — that box, over there in the corner? The fact is — is — that it does
not suit me, your box.”
“How is that?”
“Seeing that — seeing that I am not accustomed to that, and also I am
rather hard of hearing.”
 The cure was very affable and said:
“Well, then! you shall come to my house and into my parlor. We will have
it just the two of us, tete-a-tete. Does that suit you?”
“Yes, that is all right, that will suit me, but your box, no.”
“Well, then, to-morrow after the days work, at six o’clock.”
“That is understood, that is all right, that is agreed on. To-morrow,
monsieur le cure. Whoever draws back is a skunk!”
And he held out his great rough hand which the priest grasped heartily
with a clap that resounded through the church.
Theodule Sabot was not easy in his mind all the following day. He had a
feeling analogous to the apprehension one experiences when a tooth has to be
drawn. The thought recurred to him at every moment: “I must go to
confession this evening.” And his troubled mind, the mind of an atheist only
half convinced, was bewildered with a confused and overwhelming dread of
the divine mystery.
As soon as he had finished his work, he betook himself to the parsonage.
The cure was waiting for him in the garden, reading his breviary as he
walked along a little path. He appeared radiant and greeted him with a good-
natured laugh.
“Well, here we are! Come in, come in, Monsieur Sabot, no one will eat
you.”
And Sabot preceded him into the house. He faltered:
“If you do not mind I should like to get through with this little matter at
once.”
The cure replied:
“I am at your service. I have my surplice here. One minute and I will
listen to you.”
The carpenter, so disturbed that he had not two ideas in his head, watched
him as he put on the white vestment with its pleated folds. The priest
beckoned to him and said:
“Kneel down on this cushion.”
Sabot remained standing, ashamed of having to kneel. He stuttered:
“Is it necessary?”
But the abbe had become dignified.
“You cannot approach the penitent bench except on your knees.”
And Sabot knelt down.
“Repeat the confiteor,” said the priest.
 “What is that?” asked Sabot.
“The confiteor. If you do not remember it, repeat after me, one by one, the
words I am going to say.” And the cure repeated the sacred prayer, in a slow
tone, emphasizing the words which the carpenter repeated after him. Then he
said:
“Now make your confession.”
But Sabot was silent, not knowing where to begin. The abbe then came to
his aid.
“My child, I will ask you questions, since you don’t seem familiar with
these things. We will take, one by one, the commandments of God. Listen to
me and do not be disturbed. Speak very frankly and never fear that you may
say too much.
“‘One God alone, thou shalt adore,
And love him perfectly.’
“Have you ever loved anything, or anybody, as well as you loved God?
Have you loved him with all your soul, all your heart, all the strength of your
love?”
Sabot was perspiring with the effort of thinking. He replied:
“No. Oh, no, m’sieu le cure. I love God as much as I can. That is — yes
— I love him very much. To say that I do not love my children, no — I cannot
say that. To say that if I had to choose between them and God, I could not be
sure. To say that if I had to lose a hundred francs for the love of God, I could
not say about that. But I love him well, for sure, I love him all the same.” The
priest said gravely “You must love Him more than all besides.” And Sabot,
meaning well, declared “I will do what I possibly can, m’sieu le cure.” The
abbe resumed:
“‘God’s name in vain thou shalt not take
Nor swear by any other thing.’
“Did you ever swear?”
“No-oh, that, no! I never swear, never. Sometimes, in a moment of anger, I
may say sacre nom de Dieu! But then, I never swear.”
“That is swearing,” cried the priest, and added seriously:
“Do not do it again.
“‘Thy Sundays thou shalt keep
In serving God devoutly.’
“What do you do on Sunday?”
This time Sabot scratched his ear.
 “Why, I serve God as best I can, m’sieu le cure. I serve him — at home. I
work on Sunday.”
The cure interrupted him, saying magnanimously:
“I know, you will do better in future. I will pass over the following
commandments, certain that you have not transgressed the two first. We will
take from the sixth to the ninth. I will resume:
“‘Others’ goods thou shalt not take
Nor keep what is not thine.’
“Have you ever taken in any way what belonged to another?”
But Theodule Sabot became indignant.
“Of course not, of course not! I am an honest man, m’sieu le cure, I swear
it, for sure. To say that I have not sometimes charged for a few more hours of
work to customers who had means, I could not say that. To say that I never
add a few centimes to bills, only a few, I would not say that. But to steal, no!
Oh, not that, no!”
The priest resumed severely:
“To take one single centime constitutes a theft. Do not do it again.
‘False witness thou shalt not bear,
Nor lie in any way.’
“Have you ever told a lie?”
“No, as to that, no. I am not a liar. That is my quality. To say that I have
never told a big story, I would not like to say that. To say that I have never
made people believe things that were not true when it was to my own
interest, I would not like to say that. But as for lying, I am not a liar.”
The priest simply said:
“Watch yourself more closely.” Then he continued:
“‘The works of the flesh thou shalt not desire
Except in marriage only.’
“Did you ever desire, or live with, any other woman than your wife?”
Sabot exclaimed with sincerity:
“As to that, no; oh, as to that, no, m’sieu le Cure. My poor wife, deceive
her! No, no! Not so much as the tip of a finger, either in thought or in act. That
is the truth.”
They were silent a few seconds, then, in a lower tone, as though a doubt
had arisen in his mind, he resumed:
“When I go to town, to say that I never go into a house, you know, one of
the licensed houses, just to laugh and talk and see something different, I could
not say that. But I always pay, monsieur le cure, I always pay. From the
moment you pay, without anyone seeing or knowing you, no one can get you
into trouble.”
The cure did not insist, and gave him absolution.
Theodule Sabot did the work on the chancel, and goes to communion
every month.
 THE WRONG HOUSE

Quartermaster Varajou had obtained a week’s leave to go and visit his sister,
Madame Padoie. Varajou, who was in garrison at Rennes and was leading a
pretty gay life, finding himself high and dry, wrote to his sister saying that he
would devote a week to her. It was not that he cared particularly for Mme.
Padoie, a little moralist, a devotee, and always cross; but he needed money,
needed it very badly, and he remembered that, of all his relations, the
Padoies were the only ones whom he had never approached on the subject.
Pere Varajou, formerly a horticulturist at Angers, but now retired from
business, had closed his purse strings to his scapegrace son and had hardly
seen him for two years. His daughter had married Padoie, a former treasury
clerk, who had just been appointed tax collector at Vannes.
Varajou, on leaving the train, had some one direct him to the house of his
brother-in-law, whom he found in his office arguing with the Breton peasants
of the neighborhood. Padoie rose from his seat, held out his hand across the
table littered with papers, murmured, “Take a chair. I will be at liberty in a
moment,” sat down again and resumed his discussion.
The peasants did not understand his explanations, the collector did not
understand their line of argument. He spoke French, they spoke Breton, and
the clerk who acted as interpreter appeared not to understand either.
It lasted a long time, a very long time. Varajou looked at his brother-in-
law and thought: “What a fool!” Padoie must have been almost fifty. He was
tall, thin, bony, slow, hairy, with heavy arched eyebrows. He wore a velvet
skull cap with a gold cord vandyke design round it. His look was gentle, like
his actions. His speech, his gestures, his thoughts, all were soft. Varajou said
to himself, “What a fool!”
He, himself, was one of those noisy roysterers for whom the greatest
pleasures in life are the cafe and abandoned women. He understood nothing
outside of these conditions of existence.
A boisterous braggart, filled with contempt for the rest of the world, he
despised the entire universe from the height of his ignorance. When he said:
“Nom d’un chien, what a spree!” he expressed the highest degree of
admiration of which his mind was capable.
Having finally got rid of his peasants, Padoie inquired:
“How are you?”
“Pretty well, as you see. And how are you?”
“Quite well, thank you. It is very kind of you to have thought of coming to
see us.”
“Oh, I have been thinking of it for some time; but, you know, in the
military profession one has not much freedom.”
“Oh, I know, I know. All the same, it is very kind of you.”
“And Josephine, is she well?”
“Yes, yes, thank you; you will see her presently.” “Where is she?”
“She is making some calls. We have a great many friends here; it is a very
nice town.”
“I thought so.”
The door opened and Mme. Padoie appeared. She went over to her
brother without any eagerness, held her cheek for him to kiss, and asked:
“Have you been here long?”
“No, hardly half an hour.”
“Oh, I thought the train would be late. Will you come into the parlor?”
They went into the adjoining room, leaving Padoie to his accounts and his
taxpayers. As soon as they were alone, she said:
“I have heard nice things about you!”
“What have you heard?”
“It seems that you are behaving like a blackguard, getting drunk and
contracting debts.”
He appeared very much astonished.
“I! never in the world!”
“Oh, do not deny it, I know it.”
He attempted to defend himself, but she gave him such a lecture that he
could say nothing more.
She then resumed:
“We dine at six o’clock, and you can amuse yourself until then. I cannot
entertain you, as I have so many things to do.”
When he was alone he hesitated as to whether he should sleep or take a
walk. He looked first at the door leading to his room and then at the hall
door, and decided to go out. He sauntered slowly through the quiet Breton
town, so sleepy, so calm, so dead, on the shores of its inland bay that is
called “le Morbihan.” He looked at the little gray houses, the occasional
pedestrians, the empty stores, and he murmured:
“Vannes is certainly not gay, not lively. It was a sad idea, my coming
here.”
He reached the harbor, the desolate harbor, walked back along a lonely,
deserted boulevard, and got home before five o’clock. Then he threw himself
on his bed to sleep till dinner time. The maid woke him, knocking at the door.
“Dinner is ready, sir:”
He went downstairs. In the damp dining-room with the paper peeling from
the walls near the floor, he saw a soup tureen on a round table without any
table cloth, on which were also three melancholy soup-plates.
M. and Mme. Padoie entered the room at the same time as Varajou. They
all sat down to table, and the husband and wife crossed themselves over the
pit of their stomachs, after which Padoie helped the soup, a meat soup. It was
the day for pot-roast.
After the soup, they had the beef, which was done to rags, melted, greasy,
like pap. The officer ate slowly, with disgust, weariness and rage.
Mme. Padoie said to her husband:
“Are you going to the judge’s house this evening?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Do not stay late. You always get so tired when you go out. You are not
made for society, with your poor health.”
She then talked about society in Vannes, of the excellent social circle in
which the Padoies moved, thanks to their religious sentiments.
A puree of potatoes and a dish of pork were next served, in honor of the
guest. Then some cheese, and that was all. No coffee.
When Varajou saw that he would have to spend the evening tete-a-tete
with his sister, endure her reproaches, listen to her sermons, without even a
glass of liqueur to help him to swallow these remonstrances, he felt that he
could not stand the torture, and declared that he was obliged to go to the
police station to have something attended to regarding his leave of absence.
And he made his escape at seven o’clock.
He had scarcely reached the street before he gave himself a shake like a
dog coming out of the water. He muttered:
“Heavens, heavens, heavens, what a galley slave’s life!”
 And he set out to look for a cafe, the best in the town. He found it on a
public square, behind two gas lamps. Inside the cafe, five or six men, semi-
gentlemen, and not noisy, were drinking and chatting quietly, leaning their
elbows on the small tables, while two billiard players walked round the
green baize, where the balls were hitting each other as they rolled.
One heard them counting:
“Eighteen-nineteen. No luck. Oh, that’s a good stroke! Well played!
Eleven. You should have played on the red. Twenty. Froze! Froze! Twelve.
Ha! Wasn’t I right?”
Varajou ordered:
“A demi-tasse and a small decanter of brandy, the best.” Then he sat down
and waited for it.
He was accustomed to spending his evenings off duty with his
companions, amid noise and the smoke of pipes. This silence, this quiet,
exasperated him. He began to drink; first the coffee, then the brandy, and
asked for another decanter. He now wanted to laugh, to shout, to sing, to fight
some one. He said to himself:
“Gee, I am half full. I must go and have a good time.”
And he thought he would go and look for some girls to amuse him. He
called the waiter:
“Hey, waiter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me, where does one amuse oneself here?”
The man looked stupid, and replied:
“I do not know, sir. Here, I suppose!”
“How do you mean here? What do you call amusing oneself, yourself?”
“I do not know, sir, drinking good beer or good wine.”
“Ah, go away, dummy, how about the girls?”
“The girls, ah! ah!”
“Yes, the girls, where can one find any here?”
“Girls?”
“Why, yes, girls!”
The boy approached and lowering his voice, said: “You want to know
where they live?”
“Why, yes, the devil!”
“You take the second street to the left and then the first to the right. It is
number fifteen.”
 “Thank you, old man. There is something for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
And Varajou went out of the cafe, repeating, “Second to the left, first to
the right, number 15.” But at the end of a few seconds he thought, “second to
the left yes. But on leaving the cafe must I walk to the right or the left? Bah, it
cannot be helped, we shall see.”
And he walked on, turned down the second street to the left, then the first
to the right and looked for number 15. It was a nice looking house, and one
could see behind the closed blinds that the windows were lighted up on the
first floor. The hall door was left partly open, and a lamp was burning in the
vestibule. The non-commissioned officer thought to himself:
“This looks all right.”
He went in and, as no one appeared, he called out:
“Hallo there, hallo!”
A little maid appeared and looked astonished at seeing a soldier. He said:
“Good-morning, my child. Are the ladies upstairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the parlor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I go up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The door opposite the stairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
He ascended the stairs, opened a door and saw sitting in a room well
lighted up by two lamps, a chandelier, and two candelabras with candles in
them, four ladies in evening dress, apparently expecting some one.
Three of them, the younger ones, remained seated, with rather a formal air,
on some crimson velvet chairs; while the fourth, who was about forty-five,
was arranging some flowers in a vase. She was very stout, and wore a green
silk dress with low neck and short sleeves, allowing her red neck, covered
with powder, to escape as a huge flower might from its corolla.
The officer saluted them, saying:
“Good-day, ladies.”
The older woman turned round, appeared surprised, but bowed.
“Good-morning, sir.”
He sat down. But seeing that they did not welcome him eagerly, he thought
that possibly only commissioned officers were admitted to the house, and this
made him uneasy. But he said:
“Bah, if one comes in, we can soon tell.”
He then remarked:
“Are you all well?”
The large lady, no doubt the mistress of the house, replied:
“Very well, thank you!”
He could think of nothing else to say, and they were all silent. But at last,
being ashamed of his bashfulness, and with an awkward laugh, he said:
“Do not people have any amusement in this country? I will pay for a bottle
of wine.”
He had not finished his sentence when the door opened, and in walked
Padoie dressed in a black suit.
Varajou gave a shout of joy, and rising from his seat, he rushed at his
brother-in-law, put his arms round him and waltzed him round the room,
shouting:
“Here is Padoie! Here is Padoie! Here is Padoie!”
Then letting go of the tax collector he exclaimed as he looked him in the
face:
“Oh, oh, oh, you scamp, you scamp! You are out for a good time, too. Oh,
you scamp! And my sister! Are you tired of her, say?”
As he thought of all that he might gain through this unexpected situation,
the forced loan, the inevitable blackmail, he flung himself on the lounge and
laughed so heartily that the piece of furniture creaked all over.
The three young ladies, rising simultaneously, made their escape, while
the older woman retreated to the door looking as though she were about to
faint.
And then two gentlemen appeared in evening dress, and wearing the
ribbon of an order. Padoie rushed up to them.
“Oh, judge — he is crazy, he is crazy. He was sent to us as a
convalescent. You can see that he is crazy.”
Varajou was sitting up now, and not being able to understand it all, he
guessed that he had committed some monstrous folly. Then he rose, and
turning to his brother-in-law, said:
“What house is this?”
But Padoie, becoming suddenly furious, stammered out:
“What house — what — what house is this? Wretch — scoundrel —
villain — what house, indeed? The house of the judge — of the judge of the
Supreme Court — of the Supreme Court — of the Supreme Court — Oh, oh
— rascal! — rascal! — rascal!”
 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who
sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no
dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married
by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little
clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was
unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women
there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of
family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind
are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of
the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies
and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the
bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All
those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have
been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton
peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and
bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental
tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in
knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the
oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with
ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the
little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o’clock
with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women
envy and whose attention they all desire.
When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a
tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup
tureen and declared with a delighted air, “Ah, the good soup! I don’t know
anything better than that,” she thought of dainty dinners, of shining
silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and
with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of
delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered
gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating
the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She
felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to
be charming, to be sought after.
She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and
whom she did not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she
came home.
But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and
holding a large envelope in his hand.
“There,” said he, “there is something for you.”
She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these
words:
The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau
request the honor of M. and Madame Loisel’s company at the palace of
the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.
Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the
invitation on the table crossly, muttering:
“What do you wish me to do with that?”
“Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is
such a fine opportunity. I had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it
is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole
official world will be there.”
She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:
“And what do you wish me to put on my back?”
He had not thought of that. He stammered:
“Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me.”
He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears
ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he answered.
By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice,
while she wiped her wet cheeks:
“Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can’t go to this ball. Give
your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am.”
He was in despair. He resumed:
 “Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown,
which you could use on other occasions — something very simple?”
She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering
also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal
and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.
Finally she replied hesitating:
“I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred
francs.”
He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy
a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of
Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.
But he said:
“Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty
gown.”
The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy,
anxious. Her frock was ready, however. Her husband said to her one
evening:
“What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three
days.”
And she answered:
“It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament,
nothing to put on. I shall look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go
at all.”
“You might wear natural flowers,” said her husband. “They’re very stylish
at this time of year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent
roses.”
She was not convinced.
“No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other
women who are rich.”
“How stupid you are!” her husband cried. “Go look up your friend,
Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You’re intimate
enough with her to do that.”
She uttered a cry of joy:
“True! I never thought of it.”
The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.
Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large
jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel:
 “Choose, my dear.”
She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold
cross set with precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the
ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part
with them, to give them back. She kept asking:
“Haven’t you any more?”
“Why, yes. Look further; I don’t know what you like.”
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond
necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands
trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-
necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.
Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:
“Will you lend me this, only this?”
“Why, yes, certainly.”
She threw her arms round her friend’s neck, kissed her passionately, then
fled with her treasure.
The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She
was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and
wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be
introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was
remarked by the minister himself.
She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting
all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud
of happiness comprised of all this homage, admiration, these awakened
desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman’s heart.
She left the ball about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been
sleeping since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other
gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.
He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps
of common life, the poverty of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball
dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not to be remarked by the
other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.
Loisel held her back, saying: “Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I
will call a cab.”
But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they
reached the street they could not find a carriage and began to look for one,
shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.
 They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they
found on the quay one of those ancient night cabs which, as though they were
ashamed to show their shabbiness during the day, are never seen round Paris
until after dark.
It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they
mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he reflected
that he must be at the ministry at ten o’clock that morning.
She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in
all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace
around her neck!
“What is the matter with you?” demanded her husband, already half
undressed.
She turned distractedly toward him.
“I have — I have — I’ve lost Madame Forestier’s necklace,” she cried.
He stood up, bewildered.
“What! — how? Impossible!”
They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets,
everywhere, but did not find it.
“You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?” he asked.
“Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister’s house.”
“But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be
in the cab.”
“Yes, probably. Did you take his number?”
“No. And you — didn’t you notice it?”
“No.”
They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.
“I shall go back on foot,” said he, “over the whole route, to see whether I
can find it.”
He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength
to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.
Her husband returned about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.
He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a
reward; he went to the cab companies — everywhere, in fact, whither he was
urged by the least spark of hope.
She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible
calamity.
 Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered
nothing.
“You must write to your friend,” said he, “that you have broken the clasp
of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to
turn round.”
She wrote at his dictation.
At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five
years, declared:
“We must consider how to replace that ornament.”
The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the
jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books.
“It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have
furnished the case.”
Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the
other, trying to recall it, both sick with chagrin and grief.
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that
seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand
francs. They could have it for thirty-six.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made
a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case
they should find the lost necklace before the end of February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him.
He would borrow the rest.
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another,
five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations,
dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of
his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it;
and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about
to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral
tortures that he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the
jeweler’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to
her with a chilly manner:
“You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it.”
She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had
detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have
said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?
 Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She
bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be
paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their
lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.
She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of
the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on
greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts and the
dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the
street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every
landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer,
the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, meeting with
impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.
Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.
Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman’s accounts, and late
at night he often copied manuscript for five sous a page.
This life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates
of usury and the accumulations of the compound interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of
impoverished households — strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair,
skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with
great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office,
she sat down near the window and she thought of that gay evening of long
ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired.
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows?
who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed
to make or ruin us!
But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to
refresh herself after the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman
who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still
beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And
now that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not?
She went up.
“Good-day, Jeanne.”
The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife,
did not recognize her at all and stammered:
 “But — madame! — I do not know — You must have mistaken.”
“No. I am Mathilde Loisel.”
Her friend uttered a cry.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!”
“Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty
— and that because of you!”
“Of me! How so?”
“Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the
ministerial ball?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, I lost it.”
“What do you mean? You brought it back.”
“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to
pay for it. You can understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had
nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad.”
Madame Forestier had stopped.
“You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?”
“Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar.”
And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at
most only five hundred francs!”
 THE MARQUIS DE FUMEROL

Roger de Tourneville was whiffing a cigar and blowing out small clouds of
smoke every now and then, as he sat astride a chair amid a party of friends.
He was talking.
“We were at dinner when a letter was brought in which my father opened.
You know my father, who thinks that he is king of France ad interim. I call
him Don Quixote, because for twelve years he has been running a tilt against
the windmill of the Republic, without quite knowing whether it was in the
cause of the Bourbons or the Orleanists. At present he is bearing the lance in
the cause of the Orleanists alone, because there is no one else left. In any
case, he thinks himself the first gentleman of France, the best known, the most
influential, the head of the party; and as he is an irremovable senator, he
thinks that the thrones of the neighboring kings are very insecure.
“As for my mother, she is my father’s soul, she is the soul of the kingdom
and of religion, and the scourge of all evil-thinkers.
“Well, a letter was brought in while we were at dinner, and my father
opened and read it, and then he said to mother: ‘Your brother is dying.’ She
grew very pale. My uncle was scarcely ever mentioned in the house, and I
did not know him at all; all I knew from public talk was, that he had led, and
was still leading, a gay life. After having spent his fortune in fast living, he
was now in small apartments in the Rue des Martyrs.
“An ancient peer of France and former colonel of cavalry, it was said that
he believed in neither God nor devil. Not believing, therefore, in a future life
he had abused the present life in every way, and had become a live wound in
my mother’s heart.
“‘Give me that letter, Paul,’ she said, and when she read it, I asked for it
in my turn. Here it is:
‘Monsieur le Comte, I think I ought to let you know that your
brother-in-law, the Comte Fumerol, is going to die. Perhaps you
would like to make some arrangements, and do not forget I told you.
Your servant,
‘MELANIE.’
 “‘We must take counsel,’ papa murmured. ‘In my position, I ought to
watch over your brother’s last moments.’
“Mamma continued: ‘I will send for Abbe Poivron and ask his advice,
and then I will go to my brother with the abbe and Roger. Remain here, Paul,
for you must not compromise yourself; but a woman can, and ought to do
these things. For a politician in your position, it is another matter. It would be
a fine thing for one of your opponents to be able to bring one of your most
laudable actions up against you.’ ‘You are right,’ my father said. ‘Do as you
think best, my dear wife.’
“A quarter of an hour, later, the Abbe Poivron came into the drawing-
room, and the situation was explained to him, analyzed and discussed in all
its bearings. If the Marquis de Fumerol, one of the greatest names in France,
were to die without the ministrations of religion, it would assuredly be a
terrible blow to the nobility in general, and to the Count de Tourneville in
particular, and the freethinkers would be triumphant. The liberal newspapers
would sing songs of victory for six months; my mother’s name would be
dragged through the mire and brought into the prose of Socialistic journals,
and my father’s name would be smirched. It was impossible that such a thing
should be.
“A crusade was therefore immediately decided upon, which was to be led
by the Abbe Poivron, a little, fat, clean, priest with a faint perfume about
him, a true vicar of a large church in a noble and rich quarter.
“The landau was ordered and we all three set out, my mother, the cure and
I, to administer the last sacraments to my uncle.
“It had been decided first of all we should see Madame Melanie who had
written the letter, and who was most likely the porter’s wife, or my uncle’s
servant, and I dismounted, as an advance guard, in front of a seven-story
house and went into a dark passage, where I had great difficulty in finding the
porter’s den. He looked at me distrustfully, and I said:
“‘Madame Melanie, if you please.’ ‘Don’t know her!’ ‘But I have
received a letter from her.’ ‘That may be, but I don’t know her. Are you
asking for a lodger?’ ‘No, a servant probably. She wrote me about a place.’
‘A servant? — a servant? Perhaps it is the marquis’. Go and see, the fifth
story on the left.’
“As soon as he found I was not asking for a doubtful character he became
more friendly and came as far as the corridor with me. He was a tall, thin
man with white whiskers, the manners of a beadle and majestic gestures.
 “I climbed up a long spiral staircase, the railing of which I did not venture
to touch, and I gave three discreet knocks at the left-hand door on the fifth
story. It opened immediately, and an enormous dirty woman appeared before
me. She barred the entrance with her extended arms which she placed against
the two doorposts, and growled:
“‘What do you want?’ ‘Are you Madame Melanie?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I am the
Visconte de Tourneville.’ ‘Ah! All right! Come in.’ ‘Well, the fact is, my
mother is downstairs with a priest.’ ‘Oh! All right; go and bring them up; but
be careful of the porter.’
“I went downstairs and came up again with my mother, who was followed
by the abbe, and I fancied that I heard other footsteps behind us. As soon as
we were in the kitchen, Melanie offered us chairs, and we all four sat down
to deliberate.
“‘Is he very ill?’ my mother asked. ‘Oh! yes, madame; he will not be here
long.’ ‘Does he seem disposed to receive a visit from a priest?’ ‘Oh! I do not
think so.’ ‘Can I see him?’ ‘Well — yes madame — only — only — those
young ladies are with him.’ ‘What young ladies?’ ‘Why — why — his lady
friends, of course.’ ‘Oh!’ Mamma had grown scarlet, and the Abbe Poivron
had lowered his eyes.
“The affair began to amuse me, and I said: ‘Suppose I go in first? I shall
see how he receives me, and perhaps I shall be able to prepare him to
receive you.’
“My mother, who did not suspect any trick, replied: ‘Yes, go, my dear.’
But a woman’s voice cried out: ‘Melanie!’
“The servant ran out and said: ‘What do you want, Mademoiselle Claire?’
‘The omelette; quickly.’ ‘In a minute, mademoiselle.’ And coming back to us,
she explained this summons.
“They had ordered a cheese omelette at two o’clock as a slight collation.
And she at once began to break the eggs into a salad bowl, and to whip them
vigorously, while I went out on the landing and pulled the bell, so as to
formally announce my arrival. Melanie opened the door to me, and made me
sit down in an ante-room, while she went to tell my uncle that I had come;
then she came back and asked me to go in, while the abbe hid behind the
door, so that he might appear at the first signal.
“I was certainly very much surprised at the sight of my uncle, for he was
very handsome, very solemn and very elegant, the old rake.
 “Sitting, almost lying, in a large armchair, his legs wrapped in blankets,
his hands, his long, white hands, over the arms of the chair, he was waiting
for death with the dignity of a patriarch. His white beard fell on his chest,
and his hair, which was also white, mingled with it on his cheeks.
“Standing behind his armchair, as if to defend him against me, were two
young women, who looked at me with bold eyes. In their petticoats and
morning wrappers, with bare arms, with coal black hair twisted in a knot on
the nape of their neck, with embroidered, Oriental slippers, which showed
their ankles and silk stockings, they looked like the figures in some
symbolical painting, by the side of the dying man. Between the easy-chair
and the bed, there was a table covered with a white cloth, on which two
plates, two glasses, two forks and two knives, were waiting for the cheese
omelette which had been ordered some time before of Melanie.
“My uncle said in a weak, almost breathless, but clear voice:
“‘Good-morning, my child; it is rather late in the day to come and see me;
our acquaintanceship will not last long.’ I stammered out, ‘It was not my
fault, uncle:’ ‘No; I know that,’ he replied. ‘It is your father and mother’s
fault more than yours. How are they?’ ‘Pretty well, thank you. When they
heard that you were ill, they sent me to ask after you.’ ‘Ah! Why did they not
come themselves?’
“I looked up at the two girls and said gently: ‘It is not their fault if they
could not come, uncle. But it would be difficult for my father, and impossible
for my mother to come in here.’ The old man did not reply, but raised his
hand toward mine, and I took the pale, cold hand and held it in my own.
“The door opened, Melanie came in with the omelette and put it on the
table, and the two girls immediately sat down at the table, and began to eat
without taking their eyes off me. Then I said: ‘Uncle, it would give great
pleasure to my mother to embrace you.’ ‘I also,’ he murmured, ‘should like
— — ‘ He said no more, and I could think of nothing to propose to him, and
there was silence except for the noise of the plates and that vague sound of
eating.
“Now, the abbe, who was listening behind the door, seeing our
embarrassment, and thinking we had won the game, thought the time had
come to interpose, and showed himself. My uncle was so stupefied at sight of
him that at first he remained motionless; and then he opened his mouth as if
he meant to swallow up the priest, and shouted to him in a strong, deep,
furious voice: ‘What are you doing here?’
 “The abbe, who was used to difficult situations, came forward into the
room, murmuring: ‘I have come in your sister’s name, Monsieur le Marquis;
she has sent me. She would be happy, monsieur— ‘
“But the marquis was not listening. Raising one hand, he pointed to the
door with a proud, tragic gesture, and said angrily and breathing hard:
‘Leave this room — go out — robber of souls. Go out from here, you
violator of consciences. Go out from here, you pick-lock of dying men’s
doors!’
“The abbe retreated, and I also went to the door, beating a retreat with the
priest; the two young women, who had the best of it, got up, leaving their
omelette only half eaten, and went and stood on either side of my uncle’s
easy-chair, putting their hands on his arms to calm him, and to protect him
against the criminal enterprises of the Family, and of Religion.
“The abbe and I rejoined my mother in the kitchen, and Melanie again
offered us chairs. ‘I knew quite well that this method would not work; we
must try some other means, otherwise he will escape us.’ And they began
deliberating afresh, my mother being of one opinion and the abbe of another,
while I held a third.
“We had been discussing the matter in a low voice for half an hour,
perhaps, when a great noise of furniture being moved and of cries uttered by
my uncle, more vehement and terrible even than the former had been, made us
all four jump up.
“Through the doors and walls we could hear him shouting: ‘Go out — out
— rascals — humbugs, get out, scoundrels — get out — get out!’
“Melanie rushed in, but came back immediately to call me to help her, and
I hastened in. Opposite to my uncle, who was terribly excited by anger,
almost standing up and vociferating, stood two men, one behind the other,
who seemed to be waiting till he should be dead with rage.
“By his ridiculous long coat, his long English shoes, his manners of a tutor
out of a position, his high collar, white necktie and straight hair, his humble
face of a false priest of a bastard religion, I immediately recognized the first
as a Protestant minister.
“The second was the porter of the house, who belonged to the reformed
religion and had followed us, and having seen our defeat, had gone to fetch
his own pastor, in hopes that he might meet a better reception. My uncle
seemed mad with rage! If the sight of the Catholic priest, of the priest of his
ancestors, had irritated the Marquis de Fumerol, who had become a
freethinker, the sight of his porter’s minister made him altogether beside
himself. I therefore took the two men by the arm and threw them out of the
room so roughly that they bumped against each other twice, between the two
doors which led to the staircase; and then I disappeared in my turn and
returned to the kitchen, which was our headquarters in order to take counsel
with my mother and the abbe.
“But Melanie came back in terror, sobbing out:
“‘He is dying — he is dying — come immediately — he is dying.’
“My mother rushed out. My uncle had fallen to the ground, and lay full
length along the floor, without moving. I fancy he was already dead. My
mother was superb at that moment! She went straight up to the two girls who
were kneeling by the body and trying to raise it up, and pointing to the door
with irresistible authority, dignity and majesty, she said: ‘Now it is time for
you to leave the room.’
“And they went out without a word of protest. I must add, that I was
getting ready to turn them out as unceremoniously as I had done the parson
and the porter.
“Then the Abbe Poivron administered the last sacraments to my uncle
with all the customary prayers, and remitted all his sins, while my mother
sobbed as she knelt near her brother. Suddenly, however, she exclaimed: ‘He
recognized me; he pressed my hand; I am sure he recognized me!!! — and
that he thanked me! Oh, God, what happiness!’
“Poor mamma! If she had known or guessed for whom those thanks were
intended!
“They laid my uncle on his bed; he was certainly dead this time.
“‘Madame,’ Melanie said, ‘we have no sheets to bury him in; all the linen
belongs to these two young ladies,’ and when I looked at the omelette which
they had not finished, I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time.
There are some humorous moments and some humorous situations in life,
occasionally!
“We gave my uncle a magnificent fungal, with five speeches at the grave.
Baron de Croiselles, the senator, showed in admirable terms that God always
returns victorious into well-born souls which have temporarily been led into
error. All the members of the Royalist and Catholic party followed the
funeral procession with the enthusiasm of victors, as they spoke of that
beautiful death after a somewhat troublous life.”
 Viscount Roger ceased speaking; his audience was laughing. Then
somebody said: “Bah! That is the story of all conversions in extremis.”
 THE TRIP OF LE HORLA

On the morning of July 8th I received the following telegram: “Fine day.
Always my predictions. Belgian frontier. Baggage and servants left at noon at
the social session. Beginning of manoeuvres at three. So I will wait for you
at the works from five o’clock on. Jovis.”
At five o’clock sharp I entered the gas works of La Villette. It might have
been mistaken for the colossal ruins of an old town inhabited by Cyclops.
There were immense dark avenues separating heavy gasometers standing one
behind another, like monstrous columns, unequally high and, undoubtedly, in
the past the supports of some tremendous, some fearful iron edifice.
The balloon was lying in the courtyard and had the appearance of a cake
made of yellow cloth, flattened on the ground under a rope. That is called
placing a balloon in a sweep-net, and, in fact, it appeared like an enormous
fish.
Two or three hundred people were looking at it, sitting or standing, and
some were examining the basket, a nice little square basket for a human
cargo, bearing on its side in gold letters on a mahogany plate the words: Le
Horla.
Suddenly the people began to stand back, for the gas was beginning to
enter into the balloon through a long tube of yellow cloth, which lay on the
soil, swelling and undulating like an enormous worm. But another thought,
another picture occurs to every mind. It is thus that nature itself nourishes
beings until their birth. The creature that will rise soon begins to move, and
the attendants of Captain Jovis, as Le Horla grew larger, spread and put in
place the net which covers it, so that the pressure will be regular and equally
distributed at every point.
The operation is very delicate and very important, for the resistance of the
cotton cloth of which the balloon is made is figured not in proportion to the
contact surface of this cloth with the net, but in proportion to the links of the
basket.
Le Horla, moreover, has been designed by M. Mallet, constructed under
his own eyes and made by himself. Everything had been made in the shops of
M. Jovis by his own working staff and nothing was made outside.
We must add that everything was new in this balloon, from the varnish to
the valve, those two essential parts of a balloon. Both must render the cloth
gas-proof, as the sides of a ship are waterproof. The old varnishes, made
with a base of linseed oil, sometimes fermented and thus burned the cloth,
which in a short time would tear like a piece of paper.
The valves were apt to close imperfectly after being opened and when the
covering called “cataplasme” was injured. The fall of M. L’Hoste in the open
sea during the night proved the imperfection of the old system.
The two discoveries of Captain Jovis, the varnish principally, are of
inestimable value in the art of ballooning.
The crowd has begun to talk, and some men, who appear to be specialists,
affirm with authority that we shall come down before reaching the
fortifications. Several other things have been criticized in this novel type of
balloon with which we are about to experiment with so much pleasure and
success.
It is growing slowly but surely. Some small holes and scratches made in
transit have been discovered, and we cover them and plug them with a little
piece of paper applied on the cloth while wet. This method of repairing
alarms and mystifies the public.
While Captain Jovis and his assistants are busy with the last details, the
travellers go to dine in the canteen of the gas-works, according to the
established custom.
When we come out again the balloon is swaying, enormous and
transparent, a prodigious golden fruit, a fantastic pear which is still ripening,
covered by the last rays of the setting sun. Now the basket is attached, the
barometers are brought, the siren, which we will blow to our hearts’ content,
is also brought, also the two trumpets, the eatables, the overcoats and
raincoats, all the small articles that can go with the men in that flying basket.
As the wind pushes the balloon against the gasometers, it is necessary to
steady it now and then, to avoid an accident at the start.
Captain Jovis is now ready and calls all the passengers.
Lieutenant Mallet jumps aboard, climbing first on the aerial net between
the basket and the balloon, from which he will watch during the night the
movements of Le Horla across the skies, as the officer on watch, standing on
starboard, watches the course of a ship.
 M. Etierine Beer gets in after him, then comes M. Paul Bessand, then M.
Patrice Eyries and I get in last.
But the basket is too heavy for the balloon, considering the long trip to be
taken, and M. Eyries has to get out, not without great regret.
M. Joliet, standing erect on the edge of the basket, begs the ladies, in very
gallant terms, to stand aside a little, for he is afraid he might throw sand on
their hats in rising. Then he commands:
“Let it loose,” and, cutting with one stroke of his knife the ropes that hold
the balloon to the ground, he gives Le Horla its liberty.
In one second we fly skyward. Nothing can be heard; we float, we rise,
we fly, we glide. Our friends shout with glee and applaud, but we hardly hear
them, we hardly see them. We are already so far, so high! What? Are we
really leaving these people down there? Is it possible? Paris spreads out
beneath us, a dark bluish patch, cut by its streets, from which rise, here and
there, domes, towers, steeples, then around it the plain, the country, traversed
by long roads, thin and white, amidst green fields of a tender or dark green,
and woods almost black.
The Seine appears like a coiled snake, asleep, of which we see neither
head nor tail; it crosses Paris, and the entire field resembles an immense
basin of prairies and forests dotted here and there by mountains, hardly
visible in the horizon.
The sun, which we could no longer see down below, now reappears as
though it were about to rise again, and our balloon seems to be lighted; it
must appear like a star to the people who are looking up. M. Mallet every
few seconds throws a cigarette paper into-space and says quietly: “We are
rising, always rising,” while Captain Jovis, radiant with joy, rubs his hands
together and repeats: “Eh? this varnish? Isn’t it good?”
In fact, we can see whether we are rising or sinking only by throwing a
cigarette paper out of the basket now and then. If this paper appears to fall
down like a stone, it means that the balloon is rising; if it appears to shoot
skyward the balloon is descending.
The two barometers mark about five hundred meters, and we gaze with
enthusiastic admiration at the earth we are leaving and to which we are not
attached in any way; it looks like a colored map, an immense plan of the
country. All its noises, however, rise to our ears very distinctly, easily
recognizable. We hear the sound of the wheels rolling in the streets, the snap
of a whip, the cries of drivers, the rolling and whistling of trains and the
laughter of small boys running after one another. Every time we pass over a
village the noise of children’s voices is heard above the rest and with the
greatest distinctness. Some men are calling us; the locomotives whistle; we
answer with the siren, which emits plaintive, fearfully shrill wails like the
voice of a weird being wandering through the world.
We perceive lights here and there, some isolated fire in the farms, and
lines of gas in the towns. We are going toward the northwest, after roaming
for some time over the little lake of Enghien. Now we see a river; it is the
Oise, and we begin to argue about the exact spot we are passing. Is that town
Creil or Pontoise — the one with so many lights? But if we were over
Pontoise we could see the junction of the Seine and the Oise; and that
enormous fire to the left, isn’t it the blast furnaces of Montataire? So then we
are above Creil. The view is superb; it is dark on the earth, but we are still
in the light, and it is now past ten o’clock. Now we begin to hear slight
country noises, the double cry of the quail in particular, then the mewing of
cats and the barking of dogs. Surely the dogs have scented the balloon; they
have seen it and have given the alarm. We can hear them barking all over the
plain and making the identical noise they make when baying at the moon. The
cows also seem to wake up in the barns, for we can hear them lowing; all the
beasts are scared and moved before the aerial monster that is passing.
The delicious odors of the soil rise toward us, the smell of hay, of
flowers, of the moist, verdant earth, perfuming the air-a light air, in fact, so
light, so sweet, so delightful that I realize I never was so fortunate as to
breathe before. A profound sense of well-being, unknown to me heretofore,
pervades me, a well-being of body and spirit, composed of supineness, of
infinite rest, of forgetfulness, of indifference to everything and of this novel
sensation of traversing space without any of the sensations that make motion
unbearable, without noise, without shocks and without fear.
At times we rise and then descend. Every few minutes Lieutenant Mallet,
suspended in his cobweb of netting, says to Captain Jovis: “We are
descending; throw down half a handful.” And the captain, who is talking and
laughing with us, with a bag of ballast between his legs, takes a handful of
sand out of the bag and throws it overboard.
Nothing is more amusing, more delicate, more interesting than the
manoeuvring of a balloon. It is an enormous toy, free and docile, which
obeys with surprising sensitiveness, but it is also, and before all, the slave of
the wind, which we cannot control. A pinch of sand, half a sheet of paper,
one or two drops of water, the bones of a chicken which we had just eaten,
thrown overboard, makes it go up quickly.
A breath of cool, damp air rising from the river or the wood we are
traversing makes the balloon descend two hundred metres. It does not vary
when passing over fields of ripe grain, and it rises when it passes over
towns.
The earth sleeps now, or, rather, men sleep on the earth, for the beasts
awakened by the sight of our balloon announce our approach everywhere.
Now and then the rolling of a train or the whistling of a locomotive is plainly
distinguishable. We sound our siren as we pass over inhabited places; and
the peasants, terrified in their beds, must surely tremble and ask themselves if
the Angel Gabriel is not passing by.
A strong and continuous odor of gas can be plainly observed. We must
have encountered a current of warm air, and the balloon expands, losing its
invisible blood by the escape-valve, which is called the appendix, and which
closes of itself as soon as the expansion ceases.
We are rising. The earth no longer gives back the echo of our trumpets; we
have risen almost two thousand feet. It is not light enough for us to consult the
instruments; we only know that the rice paper falls from us like dead
butterflies, that we are rising, always rising. We can no longer see the earth;
a light mist separates us from it; and above our head twinkles a world of
stars.
A silvery light appears before us and makes the sky turn pale, and
suddenly, as if it were rising from unknown depths behind the horizon below
us rises the moon on the edge of a cloud. It seems to be coming from below,
while we are looking down upon it from a great height, leaning on the edge of
our basket like an audience on a balcony. Clear and round, it emerges from
the clouds and slowly rises in the sky.
The earth no longer seems to exist, it is buried in milky vapors that
resemble a sea. We are now alone in space with the moon, which looks like
another balloon travelling opposite us; and our balloon, which shines in the
air, appears like another, larger moon, a world wandering in the sky amid the
stars, through infinity. We no longer speak, think nor live; we float along
through space in delicious inertia. The air which is bearing us up has made of
us all beings which resemble itself, silent, joyous, irresponsible beings,
intoxicated by this stupendous flight, peculiarly alert, although motionless.
One is no longer conscious of one’s flesh or one’s bones; one’s heart seems
to have ceased beating; we have become something indescribable, birds who
do not even have to flap their wings.
All memory has disappeared from our minds, all trouble from our
thoughts; we have no more regrets, plans nor hopes. We look, we feel, we
wildly enjoy this fantastic journey; nothing in the sky but the moon and
ourselves! We are a wandering, travelling world, like our sisters, the planets;
and this little world carries five men who have left the earth and who have
almost forgotten it. We can now see as plainly as in daylight; we look at each
other, surprised at this brightness, for we have nothing to look at but
ourselves and a few silvery clouds floating below us. The barometers mark
twelve hundred metres, then thirteen, fourteen, fifteen hundred; and the little
rice papers still fall about us.
Captain Jovis claims that the moon has often made balloons act thus, and
that the upward journey will continue.
We are now at two thousand metres; we go up to two thousand three
hundred and fifty; then the balloon stops: We blow the siren and are surprised
that no one answers us from the stars.
We are now going down rapidly. M. Mallet keeps crying: “Throw out
more ballast! throw out more ballast!” And the sand and stones that we throw
over come back into our faces, as if they were going up, thrown from below
toward the stars, so rapid is our descent.
Here is the earth! Where are we? It is now past midnight, and we are
crossing a broad, dry, well-cultivated country, with many roads and well
populated.
To the right is a large city and farther away to the left is another. But
suddenly from the earth appears a bright fairy light; it disappears, reappears
and once more disappears. Jovis, intoxicated by space, exclaims: “Look,
look at this phenomenon of the moon in the water. One can see nothing more
beautiful at night!”
Nothing indeed can give one an idea of the wonderful brightness of these
spots of light which are not fire, which do not look like reflections, which
appear quickly here or there and immediately go out again. These shining
lights appear on the winding rivers at every turn, but one hardly has time to
see them as the balloon passes as quickly as the wind.
We are now quite near the earth, and Beer exclaims:— “Look at that!
What is that running over there in the fields? Isn’t it a dog?” Indeed,
something is running along the ground with great speed, and this something
seems to jump over ditches, roads, trees with such ease that we could not
understand what it might be. The captain laughed: “It is the shadow of our
balloon. It will grow as we descend.”
I distinctly hear a great noise of foundries in the distance. And, according
to the polar star, which we have been observing all night, ‘and which I have
so often watched and consulted from the bridge of my little yacht on the
Mediterranean, we are heading straight for Belgium.
Our siren and our two horns are continually calling. A few cries from
some truck driver or belated reveler answer us. We bellow: “Where are
we?” But the balloon is going so rapidly that the bewildered man has not
even time to answer us. The growing shadow of Le Horla, as large as a
child’s ball, is fleeing before us over the fields, roads and woods. It goes
along steadily, preceding us by about a quarter of a mile; and now I am
leaning out of the basket, listening to the roaring of the wind in the trees and
across the harvest fields. I say to Captain Jovis: “How the wind blows!”
He answers: “No, those are probably waterfalls.” I insist, sure of my ear
that knows the sound of the wind, from hearing it so often whistle through the
rigging. Then Jovis nudges me; he fears to frighten his happy, quiet
passengers, for he knows full well that a storm is pursuing us.
At last a man manages to understand us; he answers: “Nord!” We get the
same reply from another.
Suddenly the lights of a town, which seems to be of considerable size,
appear before us. Perhaps it is Lille. As we approach it, such a wonderful
flow of fire appears below us that I think myself transported into some
fairyland where precious stones are manufactured for giants.
It seems that it is a brick factory. Here are others, two, three. The fusing
material bubbles, sparkles, throws out blue, red, yellow, green sparks,
reflections from giant diamonds, rubies, emeralds, turquoises, sapphires,
topazes. And near by are great foundries roaring like apocalyptic lions; high
chimneys belch forth their clouds of smoke and flame, and we can hear the
noise of metal striking against metal.
“Where are we?”
The voice of some joker or of a crazy person answers: “In a balloon!”
“Where are we?”
“At Lille!”
We were not mistaken. We are already out of sight of the town, and we see
Roubaix to the right, then some well-cultivated, rectangular fields, of
different colors according to the crops, some yellow, some gray or brown.
But the clouds are gathering behind us, hiding the moon, whereas toward the
east the sky is growing lighter, becoming a clear blue tinged with red. It is
dawn. It grows rapidly, now showing us all the little details of the earth, the
trains, the brooks, the cows, the goats. And all this passes beneath us with
surprising speed. One hardly has time to notice that other fields, other
meadows, other houses have already disappeared. Cocks are crowing, but
the voice of ducks drowns everything. One might think the world to be
peopled, covered with them, they make so much noise.
The early rising peasants are waving their arms and crying to us: “Let
yourselves drop!” But we go along steadily, neither rising nor falling, leaning
over the edge of the basket and watching the world fleeing under our feet.
Jovis sights another city far off in the distance. It approaches; everywhere
are old church spires. They are delightful, seen thus from above. Where are
we? Is this Courtrai? Is it Ghent?
We are already very near it, and we see that it is surrounded by water and
crossed in every direction by canals. One might think it a Venice of the north.
Just as we are passing so near to a church tower that our long guy-rope
almost touches it, the chimes begin to ring three o’clock. The sweet, clear
sounds rise to us from this frail roof which we have almost touched in our
wandering course. It is a charming greeting, a friendly welcome from
Holland. We answer with our siren, whose raucous voice echoes throughout
the streets.
It was Bruges. But we have hardly lost sight of it when my neighbor, Paul
Bessand, asks me: “Don’t you see something over there, to the right, in front
of us? It looks like a river.”
And, indeed, far ahead of us stretches a bright highway, in the light of the
dawning day. Yes, it looks like a river, an immense river full of islands.
“Get ready for the descent,” cried the captain. He makes M. Mallet leave
his net and return to the basket; then we pack the barometers and everything
that could be injured by possible shocks. M. Bessand exclaims: “Look at the
masts over there to the left! We are at the sea!”
Fogs had hidden it from us until then. The sea was everywhere, to the left
and opposite us, while to our right the Scheldt, which had joined the
Moselle, extended as far as the sea, its mouths vaster than a lake.
It was necessary to descend within a minute or two. The rope to the
escape-valve, which had been religiously enclosed in a little white bag and
placed in sight of all so that no one would touch it, is unrolled, and M. Mallet
holds it in his hand while Captain Jovis looks for a favorable landing.
Behind us the thunder was rumbling and not a single bird followed our
mad flight.
“Pull!” cried Jovis.
We were passing over a canal. The basket trembled and tipped over
slightly. The guy-rope touched the tall trees on both banks. But our speed is
so great that the long rope now trailing does not seem to slow down, and we
pass with frightful rapidity over a large farm, from which the bewildered
chickens, pigeons and ducks fly away, while the cows, cats and dogs run,
terrified, toward the house.
Just one-half bag of ballast is left. Jovis throws it overboard, and Le
Horla flies lightly across the roof.
The captain once more cries: “The escape-valve!”
M. Mallet reaches for the rope and hangs to it, and we drop like an arrow.
With a slash of a knife the cord which retains the anchor is cut, and we drag
this grapple behind us, through a field of beets. Here are the trees.
“Take care! Hold fast! Look out for your heads!”
We pass over them. Then a strong shock shakes us. The anchor has taken
hold.
“Look out! Take a good hold! Raise yourselves by your wrists. We are
going to touch ground.”
The basket does indeed strike the earth. Then it flies up again. Once more
it falls and bounds upward again, and at last it settles on the ground, while
the balloon struggles madly, like a wounded beast.
Peasants run toward us, but they do not dare approach. They were a long
time before they decided to come and deliver us, for one cannot set foot on
the ground until the bag is almost completely deflated.
Then, almost at the same time as the bewildered men, some of whom
showed their astonishment by jumping, with the wild gestures of savages, all
the cows that were grazing along the coast came toward us, surrounding our
balloon with a strange and comical circle of horns, big eyes and blowing
nostrils.
With the help of the accommodating and hospitable Belgian peasants, we
were able in a short time to pack up all our material and carry it to the station
at Heyst, where at twenty minutes past eight we took the train for Paris.
 The descent occurred at three-fifteen in the morning, preceding by only a
few seconds the torrent of rain and the blinding lightning of the storm which
had been chasing us before it.
Thanks to Captain Jovis, of whom I had heard much from my colleague,
Paul Ginisty — for both of them had fallen together and voluntarily into the
sea opposite Mentone — thanks to this brave man, we were able to see, in a
single night, from far up in the sky, the setting of the sun, the rising of the
moon and the dawn of day and to go from Paris to the mouth of the Scheldt
through the skies.
[This story appeared in “Figaro” on July 16, 1887, under the title:
“From Paris to Heyst.”]
 FAREWELL!

The two friends were getting near the end of their dinner. Through the cafe
windows they could see the Boulevard, crowded with people. They could
feel the gentle breezes which are wafted over Paris on warm summer
evenings and make you feel like going out somewhere, you care not where,
under the trees, and make you dream of moonlit rivers, of fireflies and of
larks.
One of the two, Henri Simon, heaved a deep sigh and said:
“Ah! I am growing old. It’s sad. Formerly, on evenings like this, I felt full
of life. Now, I only feel regrets. Life is short!”
He was perhaps forty-five years old, very bald and already growing stout.
The other, Pierre Carnier, a trifle older, but thin and lively, answered:
“Well, my boy, I have grown old without noticing it in the least. I have
always been merry, healthy, vigorous and all the rest. As one sees oneself in
the mirror every day, one does not realize the work of age, for it is slow,
regular, and it modifies the countenance so gently that the changes are
unnoticeable. It is for this reason alone that we do not die of sorrow after
two or three years of excitement. For we cannot understand the alterations
which time produces. In order to appreciate them one would have to remain
six months without seeing one’s own face — then, oh, what a shock!
“And the women, my friend, how I pity the poor beings! All their joy, all
their power, all their life, lies in their beauty, which lasts ten years.
“As I said, I aged without noticing it; I thought myself practically a youth,
when I was almost fifty years old. Not feeling the slightest infirmity, I went
about, happy and peaceful.
“The revelation of my decline came to me in a simple and terrible manner,
which overwhelmed me for almost six months — then I became resigned.
“Like all men, I have often been in love, but most especially once.
“I met her at the seashore, at Etretat, about twelve years ago, shortly after
the war. There is nothing prettier than this beach during the morning bathing
hour. It is small, shaped like a horseshoe, framed by high while cliffs, which
are pierced by strange holes called the ‘Portes,’ one stretching out into the
ocean like the leg of a giant, the other short and dumpy. The women gather on
the narrow strip of sand in this frame of high rocks, which they make into a
gorgeous garden of beautiful gowns. The sun beats down on the shores, on
the multicolored parasols, on the blue-green sea; and all is gay, delightful,
smiling. You sit down at the edge of the water and you watch the bathers. The
women come down, wrapped in long bath robes, which they throw off
daintily when they reach the foamy edge of the rippling waves; and they run
into the water with a rapid little step, stopping from time to time for a
delightful little thrill from the cold water, a short gasp.
“Very few stand the test of the bath. It is there that they can be judged,
from the ankle to the throat. Especially on leaving the water are the defects
revealed, although water is a powerful aid to flabby skin.
“The first time that I saw this young woman in the water, I was delighted,
entranced. She stood the test well. There are faces whose charms appeal to
you at first glance and delight you instantly. You seem to have found the
woman whom you were born to love. I had that feeling and that shock.
“I was introduced, and was soon smitten worse than I had ever been
before. My heart longed for her. It is a terrible yet delightful thing thus to be
dominated by a young woman. It is almost torture, and yet infinite delight.
Her look, her smile, her hair fluttering in the wind, the little lines of her face,
the slightest movement of her features, delighted me, upset me, entranced me.
She had captured me, body and soul, by her gestures, her manners, even by
her clothes, which seemed to take on a peculiar charm as soon as she wore
them. I grew tender at the sight of her veil on some piece of furniture, her
gloves thrown on a chair. Her gowns seemed to me inimitable. Nobody had
hats like hers.
“She was married, but her husband came only on Saturday, and left on
Monday. I didn’t cencern myself about him, anyhow. I wasn’t jealous of him,
I don’t know why; never did a creature seem to me to be of less importance
in life, to attract my attention less than this man.
“But she! how I loved her! How beautiful, graceful and young she was!
She was youth, elegance, freshness itself! Never before had I felt so strongly
what a pretty, distinguished, delicate, charming, graceful being woman is.
Never before had I appreciated the seductive beauty to be found in the curve
of a cheek, the movement of a lip, the pinkness of an ear, the shape of that
foolish organ called the nose.
 “This lasted three months; then I left for America, overwhelmed with
sadness. But her memory remained in me, persistent, triumphant. From far
away I was as much hers as I had been when she was near me. Years passed
by, and I did not forget her. The charming image of her person was ever
before my eyes and in my heart. And my love remained true to her, a quiet
tenderness now, something like the beloved memory of the most beautiful and
the most enchanting thing I had ever met in my life.
“Twelve years are not much in a lifetime! One does not feel them slip by.
The years follow each other gently and quickly, slowly yet rapidly, each one
is long and yet so soon over! They add up so rapidly, they leave so few
traces behind them, they disappear so completely, that, when one turns round
to look back over bygone years, one sees nothing and yet one does not
understand how one happens to be so old. It seemed to me, really, that hardly
a few months separated me from that charming season on the sands of Etretat.
“Last spring I went to dine with some friends at Maisons-Laffitte.
“Just as the train was leaving, a big, fat lady, escorted by four little girls,
got into my car. I hardly looked at this mother hen, very big, very round, with
a face as full as the moon framed in an enormous, beribboned hat.
“She was puffing, out of breath from having been forced to walk quickly.
The children began to chatter. I unfolded my paper and began to read.
“We had just passed Asnieres, when my neighbor suddenly turned to me
and said:
“‘Excuse me, sir, but are you not Monsieur Garnier?’
“‘Yes, madame.’
“Then she began to laugh, the pleased laugh of a good woman; and yet it
was sad.
“‘You do not seem to recognize me.’
“I hesitated. It seemed to me that I had seen that face somewhere; but
where? when? I answered:
“‘Yes — and no. I certainly know you, and yet I cannot recall your name.’
“She blushed a little:
“‘Madame Julie Lefevre.’
“Never had I received such a shock. In a second it seemed to me as though
it were all over with me! I felt that a veil had been torn from my eyes and that
I was going to make a horrible and heartrending discovery.
“So that was she! That big, fat, common woman, she! She had become the
mother of these four girls since I had last her. And these little beings
surprised me as much as their mother. They were part of her; they were big
girls, and already had a place in life. Whereas she no longer counted, she,
that marvel of dainty and charming gracefulness. It seemed to me that I had
seen her but yesterday, and this is how I found her again! Was it possible? A
poignant grief seized my heart; and also a revolt against nature herself, an
unreasoning indignation against this brutal, infarious act of destruction.
“I looked at her, bewildered. Then I took her hand in mine, and tears came
to my eyes. I wept for her lost youth. For I did not know this fat lady.
“She was also excited, and stammered:
“‘I am greatly changed, am I not? What can you expect — everything has
its time! You see, I have become a mother, nothing but a good mother.
Farewell to the rest, that is over. Oh! I never expected you to recognize me if
we met. You, too, have changed. It took me quite a while to be sure that I was
not mistaken. Your hair is all white. Just think! Twelve years ago! Twelve
years! My oldest girl is already ten.’
“I looked at the child. And I recognized in her something of her mother’s
old charm, but something as yet unformed, something which promised for the
future. And life seemed to me as swift as a passing train.
“We had reached. Maisons-Laffitte. I kissed my old friend’s hand. I had
found nothing utter but the most commonplace remarks. I was too much upset
to talk.
“At night, alone, at home, I stood in front of the mirror for a long time, a
very long time. And I finally remembered what I had been, finally saw in my
mind’s eye my brown mustache, my black hair and the youthful expression of
my face. Now I was old. Farewell!”
 THE WOLF

This is what the old Marquis d’Arville told us after St. Hubert’s dinner at the
house of the Baron des Ravels.
We had killed a stag that day. The marquis was the only one of the guests
who had not taken part in this chase. He never hunted.
During that long repast we had talked about hardly anything but the
slaughter of animals. The ladies themselves were interested in bloody and
exaggerated tales, and the orators imitated the attacks and the combats of men
against beasts, raised their arms, romanced in a thundering voice.
M. d Arville talked well, in a certain flowery, high-sounding, but effective
style. He must have told this story frequently, for he told it fluently, never
hesitating for words, choosing them with skill to make his description vivid.
Gentlemen, I have never hunted, neither did my father, nor my grandfather,
nor my great-grandfather. This last was the son of a man who hunted more
than all of you put together. He died in 1764. I will tell you the story of his
death.
His name was Jean. He was married, father of that child who became my
great-grandfather, and he lived with his younger brother, Francois d’Arville,
in our castle in Lorraine, in the midst of the forest.
Francois d’Arville had remained a bachelor for love of the chase.
They both hunted from one end of the year to the other, without stopping
and seemingly without fatigue. They loved only hunting, understood nothing
else, talked only of that, lived only for that.
They had at heart that one passion, which was terrible and inexorable. It
consumed them, had completely absorbed them, leaving room for no other
thought.
They had given orders that they should not be interrupted in the chase for
any reason whatever. My great-grandfather was born while his father was
following a fox, and Jean d’Arville did not stop the chase, but exclaimed:
“The deuce! The rascal might have waited till after the view — halloo!”
His brother Franqois was still more infatuated. On rising he went to see
the dogs, then the horses, then he shot little birds about the castle until the
time came to hunt some large game.
In the countryside they were called M. le Marquis and M. le Cadet, the
nobles then not being at all like the chance nobility of our time, which wishes
to establish an hereditary hierarchy in titles; for the son of a marquis is no
more a count, nor the son of a viscount a baron, than a son of a general is a
colonel by birth. But the contemptible vanity of today finds profit in that
arrangement.
My ancestors were unusually tall, bony, hairy, violent and vigorous. The
younger, still taller than the older, had a voice so strong that, according to a
legend of which he was proud, all the leaves of the forest shook when he
shouted.
When they were both mounted to set out hunting, it must have been a
superb sight to see those two giants straddling their huge horses.
Now, toward the midwinter of that year, 1764, the frosts were excessive,
and the wolves became ferocious.
They even attacked belated peasants, roamed at night outside the houses,
howled from sunset to sunrise, and robbed the stables.
And soon a rumor began to circulate. People talked of a colossal wolf
with gray fur, almost white, who had eaten two children, gnawed off a
woman’s arm, strangled all the watch dogs in the district, and even come
without fear into the farmyards. The people in the houses affirmed that they
had felt his breath, and that it made the flame of the lights flicker. And soon a
panic ran through all the province. No one dared go out any more after
nightfall. The darkness seemed haunted by the image of the beast.
The brothers d’Arville determined to find and kill him, and several times
they brought together all the gentlemen of the country to a great hunt.
They beat the forests and searched the coverts in vain; they never met him.
They killed wolves, but not that one. And every night after a battue the beast,
as if to avenge himself, attacked some traveller or killed some one’s cattle,
always far from the place where they had looked for him.
Finally, one night he stole into the pigpen of the Chateau d’Arville and ate
the two fattest pigs.
The brothers were roused to anger, considering this attack as a direct
insult and a defiance. They took their strong bloodhounds, used to pursue
dangerous animals, and they set off to hunt, their hearts filled with rage.
From dawn until the hour when the empurpled sun descended behind the
great naked trees, they beat the woods without finding anything.
 At last, furious and disgusted, both were returning, walking their horses
along a lane bordered with hedges, and they marvelled that their skill as
huntsmen should be baffled by this wolf, and they were suddenly seized with
a mysterious fear.
The elder said:
“That beast is not an ordinary one. You would say it had a mind like a
man.”
The younger answered:
“Perhaps we should have a bullet blessed by our cousin, the bishop, or
pray some priest to pronounce the words which are needed.”
Then they were silent.
Jean continued:
“Look how red the sun is. The great wolf will do some harm to-night.”
He had hardly finished speaking when his horse reared; that of Franqois
began to kick. A large thicket covered with dead leaves opened before them,
and a mammoth beast, entirely gray, jumped up and ran off through the wood.
Both uttered a kind of grunt of joy, and bending over the necks of their
heavy horses, they threw them forward with an impulse from all their body,
hurling them on at such a pace, urging them, hurrying them away, exciting
them so with voice and with gesture and with spur that the experienced riders
seemed to be carrying the heavy beasts between 4 their thighs and to bear
them off as if they were flying.
Thus they went, plunging through the thickets, dashing across the beds of
streams, climbing the hillsides, descending the gorges, and blowing the horn
as loud as they could to attract their people and the dogs.
And now, suddenly, in that mad race, my ancestor struck his forehead
against an enormous branch which split his skull; and he fell dead on the
ground, while his frightened horse took himself off, disappearing in the
gloom which enveloped the woods.
The younger d’Arville stopped quick, leaped to the earth, seized his
brother in his arms, and saw that the brains were escaping from the wound
with the blood.
Then he sat down beside the body, rested the head, disfigured and red, on
his knees, and waited, regarding the immobile face of his elder brother. Little
by little a fear possessed him, a strange fear which he had never felt before,
the fear of the dark, the fear of loneliness, the fear of the deserted wood, and
the fear also of the weird wolf who had just killed his brother to avenge
himself upon them both.
The gloom thickened; the acute cold made the trees crack. Francois got up,
shivering, unable to remain there longer, feeling himself growing faint.
Nothing was to be heard, neither the voice of the dogs nor the sound of the
horns-all was silent along the invisible horizon; and this mournful silence of
the frozen night had something about it terrific and strange.
He seized in his immense hands the great body of Jean, straightened it, and
laid it across the saddle to carry it back to the chateau; then he went on his
way softly, his mind troubled as if he were in a stupor, pursued by horrible
and fear-giving images.
And all at once, in the growing darkness a great shape crossed his path. It
was the beast. A shock of terror shook the hunter; something cold, like a drop
of water, seemed to glide down his back, and, like a monk haunted of the
devil, he made a great sign of the cross, dismayed at this abrupt return of the
horrible prowler. But his eyes fell again on the inert body before him, and
passing abruptly from fear to anger, he shook with an indescribable rage.
Then he spurred his horse and rushed after the wolf.
He followed it through the copses, the ravines, and the tall trees,
traversing woods which he no longer recognized, his eyes fixed on the white
speck which fled before him through the night.
His horse also seemed animated by a force and strength hitherto unknown.
It galloped straight ahead with outstretched neck, striking against trees, and
rocks, the head and the feet of the dead man thrown across the saddle. The
limbs tore out his hair; the brow, beating the huge trunks, spattered them with
blood; the spurs tore their ragged coats of bark. Suddenly the beast and the
horseman issued from the forest and rushed into a valley, just as the moon
appeared above the mountains. The valley here was stony, inclosed by
enormous rocks.
Francois then uttered a yell of joy which the echoes repeated like a peal
of thunder, and he leaped from his horse, his cutlass in his hand.
The beast, with bristling hair, the back arched, awaited him, its eyes
gleaming like two stars. But, before beginning battle, the strong hunter,
seizing his brother, seated him on a rock, and, placing stones under his head,
which was no more than a mass of blood, he shouted in the ears as if he was
talking to a deaf man: “Look, Jean; look at this!”
 Then he attacked the monster. He felt himself strong enough to overturn a
mountain, to bruise stones in his hands. The beast tried to bite him, aiming for
his stomach; but he had seized the fierce animal by the neck, without even
using his weapon, and he strangled it gently, listening to the cessation of
breathing in its throat and the beatings of its heart. He laughed, wild with joy,
pressing closer and closer his formidable embrace, crying in a delirium of
joy, “Look, Jean, look!” All resistance ceased; the body of the wolf became
limp. He was dead.
Franqois took him up in his arms and carried him to the feet of the elder
brother, where he laid him, repeating, in a tender voice: “There, there, there,
my little Jean, see him!”
Then he replaced on the saddle the two bodies, one upon the other, and
rode away.
He returned to the chateau, laughing and crying, like Gargantua at the birth
of Pantagruel, uttering shouts of triumph, and boisterous with joy as he
related the death of the beast, and grieving and tearing his beard in telling of
that of his brother.
And often, later, when he talked again of that day, he would say, with tears
in his eyes: “If only poor Jean could have seen me strangle the beast, he
would have died content, that I am sure!”
The widow of my ancestor inspired her orphan son with that horror of the
chase which has transmitted itself from father to son as far down as myself.
The Marquis d’Arville was silent. Some one asked:
“That story is a legend, isn’t it?”
And the story teller answered:
“I swear to you that it is true from beginning to end.”
Then a lady declared, in a little, soft voice
“All the same, it is fine to have passions like that.”
 THE INN

Resembling in appearance all the wooden hostelries of the High Alps

situated at the foot of glaciers in the barren rocky gorges that intersect the
summits of the mountains, the Inn of Schwarenbach serves as a resting place
for travellers crossing the Gemini Pass.
It remains open for six months in the year and is inhabited by the family of
Jean Hauser; then, as soon as the snow begins to fall and to fill the valley so
as to make the road down to Loeche impassable, the father and his three sons
go away and leave the house in charge of the old guide, Gaspard Hari, with
the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, and Sam, the great mountain dog.
The two men and the dog remain till the spring in their snowy prison, with
nothing before their eyes except the immense white slopes of the Balmhorn,
surrounded by light, glistening summits, and are shut in, blocked up and
buried by the snow which rises around them and which envelops, binds and
crushes the little house, which lies piled on the roof, covering the windows
and blocking up the door.
It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to Loeche,
as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming dangerous. Three
mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the three sons. Then the
mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule and
set off in their turn and the father followed them, accompanied by the two
men in charge, who were to escort the family as far as the brow of the
descent. First of all they passed round the small lake, which was now frozen
over, at the bottom of the mass of rocks which stretched in front of the inn,
and then they followed the valley, which was dominated on all sides by the
snow-covered summits.
A ray of sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen desert and
illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame. No living thing appeared
among this ocean of mountains. There was no motion in this immeasurable
solitude and no noise disturbed the profound silence.
By degrees the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall, long-legged Swiss, left
old man Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up the mule which
bore the two women. The younger one looked at him as he approached and
appeared to be calling him with her sad eyes. She was a young, fairhaired
little peasant girl, whose milk-white cheeks and pale hair looked as if they
had lost their color by their long abode amid the ice. When he had got up to
the animal she was riding he put his hand on the crupper and relaxed his
speed. Mother Hauser began to talk to him, enumerating with the minutest
details all that he would have to attend to during the winter. It was the first
time that he was going to stay up there, while old Hari had already spent
fourteen winters amid the snow, at the inn of Schwarenbach.
Ulrich Kunsi listened, without appearing to understand and looked
incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: “Yes, Madame Hauser,”
but his thoughts seemed far away and his calm features remained unmoved.
They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the
end of the valley. On the right one saw the black, pointed, rocky summits of
the Daubenhorn beside the enormous moraines of the Lommern glacier,
above which rose the Wildstrubel. As they approached the Gemmi pass,
where the descent of Loeche begins, they suddenly beheld the immense
horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of the
Rhone separated them.
In the distance there was a group of white, unequal, flat, or pointed
mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two
peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty and
formidable pyramid of Mount Cervin, that slayer of men, and the Dent-
Blanche, that monstrous coquette.
Then beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrific abyss,
they perceived Loeche, where houses looked as grains of sand which had
been thrown into that enormous crevice that is ended and closed by the
Gemmi and which opens, down below, on the Rhone.
The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which winds and turns
continually, doubling backward, then, fantastically and strangely, along the
side of the mountain as far as the almost invisible little village at its feet. The
women jumped into the snow and the two old men joined them. “Well,”
father Hauser said, “good-by, and keep up your spirits till next year, my
friends,” and old Hari replied: “Till next year.”
They embraced each other and then Madame Hauser in her turn offered
her cheek, and the girl did the same.
 When Ulrich Kunsi’s turn came, he whispered in Louise’s ear, “Do not
forget those up yonder,” and she replied, “No,” in such a low voice that he
guessed what she had said without hearing it. “Well, adieu,” Jean Hauser
repeated, “and don’t fall ill.” And going before the two women, he
commenced the descent, and soon all three disappeared at the first turn in the
road, while the two men returned to the inn at Schwarenbach.
They walked slowly, side by side, without speaking. It was over, and they
would be alone together for four or five months. Then Gaspard Hari began to
relate his life last winter. He had remained with Michael Canol, who was too
old now to stand it, for an accident might happen during that long solitude.
They had not been dull, however; the only thing was to make up one’s mind
to it from the first, and in the end one would find plenty of distraction, games
and other means of whiling away the time.
Ulrich Kunsi listened to him with his eyes on the ground, for in his
thoughts he was following those who were descending to the village. They
soon came in sight of the inn, which was, however, scarcely visible, so small
did it look, a black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow, and
when they opened the door Sam, the great curly dog, began to romp round
them.
“Come, my boy,” old Gaspard said, “we have no women now, so we must
get our own dinner ready. Go and peel the potatoes.” And they both sat down
on wooden stools and began to prepare the soup.
The next morning seemed very long to Kunsi. Old Hari smoked and spat
on the hearth, while the young man looked out of the window at the snow-
covered mountain opposite the house.
In the afternoon he went out, and going over yesterday’s ground again, he
looked for the traces of the mule that had carried the two women. Then when
he had reached the Gemmi Pass, he laid himself down on his stomach and
looked at Loeche.
The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, from
which it was sheltered by the pine woods which protected it on all sides. Its
low houses looked like paving stones in a large meadow from above.
Hauser’s little daughter was there now in one of those gray-colored houses.
In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to be able to make them out
separately. How he would have liked to go down while he was yet able!
But the sun had disappeared behind the lofty crest of the Wildstrubel and
the young man returned to the chalet. Daddy Hari was smoking, and when he
saw his mate come in he proposed a game of cards to him, and they sat down
opposite each other, on either side of the table. They played for a long time a
simple game called brisque and then they had supper and went to bed.
The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without any fresh
snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and other rare
birds which ventured on those frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly
to the Gemmi Pass to look at the village. Then they played cards, dice or
dominoes and lost and won a trifle, just to create an interest in the game.
One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving,
deep and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly and was
by degrees burying them under a thick, heavy coverlet of foam. That lasted
four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and the windows,
to dig out a passage and to cut steps to get over this frozen powder, which a
twelve hours’ frost had made as hard as the granite of the moraines.
They lived like prisoners and did not venture outside their abode. They
had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich Kunsi
undertook the scouring, washing and everything that belonged to cleanliness.
He also chopped up the wood while Gaspard Hari did the cooking and
attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was interrupted by
long games at cards or dice, and they never quarrelled, but were always calm
and placid. They were never seen impatient or ill-humored, nor did they ever
use hard words, for they had laid in a stock of patience for their wintering on
the top of the mountain.
Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and
occasionally he killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at Schwarenbach
and they revelled in fresh meat. One morning he went out as usual. The
thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and as the sun had not
yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals at the approaches to the
Wildstrubel, and Ulrich, being alone, remained in bed until ten o’clock. He
was of a sleepy nature, but he would not have dared to give way like that to
his inclination in the presence of the old guide, who was ever an early riser.
He breakfasted leisurely with Sam, who also spent his days and nights in
sleeping in front of the fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at
the solitude, and was-seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one
is by the craving of a confirmed habit, and so he went out to meet his
companion, who was to return at four o’clock.
 The snow had levelled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses,
obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that between
the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white, regular, dazzling
and frozen surface. For three weeks Ulrich had not been to the edge of the
precipice from which he had looked down on the village, and he wanted to
go there before climbing the slopes which led to Wildstrubel. Loeche was
now also covered by the snow and the houses could scarcely be
distinguished, covered as they were by that white cloak.
Then, turning to the right, he reached the Loemmern glacier. He went along
with a mountaineer’s long strides, striking the snow, which was as hard as a
rock, with his iron-pointed stick, and with his piercing eyes he looked for the
little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse.
When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped and asked himself
whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk along the
moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining, the snow was
assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough gusts over its
crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill, vibrating call. His voice sped
through the deathlike silence in which the mountains were sleeping; it
reached the distance, across profound and motionless waves of glacial foam,
like the cry of a bird across the waves of the sea. Then it died away and
nothing answered him.
He began to walk again. The sun had sunk yonder behind the mountain
tops, which were still purple with the reflection from the sky, but the depths
of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt
frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude, the winter
death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were going to stop
and to freeze his blood, to make his limbs grow stiff and to turn him into a
motionless and frozen object, and he set off running, fleeing toward his
dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have returned during his absence.
He had taken another road; he would, no doubt, be sitting before the fire,
with a dead chamois at his feet. He soon came in sight of the inn, but no
smoke rose from it. Ulrich walked faster and opened the door. Sam ran up to
him to greet him, but Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunsi, in his alarm,
turned round suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a
corner. Then he relighted the fire and made the soup, hoping every moment to
see the old man come in. From time to time he went out to see if he were not
coming. It was quite night now, that wan, livid night of the mountains, lighted
by a thin, yellow crescent moon, just disappearing behind the mountain tops.
Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and feet,
while he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have
broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step and dislocated his
ankle. And, perhaps, he was lying on the snow, overcome and stiff with the
cold, in agony of mind, lost and, perhaps, shouting for help, calling with all
his might in the silence of the night.. But where? The mountain was so vast,
so rugged, so dangerous in places, especially at that time of the year, that it
would have required ten or twenty guides to walk for a week in all directions
to find a man in that immense space. Ulrich Kunsi, however, made up his
mind to set out with Sam if Gaspard did not return by one in the morning, and
he made his preparations.
He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing iron,
tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist, and looked to see that his iron-
shod stick and his axe, which served to cut steps in the ice, were in order.
Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth, the great dog was
snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking, as regularly as a heart
beating, in its resounding wooden case. He waited, with his ears on the alert
for distant sounds, and he shivered when the wind blew against the roof and
the walls. It struck twelve and he trembled: Then, frightened and shivering,
he put some water on the fire, so that he might have some hot coffee before
starting, and when the clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door
and went off in the direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he mounted,
scaling the rocks by means of his climbing irons, cutting into the ice,
advancing continually, and occasionally hauling up the dog, who remained
below at the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by means of the
rope. It was about six o’clock when he reached one of the summits to which
old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited till it should be
daylight.
The sky was growing pale overhead, and a strange light, springing nobody
could tell whence, suddenly illuminated the immense ocean of pale mountain
summits, which extended for a hundred leagues around him. One might have
said that this vague brightness arose from the snow itself and spread abroad
in space. By degrees the highest distant summits assumed a delicate, pink
flesh color, and the red sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the
Bernese Alps.
 Ulrich Kunsi set off again, walking like a hunter, bent over, looking for
tracks, and saying to his dog: “Seek, old fellow, seek!”
He was descending the mountain now, scanning the depths closely, and
from time to time shouting, uttering aloud, prolonged cry, which soon died
away in that silent vastness. Then he put his ear to the ground to listen. He
thought he could distinguish a voice, and he began to run and shouted again,
but he heard nothing more and sat down, exhausted and in despair. Toward
midday he breakfasted and gave Sam, who was as tired as himself, something
to eat also, and then he recommenced his search.
When evening came he was still walking, and he had walked more than
thirty miles over the mountains. As he was too far away to return home and
too tired to drag himself along any further, he dug a hole in the snow and
crouched in it with his dog under a blanket which he had brought with him.
And the man and the dog lay side by side, trying to keep warm, but frozen to
the marrow nevertheless. Ulrich scarcely slept, his mind haunted by visions
and his limbs shaking with cold.
Day was breaking when he got up. His legs were as stiff as iron bars and
his spirits so low that he was ready to cry with anguish, while his heart was
beating so that he almost fell over with agitation, when he thought he heard a
noise.
Suddenly he imagined that he also was going to die of cold in the midst of
this vast solitude, and the terror of such a death roused his energies and gave
him renewed vigor. He was descending toward the inn, falling down and
getting up again, and followed at a distance by Sam, who was limping on
three legs, and they did not reach Schwarenbach until four o’clock in the
afternoon. The house was empty and the young man made a fire, had
something to eat and went to sleep, so worn out that he did not think of
anything more.
He slept for a long time, for a very long time, an irresistible sleep. But
suddenly a voice, a cry, a name, “Ulrich!” aroused him from his profound
torpor and made him sit up in bed. Had he been dreaming? Was it one of
those strange appeals which cross the dreams of disquieted minds? No, he
heard it still, that reverberating cry-which had entered his ears and remained
in his flesh-to the tips of his sinewy fingers. Certainly somebody had cried
out and called “Ulrich!” There was somebody there near the house, there
could be no doubt of that, and he opened the door and shouted, “Is it you,
Gaspard?” with all the strength of his lungs. But there was no reply, no
murmur, no groan, nothing. It was quite dark and the snow looked wan.
The wind had risen, that icy wind that cracks the rocks and leaves nothing
alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts, which were
more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again
Ulrich shouted: “Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard.” And then he waited again.
Everything was silent on the mountain.
Then he shook with terror and with a bound he was inside the inn, when
he shut and bolted the door, and then he fell into a chair trembling all over,
for he felt certain that his comrade had called him at the moment he was
expiring.
He was sure of that, as sure as one is of being alive or of eating a piece of
bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and three nights
somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep, untrodden ravines whose
whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He had been dying for
two days and three nights and he had just then died, thinking of his comrade.
His soul, almost before it was released, had taken its flight to the inn where
Ulrich was sleeping, and it had called him by that terrible and mysterious
power which the spirits of the dead have to haunt the living. That voiceless
soul had cried to the worn-out soul of the sleeper; it had uttered its last
farewell, or its reproach, or its curse on the man who had not searched
carefully enough.
And Ulrich felt that it was there, quite close to him, behind the wall,
behind the door which he had just fastened. It was wandering about, like a
night bird which lightly touches a lighted window with his wings, and the
terrified young man was ready to scream with horror. He wanted to run away,
but did not dare to go out; he did not dare, and he should never dare to do it
in the future, for that phantom would remain there day and night, round the
inn, as long as the old man’s body was not recovered and had not been
deposited in the consecrated earth of a churchyard.
When it was daylight Kunsi recovered some of his courage at the return of
the bright sun. He prepared his meal, gave his dog some food and then
remained motionless on a chair, tortured at heart as he thought of the old man
lying on the snow, and then, as soon as night once more covered the
mountains, new terrors assailed him. He now walked up and down the dark
kitchen, which was scarcely lighted by the flame of one candle, and he
walked from one end of it to the other with great strides, listening, listening
whether the terrible cry of the other night would again break the dreary
silence outside. He felt himself alone, unhappy man, as no man had ever been
alone before! He was alone in this immense desert of Snow, alone five
thousand feet above the inhabited earth, above human habitation, above that
stirring, noisy, palpitating life, alone under an icy sky! A mad longing
impelled him to run away, no matter where, to get down to Loeche by flinging
himself over the precipice; but he did not even dare to open the door, as he
felt sure that the other, the dead man, would bar his road, so that he might not
be obliged to remain up there alone:
Toward midnight, tired with walking, worn out by grief and fear, he at last
fell into a doze in his chair, for he was afraid of his bed as one is of a
haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the other evening pierced his
ears, and it was so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repulse the
ghost, and he fell backward with his chair.
Sam, who was awakened by the noise, began to howl as frightened dogs
do howl, and he walked all about the house trying to find out where the
danger came from. When he got to the door, he sniffed beneath it, smelling
vigorously, with his coat bristling and his tail stiff, while he growled angrily.
Kunsi, who was terrified, jumped up, and, holding his chair by one leg, he
cried: “Don’t come in, don’t come in, or I shall kill you.” And the dog,
excited by this threat, barked angrily at that invisible enemy who defied his
master’s voice. By degrees, however, he quieted down and came back and
stretched himself in front of the fire, but he was uneasy and kept his head up
and growled between his teeth.
Ulrich, in turn, recovered his senses, but as he felt faint with terror, he
went and got a bottle of brandy out of the sideboard, and he drank off several
glasses, one after anther, at a gulp. His ideas became vague, his courage
revived and a feverish glow ran through his veins.
He ate scarcely anything the next day and limited himself to alcohol, and
so he lived for several days, like a drunken brute. As soon as he thought of
Gaspard Hari, he began to drink again, and went on drinking until he fell to
the ground, overcome by intoxication. And there he remained lying on his
face, dead drunk, his limbs benumbed, and snoring loudly. But scarcely had
he digested the maddening and burning liquor than the same cry, “Ulrich!”
woke him like a bullet piercing his brain, and he got up, still staggering,
stretching out his hands to save himself from falling, and calling to Sam to
help him. And the dog, who appeared to be going mad like his master, rushed
to the door, scratched it with his claws and gnawed it with his long white
teeth, while the young man, with his head thrown back drank the brandy in
draughts, as if it had been cold water, so that it might by and by send his
thoughts, his frantic terror, and his memory to sleep again.
In three weeks he had consumed all his stock of ardent spirits. But his
continual drunkenness only lulled his terror, which awoke more furiously
than ever as soon as it was impossible for him to calm it. His fixed idea then,
which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was
continually increasing in his absolute solitude, penetrated him like a gimlet.
He now walked about the house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his ear
to the door to listen if the other were there and defying him through the wall.
Then, as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which
made him leap to his feet.
At last one night, as cowards do when driven to extremities, he sprang to
the door and opened it, to see who was calling him and to force him to keep
quiet, but such a gust of cold wind blew into his face that it chilled him to the
bone, and he closed and bolted the door again immediately, without noticing
that Sam had rushed out. Then, as he was shivering with cold, he threw some
wood on the fire and sat down in front of it to warm himself, but suddenly he
started, for somebody was scratching at the wall and crying. In desperation
he called out: “Go away!” but was answered by another long, sorrowful
wail.
Then all his remaining senses forsook him from sheer fright. He repeated:
“Go away!” and turned round to try to find some corner in which to hide,
while the other person went round the house still crying and rubbing against
the wall. Ulrich went to the oak sideboard, which was full of plates and
dishes and of provisions, and lifting it up with superhuman strength, he
dragged it to the door, so as to form a barricade. Then piling up all the rest of
the furniture, the mattresses, palliasses and chairs, he stopped up the
windows as one does when assailed by an enemy.
But the person outside now uttered long, plaintive, mournful groans, to
which the young man replied by similar groans, and thus days and nights
passed without their ceasing to howl at each other. The one was continually
walking round the house and scraped the walls with his nails so vigorously
that it seemed as if he wished to destroy them, while the other, inside,
followed all his movements, stooping down and holding his ear to the walls
and replying to all his appeals with terrible cries. One evening, however,
Ulrich heard nothing more, and he sat down, so overcome by fatigue, that he
went to sleep immediately and awoke in the morning without a thought,
without any recollection of what had happened, just as if his head had been
emptied during his heavy sleep, but he felt hungry, and he ate.
The winter was over and the Gemmi Pass was practicable again, so the
Hauser family started off to return to their inn. As soon as they had reached
the top of the ascent the women mounted their mule and spoke about the two
men whom they would meet again shortly. They were, indeed, rather
surprised that neither of them had come down a few days before, as soon as
the road was open, in order to tell them all about their long winter sojourn.
At last, however, they saw the inn, still covered with snow, like a quilt. The
door and the window were closed, but a little smoke was coming out of the
chimney, which reassured old Hauser. On going up to the door, however, he
saw the skeleton of an animal which had been torn to pieces by the eagles, a
large skeleton lying on its side.
They all looked close at it and the mother said:
“That must be Sam,” and then she shouted: “Hi, Gaspard!” A cry from the
interior of the house answered her and a sharp cry that one might have
thought some animal had uttered it. Old Hauser repeated, “Hi, Gaspard!” and
they heard another cry similar to the first.
Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the door, but
it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took a beam to serve
as a battering-ram and hurled it against the door with all their might. The
wood gave way and the boards flew into splinters. Then the house was
shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the side board which was
overturned, they saw a man standing upright, with his hair falling on his
shoulders and a beard descending to his breast, with shining eyes, and
nothing but rags to cover him. They did not recognize him, but Louise Hauser
exclaimed:
“It is Ulrich, mother.” And her mother declared that it was Ulrich,
although his hair was white.
He allowed them to go up to him and to touch him, but he did not reply to
any of their questions, and they were obliged to take him to Loeche, where
the doctors found that he was mad, and nobody ever found out what had
become of his companion.
Little Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of decline, which the
physicians attributed to the cold air of the mountains.
 MONSIEUR PARENT

George’s father was sitting in an iron chair, watching his little son with
concentrated affection and attention, as little George piled up the sand into
heaps during one of their walks. He would take up the sand with both hands,
make a mound of it, and put a chestnut leaf on top. His father saw no one but
him in that public park full of people.
The sun was just disappearing behind the roofs of the Rue Saint-Lazare,
but still shed its rays obliquely on that little, overdressed crowd. The
chestnut trees were lighted up by its yellow rays, and the three fountains
before the lofty porch of the church had the appearance of liquid silver.
Monsieur Parent, accidentally looking up at the church clock, saw that he
was five minutes late. He got up, took the child by the arm, shook his dress,
which was covered with sand, wiped his hands, and led him in the direction
of the Rue Blanche. He walked quickly, so as not to get in after his wife, and
the child could not keep up with him. He took him up and carried him, though
it made him pant when he had to walk up the steep street. He was a man of
forty, already turning gray, and rather stout. At last he reached his house. An
old servant who had brought him up, one of those trusted servants who are
the tyrants of families, opened the door to him.
“Has madame come in yet?” he asked anxiously.
The servant shrugged her shoulders:
“When have you ever known madame to come home at half-past six,
monsieur?”
“Very well; all the better; it will give me time to change my things, for I
am very warm.”
The servant looked at him with angry and contemptuous pity. “Oh, I can
see that well enough,” she grumbled. “You are covered with perspiration,
monsieur. I suppose you walked quickly and carried the child, and only to
have to wait until half-past seven, perhaps, for madame. I have made up my
mind not to have dinner ready on time. I shall get it for eight o’clock, and if,
you have to wait, I cannot help it; roast meat ought not to be burnt!”
Monsieur Parent pretended not to hear, but went into his own room, and as
soon as he got in, locked the door, so as to be alone, quite alone. He was so
used now to being abused and badly treated that he never thought himself safe
except when he was locked in.
What could he do? To get rid of Julie seemed to him such a formidable
thing to do that he hardly ventured to think of it, but it was just as impossible
to uphold her against his wife, and before another month the situation would
become unbearable between the two. He remained sitting there, with his
arms hanging down, vaguely trying to discover some means to set matters
straight, but without success. He said to himself: “It is lucky that I have
George; without him I should-be very miserable.”
Just then the clock struck seven, and he started up. Seven o’clock, and he
had not even changed his clothes. Nervous and breathless, he undressed, put
on a clean shirt, hastily finished his toilet, as if he had been expected in the
next room for some event of extreme importance, and went into the drawing-
room, happy at having nothing to fear. He glanced at the newspaper, went and
looked out of the window, and then sat down again, when the door opened,
and the boy came in, washed, brushed, and smiling. Parent took him up in his
arms and kissed him passionately; then he tossed him into the air, and held
him up to the ceiling, but soon sat down again, as he was tired with all his
exertion. Then, taking George on his knee, he made him ride a-cock-horse.
The child laughed and clapped his hands and shouted with pleasure, as did
his father, who laughed until his big stomach shook, for it amused him almost
more than it did the child.
Parent loved him with all the heart of a weak, resigned, ill-used man. He
loved him with mad bursts of affection, with caresses and with all the bashful
tenderness which was hidden in him, and which had never found an outlet,
even at the early period of his married life, for his wife had always shown
herself cold and reserved.
Just then Julie came to the door, with a pale face and glistening eyes, and
said in a voice which trembled with exasperation: “It is half-past seven,
monsieur.”
Parent gave an uneasy and resigned look at the clock and replied: “Yes, it
certainly is half-past seven.”
“Well, my dinner is quite ready now.”
Seeing the storm which was coming, he tried to turn it aside. “But did you
not tell me when I came in that it would not be ready before eight?”
“Eight! what are you thinking about? You surely do not mean to let the
child dine at eight o’clock? It would ruin his stomach. Just suppose that he
only had his mother to look after him! She cares a great deal about her child.
Oh, yes, we will speak about her; she is a mother! What a pity it is that there
should be any mothers like her!”
Parent thought it was time to cut short a threatened scene. “Julie,” he said,
“I will not allow you to speak like that of your mistress. You understand me,
do you not? Do not forget it in the future.”
The old servant, who was nearly choked with surprise, turned and went
out, slamming the door so violently after her that the lustres on the chandelier
rattled, and for some seconds it sounded as if a number of little invisible
bells were ringing in the drawing-room.
Eight o’clock struck, the door opened, and Julie came in again. She had
lost her look of exasperation, but now she put on an air of cold and
determined resolution, which was still more formidable.
“Monsieur,” she said, “I served your mother until the day of her death, and
I have attended to you from your birth until now, and I think it may be said
that I am devoted to the family.” She waited for a reply, and Parent
stammered:
“Why, yes, certainly, my good Julie.”
“You know quite well,” she continued, “that I have never done anything
for the sake of money, but always for your sake; that I have never deceived
you nor lied to you, that you have never had to find fault with me— “
“Certainly, my good Julie.”
“Very well, then, monsieur; it cannot go on any longer like this. I have said
nothing, and left you in your ignorance, out of respect and liking for you, but
it is too much, and every one in the neighborhood is laughing at you.
Everybody knows about it, and so I must tell you also, although I do not like
to repeat it. The reason why madame comes in at any time she chooses is that
she is doing abominable things.”
He seemed stupefied and not to understand, and could only stammer out:
“Hold your tongue; you know I have forbidden you — — “
But she interrupted him with irresistible resolution. “No, monsieur, I must
tell you everything now. For a long time madame has been carrying on with
Monsieur Limousin. I have seen them kiss scores of times behind the door.
Ah! you may be sure that if Monsieur Limousin had been rich, madame would
never have married Monsieur Parent. If you remember how the marriage was
brought about, you would understand the matter from beginning to end.”
 Parent had risen, and stammered out, his face livid: “Hold your tongue —
hold your tongue, or — — “
She went on, however: “No, I mean to tell you everything. She married
you from interest, and she deceived you from the very first day. It was all
settled between them beforehand. You need only reflect for a few moments to
understand it, and then, as she was not satisfied with having married you, as
she did not love you, she has made your life miserable, so miserable that it
has almost broken my heart when I have seen it.”
He walked up and down the room with hands clenched, repeating: “Hold
your tongue — hold your tongue — — “ For he could find nothing else to
say. The old servant, however, would not yield; she seemed resolved on
everything.
George, who had been at first astonished and then frightened at those
angry voices, began to utter shrill screams, and remained behind his father,
with his face puckered up and his mouth open, roaring.
His son’s screams exasperated Parent, and filled him with rage and
courage. He rushed at Julie with both arms raised, ready to strike her,
exclaiming: “Ah! you wretch. You will drive the child out of his senses.” He
already had his hand on her, when she screamed in his face:
“Monsieur, you may beat me if you like, me who reared you, but that will
not prevent your wife from deceiving you, or alter the fact that your child is
not yours — — “
He stopped suddenly, let his arms fall, and remained standing opposite to
her, so overwhelmed that he could understand nothing more.
“You need only to look at the child,” she added, “to know who is its
father! He is the very image of Monsieur Limousin. You need only look at his
eyes and forehead. Why, a blind man could not be mistaken in him.”
He had taken her by the shoulders, and was now shaking her with all his
might. “Viper, viper!” he said. “Go out the room, viper! Go out, or I shall kill
you! Go out! Go out!”
And with a desperate effort he threw her into the next room. She fell
across the table, which was laid for dinner, breaking the glasses. Then, rising
to her feet, she put the table between her master and herself. While he was
pursuing her, in order to take hold of her again, she flung terrible words at
him.
“You need only go out this evening after dinner, and come in again
immediately, and you will see! You will see whether I have been lying! Just
try it, and you will see.” She had reached the kitchen door and escaped, but
he ran after her, up the back stairs to her bedroom, into which she had locked
herself, and knocking at the door, he said:
“You will leave my house this very instant!”
“You may be certain of that, monsieur,” was her reply. “In an hour’s time I
shall not be here any longer.”
He then went slowly downstairs again, holding on to the banister so as not
to fall, and went back to the drawing-room, where little George was sitting
on the floor, crying. He fell into a chair, and looked at the child with dull
eyes. He understood nothing, knew nothing more; he felt dazed, stupefied,
mad, as if he had just fallen on his head, and he scarcely even remembered
the dreadful things the servant had told him. Then, by degrees, his mind, like
muddy water, became calmer and clearer, and the abominable revelations
began to work in his heart.
He was no longer thinking of George. The child was quiet now and sitting
on the carpet; but, seeing that no notice was being taken of him, he began to
cry. His father ran to him, took him in his arms, and covered him with kisses.
His child remained to him, at any rate! What did the rest matter? He held him
in his arms and pressed his lips to his light hair, and, relieved and composed,
he whispered:
“George — my little George — my dear little George — — “ But he
suddenly remembered what Julie had said! Yes, she had said that he was
Limousin’s child. Oh! it could not be possible, surely. He could not believe
it, could not doubt, even for a moment, that he was his own child. It was one
of those low scandals which spring from servants’ brains! And he repeated:
“George — my dear little George.” The youngster was quiet again, now that
his father was fondling him.
Parent felt the warmth of the little chest penetrate through his clothes, and
it filled him with love, courage, and happiness; that gentle warmth soothed
him, fortified him and saved him. Then he put the small, curly head away
from him a little, and looked at it affectionately, still repeating: “George! Oh,
my little George!” But suddenly he thought:
“Suppose he were to resemble Limousin, after all!” He looked at him with
haggard, troubled eyes, and tried to discover whether there was any likeness
in his forehead, in his nose, mouth, or cheeks. His thoughts wandered as they
do when a person is going mad, and his child’s face changed in his eyes, and
assumed a strange look and improbable resemblances.
 The hall bell rang. Parent gave a bound as if a bullet had gone through
him. “There she is,” he said. “What shall I do?” And he ran and locked
himself up in his room, to have time to bathe his eyes. But in a few moments
another ring at the bell made him jump again, and then he remembered that
Julie had left, without the housemaid knowing it, and so nobody would go to
open the door. What was he to do? He went himself, and suddenly he felt
brave, resolute, ready for dissimulation and the struggle. The terrible blow
had matured him in a few moments. He wished to know the truth, he desired
it with the rage of a timid man, and with the tenacity of an easy-going man
who has been exasperated.
Nevertheless, he trembled. Does one know how much excited cowardice
there often is in boldness? He went to the door with furtive steps, and
stopped to listen; his heart beat furiously. Suddenly, however, the noise of the
bell over his head startled him like an explosion. He seized the lock, turned
the key, and opening the door, saw his wife and Limousin standing before him
on the stairs.
With an air of astonishment, which also betrayed a little irritation, she
said:
“So you open the door now? Where is Julie?”
His throat felt tight and his breathing was labored as he tried to. reply,
without being able to utter a word.
“Are you dumb?” she continued. “I asked you where Julie is?”
“She — she — has — gone — — “ he managed to stammer.
His wife began to get angry. “What do you mean by gone? Where has she
gone? Why?”
By degrees he regained his coolness. He felt an intense hatred rise up in
him for that insolent woman who was standing before him.
“Yes, she has gone altogether. I sent her away.”
“You have sent away Julie? Why, you must be mad.”
“Yes, I sent her away because she was insolent, and because — because
she was ill-using the child.”
“Julie?”
“Yes — Julie.”
“What was she insolent about?”
“About you.”
“About me?”
“Yes, because the dinner was burnt, and you did not come in.”
 “And she said — — “
“She said — offensive things about you — which I ought not — which I
could not listen to — — “
“What did she, say?”
“It is no good repeating them.”
“I want to hear them.”
“She said it was unfortunate for a man like me to be married to a woman
like you, unpunctual, careless, disorderly, a bad mother, and a bad wife.”
The young woman had gone into the anteroom, followed by Limousin,
who did not say a word at this unexpected condition of things. She shut the
door quickly, threw her cloak on a chair, and going straight up to her
husband, she stammered out:
“You say? You say? That I am — — “
Very pale and calm, he replied: “I say nothing, my dear. I am simply
repeating what Julie said to me, as you wanted to know what it was, and I
wish you to remark that I turned her off just on account of what she said.”
She trembled with a violent longing to tear out his beard and scratch his
face. In his voice and manner she felt that he was asserting his position as
master. Although she had nothing to say by way of reply, she tried to assume
the offensive by saying something unpleasant. “I suppose you have had
dinner?” she asked.
“No, I waited for you.”
She shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “It is very stupid of you to wait
after half-past seven,” she said. “You might have guessed that I was detained,
that I had a good many things to do, visits and shopping,”
And then, suddenly, she felt that she wanted to explain how she had spent
her time, and told him in abrupt, haughty words that, having to buy some
furniture in a shop a long distance off, very far off, in the Rue de Rennes, she
had met Limousin at past seven o’clock on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and
that then she had gone with him to have something to eat in a restaurant, as
she did not like to go to one by herself, although she was faint with hunger.
That was how she had dined with Limousin, if it could be called dining, for
they had only some soup and half a chicken, as they were in a great hurry to
get back.
Parent replied simply: “Well, you were quite right. I am not finding fault
with you.”
 Then Limousin, who, had not spoken till then, and who had been half
hidden behind Henriette, came forward and put out his hand, saying: “Are
you very well?”
Parent took his hand, and shaking it gently, replied: “Yes, I am very well.”
But the young woman had felt a reproach in her husband’s last words.
“Finding fault! Why do you speak of finding fault? One might think that you
meant to imply something.”
“Not at all,” he replied, by way of excuse. “I simply meant that I was not
at all anxious although you were late, and that I did not find fault with you for
it.”
She, however, took the high hand, and tried to find a pretext for a quarrel.
“Although I was late? One might really think that it was one o’clock in the
morning, and that I spent my nights away from home.”
“Certainly not, my dear. I said late because I could find no other word.
You said you should be back at half-past six, and you returned at half-past
eight. That was surely being late. I understand it perfectly well. I am not at
all surprised, even. But — but — I can hardly use any other word.”
“But you pronounce them as if I had been out all night.”
“Oh, no-oh, no!”
She saw that he would yield on every point, and she was going into her
own room, when at last she noticed that George was screaming, and then she
asked, with some feeling: “What is the matter with the child?”
“I told you that Julie had been rather unkind to him.”
“What has the wretch been doing to him?”
“Oh nothing much. She gave him a push, and he fell down.”
She wanted to see her child, and ran into the dining room, but stopped
short at the sight of the table covered with spilt wine, with broken decanters
and glasses and overturned saltcellars. “Who did all that mischief?” she
asked.
“It was Julie, who — — “ But she interrupted him furiously:
“That is too much, really! Julie speaks of me as if I were a shameless
woman, beats my child, breaks my plates and dishes, turns my house upside
down, and it appears that you think it all quite natural.”
“Certainly not, as I have got rid of her.”
“Really! You have got rid of her! But you ought to have given her in
charge. In such cases, one ought to call in the Commissary of Police!”
 “But — my dear — I really could not. There was no reason. It would have
been very difficult — — “
She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. “There! you will never be
anything but a poor, wretched fellow, a man without a will, without any
firmness or energy. Ah! she must have said some nice things to you, your
Julie, to make you turn her off like that. I should like to have been here for a
minute, only for a minute.” Then she opened the drawing-room door and ran
to George, took him into her arms and kissed him, and said: “Georgie, what
is it, my darling, my pretty one, my treasure?”
Then, suddenly turning to another idea, she said: “But the child has had no
dinner? You have had nothing to eat, my pet?”
“No, mamma.”
Then she again turned furiously upon her husband. “Why, you must be
mad, utterly mad! It is half-past eight, and George has had no dinner!”
He excused himself as best he could, for he had nearly lost his wits
through the overwhelming scene and the explanation, and felt crushed by this
ruin of his life. “But, my dear, we were waiting for you, as I did not wish to
dine without you. As you come home late every day, I expected you every
moment.”
She threw her bonnet, which she had kept on till then, into an easy-chair,
and in an angry voice she said: “It is really intolerable to have to do with
people who can understand nothing, who can divine nothing and do nothing
by themselves. So, I suppose, if I were to come in at twelve o’clock at night,
the child would have had nothing to eat? Just as if you could not have
understood that, as it was after half-past seven, I was prevented from coming
home, that I had met with some hindrance!”
Parent trembled, for he felt that his anger was getting the upper hand, but
Limousin interposed, and turning toward the young woman, said:
“My dear friend, you, are altogether unjust. Parent could not guess that you
would come here so late, as you never do so, and then, how could you expect
him to get over the difficulty all by himself, after having sent away Julie?”
But Henriette was very angry, and replied:
“Well, at any rate, he must get over the difficulty himself, for I will not
help him,” she replied. “Let him settle it!” And she went into her own room,
quite forgetting that her child had not had anything to eat.
Limousin immediately set to work to help his friend. He picked up the
broken glasses which strewed the table and took them out, replaced the
plates and knives and forks, and put the child into his high chair, while Parent
went to look for the chambermaid to wait at table. The girl came in, in great
astonishment, as she had heard nothing in George’s room, where she had
been working. She soon, however, brought in the soup, a burnt leg of mutton,
and mashed potatoes.
Parent sat by the side of the child, very much upset and distressed at all
that had happened. He gave the boy his dinner, and endeavored to eat
something himself, but he could only swallow with an effort, as his throat felt
paralyzed. By degrees he was seized with an insane desire to look at
Limousin, who was sitting opposite to him, making bread pellets, to see
whether George was like him, but he did not venture to raise his eyes for
some time. At last, however, he made up his mind to do so, and gave a quick,
sharp look at the face which he knew so well, although he almost fancied that
he had never examined it carefully. It looked so different to what he had
imagined. From time to time he looked at Limousin, trying to recognize a
likeness in the smallest lines of his face, in the slightest features, and then he
looked at his son, under the pretext of feeding him.
Two words were sounding in his ears: “His father! his father! his father!”
They buzzed in his temples at every beat of his heart. Yes, that man, that
tranquil man who was sitting on the other side of the table, was, perhaps, the
father of his son, of George, of his little George. Parent left off eating; he
could not swallow any more. A terrible pain, one of those attacks of pain
which make men scream, roll on the ground, and bite the furniture, was
tearing at his entrails, and he felt inclined to take a knife and plunge it into his
stomach. He started when he heard the door open. His wife came in. “I am
hungry,” she said; “are not you, Limousin?”
He hesitated a little, and then said: “Yes, I am, upon my word.” She had
the leg of mutton brought in again. Parent asked himself “Have they had
dinner? Or are they late because they have had a lovers’ meeting?”
They both ate with a very good appetite. Henriette was very calm, but
laughed and joked. Her husband watched her furtively. She had on a pink
teagown trimmed with white lace, and her fair head, her white neck and her
plump hands stood out from that coquettish and perfumed dress as though it
were a sea shell edged with foam.
What fun they must be making of him, if he had been their dupe since the
first day! Was it possible to make a fool of a man, of a worthy man, because
his father had left him a little money? Why could one not see into people’s
souls? How was it that nothing revealed to upright hearts the deceits of
infamous hearts? How was it that voices had the same sound for adoring as
for lying? Why was a false, deceptive look the same as a sincere one? And
he watched them, waiting to catch a gesture, a word, an intonation. Then
suddenly he thought: “I will surprise them this evening,” and he said:
“My dear, as I have dismissed Julie, I will see about getting another girl
this very day. I will go at once to procure one by to-morrow morning, so I
may not be in until late.”
“Very well,” she replied; “go. I shall not stir from here. Limousin will
keep me company. We will wait for you.” Then, turning to the maid, she said:
“You had better put George to bed, and then you can clear away and go up to
your room.”
Parent had got up; he was unsteady on his legs, dazed and bewildered, and
saying, “I shall see you again later on,” he went out, holding on to the wall,
for the floor seemed to roll like a ship. George had been carried out by his
nurse, while Henriette and Limousin went into the drawing-room.
As soon as the door was shut, he said: “You must be mad, surely, to
torment your husband as you do?”
She immediately turned on him: “Ah! Do you know that I think the habit
you have got into lately, of looking upon Parent as a martyr, is very
unpleasant?”
Limousin threw himself into an easy-chair and crossed his legs. “I am not
setting him up as a martyr in the least, but I think that, situated as we are, it is
ridiculous to defy this man as you do, from morning till night.”
She took a cigarette from the mantelpiece, lighted it, and replied: “But I
do not defy him; quite the contrary. Only he irritates me by his stupidity, and I
treat him as he deserves.”
Limousin continued impatiently: “What you are doing is very foolish! I am
only asking you to treat your husband gently, because we both of us require
him to trust us. I think that you ought to see that.”
They were close together: he, tall, dark, with long whiskers and the rather
vulgar manners of a good-looking man who is very well satisfied with
himself; she, small, fair, and pink, a little Parisian, born in the back room of a
shop, half cocotte and half bourgeoise, brought up to entice customers to the
store by her glances, and married, in consequence, to a simple,
unsophisticated man, who saw her outside the door every morning when he
went out and every evening when he came home.
 “But do you not understand; you great booby,” she said, “that I hate him
just because he married me, because he bought me, in fact; because
everything that he says and does, everything that he thinks, acts on my nerves?
He exasperates me every moment by his stupidity, which you call his
kindness; by his dullness, which you call his confidence, and then, above all,
because he is my husband, instead of you. I feel him between us, although he
does not interfere with us much. And then — and then! No, it is, after all, too
idiotic of him not to guess anything! I wish he would, at any rate, be a little
jealous. There are moments when I feel inclined to say to him: ‘Do you not
see, you stupid creature, that Paul is my lover?’
“It is quite incomprehensible that you cannot understand how hateful he is
to me, how he irritates me. You always seem to like him, and you shake
hands with him cordially. Men are very extraordinary at times.”
“One must know how to dissimulate, my dear.”
“It is no question of dissimulation, but of feeling. One might think that,
when you men deceive one another, you like each other better on that account,
while we women hate a man from the moment that we have betrayed him.”
“I do not see why one should hate an excellent fellow because one is
friendly with his wife.”
“You do not see it? You do not see it? You all of you are wanting in
refinement of feeling. However, that is one of those things which one feels
and cannot express. And then, moreover, one ought not. No, you would not
understand; it is quite useless! You men have no delicacy of feeling.”
And smiling, with the gentle contempt of an impure woman, she put both
her hands on his shoulders and held up her lips to him. He stooped down and
clasped her closely in his arms, and their lips met. And as they stood in front
of the mantel mirror, another couple exactly like them embraced behind the
clock.
They had heard nothing, neither the noise of the key nor the creaking of the
door, but suddenly Henriette, with a loud cry, pushed Limousin away with
both her arms, and they saw Parent looking at them, livid with rage, without
his shoes on and his hat over his forehead. He looked at each, one after the
other, with a quick glance of his eyes and without moving his head. He
appeared beside himself. Then, without saying a word, he threw himself on
Limousin, seized him as if he were going to strangle him, and flung him into
the opposite corner of the room so violently that the other lost his balance,
and, beating the air with his hand, struck his head violently against the wall.
 When Henriette saw that her husband was going to murder her lover, she
threw herself on Parent, seized him by the neck, and digging her ten delicate,
rosy fingers into his neck, she squeezed him so tightly, with all the vigor of a
desperate woman, that the blood spurted out under her nails, and she bit his
shoulder, as if she wished to tear it with her teeth. Parent, half-strangled and
choking, loosened his hold on Limousin, in order to shake off his wife, who
was hanging to his neck. Putting his arms round her waist, he flung her also to
the other end of the drawing-room.
Then, as his passion was short-lived, like that of most good-tempered
men, and his strength was soon exhausted, he remained standing between the
two, panting, worn out, not knowing what to do next. His brutal fury had
expended itself in that effort, like the froth of a bottle of champagne, and his
unwonted energy ended in a gasping for breath. As soon as he could speak,
however, he said:
“Go away — both of you — immediately! Go away!”
Limousin remained motionless in his corner, against the wall, too startled
to understand anything as yet, too frightened to move a finger; while
Henriette, with her hands resting on a small, round table, her head bent
forward, her hair hanging down, the bodice of her dress unfastened, waited
like a wild animal which is about to spring. Parent continued in a stronger
voice: “Go away immediately. Get out of the house!”
His wife, however, seeing that he had got over his first exasperation grew
bolder, drew herself up, took two steps toward him, and, grown almost
insolent, she said: “Have you lost your head? What is the matter with you?
What is the meaning of this unjustifiable violence?”
But he turned toward her, and raising his fist to strike her, he stammered
out: “Oh — oh — this is too much, too much! I heard everything! Everything
— do you understand? Everything! You wretch — you wretch! You are two
wretches! Get out of the house, both of you! Immediately, or I shall kill you!
Leave the house!”
She saw that it was all over, and that he knew everything; that she could
not prove her innocence, and that she must comply. But all her impudence had
returned to her, and her hatred for the man, which was aggravated now, drove
her to audacity, made her feel the need of bravado, and of defying him, and
she said in a clear voice: “Come, Limousin; as he is going to turn me out of
doors, I will go to your lodgings with you.”
 But Limousin did not move, and Parent, in a fresh access of rage, cried
out: “Go, will you? Go, you wretches! Or else — or else — — “ He seized a
chair and whirled it over his head.
Henriette walked quickly across the room, took her lover by the arm,
dragged him from the wall, to which he appeared fixed, and led him toward
the door, saying: “Do come, my friend — you see that the man is mad. Do
come!”
As she went out she turned round to her husband, trying to think of
something that she could do, something that she could invent to wound him to
the heart as she left the house, and an idea struck her, one of those venomous,
deadly ideas in which all a woman’s perfidy shows itself, and she said
resolutely: “I am going to take my child with me.”
Parent was stupefied, and stammered: “Your — your — child? You dare
to talk of your child? You venture — you venture to ask for your child —
after-after — Oh, oh, that is too much! Go, you vile creature! Go!”
She went up to him again, almost smiling, almost avenged already, and
defying him, standing close to him, and face to face, she said: “I want my
child, and you have no right to keep him, because he is not yours — do you
understand? He is not yours! He is Limousin’s!”
And Parent cried out in bewilderment: “You lie — you lie — worthless
woman!”
But she continued: “You fool! Everybody knows it except you. I tell you,
this is his father. You need only look at him to see it.”
Parent staggered backward, and then he suddenly turned round, took a
candle, and rushed into the next room; returning almost immediately, carrying
little George wrapped up in his bedclothes. The child, who had been
suddenly awakened, was crying from fright. Parent threw him into his wife’s
arms, and then, without speaking, he pushed her roughly out toward the stairs,
where Limousin was waiting, from motives of prudence.
Then he shut the door again, double-locked and bolted it, but had scarcely
got back into the drawing-room when he fell to the floor at full length.
Parent lived alone, quite alone. During the five weeks that followed their
separation, the feeling of surprise at his new life prevented him from thinking
much. He had resumed his bachelor life, his habits of lounging, about, and
took his meals at a restaurant, as he had done formerly. As he wished to
avoid any scandal, he made his wife an allowance, which was arranged by
their lawyers. By degrees, however, the thought of the child began to haunt
him. Often, when he was at home alone at night, he suddenly thought he heard
George calling out “Papa,” and his heart would begin to beat, and he would
get up quickly and open the door, to see whether, by chance, the child might
have returned, as dogs or pigeons do. Why should a child have less instinct
than an animal? On finding that he was mistaken, he would sit down in his
armchair again and think of the boy. He would think of him for hours and
whole days. It was not only a moral, but still more a physical obsession, a
nervous longing to kiss him, to hold and fondle him, to take him on his knees
and dance him. He felt the child’s little arms around his neck, his little mouth
pressing a kiss on his beard, his soft hair tickling his cheeks, and the
remembrance of all those childish ways made him suffer as a man might for
some beloved woman who has left him. Twenty or a hundred times a day he
asked himself the question whether he was or was not George’s father, and
almost before he was in bed every night he recommenced the same series of
despairing questionings.
He especially dreaded the darkness of the evening, the melancholy feeling
of the twilight. Then a flood of sorrow invaded his heart, a torrent of despair
which seemed to overwhelm him and drive him mad. He was as afraid of his
own thoughts as men are of criminals, and he fled before them as one does
from wild beasts. Above all things, he feared his empty, dark, horrible
dwelling and the deserted streets, in which, here and there, a gas lamp
flickered, where the isolated foot passenger whom one hears in the distance
seems to be a night prowler, and makes one walk faster or slower, according
to whether he is coming toward you or following you.
And in spite of himself, and by instinct, Parent went in the direction of the
broad, well-lighted, populous streets. The light and the crowd attracted him,
occupied his mind and distracted his thoughts, and when he was tired of
walking aimlessly about among the moving crowd, when he saw the foot
passengers becoming more scarce and the pavements less crowded, the fear
of solitude and silence drove him into some large cafe full of drinkers and of
light. He went there as flies go to a candle, and he would sit down at one of
the little round tables and ask for a “bock,” which he would drink slowly,
feeling uneasy every time a customer got up to go. He would have liked to
take him by the arm, hold him back, and beg him to stay a little longer, so
much did he dread the time when the waiter should come up to him and say
sharply: “Come, monsieur, it is closing time!”
 He thus got into the habit of going to the beer houses, where the continual
elbowing of the drinkers brings you in contact with a familiar and silent
public, where the heavy clouds of tobacco smoke lull disquietude, while the
heavy beer dulls the mind and calms the heart. He almost lived there. He was
scarcely up before he went there to find people to distract his glances and his
thoughts, and soon, as he felt too lazy to move, he took his meals there.
After every meal, during more than an hour, he sipped three or four small
glasses of brandy, which stupefied him by degrees, and then his head
drooped on his chest, he shut his eyes, and went to sleep. Then, awaking, he
raised himself on the red velvet seat, straightened his waistcoat, pulled down
his cuffs, and took up the newspapers again, though he had already seen them
in the morning, and read them all through again, from beginning to end.
Between four and five o’clock he went for a walk on the boulevards, to get a
little fresh air, as he used to say, and then came back to the seat which had
been reserved for him, and asked for his absinthe. He would talk to the
regular customers whose acquaintance he had made. They discussed the
news of the day and political events, and that carried him on till dinner time;
and he spent the evening as he had the afternoon, until it was time to close.
That was a terrible moment for him when he was obliged to go out into the
dark, into his empty room full of dreadful recollections, of horrible thoughts,
and of mental agony. He no longer saw any of his old friends, none of his
relatives, nobody who might remind him of his past life. But as his
apartments were a hell to him, he took a room in a large hotel, a good room
on the ground floor, so as to see the passers-by. He was no longer alone in
that great building. He felt people swarming round him, he heard voices in
the adjoining rooms, and when his former sufferings tormented him too much
at the sight of his bed, which was turned down, and of his solitary fireplace,
he went out into the wide passages and walked up and down them like a
sentinel, before all the closed doors, and looked sadly at the shoes standing
in couples outside them, women’s little boots by the side of men’s thick ones,
and he thought that, no doubt, all these people were happy, and were sleeping
in their warm beds. Five years passed thus; five miserable years. But one
day, when he was taking his usual walk between the Madeleine and the Rue
Drouot, he suddenly saw a lady whose bearing struck him. A tall gentleman
and a child were with her, and all three were walking in front of him. He
asked himself where he had seen them before, when suddenly he recognized
a movement of her hand; it was his wife, his wife with Limousin and his
child, his little George.
His heart beat as if it would suffocate him, but he did not stop, for he
wished to see them, and he followed them. They looked like a family of the
better middle class. Henriette was leaning on Paul’s arm, and speaking to
him in a low voice, and looking at him sideways occasionally. Parent got a
side view of her and recognized her pretty features, the movements of her
lips, her smile, and her coaxing glances. But the child chiefly took up his
attention. How tall and strong he was! Parent could not see his face, but only
his long, fair curls. That tall boy with bare legs, who was walking by his
mother’s side like a little man, was George. He saw them suddenly, all three,
as they stopped in front of a shop. Limousin had grown very gray, had aged
and was thinner; his wife, on the contrary, was as young looking as ever, and
had grown stouter. George he would not have recognized, he was so different
from what he had been formerly.
They went on again and Parent followed them. He walked on quickly,
passed them, and then turned round, so as to meet them face to face. As he
passed the child he felt a mad longing to take him into his arms and run off
with him, and he knocked against him as if by accident. The boy turned round
and looked at the clumsy man angrily, and Parent hurried away, shocked, hurt,
and pursued by that look. He went off like a thief, seized with a horrible fear
lest he should have been seen and recognized by his wife and her lover. He
went to his cafe without stopping, and fell breathless into his chair. That
evening he drank three absinthes. For four months he felt the pain of that
meeting in his heart. Every night he saw the three again, happy and tranquil,
father, mother, and child walking on the boulevard before going in to dinner,
and that new vision effaced the old one. It was another matter, another
hallucination now, and also a fresh pain. Little George, his little George, the
child he had so much loved and so often kissed, disappeared in the far
distance, and he saw a new one, like a brother of the first, a little boy with
bare legs, who did not know him! He suffered terribly at that thought. The
child’s love was dead; there was no bond between them; the child would not
have held out his arms when he saw him. He had even looked at him angrily.
Then, by degrees he grew calmer, his mental torture diminished, the image
that had appeared to his eyes and which haunted his nights became more
indistinct and less frequent. He began once more to live nearly like
everybody else, like all those idle people who drink beer off marble-topped
tables and wear out their clothes on the threadbare velvet of the couches.
He grew old amid the smoke from pipes, lost his hair under the gas lights,
looked upon his weekly bath, on his fortnightly visit to the barber’s to have
his hair cut, and on the purchase of a new coat or hat as an event. When he
got to his cafe in a new hat he would look at himself in the glass for a long
time before sitting down, and take it off and put it on again several times, and
at last ask his friend, the lady at the bar, who was watching him with interest,
whether she thought it suited him.
Two or three times a year he went to the theatre, and in the summer he
sometimes spent his evenings at one of the open-air concerts in the Champs
Elysees. And so the years followed each other slow, monotonous, and short,
because they were quite uneventful.
He very rarely now thought of the dreadful drama which had wrecked his
life; for twenty years had passed since that terrible evening. But the life he
had led since then had worn him out. The landlord of his cafe would often
say to him: “You ought to pull yourself together a little, Monsieur Parent; you
should get some fresh air and go into the country. I assure you that you have
changed very much within the last few months.” And when his customer had
gone out be used to say to the barmaid: “That poor Monsieur Parent is
booked for another world; it is bad never to get out of Paris. Advise him to
go out of town for a day occasionally; he has confidence in you. Summer will
soon be here; that will put him straight.”
And she, full of pity and kindness for such a regular customer, said to
Parent every day: “Come, monsieur, make up your mind to get a little fresh
air. It is so charming in the country when the weather is fine. Oh, if I could, I
would spend my life there!”
By degrees he was seized with a vague desire to go just once and see
whether it was really as pleasant there as she said, outside the walls of the
great city. One morning he said to her:
“Do you know where one can get a good luncheon in the neighborhood of
Paris?”
“Go to the Terrace at Saint-Germain; it is delightful there!”
He had been there formerly, just when he became engaged. He made up
his mind to go there again, and he chose a Sunday, for no special reason, but
merely because people generally do go out on Sundays, even when they have
nothing to do all the week; and so one Sunday morning he went to Saint-
Germain. He felt low-spirited and vexed at having yielded to that new
longing, and at having broken through his usual habits. He was thirsty; he
would have liked to get out at every station and sit down in the cafe which he
saw outside and drink a “bock” or two, and then take the first train back to
Paris. The journey seemed very long to him. He could remain sitting for
whole days, as long as he had the same motionless objects before his eyes,
but he found it very trying and fatiguing to remain sitting while he was being
whirled along, and to see the whole country fly by, while he himself was
motionless.
However, he found the Seine interesting every time he crossed it. Under
the bridge at Chatou he saw some small boats going at great speed under the
vigorous strokes of the bare-armed oarsmen, and he thought: “There are some
fellows who are certainly enjoying themselves!” The train entered the tunnel
just before you get to the station at Saint-Germain, and presently stopped at
the platform. Parent got out, and walked slowly, for he already felt tired,
toward the Terrace, with his hands behind his back, and when he got to the
iron balustrade, stopped to look at the distant horizon. The immense plain
spread out before him vast as the sea, green and studded with large villages,
almost as populous as towns. The sun bathed the whole landscape in its full,
warm light. The Seine wound like an endless serpent through the plain,
flowed round the villages and along the slopes. Parent inhaled the warm
breeze, which seemed to make his heart young again, to enliven his spirits,
and to vivify his blood, and said to himself:
“Why, it is delightful here.”
Then he went on a few steps, and stopped again to look about him. The
utter misery of his existence seemed to be brought into full relief by the
intense light which inundated the landscape. He saw his twenty years of cafe
life — dull, monotonous, heartbreaking. He might have traveled as others
did, have gone among foreigners, to unknown countries beyond the sea, have
interested himself somewhat in everything which other men are passionately
devoted to, in arts and science; he might have enjoyed life in a thousand
forms, that mysterious life which is either charming or painful, constantly
changing, always inexplicable and strange. Now, however, it was too late.
He would go on drinking “bock” after “bock” until he died, without any
family, without friends, without hope, without any curiosity about anything,
and he was seized with a feeling of misery and a wish to run away, to hide
himself in Paris, in his cafe and his lethargy! All the thoughts, all the dreams,
all the desires which are dormant in the slough of stagnating hearts had
reawakened, brought to life by those rays of sunlight on the plain.
Parent felt that if he were to remain there any longer he should lose his
reason, and he made haste to get to the Pavilion Henri IV for lunch, to try and
forget his troubles under — the influence of wine and alcohol, and at any rate
to have some one to speak to.
He took a small table in one of the arbors, from which one can see all the
surrounding country, ordered his lunch, and asked to be served at once. Then
some more people arrived and sat down at tables near him. He felt more
comfortable; he was no longer alone. Three persons were eating luncheon
near him. He looked at them two or three times without seeing them clearly,
as one looks at total strangers. Suddenly a woman’s voice sent a shiver
through him which seemed to penetrate to his very marrow. “George,” it said,
“will you carve the chicken?”
And another voice replied: “Yes, mamma.”
Parent looked up, and he understood; he guessed immediately who those
people were! He should certainly not have known them again. His wife had
grown quite white and very stout, an elderly, serious, respectable lady, and
she held her head forward as she ate for fear of spotting her dress, although
she had a table napkin tucked under her chin. George had become a man. He
had a slight beard, that uneven and almost colorless beard which adorns the
cheeks of youths. He wore a high hat, a white waistcoat, and a monocle,
because it looked swell, no doubt. Parent looked at him in astonishment. Was
that George, his son? No, he did not know that young man; there could be
nothing in common between them. Limousin had his back to him, and was
eating; with his shoulders rather bent.
All three of them seemed happy and satisfied; they came and took
luncheon in the country at well-known restaurants. They had had a calm and
pleasant existence, a family existence in a warm and comfortable house,
filled with all those trifles which make life agreeable, with affection, with all
those tender words which people exchange continually when they love each
other. They had lived thus, thanks to him, Parent, on his money, after having
deceived him, robbed him, ruined him! They had condemned him, the
innocent, simple-minded, jovial man, to all the miseries of solitude, to that
abominable life which he had led, between the pavement and a bar-room, to
every mental torture and every physical misery! They had made him a
useless, aimless being, a waif in the world, a poor old man without any
pleasures, any prospects, expecting nothing from anybody or anything. For
him, the world was empty, because he loved nothing in the world. He might
go among other nations, or go about the streets, go into all the houses in
Paris, open every room, but he would not find inside any door the beloved
face, the face of wife or child which smiles when it sees you. This idea
worked upon him more than any other, the idea of a door which one opens, to
see and to embrace somebody behind it.
And that was the fault of those three wretches! The fault of that worthless
woman, of that infamous friend, and of that tall, light-haired lad who put on
insolent airs. Now he felt as angry with the child as he did with the other
two. Was he not Limousin’s son? Would Limousin have kept him and loved
him otherwise? Would not Limousin very quickly have got rid of the mother
and of the child if he had not felt sure that it was his, positively his? Does
anybody bring up other people’s children? And now they were there, quite
close to him, those three who had made him suffer so much.
Parent looked at them, irritated and excited at the recollection of all his
sufferings and of his despair, and was especially exasperated at their placid
and satisfied looks. He felt inclined to kill them, to throw his siphon of
Seltzer water at them, to split open Limousin’s head as he every moment bent
it over his plate, raising it again immediately.
He would have his revenge now, on the spot, as he had them under his
hand. But how? He tried to think of some means, he pictured such dreadful
things as one reads of in the newspapers occasionally, but could not hit on
anything practical. And he went on drinking to excite himself, to give himself
courage not to allow such an opportunity to escape him, as he might never
have another.
Suddenly an idea struck him, a terrible idea; and he left off drinking to
mature it. He smiled as he murmured: “I have them, I have them! We will see;
we will see!”
They finished their luncheon slowly, conversing with perfect unconcern.
Parent could not hear what they were saying, but he saw their quiet gestures.
His wife’s face especially exasperated him. She had assumed a haughty air,
the air of a comfortable, devout woman, of an unapproachable, devout
woman, sheathed in principles, iron-clad in virtue. They paid their bill and
got up from table. Parent then noticed Limousin. He might have been taken
for a retired diplomat, for he looked a man of great importance, with his soft
white whiskers, the tips of which touched his coat collar.
 They walked away. Parent rose and followed them. First they went up and
down the terrace, and calmly admired the landscape, and then they went. into
the forest. Parent followed them at a distance, hiding himself so as not to
excite their suspicion too soon.
Parent came up to them by degrees, breathing hard with emotion and
fatigue, for he was unused to walking now. He soon came up to them, but was
seized with fear, an inexplicable fear, and he passed them, so as to turn round
and meet them face to face. He walked on, his heart beating, feeling that they
were just behind him now, and he said to himself: “Come, now is the time.
Courage! courage! Now is the moment!”
He turned round. They were all three sitting on the grass, at the foot of a
huge tree, and were still chatting. He made up his mind, and walked back
rapidly; stopping in front of them in the middle of the road, he said abruptly,
in a voice broken by emotion:
“It is I! Here I am! I suppose you did not expect me?”
They all three stared at this man, who seemed to be insane. He continued:
“One would suppose that you did not know me again. Just look at me! I am
Parent, Henri Parent. You thought it was all over, and that you would never
see me again. Ah! but here I am once more, you see, and now we will have
an explanation.”
Henriette, terrified, hid her face in her hands, murmuring: “Oh! Good
heavens!”
Seeing this stranger, who seemed to be threatening his mother, George
sprang up, ready to seize him by the collar. Limousin, thunderstruck, looked
in horror at this apparition, who, after gasping for breath, continued:
“So now we will have an explanation; the proper moment has come! Ah!
you deceived me, you condemned me to the life of a convict, and you thought
that I should never catch you!”
The young man took him by the shoulders and pushed him back.
“Are you mad?” he asked. “What do you want? Go on your way
immediately, or I shall give you a thrashing!”
“What do I want?” replied Parent. “I want to tell you who these people
are.”
George, however, was in a rage, and shook him; and was even going to
strike him.
“Let me go,” said Parent. “I am your father. There, see whether they
recognize me now, the wretches!”
 The young man, thunderstruck, unclenched his fists and turned toward his
mother. Parent, as soon as he was released, approached her.
“Well,” he said, “tell him yourself who I am! Tell him that my name is
Henri Parent, that I am his father because his name is George Parent, because
you are my wife, because you are all three living on my money, on the
allowance of ten thousand francs which I have made you since I drove you
out of my house. Will you tell him also why I drove you out? Because I
surprised you with this beggar, this wretch, your lover! Tell him what I was,
an honorable man, whom you married for money, and whom you deceived
from the very first day. Tell him who you are, and who I am — — “
He stammered and gasped for breath in his rage. The woman exclaimed in
a heartrending voice:
“Paul, Paul, stop him; make him be quiet! Do not let him say this before
my son!”
Limousin had also risen to his feet. He said in a very low voice: “Hold
your tongue! Hold your tongue! Do you understand what you are doing?”
“I quite know what I am doing,” resumed Parent, “and that is not all.
There is one thing that I will know, something that has tormented me for
twenty years.” Then, turning to George, who was leaning against a tree in
consternation, he said:
“Listen to me. When she left my house she thought it was not enough to
have deceived me, but she also wanted to drive me to despair. You were my
only consolation, and she took you with her, swearing that I was not your
father, but, that he was your father. Was she lying? I do not know. I have been
asking myself the question for the last twenty years.” He went close up to her,
tragic and terrible, and, pulling away her hands, with which she had covered
her face, he continued:
“Well, now! I call upon you to tell me which of us two is the father of this
young man; he or I, your husband or your lover. Come! Come! tell us.”
Limousin rushed at him. Parent pushed him back, and, sneering in his fury,
he said: “Ah! you are brave now! You are braver than you were that day
when you ran downstairs because you thought I was going to murder you.
Very well! If she will not reply, tell me yourself. You ought to know as well
as she. Tell me, are you this young fellow’s father? Come! Come! Tell me!”
He turned to his wife again. “If you will not tell me, at any rate tell your
son. He is a man, now, and he has the right to know who his father is. I do not
know, and I never did know, never, never! I cannot tell you, my boy.”
 He seemed to be losing his senses; his voice grew shrill and he worked
his arms about as if he had an epileptic ‘fit.
“Come! . . . Give me an answer. She does not know . . . I will make a bet
that she does not know . . . No . . . she does not know, by Jove! Ha! ha! ha!
Nobody knows . . . nobody . . . How can one know such things?
“You will not know either, my boy, you will not know any more than I do .
. . never. . . . Look here . . . Ask her you will find that she does not know . . . I
do not know either . . . nor does he, nor do you, nobody knows. You can
choose . . . You can choose . . . yes, you can choose him or me. . . Choose.
“Good evening . . . It is all over. If she makes up her mind to tell you, you
will come and let me know, will you not? I am living at the Hotel des
Continents . . . I should be glad to know . . . Good evening . . . I hope you
will enjoy yourselves very much . . .”
And he went away gesticulating, talking to himself under the tall trees, in
the quiet, the cool air, which was full of the fragrance of growing plants. He
did not turn round to look at them, but went straight on, walking under the
stimulus of his rage, under a storm of passion, with that one fixed idea in his
mind. All at once he found himself outside the station. A train was about to
start and he got in. During the journey his anger calmed down, he regained
his senses and returned to Paris, astonished at his own boldness, full of aches
and pains as if he had broken some bones. Nevertheless, he went to have a
“bock” at his brewery.
When she saw him come in, Mademoiselle Zoe asked in surprise: “What!
back already? are you tired?”
“Yes — yes, I am tired . . . very tired . . . You know, when one is not used
to going out. . . I’ve had enough of it. I shall not go into the country again. It
would have been better to have stayed here. For the future, I shall not stir
out.”
She could not persuade him to tell her about his little excursion, much as
she wished to.
For the first time in his life he got thoroughly drunk that night, and had to
be carried home.
 QUEEN HORTENSE

In Argenteuil she was called Queen Hortense. No one knew why. Perhaps it
was because she had a commanding tone of voice; perhaps because she was
tall, bony, imperious; perhaps because she governed a kingdom of servants,
chickens, dogs, cats, canaries, parrots, all so dear to an old maid’s heart. But
she did not spoil these familiar friends; she had for them none of those
endearing names, none of the foolish tenderness which women seem to lavish
on the soft fur of a purring cat. She governed these beasts with authority; she
reigned.
She was indeed an old maid — one of those old maids with a harsh voice
and angular motions, whose very soul seems to be hard. She never would
stand contradiction, argument, hesitation, indifference, laziness nor fatigue.
She had never been heard to complain, to regret anything, to envy anyone.
She would say: “Everyone has his share,” with the conviction of a fatalist.
She did not go to church, she had no use for priests, she hardly believed in
God, calling all religious things “weeper’s wares.”
For thirty years she had lived in her little house, with its tiny garden
running along the street; she had never changed her habits, only changing her
servants pitilessly, as soon as they reached twenty-one years of age.
When her dogs, cats and birds would die of old age, or from an accident,
she would replace them without tears and without regret; with a little spade
she would bury the dead animal in a strip of ground, throwing a few
shovelfuls of earth over it and stamping it down with her feet in an indifferent
manner.
She had a few friends in town, families of clerks who went to Paris every
day. Once in a while she would be invited out, in the evening, to tea. She
would inevitably fall asleep, and she would have to be awakened, when it
was time for her to go home. She never allowed anyone to accompany her,
fearing neither light nor darkness. She did not appear to like children.
She kept herself busy doing countless masculine tasks — carpentering,
gardening, sawing or chopping wood, even laying bricks when it was
necessary.
 She had relatives who came to see her twice a year, the Cimmes and the
Colombels, her two sisters having married, one of them a florist and the other
a retired merchant. The Cimmes had no children; the Colombels had three:
Henri, Pauline and Joseph. Henri was twenty, Pauline seventeen and Joseph
only three.
There was no love lost between the old maid and her relatives.
In the spring of the year 1882 Queen Hortense suddenly fell sick. The
neighbors called in a physician, whom she immediately drove out. A priest
then having presented himself, she jumped out of bed, in order to throw him
out of the house.
The young servant, in despair, was brewing her some tea.
After lying in bed for three days the situation appeared so serious that the
barrel-maker, who lived next door, to the right, acting on advice from the
doctor, who had forcibly returned to the house, took it upon himself to call
together the two families.
They arrived by the same train, towards ten in the morning, the Colombels
bringing little Joseph with them.
When they got to the garden gate, they saw the servant seated in the chair
against the wall, crying.
The dog was sleeping on the door mat in the broiling sun; two cats, which
looked as though they might be dead, were stretched out in front of the two
windows, their eyes closed, their paws and tails stretched out at full length.
A big clucking hen was parading through the garden with a whole
regiment of yellow, downy chicks, and a big cage hanging from the wall and
covered with pimpernel, contained a population of birds which were
chirping away in the warmth of this beautiful spring morning.
In another cage, shaped like a chalet, two lovebirds sat motionless side by
side on their perch.
M. Cimme, a fat, puffing person, who always entered first everywhere,
pushing aside everyone else, whether man or woman, when it was necessary,
asked:
“Well, Celeste, aren’t things going well?”
The little servant moaned through her tears:
“She doesn’t even recognize me any more. The doctor says it’s the end.”
Everybody looked around.
Mme. Cimme and Mme. Colombel immediately embraced each other,
without saying a word. They locked very much alike, having always worn
their hair in Madonna bands, and loud red French cashmere shawls.
Cimme turned to his brother-in-law, a pale, sal, low-complexioned, thin
man, wasted by stomach complaints, who limped badly, and said in a serious
tone of voice:
“Gad! It was high time.”
But no one dared to enter the dying woman’s room on the ground floor.
Even Cimme made way for the others. Colombel was the first to make up his
mind, and, swaying from side to side like the mast of a ship, the iron ferule of
his cane clattering on the paved hall, he entered.
The two women were the next to venture, and M. Cimmes closed the
procession.
Little Joseph had remained outside, pleased at the sight of the dog.
A ray of sunlight seemed to cut the bed in two, shining just on the hands,
which were moving nervously, continually opening and closing. The fingers
were twitching as though moved by some thought, as though trying to point
out a meaning or idea, as though obeying the dictates of a will. The rest of the
body lay motionless under the sheets. The angular frame showed not a single
movement. The eyes remained closed.
The family spread out in a semi-circle and, without a word, they began to
watch the contracted chest and the short, gasping breathing. The little servant
had followed them and was still crying.
At last Cimme asked:
“Exactly what did the doctor say?”
The girl stammered:
“He said to leave her alone, that nothing more could be done for her.”
But suddenly the old woman’s lips began to move. She seemed to be
uttering silent words, words hidden in the brain of this dying being, and her
hands quickened their peculiar movements.
Then she began to speak in a thin, high voice, which no one had ever
heard, a voice which seemed to come from the distance, perhaps from the
depths of this heart which had always been closed.
Cimme, finding this scene painful, walked away on tiptoe. Colombel,
whose crippled leg was growing tired, sat down.
The two women remained standing.
Queen Hortense was now babbling away, and no one could understand a
word. She was pronouncing names, many names, tenderly calling imaginary
people.
 “Come here, Philippe, kiss your mother. Tell me, child, do you love your
mamma? You, Rose, take care of your little sister while I am away. And
don’t leave her alone. Don’t play with matches!”
She stopped for a while, then, in a louder voice, as though she were
calling someone: “Henriette!” then waited a moment and continued:
“Tell your father that I wish to speak to him before he goes to business.”
And suddenly: “I am not feeling very well to-day, darling; promise not to
come home late. Tell your employer that I am sick. You know, it isn’t safe to
leave the children alone when I am in bed. For dinner I will fix you up a nice
dish of rice. The little ones like that very much. Won’t Claire be happy?”
And she broke into a happy, joyous laugh, such as they had never heard:
“Look at Jean, how funny he looks! He has smeared jam all over his face, the
little pig! Look, sweetheart, look; isn’t he funny?”
Colombel, who was continually lifting his tired leg from place to place,
muttered:
“She is dreaming that she has children and a husband; it is the beginning of
the death agony.”
The two sisters had not yet moved, surprised, astounded.
The little maid exclaimed:
“You must take off your shawls and your hits! Would you like to go into
the parlor?”
They went out without having said a word. And Colombel followed them,
limping, once more leaving the dying woman alone.
When they were relieved of their travelling garments, the women finally
sat down. Then one of the cats left its window, stretched, jumped into the
room and on to Mme. Cimme’s knees. She began to pet it.
In the next room could be heard the voice of the dying woman, living, in
this last hour, the life for which she had doubtless hoped, living her dreams
themselves just when all was over for her.
Cimme, in the garden, was playing with little Joseph and the dog, enjoying
himself in the whole hearted manner of a countryman, having completely
forgotten the dying woman.
But suddenly he entered the house and said to the girl:
“I say, my girl, are we not going to have luncheon? What do you ladies
wish to eat?”
They finally agreed on an omelet, a piece of steak with new potatoes,
cheese and coffee.
 As Mme. Colombel was fumbling in her pocket for her purse, Cimme
stopped her, and, turning to the maid: “Have you got any money?”
She answered:
“Yes, monsieur.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen francs.”
“That’s enough. Hustle, my girl, because I am beginning to get very
hungry:”
Mme. Cimme, looking out over the climbing vines bathed in sunlight, and
at the two turtle-doves on the roof opposite, said in an annoyed tone of voice:
“What a pity to have had to come for such a sad occasion. It is so nice in
the country to-day.”
Her sister sighed without answering, and Colombel mumbled, thinking
perhaps of the walk ahead of him:
“My leg certainly is bothering me to-day:”
Little Joseph and the dog were making a terrible noise; one was shrieking
with pleasure, the other was barking wildly. They were playing hide-and-
seek around the three flower beds, running after each other like mad.
The dying woman continued to call her children, talking with each one,
imagining that she was dressing them, fondling them, teaching them how to
read: “Come on! Simon repeat: A, B, C, D. You are not paying attention,
listen — D, D, D; do you hear me? Now repeat— “
Cimme exclaimed: “Funny what people say when in that condition.”
Mme. Colombel then asked:
“Wouldn’t it be better if we were to return to her?”
But Cimme dissuaded her from the idea:
“What’s the use? You can’t change anything. We are just as comfortable
here.”
Nobody insisted. Mme. Cimme observed the two green birds called love-
birds. In a few words she praised this singular faithfulness and blamed the
men for not imitating these animals. Cimme began to laugh, looked at his wife
and hummed in a teasing way: “Tra-la-la, tra-la-la” as though to cast a good
deal of doubt on his own, Cimme’s, faithfulness:
Colombel was suffering from cramps and was rapping the floor with his
cane.
The other cat, its tail pointing upright to the sky, now came in.
They sat down to luncheon at one o’clock.
 As soon as he had tasted the wine, Colombel, for whom only the best of
Bordeaux had been prescribed, called the servant back:
“I say, my girl, is this the best stuff that you have in the cellar?”
“No, monsieur; there is some better wine, which was only brought out
when you came.”
“Well, bring us three bottles of it.”
They tasted the wine and found it excellent, not because it was of a
remarkable vintage, but because it had been in the cellar fifteen years.
Cimme declared:
“That is regular invalid’s wine.”
Colombel, filled with an ardent desire to gain possession of this
Bordeaux, once more questioned the girl:
“How much of it is left?”
“Oh! Almost all, monsieur; mamz’elle never touched it. It’s in the bottom
stack.”
Then he turned to his brother-in-law:
“If you wish, Cimme, I would be willing to exchange something else for
this wine; it suits my stomach marvellously.”
The chicken had now appeared with its regiment of young ones. The two
women were enjoying themselves throwing crumbs to them.
Joseph and the dog, who had eaten enough, were sent back to the garden.
Queen Hortense was still talking, but in a low, hushed voice, so that the
words could no longer be distinguished.
When they had finished their coffee all went in to observe the condition of
the sick woman. She seemed calm.
They went outside again and seated themselves in a circle in the garden,
in order to complete their digestion.
Suddenly the dog, who was carrying something in his mouth, began to run
around the chairs at full speed. The child was chasing him wildly. Both
disappeared into the house.
Cimme fell asleep, his well-rounded paunch bathed in the glow of the
shining sun.
The dying woman once more began to talk in a loud voice. Then suddenly
she shrieked.
The two women and Colombel rushed in to see what was the matter.
Cimme, waking up, did not budge, because, he did not wish to witness such a
scene.
 She was sitting up, with haggard eyes. Her dog, in order to escape being
pursued by little Joseph, had jumped up on the bed, run over the sick woman,
and entrenched behind the pillow, was looking down at his playmate with
snapping eyes, ready to jump down and begin the game again. He was
holding in his mouth one of his mistress’ slippers, which he had torn to
pieces and with which he had been playing for the last hour.
The child, frightened by this woman who had suddenly risen in front of
him, stood motionless before the bed.
The hen had also come in, and frightened by the noise, had jumped up on a
chair and was wildly calling her chicks, who were chirping distractedly
around the four legs of the chair.
Queen Hortense was shrieking:
“No, no, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to! I don’t want to! Who will
bring up my children? Who will take care of them? Who will love them? No,
I don’t want to! — I don’t — — “
She fell back. All was over.
The dog, wild with excitement, jumped about the room, barking.
Colombel ran to the window, calling his brother-in-law:
“Hurry up, hurry up! I think that she has just gone.”
Then Cimme, resigned, arose and entered the room, mumbling
“It didn’t take as long as I thought it would!”
 MADEMOISELLE PEARL

What a strange idea it was for me to choose Mademoiselle Pearl for queen
that evening!
Every year I celebrate Twelfth Night with my old friend Chantal. My
father, who was his most intimate friend, used to take me round there when I
was a child. I continued the custom, and I doubtless shall continue it as long
as I live and as long as there is a Chantal in this world.
The Chantals lead a peculiar existence; they live in Paris as though they
were in Grasse, Evetot, or Pont-a-Mousson.
They have a house with a little garden near the observatory. They live
there as though they were in the country. Of Paris, the real Paris, they know
nothing at all, they suspect nothing; they are so far, so far away! However,
from time to time, they take a trip into it. Mademoiselle Chantal goes to lay in
her provisions, as it is called in the family. This is how they go to purchase
their provisions:
Mademoiselle Pearl, who has the keys to the kitchen closet (for the linen
closets are administered by the mistress herself), Mademoiselle Pearl gives
warning that the supply of sugar is low, that the preserves are giving out, that
there is not much left in the bottom of the coffee bag. Thus warned against
famine, Mademoiselle Chantal passes everything in review, taking notes on a
pad. Then she puts down a lot of figures and goes through lengthy
calculations and long discussions with Mademoiselle Pearl. At last they
manage to agree, and they decide upon the quantity of each thing of which
they will lay in a three months’ provision; sugar, rice, prunes, coffee,
preserves, cans of peas, beans, lobster, salt or smoked fish, etc., etc. After
which the day for the purchasing is determined on and they go in a cab with a
railing round the top and drive to a large grocery store on the other side of
the river in the new sections of the town.
Madame Chantal and Mademoiselle Pearl make this trip together,
mysteriously, and only return at dinner time, tired out, although still excited,
and shaken up by the cab, the roof of which is covered with bundles and
bags, like an express wagon.
For the Chantals all that part of Paris situated on the other side of the
Seine constitutes the new quarter, a section inhabited by a strange, noisy
population, which cares little for honor, spends its days in dissipation, its
nights in revelry, and which throws money out of the windows. From time to
time, however, the young girls are taken to the Opera-Comique or the Theatre
Francais, when the play is recommended by the paper which is read by M.
Chantal.
At present the young ladies are respectively nineteen and seventeen. They
are two pretty girls, tall and fresh, very well brought up, in fact, too well
brought up, so much so that they pass by unperceived like two pretty dolls.
Never would the idea come to me to pay the slightest attention or to pay court
to one of the young Chantal ladies; they are so immaculate that one hardly
dares speak to them; one almost feels indecent when bowing to them.
As for the father, he is a charming man, well educated, frank, cordial, but
he likes calm and quiet above all else, and has thus contributed greatly to the
mummifying of his family in order to live as he pleased in stagnant
quiescence. He reads a lot, loves to talk and is readily affected. Lack of
contact and of elbowing with the world has made his moral skin very tender
and sensitive. The slightest thing moves him, excites him, and makes him
suffer.
The Chantals have limited connections carefully chosen in the
neighborhood. They also exchange two or three yearly visits with relatives
who live in the distance.
As for me, I take dinner with them on the fifteenth of August and on
Twelfth Night. That is as much one of my duties as Easter communion is for a
Catholic.
On the fifteenth of August a few friends are invited, but on Twelfth Night I
am the only stranger.
Well, this year, as every former year, I went to the Chantals’ for my
Epiphany dinner.
According to my usual custom, I kissed M. Chantal, Madame Chantal and
Mademoiselle Pearl, and I made a deep bow to the Misses Louise and
Pauline. I was questioned about a thousand and one things, about what had
happened on the boulevards, about politics, about how matters stood in
Tong-King, and about our representatives in Parliament. Madame Chantal, a
fat lady, whose ideas always gave me the impression of being carved out
square like building stones, was accustomed to exclaiming at the end of
every political discussion: “All that is seed which does not promise much for
the future!” Why have I always imagined that Madame Chantal’s ideas are
square? I don’t know; but everything that she says takes that shape in my
head: a big square, with four symmetrical angles. There are other people
whose ideas always strike me as being round and rolling like a hoop. As
soon as they begin a sentence on any subject it rolls on and on, coming out in
ten, twenty, fifty round ideas, large and small, which I see rolling along, one
behind the other, to the end of the horizon. Other people have pointed ideas
— but enough of this.
We sat down as usual and finished our dinner without anything out of the
ordinary being said. At dessert the Twelfth Night cake was brought on. Now,
M. Chantal had been king every year. I don’t know whether this was the
result of continued chance or a family convention, but he unfailingly found the
bean in his piece of cake, and he would proclaim Madame Chantal to be
queen. Therefore, I was greatly surprised to find something very hard, which
almost made me break a tooth, in a mouthful of cake. Gently I took this thing
from my mouth and I saw that it was a little porcelain doll, no bigger than a
bean. Surprise caused me to exclaim:
“Ah!” All looked at me, and Chantal clapped his hands and cried: “It’s
Gaston! It’s Gaston! Long live the king! Long live the king!”
All took up the chorus: “Long live the king!” And I blushed to the tip of
my ears, as one often does, without any reason at all, in situations which are
a little foolish. I sat there looking at my plate, with this absurd little bit of
pottery in my fingers, forcing myself to laugh and not knowing what to do or
say, when Chantal once more cried out: “Now, you must choose a queen!”
Then I was thunderstruck. In a second a thousand thoughts and
suppositions flashed through my mind. Did they expect me to pick out one of
the young Chantal ladies? Was that a trick to make me say which one I
prefer? Was it a gentle, light, direct hint of the parents toward a possible
marriage? The idea of marriage roams continually in houses with grown-up
girls, and takes every shape and disguise, and employs every subterfuge. A
dread of compromising myself took hold of me as well as an extreme timidity
before the obstinately correct and reserved attitude of the Misses Louise and
Pauline. To choose one of them in preference to the other seemed to me as
difficult as choosing between two drops of water; and then the fear of
launching myself into an affair which might, in spite of me, lead me gently
into matrimonial ties, by means as wary and imperceptible and as calm as
this insignificant royalty — the fear of all this haunted me.
Suddenly I had an inspiration, and I held out to Mademoiselle Pearl the
symbolical emblem. At first every one was surprised, then they doubtless
appreciated my delicacy and discretion, for they applauded furiously.
Everybody was crying: “Long live the queen! Long live the queen!”
As for herself, poor old maid, she was so amazed that she completely lost
control of herself; she was trembling and stammering: “No — no — oh! no
— not me — please — not me — I beg of you — — “
Then for the first time in my life I looked at Mademoiselle Pearl and
wondered what she was.
I was accustomed to seeing her in this house, just as one sees old
upholstered armchairs on which one has been sitting since childhood without
ever noticing them. One day, with no reason at all, because a ray of sunshine
happens to strike the seat, you suddenly think: “Why, that chair is very
curious”; and then you discover that the wood has been worked by a real
artist and that the material is remarkable. I had never taken any notice of
Mademoiselle Pearl.
She was a part of the Chantal family, that was all. But how? By what
right? She was a tall, thin person who tried to remain in the background, but
who was by no means insignificant. She was treated in a friendly manner,
better than a housekeeper, not so well as a relative. I suddenly observed
several shades of distinction which I had never noticed before. Madame
Chantal said: “Pearl.” The young ladies: “Mademoiselle Pearl,” and Chantal
only addressed her as “Mademoiselle,” with an air of greater respect,
perhaps.
I began to observe her. How old could she be? Forty? Yes, forty. She was
not old, she made herself old. I was suddenly struck by this fact. She fixed
her hair and dressed in a ridiculous manner, and, notwithstanding all that, she
was not in the least ridiculous, she had such simple, natural gracefulness,
veiled and hidden. Truly, what a strange creature! How was it I had never
observed her before? She dressed her hair in a grotesque manner with little
old maid curls, most absurd; but beneath this one could see a large, calm
brow, cut by two deep lines, two wrinkles of long sadness, then two blue
eyes, large and tender, so timid, so bashful, so humble, two beautiful eyes
which had kept the expression of naive wonder of a young girl, of youthful
sensations, and also of sorrow, which had softened without spoiling them.
Her whole face was refined and discreet, a face the expression of which
seemed to have gone out without being used up or faded by the fatigues and
great emotions of life.
What a dainty mouth! and such pretty teeth! But one would have thought
that she did not dare smile.
Suddenly I compared her to Madame Chantal! Undoubtedly Mademoiselle
Pearl was the better of the two, a hundred times better, daintier, prouder,
more noble. I was surprised at my observation. They were pouring out
champagne. I held my glass up to the queen and, with a well-turned
compliment, I drank to her health. I could see that she felt inclined to hide her
head in her napkin. Then, as she was dipping her lips in the clear wine,
everybody cried: “The queen drinks! the queen drinks!” She almost turned
purple and choked. Everybody was laughing; but I could see that all loved
her.
As soon as dinner was over Chantal took me by the arm. It was time for
his cigar, a sacred hour. When alone he would smoke it out in the street;
when guests came to dinner he would take them to the billiard room and
smoke while playing. That evening they had built a fire to celebrate Twelfth
Night; my old friend took his cue, a very fine one, and chalked it with great
care; then he said:
“You break, my boy!”
He called me “my boy,” although I was twenty-five, but he had known me
as a young child.
I started the game and made a few carroms. I missed some others, but as
the thought of Mademoiselle Pearl kept returning to my mind, I suddenly
asked:
“By the way, Monsieur Chantal, is Mademoiselle Pearl a relative of
yours?”
Greatly surprised, he stopped playing and looked at me:
“What! Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard about Mademoiselle Pearl?”
“No.”
“Didn’t your father ever tell you?”
“No.”
“Well, well, that’s funny! That certainly is funny! Why, it’s a regular
romance!”
 He paused, and then continued:
“And if you only knew how peculiar it is that you should ask me that to-
day, on Twelfth Night!”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, listen. Forty-one years ago to day, the day of the Epiphany,
the following events occurred: We were then living at Roily-le-Tors, on the
ramparts; but in order that you may understand, I must first explain the house.
Roily is built on a hill, or, rather, on a mound which overlooks a great stretch
of prairie. We had a house there with a beautiful hanging garden supported by
the old battlemented wall; so that the house was in the town on the streets,
while the garden overlooked the plain. There was a door leading from the
garden to the open country, at the bottom of a secret stairway in the thick wall
— the kind you read about in novels. A road passed in front of this door,
which was provided with a big bell; for the peasants, in order to avoid the
roundabout way, would bring their provisions up this way.
“You now understand the place, don’t you? Well, this year, at Epiphany, it
had been snowing for a week. One might have thought that the world was
coming to an end. When we went to the ramparts to look over the plain, this
immense white, frozen country, which shone like varnish, would chill our
very souls. One might have thought that the Lord had packed the world in
cotton to put it away in the storeroom for old worlds. I can assure you that it
was dreary looking.
“We were a very numerous family at that time my father, my mother, my
uncle and aunt, my two brothers and four cousins; they were pretty little girls;
I married the youngest. Of all that crowd, there are only three of us left: my
wife, I, and my sister-in-law, who lives in Marseilles. Zounds! how quickly
a family like that dwindles away! I tremble when I think of it! I was fifteen
years old then, since I am fifty-six now.
“We were going to celebrate the Epiphany, and we were all happy, very
happy! Everybody was in the parlor, awaiting dinner, and my oldest brother,
Jacques, said: ‘There has been a dog howling out in the plain for about ten
minutes; the poor beast must be lost.’
“He had hardly stopped talking when the garden bell began to ring. It had
the deep sound of a church bell, which made one think of death. A shiver ran
through everybody. My father called the servant and told him to go outside
and look. We waited in complete silence; we were thinking of the snow
which covered the ground. When the man returned he declared that he had
seen nothing. The dog kept up its ceaseless howling, and always from the
same spot.
“We sat down to dinner; but we were all uneasy, especially the young
people. Everything went well up to the roast, then the bell began to ring
again, three times in succession, three heavy, long strokes which vibrated to
the tips of our fingers and which stopped our conversation short. We sat there
looking at each other, fork in the air, still listening, and shaken by a kind of
supernatural fear.
“At last my mother spoke: ‘It’s surprising that they should have waited so
long to come back. Do not go alone, Baptiste; one of these gentlemen will
accompany you.’
“My Uncle Francois arose. He was a kind of Hercules, very proud of his
strength, and feared nothing in the world. My father said to him: ‘Take a gun.
There is no telling what it might be.’
“But my uncle only took a cane and went out with the servant.
“We others remained there trembling with fear and apprehension, without
eating or speaking. My father tried to reassure us: ‘Just wait and see,’ he
said; ‘it will be some beggar or some traveller lost in the snow. After ringing
once, seeing that the door was not immediately opened, he attempted again to
find his way, and being unable to, he has returned to our door.’
“Our uncle seemed to stay away an hour. At last he came back, furious,
swearing: ‘Nothing at all; it’s some practical joker! There is nothing but that
damned dog howling away at about a hundred yards from the walls. If I had
taken a gun I would have killed him to make him keep quiet.’
“We sat down to dinner again, but every one was excited; we felt that all
was not over, that something was going to happen, that the bell would soon
ring again.
“It rang just as the Twelfth Night cake was being cut. All the men jumped
up together. My Uncle, Francois, who had been drinking champagne, swore
so furiously that he would murder it, whatever it might be, that my mother and
my aunt threw themselves on him to prevent his going. My father, although
very calm and a little helpless (he limped ever since he had broken his leg
when thrown by a horse), declared, in turn, that he wished to find out what
was the matter and that he was going. My brothers, aged eighteen and twenty,
ran to get their guns; and as no one was paying any attention to me I snatched
up a little rifle that was used in the garden and got ready to accompany the
expedition.
 “It started out immediately. My father and uncle were walking ahead with
Baptiste, who was carrying a lantern. My brothers, Jacques and Paul,
followed, and I trailed on behind in spite of the prayers of my mother, who
stood in front of the house with her sister and my cousins.
“It had been snowing again for the last hour, and the trees were weighted
down. The pines were bending under this heavy, white garment, and looked
like white pyramids or enormous sugar cones, and through the gray curtains
of small hurrying flakes could be seen the lighter bushes which stood out pale
in the shadow. The snow was falling so thick that we could hardly see ten
feet ahead of us. But the lantern threw a bright light around us. When we
began to go down the winding stairway in the wall I really grew frightened. I
felt as though some one were walking behind me, were going to grab me by
the shoulders and carry me away, and I felt a strong desire to return; but, as I
would have had to cross the garden all alone, I did not dare. I heard some
one opening the door leading to the plain; my uncle began to swear again,
exclaiming: ‘By — ! He has gone again! If I can catch sight of even his
shadow, I’ll take care not to miss him, the swine!’
“It was a discouraging thing to see this great expanse of plain, or, rather,
to feel it before us, for we could not see it; we could only see a thick, endless
veil of snow, above, below, opposite us, to the right, to the left, everywhere.
My uncle continued:
“‘Listen! There is the dog howling again; I will teach him how I shoot.
That will be something gained, anyhow.’
“But my father, who was kind-hearted, went on:
“‘It will be much better to go on and get the poor animal, who is crying
for hunger. The poor fellow is barking for help; he is calling like a man in
distress. Let us go to him.’
“So we started out through this mist, through this thick continuous fall of
snow, which filled the air, which moved, floated, fell, and chilled the skin
with a burning sensation like a sharp, rapid pain as each flake melted. We
were sinking in up to our knees in this soft, cold mass, and we had to lift our
feet very high in order to walk. As we advanced the dog’s voice became
clearer and stronger. My uncle cried: ‘Here he is!’ We stopped to observe
him as one does when he meets an enemy at night.
“I could see nothing, so I ran up to the others, and I caught sight of him; he
was frightful and weird-looking; he was a big black shepherd’s dog with
long hair and a wolf’s head, standing just within the gleam of light cast by
our lantern on the snow. He did not move; he was silently watching us.
“My uncle said: ‘That’s peculiar, he is neither advancing nor retreating. I
feel like taking a shot at him.’
“My father answered in a firm voice: ‘No, we must capture him.’
“Then my brother Jacques added: ‘But he is not alone. There is something
behind him.”
“There was indeed something behind him, something gray, impossible to
distinguish. We started out again cautiously. When he saw us approaching the
dog sat down. He did not look wicked. Instead, he seemed pleased at having
been able to attract the attention of some one.
“My father went straight to him and petted him. The dog licked his hands.
We saw that he was tied to the wheel of a little carriage, a sort of toy
carriage entirely wrapped up in three or four woolen blankets. We carefully
took off these coverings, and as Baptiste approached his lantern to the front
of this little vehicle, which looked like a rolling kennel, we saw in it a little
baby sleeping peacefully.
“We were so astonished that we couldn’t speak.
“My father was the first to collect his wits, and as he had a warm heart
and a broad mind, he stretched his hand over the roof of the carriage and
said: ‘Poor little waif, you shall be one of us!’ And he ordered my brother
Jacques to roll the foundling ahead of us. Thinking out loud, my father
continued:
“‘Some child of love whose poor mother rang at my door on this night of
Epiphany in memory of the Child of God.’
“He once more stopped and called at the top of his lungs through the night
to the four corners of the heavens: ‘We have found it!’ Then, putting his hand
on his brother’s shoulder, he murmured: ‘What if you had shot the dog,
Francois?’
“My uncle did not answer, but in the darkness he crossed himself, for,
notwithstanding his blustering manner, he was very religious.
“The dog, which had been untied, was following us.
“Ah! But you should have seen us when we got to the house! At first we
had a lot of trouble in getting the carriage up through the winding stairway;
but we succeeded and even rolled it into the vestibule.
“How funny mamma was! How happy and astonished! And my four little
cousins (the youngest was only six), they looked like four chickens around a
nest. At last we took the child from the carriage. It was still sleeping. It was
a girl about six weeks old. In its clothes we found ten thousand francs in
gold, yes, my boy, ten thousand francs! — which papa saved for her dowry.
Therefore, it was not a child of poor people, but, perhaps, the child of some
nobleman and a little bourgeoise of the town — or again — we made a
thousand suppositions, but we never found out anything-never the slightest
clue. The dog himself was recognized by no one. He was a stranger in the
country. At any rate, the person who rang three times at our door must have
known my parents well, to have chosen them thus.
“That is how, at the age of six weeks, Mademoiselle Pearl entered the
Chantal household.
“It was not until later that she was called Mademoiselle Pearl. She was at
first baptized ‘Marie Simonne Claire,’ Claire being intended, for her family
name.
“I can assure you that our return to the diningroom was amusing, with this
baby now awake and looking round her at these people and these lights with
her vague blue questioning eyes.
“We sat down to dinner again and the cake was cut. I was king, and for
queen I took Mademoiselle Pearl, just as you did to-day. On that day she did
not appreciate the honor that was being shown her.
“Well, the child was adopted and brought up in the family. She grew, and
the years flew by. She was so gentle and loving and minded so well that
every one would have spoiled her abominably had not my mother prevented
it.
“My mother was an orderly woman with a great respect for class
distinctions. She consented to treat little Claire as she did her own sons, but,
nevertheless, she wished the distance which separated us to be well marked,
and our positions well established. Therefore, as soon as the child could
understand, she acquainted her with her story and gently, even tenderly,
impressed on the little one’s mind that, for the Chantals, she was an adopted
daughter, taken in, but, nevertheless, a stranger. Claire understood the
situation with peculiar intelligence and with surprising instinct; she knew
how to take the place which was allotted her, and to keep it with so much
tact, gracefulness and gentleness that she often brought tears to my father’s
eyes. My mother herself was often moved by the passionate gratitude and
timid devotion of this dainty and loving little creature that she began calling
her: ‘My daughter.’ At times, when the little one had done something kind and
good, my mother would raise her spectacles on her forehead, a thing which
always indicated emotion with her, and she would repeat: ‘This child is a
pearl, a perfect pearl!’ This name stuck to the little Claire, who became and
remained for us Mademoiselle Pearl.”

II

M. Chantal stopped. He was sitting on the edge of the billiard table, his feet
hanging, and was playing with a ball with his left hand, while with his right
he crumpled a rag which served to rub the chalk marks from the slate. A little
red in the face, his voice thick, he was talking away to himself now, lost in
his memories, gently drifting through the old scenes and events which awoke
in his mind, just as we walk through old family gardens where we were
brought up and where each tree, each walk, each hedge reminds us of some
occurrence.
I stood opposite him leaning against the wall, my hands resting on my idle
cue.
After a slight pause he continued:
“By Jove! She was pretty at eighteen — and graceful — and perfect. Ah!
She was so sweet — and good and true — and charming! She had such eyes
— blue-transparent — clear — such eyes as I have never seen since!”
He was once more silent. I asked: “Why did she never marry?”
He answered, not to me, but to the word “marry” which had caught his
ear: “Why? why? She never would — she never would! She had a dowry of
thirty thousand francs, and she received several offers — but she never
would! She seemed sad at that time. That was when I married my cousin,
little Charlotte, my wife, to whom I had been engaged for six years.”
I looked at M. Chantal, and it seemed to me that I was looking into his
very soul, and I was suddenly witnessing one of those humble and cruel
tragedies of honest, straightforward, blameless hearts, one of those secret
tragedies known to no one, not even the silent and resigned victims. A rash
curiosity suddenly impelled me to exclaim:
“You should have married her, Monsieur Chantal!”
He started, looked at me, and said:
“I? Marry whom?”
“Mademoiselle Pearl.”
“Why?”
 “Because you loved her more than your cousin.”
He stared at me with strange, round, bewildered eyes and stammered:
“I loved her — I? How? Who told you that?”
“Why, anyone can see that — and it’s even on account of her that you
delayed for so long your marriage to your cousin who had been waiting for
you for six years.”
He dropped the ball which he was holding in his left hand, and, seizing
the chalk rag in both hands, he buried his face in it and began to sob. He was
weeping with his eyes, nose and mouth in a heartbreaking yet ridiculous
manner, like a sponge which one squeezes. He was coughing, spitting and
blowing his nose in the chalk rag, wiping his eyes and sneezing; then the tears
would again begin to flow down the wrinkles on his face and he would make
a strange gurgling noise in his throat. I felt bewildered, ashamed; I wanted to
run away, and I no longer knew what to say, do, or attempt.
Suddenly Madame Chantal’s voice sounded on the stairs. “Haven’t you
men almost finished smoking your cigars?”
I opened the door and cried: “Yes, madame, we are coming right down.”
Then I rushed to her husband, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I cried:
“Monsieur Chantal, my friend Chantal, listen to me; your wife is calling; pull
yourself together, we must go downstairs.”
He stammered: “Yes — yes — I am coming — poor girl! I am coming —
tell her that I am coming.”
He began conscientiously to wipe his face on the cloth which, for the last
two or three years, had been used for marking off the chalk from the slate;
then he appeared, half white and half red, his forehead, nose, cheeks and chin
covered with chalk, and his eyes swollen, still full of tears.
I caught him by the hands and dragged him into his bedroom, muttering: “I
beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, Monsieur Chantal, for having caused you
such sorrow — but — I did not know — you — you understand.”
He squeezed my hand, saying: “Yes — yes — there are difficult
moments.”
Then he plunged his face into a bowl of water. When he emerged from it
he did not yet seem to me to be presentable; but I thought of a little stratagem.
As he was growing worried, looking at himself in the mirror, I said to him:
“All you have to do is to say that a little dust flew into your eye and you can
cry before everybody to your heart’s content.”
 He went downstairs rubbing his eyes with his handkerchief. All were
worried; each one wished to look for the speck, which could not be found;
and stories were told of similar cases where it had been necessary to call in
a physician.
I went over to Mademoiselle Pearl and watched her, tormented by an
ardent curiosity, which was turning to positive suffering. She must indeed
have been pretty, with her gentle, calm eyes, so large that it looked as though
she never closed them like other mortals. Her gown was a little ridiculous, a
real old maid’s gown, which was unbecoming without appearing clumsy.
It seemed to me as though I were looking into her soul, just as I had into
Monsieur Chantal’s; that I was looking right from one end to the other of this
humble life, so simple and devoted. I felt an irresistible longing to question
her, to find out whether she, too, had loved him; whether she also had
suffered, as he had, from this long, secret, poignant grief, which one cannot
see, know, or guess, but which breaks forth at night in the loneliness of the
dark room. I was watching her, and I could observe her heart beating under
her waist, and I wondered whether this sweet, candid face had wept on the
soft pillow and she had sobbed, her whole body shaken by the violence of
her anguish.
I said to her in a low voice, like a child who is breaking a toy to see what
is inside: “If you could have seen Monsieur Chantal crying a while ago it
would have moved you.”
She started, asking: “What? He was weeping?”
“Ah, yes, he was indeed weeping!”
“Why?”
She seemed deeply moved. I answered:
“On your account.”
“On my account?”
“Yes. He was telling me how much he had loved you in the days gone by;
and what a pang it had given him to marry his cousin instead of you.”
Her pale face seemed to grow a little longer; her calm eyes, which always
remained open, suddenly closed so quickly that they seemed shut forever. She
slipped from her chair to the floor, and slowly, gently sank down as would a
fallen garment.
I cried: “Help! help! Mademoiselle Pearl is ill.”
Madame Chantal and her daughters rushed forward, and while they were
looking for towels, water and vinegar, I grabbed my hat and ran away.
 I walked away with rapid strides, my heart heavy, my mind full of
remorse and regret. And yet sometimes I felt pleased; I felt as though I had
done a praiseworthy and necessary act. I was asking myself: “Did I do wrong
or right?” They had that shut up in their hearts, just as some people carry a
bullet in a closed wound. Will they not be happier now? It was too late for
their torture to begin over again and early enough for them to remember it
with tenderness.
And perhaps some evening next spring, moved by a beam of moonlight
falling through the branches on the grass at their feet, they will join and press
their hands in memory of all this cruel and suppressed suffering; and,
perhaps, also this short embrace may infuse in their veins a little of this thrill
which they would not have known without it, and will give to those two dead
souls, brought to life in a second, the rapid and divine sensation of this
intoxication, of this madness which gives to lovers more happiness in an
instant than other men can gather during a whole lifetime!
 THE THIEF

While apparently thinking of something else, Dr. Sorbier had been listening
quietly to those amazing accounts of burglaries and daring deeds that might
have been taken from the trial of Cartouche. “Assuredly,” he exclaimed,
“assuredly, I know of no viler fault nor any meaner action than to attack a
girl’s innocence, to corrupt her, to profit by a moment of unconscious
weakness and of madness, when her heart is beating like that of a frightened
fawn, and her pure lips seek those of her tempter; when she abandons herself
without thinking of the irremediable stain, nor of her fall, nor of the morrow.
“The man who has brought this about slowly, viciously, who can tell with
what science of evil, and who, in such a case, has not steadiness and self-
restraint enough to quench that flame by some icy words, who has not sense
enough for two, who cannot recover his self-possession and master the
runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge of the
precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as any man who
breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the lookout for a house left
defenceless and unprotected or for some easy and dishonest stroke of
business, or as that thief whose various exploits you have just related to us.
“I, for my part, utterly refuse to absolve him, even when extenuating
circumstances plead in his favor, even when he is carrying on a dangerous
flirtation, in which a man tries in vain to keep his balance, not to exceed the
limits of the game, any more than at lawn tennis; even when the parts are
inverted and a man’s adversary is some precocious, curious, seductive girl,
who shows you immediately that she has nothing to learn and nothing to
experience, except the last chapter of love, one of those girls from whom may
fate always preserve our sons, and whom a psychological novel writer has
christened ‘The Semi-Virgins.’
“It is, of course, difficult and painful for that coarse and unfathomable
vanity which is characteristic of every man, and which might be called
‘malism’, not to stir such a charming fire, difficult to act the Joseph and the
fool, to turn away his eyes, and, as it were, to put wax into his ears, like the
companions of Ulysses when they were attracted by the divine, seductive
songs of the Sirens, difficult only to touch that pretty table covered with a
perfectly new cloth, at which you are invited to take a seat before any one
else, in such a suggestive voice, and are requested to quench your thirst and
to taste that new wine, whose fresh and strange flavor you will never forget.
But who would hesitate to exercise such self-restraint if, when he rapidly
examines his conscience, in one of those instinctive returns to his sober self
in which a man thinks clearly and recovers his head, he were to measure the
gravity of his fault, consider it, think of its consequences, of the reprisals, of
the uneasiness which he would always feel in the future, and which would
destroy the repose and happiness of his life?
“You may guess that behind all these moral reflections, such as a
graybeard like myself may indulge in, there is a story hidden, and, sad as it
is, I am sure it will interest you on account of the strange heroism it shows.”
He was silent for a few moments, as if to classify his recollections, and,
with his elbows resting on the arms of his easy-chair and his eyes looking
into space, he continued in the slow voice of a hospital professor who is
explaining a case to his class of medical students, at a bedside:
“He was one of those men who, as our grandfathers used to say, never met
with a cruel woman, the type of the adventurous knight who was always
foraging, who had something of the scamp about him, but who despised
danger and was bold even to rashness. He was ardent in the pursuit of
pleasure, and had an irresistible charm about him, one of those men in whom
we excuse the greatest excesses as the most natural things in the world. He
had run through all his money at gambling and with pretty girls, and so
became, as it were, a soldier of fortune. He amused himself whenever and
however he could, and was at that time quartered at Versailles.
“I knew him to the very depths of his childlike heart, which was only too
easily seen through and sounded, and I loved him as some old bachelor uncle
loves a nephew who plays him tricks, but who knows how to coax him. He
had made me his confidant rather than his adviser, kept me informed of his
slightest pranks, though he always pretended to be speaking about one of his
friends, and not about himself; and I must confess that his youthful
impetuosity, his careless gaiety, and his amorous ardor sometimes distracted
my thoughts and made me envy the handsome, vigorous young fellow who
was so happy at being alive, that I had not the courage to check him, to show
him the right road, and to call out to him: ‘Take care!’ as children do at blind
man’s buff.
 “And one day, after one of those interminable cotillons, where the couples
do not leave each other for hours, and can disappear together without
anybody thinking of noticing them, the poor fellow at last discovered what
love was, that real love which takes up its abode in the very centre of the
heart and in the brain, and is proud of being there, and which rules like a
sovereign and a tyrannous master, and he became desperately enamored of a
pretty but badly brought up girl, who was as disquieting and wayward as she
was pretty.
“She loved him, however, or rather she idolized him despotically, madly,
with all her enraptured soul and all her being. Left to do as she pleased by
imprudent and frivolous parents, suffering from neurosis, in consequence of
the unwholesome friendships which she contracted at the convent school,
instructed by what she saw and heard and knew was going on around her, in
spite of her deceitful and artificial conduct, knowing that neither her father
nor her mother, who were very proud of their race as well as avaricious,
would ever agree to let her marry the man whom she had taken a liking to,
that handsome fellow who had little besides vision, ideas and debts, and who
belonged to the middle-class, she laid aside all scruples, thought of nothing
but of becoming his, no matter what might be the cost.
“By degrees, the unfortunate man’s strength gave way, his heart softened,
and he allowed himself to be carried away by that current which buffeted
him, surrounded him, and left him on the shore like a waif and a stray.
“They wrote letters full of madness to each other, and not a day passed
without their meeting, either accidentally, as it seemed, or at parties and
balls. She had yielded her lips to him in long, ardent caresses, which had
sealed their compact of mutual passion.”
The doctor stopped, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears, as these
former troubles came back to his mind; and then, in a hoarse voice, he went
on, full of the horror of what he was going to relate:
“For months he scaled the garden wall, and, holding his breath and
listening for the slightest noise, like a burglar who is going to break into a
house, he went in by the servants’ entrance, which she had left open, slunk
barefoot down a long passage and up the broad staircase, which creaked
occasionally, to the second story, where his sweetheart’s room was, and
stayed there for hours.
“One night, when it was darker than usual, and he was hurrying lest he
should be later than the time agreed on, he knocked up against a piece of
furniture in the anteroom and upset it. It so happened that the girl’s mother
had not gone to sleep, either because she had a sick headache, or else be
cause she had sat up late over some novel, and, frightened at that unusual
noise which disturbed the silence of the house, she jumped out of bed,
opened the door, saw some one indistinctly running away and keeping close
to the wall, and, immediately thinking that there were burglars in the house,
she aroused her husband and the servants by her frantic screams. The
unfortunate man understood the situation; and, seeing what a terrible fix he
was in, and preferring to be taken for a common thief to dishonoring his
adored one’s name, he ran into the drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-
nots, filled his pockets at random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then
cowered down behind the grand piano, which barred the corner of a large
room.
“The servants, who had run in with lighted candles, found him, and,
overwhelming him with abuse, seized him by the collar and dragged him,
panting and apparently half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest police
station. He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when he was
brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect self-possession and
without any signs of the despair and anguish that he felt in his heart, and,
condemned and degraded and made to suffer martyrdom in his honor as a
man and a soldier — he was an officer — he did not protest, but went to
prison as one of those criminals whom society gets rid of like noxious
vermin.
“He died there of misery and of bitterness of spirit, with the name of the
fair-haired idol, for whom he had sacrificed himself, on his lips, as if it had
been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his will ‘to the priest who
administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to give it to me. In it,
without mentioning anybody, and without in the least lifting the veil, he at last
explained the enigma, and cleared himself of those accusations the terrible
burden of which he had borne until his last breath.
“I have always thought myself, though I do not know why, that the girl
married and had several charming children, whom she brought up with the
austere strictness and in the serious piety of former days!”
 CLAIR DE LUNE

Abbe Marignan’s martial name suited him well. He was a tall, thin priest,
fanatic, excitable, yet upright. All his beliefs were fixed, never varying. He
believed sincerely that he knew his God, understood His plans, desires and
intentions.
When he walked with long strides along the garden walk of his little
country parsonage, he would sometimes ask himself the question: “Why has
God done this?” And he would dwell on this continually, putting himself in
the place of God, and he almost invariably found an answer. He would never
have cried out in an outburst of pious humility: “Thy ways, O Lord, are past
finding out.”
He said to himself: “I am the servant of God; it is right for me to know the
reason of His deeds, or to guess it if I do not know it.”
Everything in nature seemed to him to have been created in accordance
with an admirable and absolute logic. The “whys” and “becauses” always
balanced. Dawn was given to make our awakening pleasant, the days to ripen
the harvest, the rains to moisten it, the evenings for preparation for slumber,
and the dark nights for sleep.
The four seasons corresponded perfectly to the needs of agriculture, and
no suspicion had ever come to the priest of the fact that nature has no
intentions; that, on the contrary, everything which exists must conform to the
hard demands of seasons, climates and matter.
But he hated woman — hated her unconsciously, and despised her by
instinct. He often repeated the words of Christ: “Woman, what have I to do
with thee?” and he would add: “It seems as though God, Himself, were
dissatisfied with this work of His.” She was the tempter who led the first
man astray, and who since then had ever been busy with her work of
damnation, the feeble creature, dangerous and mysteriously affecting one.
And even more than their sinful bodies, he hated their loving hearts.
He had often felt their tenderness directed toward himself, and though he
knew that he was invulnerable, he grew angry at this need of love that is
always vibrating in them.
 According to his belief, God had created woman for the sole purpose of
tempting and testing man. One must not approach her without defensive
precautions and fear of possible snares. She was, indeed, just like a snare,
with her lips open and her arms stretched out to man.
He had no indulgence except for nuns, whom their vows had rendered
inoffensive; but he was stern with them, nevertheless, because he felt that at
the bottom of their fettered and humble hearts the everlasting tenderness was
burning brightly — that tenderness which was shown even to him, a priest.
He felt this cursed tenderness, even in their docility, in the low tones of
their voices when speaking to him, in their lowered eyes, and in their
resigned tears when he reproved them roughly. And he would shake his
cassock on leaving the convent doors, and walk off, lengthening his stride as
though flying from danger.
He had a niece who lived with her mother in a little house near him. He
was bent upon making a sister of charity of her.
She was a pretty, brainless madcap. When the abbe preached she laughed,
and when he was angry with her she would give him a hug, drawing him to
her heart, while he sought unconsciously to release himself from this embrace
which nevertheless filled him with a sweet pleasure, awakening in his depths
the sensation of paternity which slumbers in every man.
Often, when walking by her side, along the country road, he would speak
to her of God, of his God. She never listened to him, but looked about her at
the sky, the grass and flowers, and one could see the joy of life sparkling in
her eyes. Sometimes she would dart forward to catch some flying creature,
crying out as she brought it back: “Look, uncle, how pretty it is! I want to hug
it!” And this desire to “hug” flies or lilac blossoms disquieted, angered, and
roused the priest, who saw, even in this, the ineradicable tenderness that is
always budding in women’s hearts.
Then there came a day when the sexton’s wife, who kept house for Abbe
Marignan, told him, with caution, that his niece had a lover.
Almost suffocated by the fearful emotion this news roused in him, he
stood there, his face covered with soap, for he was in the act of shaving.
When he had sufficiently recovered to think and speak he cried: “It is not
true; you lie, Melanie!”
But the peasant woman put her hand on her heart, saying: “May our Lord
judge me if I lie, Monsieur le Cure! I tell you, she goes there every night
when your sister has gone to bed. They meet by the river side; you have only
to go there and see, between ten o’clock and midnight.”
He ceased scraping his chin, and began to walk up and down impetuously,
as he always did when he was in deep thought. When he began shaving again
he cut himself three times from his nose to his ear.
All day long he was silent, full of anger and indignation. To his priestly
hatred of this invincible love was added the exasperation of her spiritual
father, of her guardian and pastor, deceived and tricked by a child, and the
selfish emotion shown by parents when their daughter announces that she has
chosen a husband without them, and in spite of them.
After dinner he tried to read a little, but could not, growing more and,
more angry. When ten o’clock struck he seized his cane, a formidable oak
stick, which he was accustomed to carry in his nocturnal walks when visiting
the sick. And he smiled at the enormous club which he twirled in a
threatening manner in his strong, country fist. Then he raised it suddenly and,
gritting his teeth, brought it down on a chair, the broken back of which fell
over on the floor.
He opened the door to go out, but stopped on the sill, surprised by the
splendid moonlight, of such brilliance as is seldom seen.
And, as he was gifted with an emotional nature, one such as had all those
poetic dreamers, the Fathers of the Church, he felt suddenly distracted and
moved by all the grand and serene beauty of this pale night.
In his little garden, all bathed in soft light, his fruit trees in a row cast on
the ground the shadow of their slender branches, scarcely in full leaf, while
the giant honeysuckle, clinging to the wall of his house, exhaled a delicious
sweetness, filling the warm moonlit atmosphere with a kind of perfumed
soul.
He began to take long breaths, drinking in the air as drunkards drink wine,
and he walked along slowly, delighted, marveling, almost forgetting his
niece.
As soon as he was outside of the garden, he stopped to gaze upon the plain
all flooded with the caressing light, bathed in that tender, languishing charm
of serene nights. At each moment was heard the short, metallic note of the
cricket, and distant nightingales shook out their scattered notes — their light,
vibrant music that sets one dreaming, without thinking, a music made for
kisses, for the seduction of moonlight.
 The abbe walked on again, his heart failing, though he knew not why. He
seemed weakened, suddenly exhausted; he wanted to sit down, to rest there,
to think, to admire God in His works.
Down yonder, following the undulations of the little river, a great line of
poplars wound in and out. A fine mist, a white haze through which the
moonbeams passed, silvering it and making it gleam, hung around and above
the mountains, covering all the tortuous course of the water with a kind of
light and transparent cotton.
The priest stopped once again, his soul filled with a growing and
irresistible tenderness.
And a doubt, a vague feeling of disquiet came over him; he was asking
one of those questions that he sometimes put to himself.
“Why did God make this? Since the night is destined for sleep,
unconsciousness, repose, forgetfulness of everything, why make it more
charming than day, softer than dawn or evening? And does why this seductive
planet, more poetic than the sun, that seems destined, so discreet is it, to
illuminate things too delicate and mysterious for the light of day, make the
darkness so transparent?
“Why does not the greatest of feathered songsters sleep like the others?
Why does it pour forth its voice in the mysterious night?
“Why this half-veil cast over the world? Why these tremblings of the
heart, this emotion of the spirit, this enervation of the body? Why this display
of enchantments that human beings do not see, since they are lying in their
beds? For whom is destined this sublime spectacle, this abundance of poetry
cast from heaven to earth?”
And the abbe could not understand.
But see, out there, on the edge of the meadow, under the arch of trees
bathed in a shining mist, two figures are walking side by side.
The man was the taller, and held his arm about his sweetheart’s neck and
kissed her brow every little while. They imparted life, all at once, to the
placid landscape in which they were framed as by a heavenly hand. The two
seemed but a single being, the being for whom was destined this calm and
silent night, and they came toward the priest as a living answer, the response
his Master sent to his questionings.
He stood still, his heart beating, all upset; and it seemed to him that he
saw before him some biblical scene, like the loves of Ruth and Boaz, the
accomplishment of the will of the Lord, in some of those glorious stories of
which the sacred books tell. The verses of the Song of Songs began to ring in
his ears, the appeal of passion, all the poetry of this poem replete with
tenderness.
And he said unto himself: “Perhaps God has made such nights as these to
idealize the love of men.”
He shrank back from this couple that still advanced with arms intertwined.
Yet it was his niece. But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying
God. And does not God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible
splendor?
And he went back musing, almost ashamed, as if he had intruded into a
temple where he had, no right to enter.
 WAITER, A “BOCK”
Why did I go into that beer hall on that particular evening? I do not know. It
was cold; a fine rain, a flying mist, veiled the gas lamps with a transparent
fog, made the side walks reflect the light that streamed from the shop
windows — lighting up the soft slush and the muddy feet of the passers-by.
I was going nowhere in particular; was simply having a short walk after
dinner. I had passed the Credit Lyonnais, the Rue Vivienne, and several other
streets. I suddenly descried a large beer hall which was more than half full. I
walked inside, with no object in view. I was not the least thirsty.
I glanced round to find a place that was not too crowded, and went and sat
down by the side of a man who seemed to me to be old, and who was
smoking a two-sous clay pipe, which was as black as coal. From six to eight
glasses piled up on the table in front of him indicated the number of “bocks”
he had already absorbed. At a glance I recognized a “regular,” one of those
frequenters of beer houses who come in the morning when the place opens,
and do not leave till evening when it is about to close. He was dirty, bald on
top of his head, with a fringe of iron-gray hair falling on the collar of his
frock coat. His clothes, much too large for him, appeared to have been made
for him at a time when he was corpulent. One could guess that he did not
wear suspenders, for he could not take ten steps without having to stop to
pull up his trousers. Did he wear a vest? The mere thought of his boots and of
that which they covered filled me with horror. The frayed cuffs were
perfectly black at the edges, as were his nails.
As soon as I had seated myself beside him, this individual said to me in a
quiet tone of voice:
“How goes it?”
I turned sharply round and closely scanned his features, whereupon he
continued:
“I see you do not recognize me.”
“No, I do not.”
“Des Barrets.”
I was stupefied. It was Count Jean des Barrets, my old college chum.
I seized him by the hand, and was so dumbfounded that I could find
nothing to say. At length I managed to stammer out:
“And you, how goes it with you?”
 He responded placidly:
“I get along as I can.”
“What are you doing now?” I asked.
“You see what I am doing,” he answered quit resignedly.
I felt my face getting red. I insisted:
“But every day?”
“Every day it is the same thing,” was his reply, accompanied with a thick
puff of tobacco smoke.
He then tapped with a sou on the top of the marble table, to attract the
attention of the waiter, and called out:
“Waiter, two ‘bocks.’”
A voice in the distance repeated:
“Two bocks for the fourth table.”
Another voice, more distant still, shouted out:
“Here they are!”
Immediately a man with a white apron appeared, carrying two “bocks,”
which he set down, foaming, on the table, spilling some of the yellow liquid
on the sandy floor in his haste.
Des Barrets emptied his glass at a single draught and replaced it on the
table, while he sucked in the foam that had been left on his mustache. He next
asked:
“What is there new?”
I really had nothing new to tell him. I stammered:
“Nothing, old man. I am a business man.”
In his monotonous tone of voice he said:
“Indeed, does it amuse you?”
“No, but what can I do? One must do something!”
“Why should one?”
“So as to have occupation.”
“What’s the use of an occupation? For my part, I do nothing at all, as you
see, never anything. When one has not a sou I can understand why one should
work. But when one has enough to live on, what’s the use? What is the good
of working? Do you work for yourself, or for others? If you work for
yourself, you do it for your own amusement, which is all right; if you work
for others, you are a fool.”
Then, laying his pipe on the marble table, he called out anew:
 “Waiter, a ‘bock.’” And continued: “It makes me thirsty to keep calling so.
I am not accustomed to that sort of thing. Yes, yes, I do nothing. I let things
slide, and I am growing old. In dying I shall have nothing to regret. My only
remembrance will be this beer hall. No wife, no children, no cares, no
sorrows, nothing. That is best.”
He then emptied the glass which had been brought him, passed his tongue
over his lips, and resumed his pipe.
I looked at him in astonishment, and said:
“But you have not always been like that?”
“Pardon me; ever since I left college.”
“That is not a proper life to lead, my dear fellow; it is simply horrible.
Come, you must have something to do, you must love something, you must
have friends.”
“No, I get up at noon, I come here, I have my breakfast, I drink my beer, I
remain until the evening, I have my dinner, I drink beer. Then about half-past
one in the morning, I go home to bed, because the place closes up; that
annoys me more than anything. In the last ten years I have passed fully six
years on this bench, in my corner; and the other four in my bed, nowhere else.
I sometimes chat with the regular customers.”
“But when you came to Paris what did you do at first?”
“I paid my devoirs to the Cafe de Medicis.”
“What next?”
“Next I crossed the water and came here.”
“Why did you take that trouble?”
“What do you mean? One cannot remain all one’s life in the Latin Quarter.
The students make too much noise. Now I shall not move again. Waiter, a
‘bock.’”
I began to think that he was making fun of me, and I continued:
“Come now, be frank. You have been the victim of some great sorrow;
some disappointment in love, no doubt! It is easy to see that you are a man
who has had some trouble. What age are you?”
“I am thirty, but I look forty-five, at least.”
I looked him straight in the face. His wrinkled, ill-shaven face gave one
the impression that he was an old man. On the top of his head a few long
hairs waved over a skin of doubtful cleanliness. He had enormous eyelashes,
a heavy mustache, and a thick beard. Suddenly I had a kind of vision, I know
not why, of a basin filled with dirty water in which all that hair had been
washed. I said to him:
“You certainly look older than your age. You surely must have
experienced some great sorrow.”
He replied:
“I tell you that I have not. I am old because I never go out into the air.
Nothing makes a man deteriorate more than the life of a cafe.”
I still could not believe him.
“You must surely also have been married? One could not get as bald-
headed as you are without having been in love.”
He shook his head, shaking dandruff down on his coat as he did so.
“No, I have always been virtuous.”
And, raising his eyes toward the chandelier which heated our heads, he
said:
“If I am bald, it is the fault of the gas. It destroys the hair. Waiter, a ‘bock.’
Are you not thirsty?”
“No, thank you. But you really interest me. Since when have you been so
morbid? Your life is not normal, it is not natural. There is something beneath
it all.”
“Yes, and it dates from my infancy. I received a great shock when I was
very young, and that turned my life into darkness which will last to the end.”
“What was it?”
“You wish to know about it? Well, then, listen. You recall, of course, the
castle in which I was brought up, for you used to spend five or six months
there during vacation. You remember that large gray building, in the middle
of a great park, and the long avenues of oaks which opened to the four points
of the compass. You remember my father and mother, both of whom were
ceremonious, solemn, and severe.
“I worshipped my mother; I was afraid of my father; but I respected both,
accustomed always as I was to see every one bow before them. They were
Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse to all the country round, and
our neighbors, the Tannemares, the Ravelets, the Brennevilles, showed them
the utmost consideration.
“I was then thirteen years old. I was happy, pleased with everything, as
one is at that age, full of the joy of life.
“Well, toward the end of September, a few days before returning to
college, as I was playing about in the shrubbery of the park, among the
branches and leaves, as I was crossing a path, I saw my father and mother,
who were walking along.
“I recall it as though it were yesterday. It was a very windy day. The
whole line of trees swayed beneath the gusts of wind, groaning, and seeming
to utter cries-those dull, deep cries that forests give out during a tempest.
“The falling leaves, turning yellow, flew away like birds, circling and
falling, and then running along the path like swift animals.
“Evening came on. It was dark in the thickets. The motion of the wind and
of the branches excited me, made me tear about as if I were crazy, and howl
in imitation of the wolves.
“As soon as I perceived my parents, I crept furtively toward them, under
the branches, in order to surprise them, as though I had been a veritable
prowler. But I stopped in fear a few paces from them. My father, who was in
a terrible passion, cried:
“‘Your mother is a fool; moreover, it is not a question of your mother. It is
you. I tell you that I need this money, and I want you to sign this.’
“My mother replied in a firm voice:
“‘I will not sign it. It is Jean’s fortune. I shall guard it for him and I will
not allow you to squander it with strange women, as you have your own
heritage.’
“Then my father, trembling with rage, wheeled round and, seizing his wife
by the throat, began to slap her with all his might full in the face with his
disengaged hand.
“My mother’s hat fell off, her hair became loosened and fell over her
shoulders; she tried to parry the blows, but she could not do so. And my
father, like a madman, kept on striking her. My mother rolled over on the
ground, covering her face with her hands. Then he turned her over on her
back in order to slap her still more, pulling away her hands, which were
covering her face.
“As for me, my friend, it seemed as though the world was coming to an
end, that the eternal laws had changed. I experienced the overwhelming
dread that one has in presence of things supernatural, in presence of
irreparable disasters. My childish mind was bewildered, distracted. I began
to cry with all my might, without knowing why; a prey to a fearful dread,
sorrow, and astonishment. My father heard me, turned round, and, on seeing
me, started toward me. I believe that he wanted to kill me, and I fled like a
hunted animal, running straight ahead into the thicket.
 “I ran perhaps for an hour, perhaps for two. I know not. Darkness set in. I
sank on the grass, exhausted, and lay there dismayed, frantic with fear, and
devoured by a sorrow capable of breaking forever the heart of a poor child. I
was cold, hungry, perhaps. At length day broke. I was afraid to get up, to
walk, to return home, to run farther, fearing to encounter my father, whom I
did not wish to see again.
“I should probably have died of misery and of hunger at the foot of a tree
if the park guard had not discovered me and led me home by force.
“I found my parents looking as usual. My mother alone spoke to me
“‘How you frightened me, you naughty boy. I lay awake the whole night.’
“I did not answer, but began to weep. My father did not utter a single
word.
“Eight days later I returned to school.
“Well, my friend, it was all over with me. I had witnessed the other side
of things, the bad side. I have not been able to perceive the good side since
that day. What has taken place in my mind, what strange phenomenon has
warped my ideas, I do not know. But I no longer had a taste for anything, a
wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any
ambition, or any hope. And I always see my poor mother on the ground, in the
park, my father beating her. My mother died some years later; my, father still
lives. I have not seen him since. Waiter, a ‘bock.’”
A waiter brought him his “bock,” which he swallowed at a gulp. But, in
taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was, he broke it. “Confound it!” he
said, with a gesture of annoyance. “That is a real sorrow. It will take me a
month to color another!”
And he called out across the vast hall, now reeking with smoke and full of
men drinking, his everlasting: “Garcon, un ‘bock’ — and a new pipe.”
 FORGIVENESS

She had been brought up in one of those families who live entirely to
themselves, apart from all the rest of the world. Such families know nothing
of political events, although they are discussed at table; for changes in the
Government take place at such a distance from them that they are spoken of
as one speaks of a historical event, such as the death of Louis XVI or the
landing of Napoleon.
Customs are modified in course of time, fashions succeed one another, but
such variations are taken no account of in the placid family circle where
traditional usages prevail year after year. And if some scandalous episode or
other occurs in the neighborhood, the disreputable story dies a natural death
when it reaches the threshold of the house. The father and mother may,
perhaps, exchange a few words on the subject when alone together some
evening, but they speak in hushed tones — for even walls have ears. The
father says, with bated breath:
“You’ve heard of that terrible affair in the Rivoil family?”
And the mother answers:
“Who would have dreamed of such a thing? It’s dreadful.”
The children suspected nothing, and arrive in their turn at years of
discretion with eyes and mind blindfolded, ignorant of the real side of life,
not knowing that people do not think as they speak, and do not speak as they
act; or aware that they should live at war, or at all events, in a state of armed
peace, with the rest of mankind; not suspecting the fact that the simple are
always deceived, the sincere made sport of, the good maltreated.
Some go on till the day of their death in this blind probity and loyalty and
honor, so pure-minded that nothing can open their eyes.
Others, undeceived, but without fully understanding, make mistakes, are
dismayed, and become desperate, believing themselves the playthings of a
cruel fate, the wretched victims of adverse circumstances, and exceptionally
wicked men.
The Savignols married their daughter Bertha at the age of eighteen. She
wedded a young Parisian, George Baron by name, who had dealings on the
Stock Exchange. He was handsome, well-mannered, and apparently all that
could be desired. But in the depths of his heart he somewhat despised his
old-fashioned parents-in-law, whom he spoke of among his intimates as “my
dear old fossils.”
He belonged to a good family, and the girl was rich. They settled down in
Paris.
She became one of those provincial Parisians whose name is legion. She
remained in complete ignorance of the great city, of its social side, its
pleasures and its customs — just as she remained ignorant also of life, its
perfidy and its mysteries.
Devoted to her house, she knew scarcely anything beyond her own street;
and when she ventured into another part of Paris it seemed to her that she had
accomplished a long and arduous journey into some unknown, unexplored
city. She would then say to her husband in the evening:
“I have been through the boulevards to-day.”
Two or three times a year her husband took her to the theatre. These were
events the remembrance of which never grew dim; they provided subjects of
conversation for long afterward.
Sometimes three months afterward she would suddenly burst into laughter,
and exclaim:
“Do you remember that actor dressed up as a general, who crowed like a
cock?”
Her friends were limited to two families related to her own. She spoke of
them as “the Martinets” and “the Michelins.”
Her husband lived as he pleased, coming home when it suited him —
sometimes not until dawn — alleging business, but not putting himself out
overmuch to account for his movements, well aware that no suspicion would
ever enter his wife’s guileless soul.
But one morning she received an anonymous letter.
She was thunderstruck — too simple-minded to understand the infamy of
unsigned information and to despise the letter, the writer of which declared
himself inspired by interest in her happiness, hatred of evil, and love of truth.
This missive told her that her husband had had for two years past, a
sweetheart, a young widow named Madame Rosset, with whom he spent all
his evenings.
Bertha knew neither how to dissemble her grief nor how to spy on her
husband. When he came in for lunch she threw the letter down before him,
burst into tears, and fled to her room.
He had time to take in the situation and to prepare his reply. He knocked at
his wife’s door. She opened it at once, but dared not look at him. He smiled,
sat down, drew her to his knee, and in a tone of light raillery began:
“My dear child, as a matter of fact, I have a friend named Madame Rosset,
whom I have known for the last ten years, and of whom I have a very high
opinion. I may add that I know scores of other people whose names I have
never mentioned to you, seeing that you do not care for society, or fresh
acquaintances, or functions of any sort. But, to make short work of such vile
accusations as this, I want you to put on your things after lunch, and we’ll go
together and call on this lady, who will very soon become a friend of yours,
too, I am quite sure.”
She embraced her husband warmly, and, moved by that feminine spirit of
curiosity which will not be lulled once it is aroused, consented to go and see
this unknown widow, of whom she was, in spite of everything, just the least
bit jealous. She felt instinctively that to know a danger is to be already armed
against it.
She entered a small, tastefully furnished flat on the fourth floor of an
attractive house. After waiting five minutes in a drawing-room rendered
somewhat dark by its many curtains and hangings, a door opened, and a very
dark, short, rather plump young woman appeared, surprised and smiling.
George introduced them:
“My wife — Madame Julie Rosset.”
The young widow uttered a half-suppressed cry of astonishment and joy,
and ran forward with hands outstretched. She had not hoped, she said, to
have this pleasure, knowing that Madame Baron never saw any one, but she
was delighted to make her acquaintance. She was so fond of George (she
said “George” in a familiar, sisterly sort of way) that, she had been most
anxious to know his young wife and to make friends with her, too.
By the end of a month the two new friends were inseparable. They saw
each other every day, sometimes twice a day, and dined together every
evening, sometimes at one house, sometimes at the other. George no longer
deserted his home, no longer talked of pressing business. He adored his own
fireside, he said.
When, after a time, a flat in the house where Madame Rosset lived
became vacant Madame Baron hastened to take it, in order to be near her
friend and spend even more time with her than hitherto.
 And for two whole years their friendship was without a cloud, a
friendship of heart and mind — absolute, tender, devoted. Bertha could
hardly speak without bringing in Julie’s name. To her Madame Rosset
represented perfection.
She was utterly happy, calm and contented.
But Madame Rosset fell ill. Bertha hardly left her side. She spent her
nights with her, distracted with grief; even her husband seemed inconsolable.
One morning the doctor, after leaving the invalid’s bedside, took George
and his wife aside, and told them that he considered Julie’s condition very
grave.
As soon as he had gone the grief-stricken husband and wife sat down
opposite each other and gave way to tears. That night they both sat up with
the patient. Bertha tenderly kissed her friend from time to time, while George
stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes gazing steadfastly on the invalid’s face.
The next day she was worse.
But toward evening she declared she felt better, and insisted that her
friends should go back to their own apartment to dinner.
They were sitting sadly in the dining-room, scarcely even attempting to
eat, when the maid gave George a note. He opened it, turned pale as death,
and, rising from the table, said to his wife in a constrained voice:
“Wait for me. I must leave you a moment. I shall be back in ten minutes.
Don’t go away on any account.”
And he hurried to his room to get his hat.
Bertha waited for him, a prey to fresh anxiety. But, docile in everything,
she would not go back to her friend till he returned.
At length, as he did not reappear, it occurred to her to visit his room and
see if he had taken his gloves. This would show whether or not he had had a
call to make.
She saw them at the first glance. Beside them lay a crumpled paper,
evidently thrown down in haste.
She recognized it at once as the note George had received.
And a burning temptation, the first that had ever assailed her urged her to
read it and discover the cause of her husband’s abrupt departure. Her
rebellious conscience protester’ but a devouring and fearful curiosity
prevailed. She seized the paper, smoothed it out, recognized the tremulous,
penciled writing as Julie’s, and read:
“Come alone and kiss me, my poor dear. I am dying.”
 At first she did not understand, the idea of Julie’s death being her
uppermost thought. But all at once the true meaning of what she read burst in
a flash upon her; this penciled note threw a lurid light upon her whole
existence, revealed the whole infamous truth, all the treachery and perfidy of
which she had been the victim. She understood the long years of deceit, the
way in which she had been made their puppet. She saw them again, sitting
side by side in the evening, reading by lamplight out of the same book,
glancing at each other at the end of each page.
And her poor, indignant, suffering, bleeding heart was cast into the depths
of a despair which knew no bounds.
Footsteps drew near; she fled, and shut herself in her own room.
Presently her husband called her:
“Come quickly! Madame Rosset is dying.”
Bertha appeared at her door, and with trembling lips replied:
“Go back to her alone; she does not need me.”
He looked at her stupidly, dazed with grief, and repeated:
“Come at once! She’s dying, I tell you!”
Bertha answered:
“You would rather it were I.”
Then at last he understood, and returned alone to the dying woman’s
bedside.
He mourned her openly, shamelessly, indifferent to the sorrow of the wife
who no longer spoke to him, no longer looked at him; who passed her life in
solitude, hedged round with disgust, with indignant anger, and praying night
and day to God.
They still lived in the same house, however, and sat opposite each other at
table, in silence and despair.
Gradually his sorrow grew less acute; but she did not forgive him.
And so their life went on, hard and bitter for them both.
For a whole year they remained as complete strangers to each other as if
they had never met. Bertha nearly lost her reason.
At last one morning she went out very early, and returned about eight
o’clock bearing in her hands an enormous bouquet of white roses. And she
sent word to her husband that she wanted to speak to him. He came-anxious
and uneasy.
“We are going out together,” she said. “Please carry these flowers; they
are too heavy for me.”
 A carriage took them to the gate of the cemetery, where they alighted.
Then, her eyes filling with tears, she said to George:
“Take me to her grave.”
He trembled, and could not understand her motive; but he led the way, still
carrying the flowers. At last he stopped before a white marble slab, to which
he pointed without a word.
She took the bouquet from him, and, kneeling down, placed it on the
grave. Then she offered up a silent, heartfelt prayer.
Behind her stood her husband, overcome by recollections of the past.
She rose, and held out her hands to him.
“If you wish it, we will be friends,” she said.
 A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS

Mattre Saval, notary at Vernon, was passionately fond of music. Although

still young he was already bald; he was always carefully shaven, was
somewhat corpulent as was suitable, and wore a gold pince-nez instead of
spectacles. He was active, gallant and cheerful and was considered quite an
artist in Vernon. He played the piano and the violin, and gave musicals where
the new operas were interpreted.
He had even what is called a bit of a voice; nothing but a bit, very little
bit of a voice; but he managed it with so much taste that cries of “Bravo!”
“Exquisite!” “Surprising!” “Adorable!” issued from every throat as soon as
he had murmured the last note.
He subscribed to a music publishing house in Paris, and they sent him the
latest music, and from time to time he sent invitations after this fashion to the
elite of the town:
“You are invited to be present on Monday evening at the house of M.
Saval, notary, Vernon, at the first rendering of ‘Sais.’”
A few officers, gifted with good voices, formed the chorus. Two or three
lady amateurs also sang. The notary filled the part of leader of the orchestra
with so much correctness that the bandmaster of the 190th regiment of the line
said of him, one day, at the Cafe de l’Europe.
“Oh! M. Saval is a master. It is a great pity that he did not adopt the career
of an artist.”
When his name was mentioned in a drawing-room, there was always
somebody found to declare: “He is not an amateur; he is an artist, a genuine
artist.”
And two or three persons repeated, in a tone of profound conviction:
“Oh! yes, a genuine artist,” laying particular stress on the word “genuine.”
Every time that a new work was interpreted at a big Parisian theatre M.
Saval paid a visit to the capital.
Now, last year, according to his custom, he went to hear Henri VIII. He
then took the express which arrives in Paris at 4:30 P.M., intending to return
by the 12:35 A.M. train, so as not to have to sleep at a hotel. He had put on
evening dress, a black coat and white tie, which he concealed under his
overcoat with the collar turned up.
As soon as he set foot on the Rue d’Amsterdam, he felt himself in quite
jovial mood. He said to himself:
“Decidedly, the air of Paris does not resemble any other air. It has in it
something indescribably stimulating, exciting, intoxicating, which fills you
with a strange longing to dance about and to do many other things. As soon as
I arrive here, it seems to me, all of a sudden, that I have taken a bottle of
champagne. What a life one can lead in this city in the midst of artists! Happy
are the elect, the great men who make themselves a reputation in such a city!
What an existence is theirs!”
And he made plans; he would have liked to know some of these
celebrated men, to talk about them in Vernon, and to spend an evening with
them from time to time in Paris.
But suddenly an idea struck him. He had heard allusions to little cafes in
the outer boulevards at which well-known painters, men of letters, and even
musicians gathered, and he proceeded to go up to Montmartre at a slow pace.
He had two hours before him. He wanted to look about him. He passed in
front of taverns frequented by belated bohemians, gazing at the different
faces, seeking to discover the artists. Finally, he came to the sign of “The
Dead Rat,” and, allured by the name, he entered.
Five or six women, with their elbows resting on the marble tables, were
talking in low tones about their love affairs, the quarrels of Lucie and
Hortense, and the scoundrelism of Octave. They were no longer young, were
too fat or too thin, tired out, used up. You could see that they were almost
bald; and they drank beer like men.
M. Saval sat down at some distance from them and waited, for the hour
for taking absinthe was at hand.
A tall young man soon came in and took a seat beside him. The landlady
called him M. “Romantin.” The notary quivered. Was this the Romantin who
had taken a medal at the last Salon?
The young man made a sign to the waiter.
“You will bring up my dinner at once, and then carry to my new studio, 15
Boulevard de Clichy, thirty bottles of beer, and the ham I ordered this
morning. We are going to have a housewarming.”
M. Saval immediately ordered dinner. Then, he took off his overcoat, so
that his dress suit and his white tie could be seen. His neighbor did not seem
to notice him. He had taken up a newspaper, and was reading it. M. Saval
glanced sideways at him, burning with the desire to speak to him.
Two young men entered, in red vests and with peaked beards, in the
fashion of Henry III. They sat down opposite Romantin.
The first of the pair said:
“Is it for this evening?”
Romantin pressed his hand.
“I believe you, old chap, and everyone will be there. I have Bonnat,
Guillemet, Gervex, Beraud, Hebert, Duez, Clairin, and Jean-Paul Laurens. It
will be a stunning affair! And women, too! Wait till you see! Every actress
without exception — of course I mean, you know, all those who have nothing
to do this evening.”
The landlord of the establishment came across.
“Do you often have this housewarming?”
The painter replied:
“I believe you, every three months, each quarter.”
M. Saval could not restrain himself any longer, and in a hesitating voice
said:
“I beg your pardon for intruding on you, monsieur, but I heard your name
mentioned, and I would be very glad to know if you really are M. Romantin,
whose work in the last Salon I have so much admired?”
The painter answered:
“I am the very person, monsieur.”
The notary then paid the artist a very well-turned compliment, showing
that he was a man of culture.
The painter, gratified, thanked him politely in reply.
Then they chattered. Romantin returned to the subject of his house-
warming, going into details as to the magnificence of the forthcoming
entertainment.
M. Saval questioned him as to all the men he was going to receive,
adding:
“It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune for a stranger to meet
at one time so many celebrities assembled in the studio of an artist of your
rank.”
Romantin, vanquished, replied:
“If it would be agreeable to you, come.”
M. Saval accepted the invitation with enthusiasm, reflecting:
 “I shall have time enough to see Henri VIII.”
Both of them had finished their meal. The notary insisted on paying the
two bills, wishing to repay his neighbor’s civilities. He also paid for the
drinks of the young fellows in red velvet; then he left the establishment with
the painter.
They stopped in front of a very long, low house, the first story having the
appearance of an interminable conservatory. Six studios stood in a row with
their fronts facing the boulevards.
Romantin was the first to enter, and, ascending the stairs, he opened a
door, and lighted a match and then a candle.
They found themselves in an immense apartment, the furniture of which
consisted of three chairs, two easels, and a few sketches standing on the
ground along the walls. M. Saval remained standing at the door somewhat
astonished.
The painter remarked:
“Here you are! we’ve got to the spot; but everything has yet to be done.”
Then, examining the high, bare apartment, its ceiling disappearing in the
darkness, he said:
“We might make a great deal out of this studio.”
He walked round it, surveying it with the utmost attention, then went on:
“I know someone who might easily give a helping hand. Women are
incomparable for hanging drapery. But I sent her to the country for to-day in
order to get her off my hands this evening. It is not that she bores me, but she
is too much lacking in the ways of good society. It would be embarrassing to
my guests.”
He reflected for a few seconds, and then added:
“She is a good girl, but not easy to deal with. If she knew that I was
holding a reception, she would tear out my eyes.”
M. Saval had not even moved; he did not understand.
The artist came over to him.
“Since I have invited you, you will assist ma about something.”
The notary said emphatically:
“Make any use of me you please. I am at your disposal.”
Romantin took off his jacket.
“Well, citizen, to work!’ We are first going to clean up.”
He went to the back of the easel, on which there was a canvas
representing a cat, and seized a very worn-out broom.
 “I say! Just brush up while I look after the lighting.”
M. Saval took the broom, inspected it, and then began to sweep the floor
very awkwardly, raising a whirlwind of dust.
Romantin, disgusted, stopped him: “Deuce take it! you don’t know how to
sweep the floor! Look at me!”
And he began to roll before him a heap of grayish sweepings, as if he had
done nothing else all his life. Then, he gave bark the broom to the notary,
who imitated him.
In five minutes, such a cloud of dust filled the studio that Rormantin
asked:
“Where are you? I can’t see you any longer.”
M. Saval, who was coughing, came near to him. The painter said:
“How would you set about making a chandelier?”
The other, surprised, asked:
“What chandelier?”
“Why, a chandelier to light the room — a chandelier with wax-candles.”
The notary did not understand.
He answered: “I don’t know.”
The painter began to jump about, cracking his fingers.
“Well, monseigneur, I have found out a way.”
Then he went on more calmly:
“Have you got five francs about you?”
M. Saval replied:
“Why, yes.”
The artist said: “Well! you’ll go out and buy for me five francs’ worth of
wax-candles while I go and see the cooper.”
And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into the street. At the end of
five minutes, they had returned, one of them with the wax-candles and the
other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged his hand into a
cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which he fixed in the form of
a crown around the hoop.
He then went downstairs to borrow a ladder from the janitress, after
having explained that he had made interest with the old woman by painting
the portrait of her cat, exhibited on the easel.
When he returned with the ladder, he said to M. Saval:
“Are you active?”
The other, without understanding, answered:
 “Why, yes.”
“Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to the ring
of the ceiling. Then, you put a wax-candle in each bottle, and light it. I tell
you I have a genius for lighting up. But off with your coat, damn it! You are
just like a Jeames.”
The door was opened brusquely. A woman appeared, her eyes flashing,
and remained standing on the threshold.
Romantin gazed at her with a look of terror.
She waited some seconds, crossing her arms over her breast, and then in a
shrill, vibrating, exasperated voice said:
“Ha! you dirty scoundrel, is this the way you leave me?”
Romantin made no reply. She went on:
“Ha! you scoundrel! You did a nice thing in parking me off to the country.
You’ll soon see the way I’ll settle your jollification. Yes, I’m going to
receive your friends.”
She grew warmer.
“I’m going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax-candles — — “
Romantin said in a soft tone:
“Mathilde — — “
But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on:
“Wait a little, my fine fellow! wait a little!”
Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands.
“Mathilde — — “
But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials of
her wrath with strong words and reproaches. They flowed out of her mouth
like, a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it. The words pouring forth
seemed struggling for exit. She stuttered, stammered, yelled, suddenly
recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a curse.
He seized her hands without her having noticed it. She did not seem to see
anything, so taken up was she in scolding and relieving her feelings. And
suddenly she began to weep. The tears flowed from her eyes, but this did not
stop her complaints. But her words were uttered in a screaming falsetto
voice with tears in it and interrupted by sobs. She commenced afresh twice
or three times, till she stopped as if something were choking her, and at last
she ceased with a regular flood of tears.
Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.
 “Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen. You must be reasonable. You know,
if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these gentlemen for the
medal I got at the Salon. I cannot receive women. You ought to understand
that. It is not the same with artists as with other people.”
She stammered, in the midst of her tears:
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
He replied:
“It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I’m going to
see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will remain quietly
waiting for me in bed, and I’ll come back as soon as it’s over.”
She murmured:
“Yes, but you will not begin over again?”
“No, I swear to you!”
He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:
“My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If anyone arrives in
my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?”
And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her
handkerchief as she went along.
Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him in
order. Then he lighted the wax-candles, and waited.
He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin did not
return. Then, suddenly there was a dreadful noise on the stairs, a song
shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular march like that of a
Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by the steady tramp of feet.
The door flew open, and a motley throng appeared — men and women in
file, two and two holding each other by the arm and stamping their heels on
the ground to mark time, advanced into the studio like a snake uncoiling
itself. They howled:
“Come, and let us all be merry,
Pretty maids and soldiers gay!”
M. Saval, thunderstruck, remained standing in evening dress under the
chandelier. The procession of revellers caught sight of him, and uttered a
shout:
“A Jeames! A Jeames!”
And they began whirling round him, surrounding him with a circle of
vociferations. Then they took each other by the hand and went dancing about
madly.
 He attempted to explain:
“Messieurs — messieurs — mesdames — — “
But they did not listen to him. They whirled about, they jumped, they
brawled.
At last, the dancing ceased. M. Saval said:
“Gentlemen — — “
A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted him:
“What’s your name, my friend?”
The notary, quite scared, said:
“I am M. Saval.”
A voice exclaimed:
“You mean Baptiste.”
A woman said:
“Let the poor waiter alone! You’ll end by making him get angry. He’s paid
to wait on us, and not to be laughed at by us.”
Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf of bread,
and one a ham.
The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage, and
gave orders:
“Here, go and arrange the sideboard in the corner over there. Put the
bottles at the left and the provisions at the right.”
Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: “But, messieurs, I am a
notary!”
There was a moment’s silence and then a wild outburst of laughter. One
suspicious gentleman asked:
“How came you to be here?”
He explained, telling about his project of going to the opera, his departure
from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he had spent the
evening.
They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
applause, and called him Scheherazade.
Romantin did not return. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was presented to
them so that he might begin his story over again. He declined; they forced him
to relate it. They seated and tied him on one of three chairs between two
women who kept constantly filling his glass. He drank; he laughed; he talked;
he sang, too. He tried to waltz with his chair, and fell on the ground.
 From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however, that
they undressed him, put him to bed, and that he was nauseated.
When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his feet
against a cupboard, in a strange bed.
An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
last, she said:
“Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get drunk
like this?”
He sat up in bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:
“Where am I?”
“Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten carcass
out of here as quick as you can — and lose no time about it!”
He wanted to get up. He found that he was in no condition to do so. His
clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:
“Madame, I —— Then he remembered. What was he to do? He asked:
“Did Monsieur Romantin come back?”
The doorkeeper shouted:
“Will you take your dirty carcass out of this, so that he at any rate may not
catch you here?”
M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:
“I haven’t got my clothes; they have been taken away from me.”
He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends, and
borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till evening. And
when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room in
Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a very inferior art.
 THAT COSTLY RIDE

The household lived frugally on the meager income derived from the
husband’s insignificant appointments. Two children had been born of the
marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become one
of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a noble family —
which in spite of misfortune never forgets its rank.
Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces, under the paternal
roof, by an aged priest. His people were not rich, but they managed to live
and to keep up appearances.
At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position, and he entered the
Ministry of Marine as a clerk at sixty pounds a year. He foundered on the
rock of life like all those who have not been early prepared for its rude
struggles, who look at life through a mist, who do not know how to protect
themselves, whose special aptitudes and faculties have not been developed
from childhood, whose early training has not developed the rough energy
needed for the battle of life or furnished them with tool or weapon.
His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.
He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few friends of his family
— elderly people, far behind the times, and poor like himself, who lived in
aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of the Faubourg Saint-Germain;
and he had created a social circle for himself.
Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these needy aristocrats lived
in the upper stories of sleepy, old-world houses. From top to bottom of their
dwellings the tenants were titled, but money seemed just as scarce on the
ground floor as in the attics.
Their eternal prejudices, absorption in their rank, anxiety lest they should
lose caste, filled the minds and thoughts of these families once so brilliant,
now ruined by the idleness of the men of the family. Hector de Gribelin met
in this circle a young girl as well born and as poor as himself and married
her.
They had two children in four years.
For four years more the husband and wife, harassed by poverty, knew no
other distraction than the Sunday walk in the Champs-Elysees and a few
evenings at the theatre (amounting in all to one or two in the course of the
winter) which they owed to free passes presented by some comrade or other.
But in the spring of the following year some overtime work was entrusted
to Hector de Gribelin by his chief, for which he received the large sum of
three hundred francs.
The day he brought the money home he said to his wife:
“My dear Henrietta, we must indulge in some sort of festivity — say an
outing for the children.”
And after a long discussion it was decided that they should go and lunch
one day in the country.
“Well,” cried Hector, “once will not break us, so we’ll hire a wagonette
for you, the children and the maid. And I’ll have a saddle horse; the exercise
will do me good.”
The whole week long they talked of nothing but the projected excursion.
Every evening, on his return from the office, Hector caught up his elder
son, put him astride his leg, and, making him bounce up and down as hard as
he could, said:
“That’s how daddy will gallop next Sunday.”
And the youngster amused himself all day long by bestriding chairs,
dragging them round the room and shouting:
“This is daddy on horseback!”
The servant herself gazed at her master with awestruck eyes as she thought
of him riding alongside the carriage, and at meal-times she listened with all
her ears while he spoke of riding and recounted the exploits of his youth,
when he lived at home with his father. Oh, he had learned in a good school,
and once he felt his steed between his legs he feared nothing — nothing
whatever!
Rubbing his hands, he repeated gaily to his wife:
“If only they would give me a restive animal I should be all the better
pleased. You’ll see how well I can ride; and if you like we’ll come back by
the Champs-Elysees just as all the people are returning from the Bois. As we
shall make a good appearance, I shouldn’t at all object to meeting some one
from the ministry. That is all that is necessary to insure the respect of one’s
chiefs.”
On the day appointed the carriage and the riding horse arrived at the same
moment before the door. Hector went down immediately to examine his
mount. He had had straps sewn to his trousers and flourished in his hand a
whip he had bought the evening before.
He raised the horse’s legs and felt them one after another, passed his hand
over the animal’s neck, flank and hocks, opened his mouth, examined his
teeth, declared his age; and then, the whole household having collected round
him, he delivered a discourse on the horse in general and the specimen
before him in particular, pronouncing the latter excellent in every respect.
When the rest of the party had taken their seats in the carriage he examined
the saddle-girth; then, putting his foot in the stirrup, he sprang to the saddle.
The animal began to curvet and nearly threw his rider.
Hector, not altogether at his ease, tried to soothe him:
“Come, come, good horse, gently now!”
Then, when the horse had recovered his equanimity and the rider his
nerve, the latter asked:
“Are you ready?”
The occupants of the carriage replied with one voice:
“Yes.”
“Forward!” he commanded.
And the cavalcade set out.
All looks were centered on him. He trotted in the English style, rising
unnecessarily high in the saddle; looking at times as if he were mounting into
space. Sometimes he seemed on the point of falling forward on the horse’s
mane; his eyes were fixed, his face drawn, his cheeks pale.
His wife, holding one of the children on her knees, and the servant, who
was carrying the other, continually cried out:
“Look at papa! look at papa!”
And the two boys, intoxicated by the motion of the carriage, by their
delight and by the keen air, uttered shrill cries. The horse, frightened by the
noise they made, started off at a gallop, and while Hector was trying to
control his steed his hat fell off, and the driver had to get down and pick it
up. When the equestrian had recovered it he called to his wife from a
distance:
“Don’t let the children shout like that! They’ll make the horse bolt!”
They lunched on the grass in the Vesinet woods, having brought provisions
with them in the carriage.
Although the driver was looking after the three horses, Hector rose every
minute to see if his own lacked anything; he patted him on the neck and fed
him with bread, cakes and sugar.
“He’s an unequal trotter,” he declared. “He certainly shook me up a little
at first, but, as you saw, I soon got used to it. He knows his master now and
won’t give any more trouble.”
As had been decided, they returned by the Champs-Elysees.
That spacious thoroughfare literally swarmed with vehicles of every kind,
and on the sidewalks the pedestrians were so numerous that they looked like
two indeterminate black ribbons unfurling their length from the Arc de
Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. A flood of sunlight played on this gay
scene, making the varnish of the carriages, the steel of the harness and the
handles of the carriage doors shine with dazzling brilliancy.
An intoxication of life and motion seemed to have invaded this
assemblage of human beings, carriages and horses. In the distance the
outlines of the Obelisk could be discerned in a cloud of golden vapor.
As soon as Hector’s horse had passed the Arc de Triomphe he became
suddenly imbued with fresh energy, and, realizing that his stable was not far
off, began to trot rapidly through the maze of wheels, despite all his rider’s
efforts to restrain him.
The carriage was now far behind. When the horse arrived opposite the
Palais de l’Industrie he saw a clear field before him, and, turning to the right,
set off at a gallop.
An old woman wearing an apron was crossing the road in leisurely
fashion. She happened to be just in Hector’s way as he arrived on the scene
riding at full speed. Powerless to control his mount, he shouted at the top of
his voice:
“Hi! Look out there! Hi!”
She must have been deaf, for she continued peacefully on her way until the
awful moment when, struck by the horse’s chest as by a locomotive under full
steam, she rolled ten paces off, turning three somersaults on the way.
Voices yelled:
“Stop him!”
Hector, frantic with terror, clung to the horse’s mane and shouted:
“Help! help!”
A terrible jolt hurled him, as if shot from a gun, over his horse’s ears and
cast him into the arms of a policeman who was running up to stop him.
In the space of a second a furious, gesticulating, vociferating group had
gathered round him. An old gentleman with a white mustache, wearing a
large round decoration, seemed particularly exasperated. He repeated:
“Confound it! When a man is as awkward as all that he should remain at
home and not come killing people in the streets, if he doesn’t know how to
handle a horse.”
Four men arrived on the scene, carrying the old woman. She appeared to
be dead. Her skin was like parchment, her cap on one side and she was
covered with dust.
“Take her to a druggist’s,” ordered the old gentleman, “and let us go to the
commissary of police.”
Hector started on his way with a policeman on either side of him, a third
was leading his horse. A crowd followed them — and suddenly the
wagonette appeared in sight. His wife alighted in consternation, the servant
lost her head, the children whimpered. He explained that he would soon be at
home, that he had knocked a woman down and that there was not much the
matter. And his family, distracted with anxiety, went on their way.
When they arrived before the commissary the explanation took place in
few words. He gave his name — Hector de Gribelin, employed at the
Ministry of Marine; and then they awaited news of the injured woman. A
policeman who had been sent to obtain information returned, saying that she
had recovered consciousness, but was complaining of frightful internal pain.
She was a charwoman, sixty-five years of age, named Madame Simon.
When he heard that she was not dead Hector regained hope and promised
to defray her doctor’s bill. Then he hastened to the druggist’s. The door way
was thronged; the injured woman, huddled in an armchair, was groaning. Her
arms hung at her sides, her face was drawn. Two doctors were still engaged
in examining her. No bones were broken, but they feared some internal
lesion.
Hector addressed her:
“Do you suffer much?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Where is the pain?”
“I feel as if my stomach were on fire.”
A doctor approached.
“Are you the gentleman who caused the accident?”
“I am.”
“This woman ought to be sent to a home. I know one where they would
take her at six francs a day. Would you like me to send her there?”
 Hector was delighted at the idea, thanked him and returned home much
relieved.
His wife, dissolved in tears, was awaiting him. He reassured her.
“It’s all right. This Madame Simon is better already and will be quite
well in two or three days. I have sent her to a home. It’s all right.”
When he left his office the next day he went to inquire for Madame Simon.
He found her eating rich soup with an air of great satisfaction.
“Well?” said he.
“Oh, sir,” she replied, “I’m just the same. I feel sort of crushed — not a
bit better.”
The doctor declared they must wait and see; some complication or other
might arise.
Hector waited three days, then he returned. The old woman, fresh-faced
and clear-eyed, began to whine when she saw him:
“I can’t move, sir; I can’t move a bit. I shall be like this for the rest of my
days.”
A shudder passed through Hector’s frame. He asked for the doctor, who
merely shrugged his shoulders and said:
“What can I do? I can’t tell what’s wrong with her. She shrieks when they
try to raise her. They can’t even move her chair from one place to another
without her uttering the most distressing cries. I am bound to believe what
she tells me; I can’t look into her inside. So long as I have no chance of
seeing her walk I am not justified in supposing her to be telling lies about
herself.”
The old woman listened, motionless, a malicious gleam in her eyes.
A week passed, then a fortnight, then a month. Madame Simon did not
leave her armchair. She ate from morning to night, grew fat, chatted gaily
with the other patients and seemed to enjoy her immobility as if it were the
rest to which she was entitled after fifty years of going up and down stairs, of
turning mattresses, of carrying coal from one story to another, of sweeping
and dusting.
Hector, at his wits’ end, came to see her every day. Every day he found
her calm and serene, declaring:
“I can’t move, sir; I shall never be able to move again.”
Every evening Madame de Gribelin, devoured with anxiety, said:
“How is Madame Simon?”
And every time he replied with a resignation born of despair:
 “Just the same; no change whatever.”
They dismissed the servant, whose wages they could no longer afford.
They economized more rigidly than ever. The whole of the extra pay had
been swallowed up.
Then Hector summoned four noted doctors, who met in consultation over
the old woman. She let them examine her, feel her, sound her, watching them
the while with a cunning eye.
“We must make her walk,” said one.
“But, sirs, I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t move!”
Then they took hold of her, raised her and dragged her a short distance,
but she slipped from their grasp and fell to the floor, groaning and giving vent
to such heartrending cries that they carried her back to her seat with infinite
care and precaution.
They pronounced a guarded opinion — agreeing, however, that work was
an impossibility to her.
And when Hector brought this news to his wife she sank on a chair,
murmuring:
“It would be better to bring her here; it would cost us less.”
He started in amazement.
“Here? In our own house? How can you think of such a thing?”
But she, resigned now to anything, replied with tears in her eyes:
“But what can we do, my love? It’s not my fault!”
 USELESS BEAUTY

About half-past five one afternoon at the end of June when the sun was
shining warm and bright into the large courtyard, a very elegant victoria with
two beautiful black horses drew up in front of the mansion.
The Comtesse de Mascaret came down the steps just as her husband, who
was coming home, appeared in the carriage entrance. He stopped for a few
moments to look at his wife and turned rather pale. The countess was very
beautiful, graceful and distinguished looking, with her long oval face, her
complexion like yellow ivory, her large gray eyes and her black hair; and she
got into her carriage without looking at him, without even seeming to have
noticed him, with such a particularly high-bred air, that the furious jealousy
by which he had been devoured for so long again gnawed at his heart. He
went up to her and said: “You are going for a drive?”
She merely replied disdainfully: “You see I am!”
“In the Bois de Boulogne?”
“Most probably.”
“May I come with you?”
“The carriage belongs to you.”
Without being surprised at the tone in which she answered him, he got in
and sat down by his wife’s side and said: “Bois de Boulogne.” The footman
jumped up beside the coachman, and the horses as usual pranced and tossed
their heads until they were in the street. Husband and wife sat side by side
without speaking. He was thinking how to begin a conversation, but she
maintained such an obstinately hard look that he did not venture to make the
attempt. At last, however, he cunningly, accidentally as it were, touched the
countess’ gloved hand with his own, but she drew her arm away with a
movement which was so expressive of disgust that he remained thoughtful, in
spite of his usual authoritative and despotic character, and he said:
“Gabrielle!”
“What do you want?”
 “I think you are looking adorable.”
She did not reply, but remained lying back in the carriage, looking like an
irritated queen. By that time they were driving up the Champs Elysees,
toward the Arc de Triomphe. That immense monument, at the end of the long
avenue, raised its colossal arch against the red sky and the sun seemed to be
descending on it, showering fiery dust on it from the sky.
The stream of carriages, with dashes of sunlight reflected in the silver
trappings of the harness and the glass of the lamps, flowed on in a double
current toward the town and toward the Bois, and the Comte de Mascaret
continued: “My dear Gabrielle!”
Unable to control herself any longer, she replied in an exasperated voice:
“Oh! do leave me in peace, pray! I am not even allowed to have my carriage
to myself now.” He pretended not to hear her and continued: “You never have
looked so pretty as you do to-day.”
Her patience had come to an end, and she replied with irrepressible
anger: “You are wrong to notice it, for I swear to you that I will never have
anything to do with you in that way again.”
The count was decidedly stupefied and upset, and, his violent nature
gaining the upper hand, he exclaimed: “What do you mean by that?” in a tone
that betrayed rather the brutal master than the lover. She replied in a low
voice, so that the servants might not hear amid the deafening noise of the
wheels: “Ah! What do I mean by that? What do I mean by that? Now I
recognize you again! Do you want me to tell everything?”
“Yes.”
“Everything that has weighed on my heart since I have been the victim of
your terrible selfishness?”
He had grown red with surprise and anger and he growled between his
closed teeth: “Yes, tell me everything.”
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a big red beard, a handsome
man, a nobleman, a man of the world, who passed as a perfect husband and
an excellent father, and now, for the first time since they had started, she
turned toward him and looked him full in the face: “Ah! You will hear some
disagreeable things, but you must know that I am prepared for everything, that
I fear nothing, and you less than any one to-day.”
He also was looking into her eyes and was already shaking with rage as
he said in a low voice: “You are mad.”
 “No, but I will no longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of maternity,
which you have inflicted on me for eleven years! I wish to take my place in
society as I have the right to do, as all women have the right to do.”
He suddenly grew pale again and stammered: “I do not understand you.”
“Oh! yes; you understand me well enough. It is now three months since I
had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of all your
efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived, when you saw
me on the doorstep, you think it is time that I should think of having another
child.”
“But you are talking nonsense!”
“No, I am not, I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have
been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten years
longer, after which you will leave off being jealous.”
He seized her arm and squeezed it, saying: “I will not allow you to talk to
me like that much longer.”
“And I shall talk to you till the end, until I have finished all I have to say
to you, and if you try to prevent me, I shall raise my voice so that the two
servants, who are on the box, may hear. I only allowed you to come with me
for that object, for I have these witnesses who will oblige you to listen to me
and to contain yourself, so now pay attention to what I say. I have always felt
an antipathy to you, and I have always let you see it, for I have never lied,
monsieur. You married me in spite of myself; you forced my parents, who
were in embarrassed circumstances, to give me to you, because you were
rich, and they obliged me to marry you in spite of my tears.
“So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I had
become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget your
coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only remember
that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it might be
possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no man has ever
been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy, which was as
degrading to you as it was to me. I had not been married eight months when
you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you even told me so. What a
disgrace! And as you could not prevent me from being beautiful and from
pleasing people, from being called in drawing-rooms and also in the
newspapers one of the most beautiful women in Paris, you tried everything
you could think of to keep admirers from me, and you hit upon the
abominable idea of making me spend my life in a constant state of
motherhood, until the time should come when I should disgust every man. Oh,
do not deny it. I did not understand it for some time, but then I guessed it. You
even boasted about it to your sister, who told me of it, for she is fond of me
and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness.
“Ah! Remember how you have behaved in the past! How for eleven years
you have compelled me to give up all society and simply be a mother to your
children. And then you would grow disgusted with me and I was sent into the
country, the family chateau, among fields and meadows. And when I
reappeared, fresh, pretty and unspoiled, still seductive and constantly
surrounded by admirers, hoping that at last I should live a little more like a
rich young society woman, you were seized with jealousy again, and you
began once more to persecute me with that infamous and hateful desire from
which you are suffering at this moment by my side. And it is not the desire of
possessing me — for I should never have refused myself to you, but it is the
wish to make me unsightly.
“And then that abominable and mysterious thing occurred which I was a
long time in understanding (but I grew sharp by dint of watching your
thoughts and actions): You attached yourself to your children with all the
security which they gave you while I bore them. You felt affection for them,
with all your aversion to me, and in spite of your ignoble fears, which were
momentarily allayed by your pleasure in seeing me lose my symmetry.
“Oh! how often have I noticed that joy in you! I have seen it in your eyes
and guessed it. You loved your children as victories, and not because they
were of your own blood. They were victories over me, over my youth, over
my beauty, over my charms, over the compliments which were paid me and
over those that were whispered around me without being paid to me
personally. And you are proud of them, you make a parade of them, you take
them out for drives in your break in the Bois de Boulogne and you give them
donkey rides at Montmorency. You take them to theatrical matinees so that
you may be seen in the midst of them, so that the people may say: ‘What a
kind father’ and that it may be repeated — — “
He had seized her wrist with savage brutality, and he squeezed it so
violently that she was quiet and nearly cried out with the pain and he said to
her in a whisper:
“I love my children, do you hear? What you have just told me is
disgraceful in a mother. But you belong to me; I am master — your master —
I can exact from you what I like and when I like — and I have the law-on my
side.”
He was trying to crush her fingers in the strong grip of his large, muscular
hand, and she, livid with pain, tried in vain to free them from that vise which
was crushing them. The agony made her breathe hard and the tears came into
her eyes. “You see that I am the master and the stronger,” he said. When he
somewhat loosened his grip, she asked him: “Do you think that I am a
religious woman?”
He was surprised and stammered “Yes.”
“Do you think that I could lie if I swore to the truth of anything to you
before an altar on which Christ’s body is?”
“No.”
“Will you go with me to some church?”
“What for?”
“You shall see. Will you?”
“If you absolutely wish it, yes.”
She raised her voice and said: “Philippe!” And the coachman, bending
down a little, without taking his eyes from his horses, seemed to turn his ear
alone toward his mistress, who continued: “Drive to St. Philippe-du-Roule.”
And the-victoria, which had reached the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne
returned to Paris.
Husband and wife did not exchange a word further during the drive, and
when the carriage stopped before the church Madame de Mascaret jumped
out and entered it, followed by the count, a few yards distant. She went,
without stopping, as far as the choir-screen, and falling on her knees at a
chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time, and he,
standing behind her could see that she was crying. She wept noiselessly, as
women weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There was a kind of
undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden and
stifled by her fingers.
But the Comte de Mascaret thought that the situation was lasting too long,
and he touched her on the shoulder. That contact recalled her to herself, as if
she had been burned, and getting up, she looked straight into his eyes. “This
is what I have to say to you. I am afraid of nothing, whatever you may do to
me. You may kill me if you like. One of your children is not yours, and one
only; that I swear to you before God, who hears me here. That was the only
revenge that was possible for me in return for all your abominable masculine
tyrannies, in return for the penal servitude of childbearing to which you have
condemned me. Who was my lover? That you never will know! You may
suspect every one, but you never will find out. I gave myself to him, without
love and without pleasure, only for the sake of betraying you, and he also
made me a mother. Which is the child? That also you never will know. I have
seven; try to find out! I intended to tell you this later, for one has not avenged
oneself on a man by deceiving him, unless he knows it. You have driven me
to confess it today. I have now finished.”
She hurried through the church toward the open door, expecting to hear
behind her the quick step: of her husband whom she had defied and to be
knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist, but she heard nothing and
reached her carriage. She jumped into it at a bound, overwhelmed with
anguish and breathless with fear. So she called out to the coachman: “Home!”
and the horses set off at a quick trot.

II

The Comtesse de Mascaret was waiting in her room for dinner time as a
criminal sentenced to death awaits the hour of his execution. What was her
husband going to do? Had he come home? Despotic, passionate, ready for
any violence as he was, what was he meditating, what had he made up his
mind to do? There was no sound in the house, and every moment she looked
at the clock. Her lady’s maid had come and dressed her for the evening and
had then left the room again. Eight o’clock struck and almost at the same
moment there were two knocks at the door, and the butler came in and
announced dinner.
“Has the count come in?”
“Yes, Madame la Comtesse. He is in the diningroom.”
For a little moment she felt inclined to arm herself with a small revolver
which she had bought some time before, foreseeing the tragedy which was
being rehearsed in her heart. But she remembered that all the children would
be there, and she took nothing except a bottle of smelling salts. He rose
somewhat ceremoniously from his chair. They exchanged a slight bow and
sat down. The three boys with their tutor, Abbe Martin, were on her right and
the three girls, with Miss Smith, their English governess, were on her left.
The youngest child, who was only three months old, remained upstairs with
his nurse.
 The abbe said grace as usual when there was no company, for the children
did not come down to dinner when guests were present. Then they began
dinner. The countess, suffering from emotion, which she had not calculated
upon, remained with her eyes cast down, while the count scrutinized now the
three boys and now the three girls with an uncertain, unhappy expression,
which travelled from one to the other. Suddenly pushing his wineglass from
him, it broke, and the wine was spilt on the tablecloth, and at the slight noise
caused by this little accident the countess started up from her chair; and for
the first time they looked at each other. Then, in spite of themselves, in spite
of the irritation of their nerves caused by every glance, they continued to
exchange looks, rapid as pistol shots.
The abbe, who felt that there was some cause for embarrassment which he
could not divine, attempted to begin a conversation and tried various
subjects, but his useless efforts gave rise to no ideas and did not bring out a
word. The countess, with feminine tact and obeying her instincts of a woman
of the world, attempted to answer him two or three times, but in vain. She
could not find words, in the perplexity of her mind, and her own voice almost
frightened her in the silence of the large room, where nothing was heard
except the slight sound of plates and knives and forks.
Suddenly her husband said to her, bending forward: “Here, amid your
children, will you swear to me that what you told me just now is true?”
The hatred which was fermenting in her veins suddenly roused her, and
replying to that question with the same firmness with which she had replied
to his looks, she raised both her hands, the right pointing toward the boys and
the left toward the girls, and said in a firm, resolute voice and without any
hesitation: “On the head of my children, I swear that I have told you the
truth.”
He got up and throwing his table napkin on the table with a movement of
exasperation, he turned round and flung his chair against the wall, and then
went out without another word, while she, uttering a deep sigh, as if after a
first victory, went on in a calm voice: “You must not pay any attention to
what your father has just said, my darlings; he was very much upset a short
time ago, but he will be all right again in a few days.”
Then she talked with the abbe and Miss Smith and had tender, pretty
words for all her children, those sweet, tender mother’s ways which unfold
little hearts.
 When dinner was over she went into the drawing-room, all her children
following her. She made the elder ones chatter, and when their bedtime came
she kissed them for a long time and then went alone into her room.
She waited, for she had no doubt that the count would come, and she made
up her mind then, as her children were not with her, to protect herself as a
woman of the world as she would protect her life, and in the pocket of her
dress she put the little loaded revolver which she had bought a few days
previously. The hours went by, the hours struck, and every sound was hushed
in the house. Only the cabs, continued to rumble through the streets, but their
noise was only heard vaguely through the shuttered and curtained windows.
She waited, full of nervous energy, without any fear of him now, ready for
anything, and almost triumphant, for she had found means of torturing him
continually during every moment of his life.
But the first gleam of dawn came in through the fringe at the bottom of her
curtain without his having come into her room, and then she awoke to the
fact, with much amazement, that he was not coming. Having locked and
bolted her door, for greater security, she went to bed at last and remained
there, with her eyes open, thinking and barely understanding it all, without
being able to guess what he was going to do.
When her maid brought her tea she at the same time handed her a letter
from her husband. He told her that he was going to undertake a longish
journey and in a postscript added that his lawyer would provide her with any
sums of money she might require for all her expenses.

III

It was at the opera, between two acts of “Robert the Devil.” In the stalls the
men were standing up, with their hats on, their waistcoats cut very low so as
to show a large amount of white shirt front, in which gold and jewelled studs
glistened, and were looking at the boxes full of ladies in low dresses
covered with diamonds and pearls, who were expanding like flowers in that
illuminated hothouse, where the beauty of their faces and the whiteness of
their shoulders seemed to bloom in order to be gazed at, amid the sound of
the music and of human voices.
Two friends, with their backs to the orchestra, were scanning those rows
of elegance, that exhibition of real or false charms, of jewels, of luxury and
of pretension which displayed itself in all parts of the Grand Theatre, and
one of them, Roger de Salnis, said to his companion, Bernard Grandin:
“Just look how beautiful the Comtesse de Mascaret still is.”
The older man in turn looked through his opera glasses at a tall lady in a
box opposite. She appeared to be still very young, and her striking beauty
seemed to attract all eyes in every corner of the house. Her pale complexion,
of an ivory tint, gave her the appearance of a statue, while a small diamond
coronet glistened on her black hair like a streak of light.
When he had looked at her for some time, Bernard Grandin replied with a
jocular accent of sincere conviction: “You may well call her beautiful!”
“How old do you think she is?”
“Wait a moment. I can tell you exactly, for I have known her since she was
a child and I saw her make her debut into society when she was quite a girl.
She is — she is — thirty — thirty-six.”
“Impossible!”
“I am sure of it.”
“She looks twenty-five.”
“She has had seven children.”
“It is incredible.”
“And what is more, they are all seven alive, as she is a very good mother.
I occasionally go to the house, which is a very quiet and pleasant one, where
one may see the phenomenon of the family in the midst of society.”
“How very strange! And have there never been any reports about her?”
“Never.”
“But what about her husband? He is peculiar, is he not?”
“Yes and no. Very likely there has been a little drama between them, one
of those little domestic dramas which one suspects, never finds out exactly,
but guesses at pretty closely.”
“What is it?”
“I do not know anything about it. Mascaret leads a very fast life now, after
being a model husband. As long as he remained a good spouse he had a
shocking temper, was crabbed and easily took offence, but since he has been
leading his present wild life he has become quite different, But one might
surmise that he has some trouble, a worm gnawing somewhere, for he has
aged very much.”
Thereupon the two friends talked philosophically for some minutes about
the secret, unknowable troubles which differences of character or perhaps
physical antipathies, which were not perceived at first, give rise to in
families, and then Roger de Salnis, who was still looking at Madame de
Mascaret through his opera glasses, said: “It is almost incredible that that
woman can have had seven children!”
“Yes, in eleven years; after which, when she was thirty, she refused to
have any more, in order to take her place in society, which she seems likely
to do for many years.”
“Poor women!”
“Why do you pity them?”
“Why? Ah! my dear fellow, just consider! Eleven years in a condition of
motherhood for such a woman! What a hell! All her youth, all her beauty,
every hope of success, every poetical ideal of a brilliant life sacrificed to
that abominable law of reproduction which turns the normal woman into a
mere machine for bringing children into the world.”
“What would you have? It is only Nature!”
“Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight against
Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal state. You may be
sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean, pretty, elegant or
accessory to our ideal; the human brain has done it. It is man who has
introduced a little grace, beauty, unknown charm and mystery into creation by
singing about it, interpreting it, by admiring it as a poet, idealizing it as an
artist and by explaining it through science, doubtless making mistakes, but
finding ingenious reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and
mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings,
full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment,
grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human
decrepitude. He seems to have made them only in order that they may
reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral
insects. I said reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and I adhere to
that expression. What is there as a matter of fact more ignoble and more
repugnant than that act of reproduction of living beings, against which all
delicate minds always have revolted and always will revolt? Since all the
organs which have been invented by this economical and malicious Creator
serve two purposes, why did He not choose another method of performing
that sacred mission, which is the noblest and the most exalted of all human
functions? The mouth, which nourishes the body by means of material food,
also diffuses abroad speech and thought. Our flesh renews itself of its own
accord, while we are thinking about it. The olfactory organs, through which
the vital air reaches the lungs, communicate all the perfumes of the world to
the brain: the smell of flowers, of woods, of trees, of the sea. The ear, which
enables us to communicate with our fellow men, has also allowed us to
invent music, to create dreams, happiness, infinite and even physical
pleasure by means of sound! But one might say that the cynical and cunning
Creator wished to prohibit man from ever ennobling and idealizing his
intercourse with women. Nevertheless man has found love, which is not a
bad reply to that sly Deity, and he has adorned it with so much poetry that
woman often forgets the sensual part of it. Those among us who are unable to
deceive themselves have invented vice and refined debauchery, which is
another way of laughing at God and paying homage, immodest homage, to
beauty.
“But the normal man begets children just like an animal coupled with
another by law.
“Look at that woman! Is it not abominable to think that such a jewel, such
a pearl, born to be beautiful, admired, feted and adored, has spent eleven
years of her life in providing heirs for the Comte de Mascaret?”
Bernard Grandin replied with a laugh: “There is a great deal of truth in all
that, but very few people would understand you.”
Salnis became more and more animated. “Do you know how I picture God
myself?” he said. “As an enormous, creative organ beyond our ken, who
scatters millions of worlds into space, just as one single fish would deposit
its spawn in the sea. He creates because it is His function as God to do so,
but He does not know what He is doing and is stupidly prolific in His work
and is ignorant of the combinations of all kinds which are produced by His
scattered germs. The human mind is a lucky little local, passing accident
which was totally unforeseen, and condemned to disappear with this earth
and to recommence perhaps here or elsewhere the same or different with
fresh combinations of eternally new beginnings. We owe it to this little lapse
of intelligence on His part that we are very uncomfortable in this world
which was not made for us, which had not been prepared to receive us, to
lodge and feed us or to satisfy reflecting beings, and we owe it to Him also
that we have to struggle without ceasing against what are still called the
designs of Providence, when we are really refined and civilized beings.”
Grandin, who was listening to him attentively as he had long known the
surprising outbursts of his imagination, asked him: “Then you believe that
human thought is the spontaneous product of blind divine generation?”
“Naturally! A fortuitous function of the nerve centres of our brain, like the
unforeseen chemical action due to new mixtures and similar also to a charge
of electricity, caused by friction or the unexpected proximity of some
substance, similar to all phenomena caused by the infinite and fruitful
fermentation of living matter.
“But, my dear fellow, the truth of this must be evident to any one who
looks about him. If the human mind, ordained by an omniscient Creator, had
been intended to be what it has become, exacting, inquiring, agitated,
tormented — so different from mere animal thought and resignation — would
the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are have
been this unpleasant little park for small game, this salad patch, this wooded,
rocky and spherical kitchen garden where your improvident Providence had
destined us to live naked, in caves or under trees, nourished on the flesh of
slaughtered animals, our brethren, or on raw vegetables nourished by the sun
and the rain?
“But it is sufficient to reflect for a moment, in order to understand that this
world was not made for such creatures as we are. Thought, which is
developed by a miracle in the nerves of the cells in our brain, powerless,
ignorant and confused as it is, and as it will always remain, makes all of us
who are intellectual beings eternal and wretched exiles on earth.
“Look at this earth, as God has given it to those who inhabit it. Is it not
visibly and solely made, planted and covered with forests for the sake of
animals? What is there for us? Nothing. And for them, everything, and they
have nothing to do but to eat or go hunting and eat each other, according to
their instincts, for God never foresaw gentleness and peaceable manners; He
only foresaw the death of creatures which were bent on destroying and
devouring each other. Are not the quail, the pigeon and the partridge the
natural prey of the hawk? the sheep, the stag and the ox that of the great flesh-
eating animals, rather than meat to be fattened and served up to us with
truffles, which have been unearthed by pigs for our special benefit?
“As to ourselves, the more civilized, intellectual and refined we are, the
more we ought to conquer and subdue that animal instinct, which represents
the will of God in us. And so, in order to mitigate our lot as brutes, we have
discovered and made everything, beginning with houses, then exquisite food,
sauces, sweetmeats, pastry, drink, stuffs, clothes, ornaments, beds,
mattresses, carriages, railways and innumerable machines, besides arts and
sciences, writing and poetry. Every ideal comes from us as do all the
amenities of life, in order to make our existence as simple reproducers, for
which divine Providence solely intended us, less monotonous and less hard.
“Look at this theatre. Is there not here a human world created by us,
unforeseen and unknown to eternal fate, intelligible to our minds alone, a
sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been invented solely by and
for that discontented and restless little animal, man?
“Look at that woman, Madame de Mascaret. God intended her to live in a
cave, naked or wrapped up in the skins of wild animals. But is she not better
as she is? But, speaking of her, does any one know why and how her brute of
a husband, having such a companion by his side, and especially after having
been boorish enough to make her a mother seven times, has suddenly left her,
to run after bad women?”
Grandin replied: “Oh! my dear fellow, this is probably the only reason.
He found that raising a family was becoming too expensive, and from reasons
of domestic economy he has arrived at the same principles which you lay
down as a philosopher.”
Just then the curtain rose for the third act, and they turned round, took off
their hats and sat down.

IV

The Comte and Comtesse Mascaret were sitting side by side in the carriage
which was taking them home from the Opera, without speaking but suddenly
the husband said to his wife: “Gabrielle!”
“What do you want?”
“Don’t you think that this has lasted long enough?”
“What?”
“The horrible punishment to which you have condemned me for the last
six years?”
“What do you want? I cannot help it.”
“Then tell me which of them it is.”
“Never.”
“Think that I can no longer see my children or feel them round me, without
having my heart burdened with this doubt. Tell me which of them it is, and I
swear that I will forgive you and treat it like the others.”
“I have not the right to do so.”
 “Do you not see that I can no longer endure this life, this thought which is
wearing me out, or this question which I am constantly asking myself, this
question which tortures me each time I look at them? It is driving me mad.”
“Then you have suffered a great deal?” she said.
“Terribly. Should I, without that, have accepted the horror of living by
your side, and the still greater horror of feeling and knowing that there is one
among them whom I cannot recognize and who prevents me from loving the
others?”
“Then you have really suffered very much?” she repeated.
And he replied in a constrained and sorrowful voice:
“Yes, for do I not tell you every day that it is intolerable torture to me?
Should I have remained in that house, near you and them, if I did not love
them? Oh! You have behaved abominably toward me. All the affection of my
heart I have bestowed upon my children, and that you know. I am for them a
father of the olden time, as I was for you a husband of one of the families of
old, for by instinct I have remained a natural man, a man of former days. Yes,
I will confess it, you have made me terribly jealous, because you are a
woman of another race, of another soul, with other requirements. Oh! I shall
never forget the things you said to me, but from that day I troubled myself no
more about you. I did not kill you, because then I should have had no means
on earth of ever discovering which of our — of your children is not mine. I
have waited, but I have suffered more than you would believe, for I can no
longer venture to love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no longer
venture to look at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I cannot take them on
my knee without asking myself, ‘Can it be this one?’ I have been correct in
my behavior toward you for six years, and even kind and complaisant. Tell
me the truth, and I swear that I will do nothing unkind.”
He thought, in spite of the darkness of the carriage, that he could perceive
that she was moved, and feeling certain that she was going to speak at last, he
said: “I beg you, I beseech you to tell me” he said.
“I have been more guilty than you think perhaps,” she replied, “but I could
no longer endure that life of continual motherhood, and I had only one means
of driving you from me. I lied before God and I lied, with my hand raised to
my children’s head, for I never have wronged you.”
He seized her arm in the darkness, and squeezing it as he had done on that
terrible day of their drive in the Bois de Boulogne, he stammered:
“Is that true?”
 “It is true.”
But, wild with grief, he said with a groan: “I shall have fresh doubts that
will never end! When did you lie, the last time or now? How am I to believe
you at present? How can one believe a woman after that? I shall never again
know what I am to think. I would rather you had said to me, ‘It is Jacques or
it is Jeanne.’”
The carriage drove into the courtyard of the house and when it had drawn
up in front of the steps the count alighted first, as usual, and offered his wife
his arm to mount the stairs. As soon as they reached the first floor he said:
“May I speak to you for a few moments longer?” And she replied, “I am quite
willing.”
They went into a small drawing-room and a footman, in some surprise,
lighted the wax candles. As soon as he had left the room and they were alone
the count continued: “How am I to know the truth? I have begged you a
thousand times to speak, but you have remained dumb, impenetrable,
inflexible, inexorable, and now to-day you tell me that you have been lying.
For six years you have actually allowed me to believe such a thing! No, you
are lying now, I do not know why, but out of pity for me, perhaps?”
She replied in a sincere and convincing manner: “If I had not done so, I
should have had four more children in the last six years!”
“Can a mother speak like that?”
“Oh!” she replied, “I do not feel that I am the mother of children who
never have been born; it is enough for me to be the mother of those that I have
and to love them with all my heart. I am a woman of the civilized world,
monsieur — we all are — and we are no longer, and we refuse to be, mere
females to restock the earth.”
She got up, but he seized her hands. “Only one word, Gabrielle. Tell me
the truth!”
“I have just told you. I never have dishonored you.”
He looked her full in the face, and how beautiful she was, with her gray
eyes, like the cold sky. In her dark hair sparkled the diamond coronet, like a
radiance. He suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this grand creature
was not merely a being destined to perpetuate the race, but the strange and
mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been
accumulating in us for centuries but which have been turned aside from their
primitive and divine object and have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly
perceived and intangible beauty. There are some women like that, who
blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of
civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and esthetic charm which
surround woman, a living statue that brightens our life.
Her husband remained standing before her, stupefied at his tardy and
obscure discovery, confusedly hitting on the cause of his former jealousy and
understanding it all very imperfectly, and at last lie said: “I believe you, for I
feel at this moment that you are not lying, and before I really thought that you
were.”
She put out her hand to him: “We are friends then?”
He took her hand and kissed it and replied: “We are friends. Thank you,
Gabrielle.”
Then he went out, still looking at her, and surprised that she was still so
beautiful and feeling a strange emotion arising in him.
 THE FATHER

He was a clerk in the Bureau of Public Education and lived at Batignolles.

He took the omnibus to Paris every morning and always sat opposite a girl,
with whom he fell in love.
She was employed in a shop and went in at the same time every day. She
was a little brunette, one of those girls whose eyes are so dark that they look
like black spots, on a complexion like ivory. He always saw her coming at
the corner of the same street, and she generally had to run to catch the heavy
vehicle, and sprang upon the steps before the horses had quite stopped. Then
she got inside, out of breath, and, sitting down, looked round her.
The first time that he saw her, Francois Tessier liked the face. One
sometimes meets a woman whom one longs to clasp in one’s arms without
even knowing her. That girl seemed to respond to some chord in his being, to
that sort of ideal of love which one cherishes in the depths of the heart,
without knowing it.
He looked at her intently, not meaning to be rude, and she became
embarrassed and blushed. He noticed it, and tried to turn away his eyes; but
he involuntarily fixed them upon her again every moment, although he tried to
look in another direction; and, in a few days, they seemed to know each other
without having spoken. He gave up his place to her when the omnibus was
full, and got outside, though he was very sorry to do it. By this time she had
got so far as to greet him with a little smile; and, although she always
dropped her eyes under his looks, which she felt were too ardent, yet she did
not appear offended at being looked at in such a manner.
They ended by speaking. A kind of rapid friendship had become
established between them, a daily freemasonry of half an hour, and that was
certainly one of the most charming half hours in his life to him. He thought of
her all the rest of the day, saw her image continually during the long office
hours. He was haunted and bewitched by that floating and yet tenacious
recollection which the form of a beloved woman leaves in us, and it seemed
to him that if he could win that little person it would be maddening happiness
to him, almost above human realization.
Every morning she now shook hands with him, and he preserved the sense
of that touch and the recollection of the gentle pressure of her little fingers
until the next day, and he almost fancied that he preserved the imprint on his
palm. He anxiously waited for this short omnibus ride, while Sundays
seemed to him heartbreaking days. However, there was no doubt that she
loved him, for one Saturday, in spring, she promised to go and lunch with him
at Maisons-Laffitte the next day.

II

She was at the railway station first, which surprised him, but she said:
“Before going, I want to speak to you. We have twenty minutes, and that is
more than I shall take for what I have to say.”
She trembled as she hung on his arm, and looked down, her cheeks pale,
as she continued: “I do not want you to be deceived in me, and I shall not go
there with you, unless you promise, unless you swear — not to do — not to
do anything — that is at all improper.”
She had suddenly become as red as a poppy, and said no more. He did not
know what to reply, for he was happy and disappointed at the same time. He
should love her less, certainly, if he knew that her conduct was light, but then
it would be so charming, so delicious to have a little flirtation.
As he did not say anything, she began to speak again in an agitated voice
and with tears in her eyes. “If you do not promise to respect me altogether, I
shall return home.” And so he squeezed her arm tenderly and replied: “I
promise, you shall only do what you like.” She appeared relieved in mind,
and asked, with a smile: “Do you really mean it?” And he looked into her
eyes and replied: “I swear it” “Now you may take the tickets,” she said.
During the journey they could hardly speak, as the carriage was full, and
when they reached Maisons-Laffite they went toward the Seine. The sun,
which shone full on the river, on the leaves and the grass, seemed to be
reflected in their hearts, and they went, hand in hand, along the bank, looking
at the shoals of little fish swimming near the bank, and they walked on,
brimming over with happiness, as if they were walking on air.
At last she said: “How foolish you must think me!”
“Why?” he asked. “To come out like this, all alone with you.”
 “Certainly not; it is quite natural.” “No, no; it is not natural for me —
because I do not wish to commit a fault, and yet this is how girls fall. But if
you only knew how wretched it is, every day the same thing, every day in the
month and every month in the year. I live quite alone with mamma, and as she
has had a great deal of trouble, she is not very cheerful. I do the best I can,
and try to laugh in spite of everything, but I do not always succeed. But, all
the same, it was wrong in me to come, though you, at any rate, will not be
sorry.”
By way of an answer, he kissed her ardently on the ear that was nearest
him, but she moved from him with an abrupt movement, and, getting suddenly
angry, exclaimed: “Oh! Monsieur Francois, after what you swore to me!”
And they went back to Maisons-Laffitte.
They had lunch at the Petit-Havre, a low house, buried under four
enormous poplar trees, by the side of the river. The air, the heat, the weak
white wine and the sensation of being so close together made them silent;
their faces were flushed and they had a feeling of oppression; but, after the
coffee, they regained their high spirits, and, having crossed the Seine, started
off along the bank, toward the village of La Frette. Suddenly he asked:
“What-is your name?”
“Louise.”
“Louise,” he repeated and said nothing more.
The girl picked daisies and made them into a great bunch, while he sang
vigorously, as unrestrained as a colt that has been turned into a meadow. On
their left a vine-covered slope followed the river. Francois stopped
motionless with astonishment: “Oh, look there!” he said.
The vines had come to an end, and the whole slope was covered with
lilac bushes in flower. It was a purple wood! A kind of great carpet of
flowers stretched over the earth, reaching as far as the village, more than two
miles off. She also stood, surprised and delighted, and murmured: “Oh! how
pretty!” And, crossing a meadow, they ran toward that curious low hill,
which, every year, furnishes all the lilac that is drawn through Paris on the
carts of the flower venders.
There was a narrow path beneath the trees, so they took it, and when they
came to a small clearing, sat down.
Swarms of flies were buzzing around them and making a continuous,
gentle sound, and the sun, the bright sun of a perfectly still day, shone over
the bright slopes and from that forest of blossoms a powerful fragrance was
borne toward them, a breath of perfume, the breath of the flowers.
A church clock struck in the distance, and they embraced gently, then,
without the knowledge of anything but that kiss, lay down on the grass. But
she soon came to herself with the feeling of a great misfortune, and began to
cry and sob with grief, with her face buried in her hands.
He tried to console her, but she wanted to start to return and to go home
immediately; and she kept saying, as she walked along quickly: “Good
heavens! good heavens!”
He said to her: “Louise! Louise! Please let us stop here.” But now her
cheeks were red and her eyes hollow, and, as soon as they got to the railway
station in Paris, she left him without even saying good-by. III
When he met her in the omnibus, next day, she appeared to him to be
changed and thinner, and she said to him: “I want to speak to you; we will get
down at the Boulevard.”
As soon as they were on the pavement, she said:
“We must bid each other good-by; I cannot meet you again.” “But why?”
he asked. “Because I cannot; I have been culpable, and I will not be so
again.”
Then he implored her, tortured by his love, but she replied firmly: “No, I
cannot, I cannot.” He, however, only grew all the more excited and promised
to marry her, but she said again: “No,” and left him.
For a week he did not see her. He could not manage to meet her, and, as he
did not know her address, he thought that he had lost her altogether. On the
ninth day, however, there was a ring at his bell, and when he opened the
door, she was there. She threw herself into his arms and did not resist any
longer, and for three months they were close friends. He was beginning to
grow tired of her, when she whispered something to him, and then he had one
idea and wish: to break with her at any price. As, however, he could not do
that, not knowing how to begin, or what to say, full of anxiety through fear of
the consequences of his rash indiscretion, he took a decisive step: one night
he changed his lodgings and disappeared.
The blow was so heavy that she did not look, for the man who had
abandoned her, but threw herself at her mother’s knees and confessed her
misfortune, and, some months after, gave birth to a boy. IV
Years passed, and Francois Tessier grew old, without there having been
any alteration in his life. He led the dull, monotonous life of an office clerk,
without hope and without expectation. Every day he got up at the same time,
went through the same streets, went through the same door, past the same
porter, went into the same office, sat in the same chair, and did the same
work. He was alone in the world, alone during the day in the midst of his
different colleagues, and alone at night in his bachelor’s lodgings, and he laid
by a hundred francs a month against old age.
Every Sunday he went to the Champs-Elysees, to watch the elegant
people, the carriages and the pretty women, and the next day he used to say to
one of his colleagues: “The return of the carriages from the Bois du Boulogne
was very brilliant yesterday.” One fine Sunday morning, however, he went
into the Parc Monceau, where the mothers and nurses, sitting on the sides of
the walks, watched the children playing, and suddenly Francois Tessier
started. A woman passed by, holding two children by the hand, a little boy of
about ten and a little girl of four. It was she!
He walked another hundred yards anti then fell into a chair, choking with
emotion. She had not recognized him, and so he came back, wishing to see
her again. She was sitting down now, and the boy was standing by her side
very quietly, while the little girl was making sand castles. It was she, it was
certainly she, but she had the reserved appearance of a lady, was dressed
simply, and looked self-possessed and dignified. He looked at her from a
distance, for he did not venture to go near; but the little boy raised his head,
and Francois Tessier felt himself tremble. It was his own son, there could be
no doubt of that. And, as he looked at him, he thought he could recognize
himself as he appeared in an old photograph taken years ago. He remained
hidden behind a tree, waiting for her to go that he might follow her.
He did not sleep that night. The idea of the child especially tormented
him. His son! Oh, if he could only have known, have been sure! But what
could he have done? However, he went to the house where she lived and
asked about her. He was told that a neighbor, an honorable man of strict
morals, had been touched by her distress and had married her; he knew the
fault she had committed and had married her, and had even recognized the
child, his, Francois Tessier’s child, as his own.
He returned to the Parc Monceau every Sunday, for then he always saw
her, and each time he was seized with a mad, an irresistible longing to take
his son into his arms, to cover him with kisses and to steal him, to carry him
off.
 He suffered horribly in his wretched isolation as an old bachelor, with
nobody to care for him, and he also suffered atrocious mental torture, torn by
paternal tenderness springing from remorse, longing and jealousy and from
that need of loving one’s own children which nature has implanted in all. At
last he determined to make a despairing attempt, and, going up to her, as she
entered the park, he said, standing in the middle of the path, pale and with
trembling lips: “You do not recognize me.” She raised her eyes, looked at
him, uttered an exclamation of horror, of terror, and, taking the two children
by the hand, she rushed away, dragging them after her, while he went home
and wept inconsolably.
Months passed without his seeing her again, but he suffered, day and night,
for he was a prey to his paternal love. He would gladly have died, if he
could only have kissed his son; he would have committed murder, performed
any task, braved any danger, ventured anything. He wrote to her, but she did
not reply, and, after writing her some twenty letters, he saw that there was no
hope of altering her determination, and then he formed the desperate
resolution of writing to her husband, being quite prepared to receive a bullet
from a revolver, if need be. His letter only consisted of a few lines, as
follows:
“Monsieur: You must have a perfect horror of my name, but I am so
wretched, so overcome by misery that my only hope is in you, and, therefore,
I venture to request you to grant me an interview of only five minutes.
“I have the honor, etc.”
The next day he received the reply:
“Monsieur: I shall expect you to-morrow, Tuesday, at five o’clock.”
As he went up the staircase, Francois Tessier’s heart beat so violently that
he had to stop several times. There was a dull and violent thumping noise in
his breast, as of some animal galloping; and he could breathe only with
difficulty, and had to hold on to the banisters, in order not to fall.
He rang the bell on the third floor, and when a maid servant had opened
the door, he asked: “Does Monsieur Flamel live here?” “Yes, monsieur.
Kindly come in.”
He was shown into the drawing-room; he was alone, and waited, feeling
bewildered, as in the midst of a catastrophe, until a door opened, and a man
came in. He was tall, serious and rather stout, and wore a black frock coat,
and pointed to a chair with his hand. Francois Tessier sat down, and then
said, with choking breath: “Monsieur — monsieur — I do not know whether
you know my name — whether you know — — “
Monsieur Flamel interrupted him. “You need not tell it me, monsieur, I
know it. My wife has spoken to me about you.” He spoke in the dignified
tone of voice of a good man who wishes to be severe, and with the
commonplace stateliness of an honorable man, and Francois Tessier
continued:
“Well, monsieur, I want to say this: I am dying of grief, of remorse, of
shame, and I would like once, only once to kiss the child.”
Monsieur Flamel got up and rang the bell, and when the servant came in,
he said: “Will you bring Louis here?” When she had gone out, they remained
face to face, without speaking, as they had nothing more to say to one another,
and waited. Then, suddenly, a little boy of ten rushed into the room and ran
up to the man whom he believed to be his father, but he stopped when he saw
the stranger, and Monsieur Flamel kissed him and said: “Now, go and kiss
that gentleman, my dear.” And the child went up to the stranger and looked at
him.
Francois Tessier had risen. He let his hat fall, and was ready to fall
himself as he looked at his son, while Monsieur Flamel had turned away,
from a feeling of delicacy, and was looking out of the window.
The child waited in surprise; but he picked up the hat and gave it to the
stranger. Then Francois, taking the child up in his arms, began to kiss him
wildly all over his face; on his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth, his hair; and the
youngster, frightened at the shower of kisses, tried to avoid them, turned
away his head, and pushed away the man’s face with his little hands. But
suddenly Francois Tessier put him down and cried: “Good-by! good-by!”
And he rushed out of the room as if he had been a thief.
 MY UNCLE SOSTHENES

Some people are Freethinkers from sheer stupidity. My Uncle Sosthenes was
one of these. Some people are often religious for the same reason. The very
sight of a priest threw my uncle into a violent rage. He would shake his fist
and make grimaces at him, and would then touch a piece of iron when the
priest’s back was turned, forgetting that the latter action showed a belief after
all, the belief in the evil eye. Now, when beliefs are unreasonable, one
should have all or none at all. I myself am a Freethinker; I revolt at all
dogmas, but feel no anger toward places of worship, be they Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman, Protestant, Greek, Russian, Buddhist, Jewish, or
Mohammedan.
My uncle was a Freemason, and I used to declare that they are stupider
than old women devotees. That is my opinion, and I maintain it; if we must
have any religion at all, the old one is good enough for me.
What is their object? Mutual help to be obtained by tickling the palms of
each other’s hands. I see no harm in it, for they put into practice the Christian
precept: “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.” The only
difference consists in the tickling, but it does not seem worth while to make
such a fuss about lending a poor devil half a crown.
To all my arguments my uncle’s reply used to be:
“We are raising up a religion against a religion; Free Thought will kill
clericalism. Freemasonry is the stronghold, of those who are demolishing all
deities.”
“Very well, my dear uncle,” I would reply — in my heart I felt inclined to
say, “You old idiot! it is just that which I am blaming you for. Instead of
destroying, you are organizing competition; it is only a case of lowering
prices. And then, if you admitted only Freethinkers among you, I could
understand it, but you admit anybody. You have a number of Catholics among
you, even the leaders of the party. Pius IX is said to have been one of you
before he became pope. If you call a society with such an organization a
bulwark against clericalism, I think it is an extremely weak one.”
 “My dear boy,” my uncle would reply, with a wink, “we are most to be
dreaded in politics; slowly and surely we are everywhere undermining the
monarchical spirit.”
Then I broke out: “Yes, you are very clever! If you tell me that
Freemasonry is an election machine, I will grant it. I will never deny that it is
used as a machine to control candidates of all shades; if you say that it is only
used to hoodwink people, to drill them to go to the polls as soldiers are sent
under fire, I agree with you; if you declare that it is indispensable to all
political ambitions because it changes all its members into electoral agents, I
should say to you: ‘That is as clear as the sun.’ But when you tell me that it
serves to undermine the monarchical spirit, I can only laugh in your face.
“Just consider that gigantic and secret democratic association which had
Prince Napoleon for its grand master under the Empire; which has the Crown
Prince for its grand master in Germany, the Czar’s brother in Russia, and to
which the Prince of Wales and King Humbert, and nearly all the crowned
heads of the globe belong.”
“You are quite right,” my uncle said; “but all these persons are serving our
projects without guessing it.”
I felt inclined to tell him he was talking a pack of nonsense.
It was, however, indeed a sight to see my uncle when he had a Freemason
to dinner.
On meeting they shook hands in a manner that was irresistibly funny; one
could see that they were going through a series of secret, mysterious signs.
Then my uncle would take his friend into a corner to tell him something
important, and at dinner they had a peculiar way of looking at each other, and
of drinking to each other, in a manner as if to say: “We know all about it,
don’t we?”
And to think that there are millions on the face of the globe who are
amused at such monkey tricks! I would sooner be a Jesuit.
Now, in our town there really was an old Jesuit who was my uncle’s
detestation. Every time he met him, or if he only saw him at a distance, he
used to say: “Get away, you toad.” And then, taking my arm, he would
whisper to me:
“See here, that fellow will play me a trick some day or other, I feel sure
of it.”
My uncle spoke quite truly, and this was how it happened, and through my
fault.
 It was close on Holy Week, and my uncle made up his mind to give a
dinner on Good Friday, a real dinner, with his favorite chitterlings and black
puddings. I resisted as much as I could, and said:
“I shall eat meat on that day, but at home, quite by myself. Your
manifestation, as you call it, is an idiotic idea. Why should you manifest?
What does it matter to you if people do not eat any meat?”
But my uncle would not be persuaded. He asked three of his friends to
dine with him at one of the best restaurants in the town, and as he was going
to pay the bill I had certainly, after all, no scruples about manifesting.
At four o’clock we took a conspicuous place in the most frequented
restaurant in the town, and my uncle ordered dinner in a loud voice for six
o’clock.
We sat down punctually, and at ten o’clock we had not yet finished. Five
of us had drunk eighteen bottles of choice, still wine and four of champagne.
Then my uncle proposed what he was in the habit of calling “the
archbishop’s circuit.” Each man put six small glasses in front of him, each of
them filled with a different liqueur, and they had all to be emptied at one
gulp, one after another, while one of the waiters counted twenty. It was very
stupid, but my uncle thought it was very suitable to the occasion.
At eleven o’clock he was as drunk as a fly. So we had to take him home in
a cab and put him to bed, and one could easily foresee that his anti-clerical
demonstration would end in a terrible fit of indigestion.
As I was going back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a
cheerful drunkenness, a Machiavellian idea struck me which satisfied all my
sceptical instincts.
I arranged my necktie, put on a look of great distress, and went and, rang
loudly at the old Jesuit’s door. As he was deaf he made me wait a longish
while, but at length appeared at his window in a cotton nightcap and asked
what I wanted.
I shouted out at the top of my voice:
“Make haste, reverend sir, and open the door; a poor, despairing, sick man
is in need of your spiritual ministrations.”
The good, kind man put on his trousers as quickly as he could, and came
down without his cassock. I told him in a breathless voice that my uncle, the
Freethinker, had been taken suddenly ill, and fearing it was going to be
something serious, he had been seized with a sudden dread of death, and
wished to see the priest and talk to him; to have his advice and comfort, to
make his peace with the Church, and to confess, so as to be able to cross the
dreaded threshold at peace with himself; and I added in a mocking tone:
“At any rate, he wishes it, and if it does him no good it can do him no
harm.”
The old Jesuit, who was startled, delighted, and almost trembling, said to
me:
“Wait a moment, my son; I will come with you.” But I replied: “Pardon
me, reverend father, if I do not go with you; but my convictions will not
allow me to do so. I even refused to come and fetch you, so I beg you not to
say that you have seen me, but to declare that you had a presentiment — a
sort of revelation of his illness.”
The priest consented and went off quickly; knocked at my uncle’s door,
and was soon let in; and I saw the black cassock disappear within that
stronghold of Free Thought.
I hid under a neighboring gateway to wait results. Had he been well, my
uncle would have half-murdered the Jesuit, but I knew that he would scarcely
be able to move an arm, and I asked myself gleefully what sort of a scene
would take place between these antagonists, what disputes, what arguments,
what a hubbub, and what would be the issue of the situation, which my
uncle’s indignation would render still more tragic?
I laughed till my sides ached, and said half aloud: “Oh, what a joke, what
a joke!”
Meanwhile it was getting very cold, and I noticed that the Jesuit stayed a
long time, and I thought: “They are having an argument, I suppose.”
One, two, three hours passed, and still the reverend father did not come
out. What had happened? Had my uncle died in a fit when he saw him, or had
he killed the cassocked gentleman? Perhaps they had mutually devoured each
other? This last supposition appeared very unlikely, for I fancied that my
uncle was quite incapable of swallowing a grain more nourishment at that
moment.
At last the day broke.
I was very uneasy, and, not venturing to go into the house myself, went to
one of my friends who lived opposite. I woke him up, explained matters to
him, much to his amusement and astonishment, and took possession of his
window.
At nine o’clock he relieved me, and I got a little sleep. At two o’clock I,
in my turn, replaced him. We were utterly astonished.
 At six o’clock the Jesuit left, with a very happy and satisfied look on his
face, and we saw him go away with a quiet step.
Then, timid and ashamed, I went and knocked at the door of my uncle’s
house; and when the servant opened it I did not dare to ask her any questions,
but went upstairs without saying a word.
My uncle was lying, pale and exhausted, with weary, sorrowful eyes and
heavy arms, on his bed. A little religious picture was fastened to one of the
bed curtains with a pin.
“Why, uncle,” I said, “in bed still? Are you not well?”
He replied in a feeble voice:
“Oh, my dear boy, I have been very ill, nearly dead.”
“How was that, uncle?”
“I don’t know; it was most surprising. But what is stranger still is that the
Jesuit priest who has just left — you know, that excellent man whom I have
made such fun of — had a divine revelation of my state, and came to see
me.”
I was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh, and with
difficulty said: “Oh, really!”
“Yes, he came. He heard a voice telling him to get up and come to me,
because I was going to die. I was a revelation.”
I pretended to sneeze, so as not to burst out laughing; I felt inclined to roll
on the ground with amusement.
In about a minute I managed to say indignantly:
“And you received him, uncle? You, a Freethinker, a Freemason? You did
not have him thrown out of doors?”
He seemed confused, and stammered:
“Listen a moment, it is so astonishing — so astonishing and providential!
He also spoke to me about my father; it seems he knew him formerly.”
“Your father, uncle? But that is no reason for receiving a Jesuit.”
“I know that, but I was very ill, and he looked after me most devotedly all
night long. He was perfect; no doubt he saved my life; those men all know a
little of medicine.”
“Oh! he looked after you all night? But you said just now that he had only
been gone a very short time.”
“That is quite true; I kept him to breakfast after all his kindness. He had it
at a table by my bedside while I drank a cup of tea.”
“And he ate meat?”
 My uncle looked vexed, as if I had said something very uncalled for, and
then added:
“Don’t joke, Gaston; such things are out of place at times. He has shown
me more devotion than many a relation would have done, and I expect to
have his convictions respected.”
This rather upset me, but I answered, nevertheless: “Very well, uncle; and
what did you do after breakfast?”
“We played a game of bezique, and then he repeated his breviary while I
read a little book which he happened to have in his pocket, and which was
not by any means badly written.”
“A religious book, uncle?”
“Yes, and no, or, rather — no. It is the history of their missions in Central
Africa, and is rather a book of travels and adventures. What these men have
done is very grand.”
I began to feel that matters were going badly, so I got up. “Well, good-by,
uncle,” I said, “I see you are going to give up Freemasonry for religion; you
are a renegade.”
He was still rather confused, and stammered:
“Well, but religion is a sort of Freemasonry.”
“When is your Jesuit coming back?” I asked.
“I don’t — I don’t know exactly; to-morrow, perhaps; but it is not
certain.”
I went out, altogether overwhelmed.
My joke turned out very badly for me! My uncle became thoroughly
converted, and if that had been all I should not have cared so much. Clerical
or Freemason, to me it is all the same; six of one and half a dozen of the
other; but the worst of it is that he has just made his will — yes, made his
will — and he has disinherited me in favor of that rascally Jesuit!
 THE BARONESS

“Come with me,” said my friend Boisrene, “you will see some very
interesting bric-a-brac and works of art there.”
He conducted me to the first floor of an elegant house in one of the big
streets of Paris. We were welcomed by a very pleasing man, with excellent
manners, who led us from room to room, showing us rare things, the price of
which he mentioned carelessly. Large sums, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty thousand
francs, dropped from his lips with such grace and ease that one could not
doubt that this gentleman-merchant had millions shut up in his safe.
I had known him by reputation for a long time Very bright, clever,
intelligent, he acted as intermediary in all sorts of transactions. He kept in
touch with all the richest art amateurs in Paris, and even of Europe and
America, knowing their tastes and preferences; he apprised them by letter, or
by wire if they lived in a distant city, as soon as he knew of some work of art
which might suit them.
Men of the best society had had recourse to him in times of difficulty,
either to find money for gambling, or to pay off a debt, or to sell a picture, a
family jewel, or a tapestry.
It was said that he never refused his services when he saw a chance of
gain.
Boisrene seemed very intimate with this strange merchant. They must have
worked together in many a deal. I observed the man with great interest.
He was tall, thin, bald, and very elegant. His soft, insinuating voice had a
peculiar, tempting charm which seemed to give the objects a special value.
When he held anything in his hands, he turned it round and round, looking at it
with such skill, refinement, and sympathy that the object seemed immediately
to be beautiful and transformed by his look and touch. And its value
increased in one’s estimation, after the object had passed from the showcase
into his hands.
“And your Crucifix,” said Boisrene, “that beautiful Renaissance Crucifix
which you showed me last year?”
The man smiled and answered:
 “It has been sold, and in a very peculiar manner. There is a real Parisian
story for you! Would you like to hear it?”
“With pleasure.”
“Do you know the Baroness Samoris?”
“Yes and no. I have seen her once, but I know what she is!”
“You know — everything?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind telling me, so that I can see whether you are not
mistaken?”
“Certainly. Mme. Samoris is a woman of the world who has a daughter,
without anyone having known her husband. At any rate, she is received in a
certain tolerant, or blind society. She goes to church and devoutly partakes of
Communion, so that everyone may know it, and she never compromises
herself. She expects her daughter to marry well. Is that correct?”
“Yes, but I will complete your information. She is a woman who makes
herself respected by her admirers in spite of everything. That is a rare
quality, for in this manner she can get what she wishes from a man. The man
whom she has chosen without his suspecting it courts her for a long time,
longs for her timidly, wins her with astonishment and possesses her with
consideration. He does not notice that he is paying, she is so tactful; and she
maintains her relations on such a footing of reserve and dignity that he would
slap the first man who dared doubt her in the least. And all this in the best of
faith.
“Several times I have been able to render little services to this woman.
She has no secrets from me.
“Toward the beginning of January she came to me in order to borrow
thirty thousand francs. Naturally, I did not lend them to her; but, as I wished
to oblige her, I told her to explain her situation to me completely, so that I
might see whether there was not something I could do for her.
“She told me her troubles in such cautious language that she could not
have spoken more delicately of her child’s first communion. I finally
managed to understand that times were hard, and that she was penniless.
“The commercial crisis, political unrest, rumors of war, had made money
scarce even in the hands of her clients. And then, of course, she was very
particular.
“She would associate only with a man in the best of society, who could
strengthen her reputation as well as help her financially. A reveller, no matter
how rich, would have compromised her forever, and would have made the
marriage of her daughter quite doubtful.
“She had to maintain her household expenses and continue to entertain, in
order not to lose the opportunity of finding, among her numerous visitors, the
discreet and distinguished friend for whom she was waiting, and whom she
would choose.
“I showed her that my thirty thousand francs would have but little
likelihood of returning to me; for, after spending them all, she would have to
find at least sixty thousand more, in a lump, to pay me back.
“She seemed very disheartened when she heard this. I did not know just
what to do, when an idea, a really fine idea, struck me.
“I had just bought this Renaissance Crucifix which I showed you, an
admirable piece of workmanship, one of the finest of its land that I have ever
seen.
“‘My dear friend,’ I said to her, ‘I am going to send you that piece of
ivory. You will invent some ingenious, touching, poetic story, anything that
you wish, to explain your desire for parting with it. It is, of course, a family
heirloom left you by your father.
“‘I myself will send you amateurs, or will bring them to you. The rest
concerns you. Before they come I will drop you a line about their position,
both social and financial. This Crucifix is worth fifty thousand francs; but I
will let it go for thirty thousand. The difference will belong to you.’
“She considered the matter seriously for several minutes, and then
answered: ‘Yes, it is, perhaps, a good idea. I thank you very-much.’
“The next day I sent her my Crucifix, and the same evening the Baron de
Saint-Hospital.
“For three months I sent her my best clients, from a business point of
view. But I heard nothing more from her.
“One day I received a visit from a foreigner who spoke very little French.
I decided to introduce him personally to the baroness, in order to see how
she was getting along.
“A footman in black livery received us and ushered us into a quiet little
parlor, furnished with taste, where we waited for several minutes. She
appeared, charming as usual, extended her hand to me and invited us to be
seated; and when I had explained the reason of my visit, she rang.
“The footman appeared.
 “‘See if Mlle. Isabelle can let us go into her oratory.’ The young girl
herself brought the answer. She was about fifteen years of age, modest and
good to look upon in the sweet freshness of her youth. She wished to conduct
us herself to her chapel.
“It was a kind of religious boudoir where a silver lamp was burning
before the Crucifix, my Crucifix, on a background of black velvet. The setting
was charming and very clever. The child crossed herself and then said:
“‘Look, gentlemen. Isn’t it beautiful?’
“I took the object, examined it and declared it to be remarkable. The
foreigner also examined it, but he seemed much more interested in the two
women than in the crucifix.
“A delicate odor of incense, flowers and perfume pervaded the whole
house. One felt at home there. This really was a comfortable home, where
one would have liked to linger.
“When we had returned to the parlor I delicately broached the subject of
the price. Mme. Samoris, lowering her eyes, asked fifty thousand francs.
“Then she added: ‘If you wish to see it again, monsieur, I very seldom go
out before three o’clock; and I can be found at home every day.’
“In the street the stranger asked me for some details about the baroness,
whom he had found charming. But I did not hear anything more from either of
them.
“Three months passed by.
“One morning, hardly two weeks ago, she came here at about lunch time,
and, placing a roll of bills in my hand, said: ‘My dear, you are an angel! Here
are fifty thousand francs; I am buying your crucifix, and I am paying twenty
thousand francs more for it than the price agreed upon, on condition that you
always — always send your clients to me — for it is sill for sale.’”
 MOTHER AND SON

A party of men were chatting in the smoking room after dinner. We were
talking of unexpected legacies, strange inheritances. Then M. le Brument,
who was sometimes called “the illustrious judge” and at other times “the
illustrious lawyer,” went and stood with his back to the fire.
“I have,” said he, “to search for an heir who disappeared under peculiarly
distressing circumstances. It is one of those simple and terrible dramas of
ordinary life, a thing which possibly happens every day, and which is
nevertheless one of the most dreadful things I know. Here are the facts:
“Nearly six months ago I was called to the bedside of a dying woman. She
said to me:
“‘Monsieur, I want to intrust to you the most delicate, the most difficult,
and the most wearisome mission that can be conceived. Be good enough to
notice my will, which is there on the table. A sum of five thousand francs is
left to you as a fee if you do not succeed, and of a hundred thousand francs if
you do succeed. I want you to find my son after my death.’
“She asked me to assist her to sit up in bed, in order that she might talk
with greater ease, for her voice, broken and gasping, was whistling in her
throat.
“It was a very wealthy establishment. The luxurious apartment, of an
elegant simplicity, was upholstered with materials as thick as walls, with a
soft inviting surface.
“The dying woman continued:
“‘You are the first to hear my horrible story. I will try to have strength
enough to finish it. You must know all, in order that you, whom I know to be a
kind-hearted man as well as a man of the world, may have a sincere desire to
aid me with all your power.
“‘Listen to me:
“‘Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by
my family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterward, I married a
man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance, through obedience,
through indifference, as young girls do marry.
 “‘I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.
“‘He whom I had loved had married, in his turn. When he saw that I was a
widow, he was crushed by grief at knowing he was not free. He came to see
me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly, that it was enough to break my heart. He
came to see me at first as a friend. Perhaps I ought not to have received him.
What could I do? I was alone, so sad, so solitary, so hopeless! And I loved
him still. What sufferings we women have sometimes to endure!
“‘I had only him in the world, my parents being dead. He came frequently;
he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him come so often,
seeing that he was married. But I had not enough will-power to prevent him
from coming.
“‘How can I tell it? — he became my lover. How did this come about?
Can I explain it? Can any one explain such things? Do you think it could be
otherwise when two human beings are drawn to each other by the irresistible
force of mutual affection? Do you believe, monsieur, that it is always in our
power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle forever, and refuse to yield
to the prayers, the supplications, the tears, the frenzied words, the appeals on
bended knees, the transports of passion, with which we are pursued by the
man we adore, whom we want to gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom
we desire to crown with every possible happiness, and whom, if we are to
be guided by a worldly code of honor, we must drive to despair? What
strength would it not require? What a renunciation of happiness? what self-
denial? and even what virtuous selfishness?
“‘In short, monsieur, I was his mistress; and I was happy. I became — and
this was my greatest weakness and my greatest piece of cowardice-I became
his wife’s friend.
“‘We brought up my son together; we made a man of him, a thorough man,
intelligent, full of sense and resolution, of large and generous ideas. The boy
reached the age of seventeen.
“‘He, the young man, was fond of my — my lover, almost as fond of him
as I was myself, for he had been equally cherished and cared for by both of
us. He used to call him his ‘dear friend,’ and respected him immensely,
having never received from him anything but wise counsels and an example
of integrity, honor, and probity. He looked upon him as an old loyal and
devoted comrade of his mother, as a sort of moral father, guardian, protector
— how am I to describe it?
 “‘Perhaps the reason why he never asked any questions was that he had
been accustomed from his earliest years to see this man in my house, at my
side, and at his side, always concerned about us both.
“‘One evening the three of us were to dine together — this was my chief
amusement — and I waited for the two men, asking myself which of them
would be the first to arrive. The door opened; it was my old friend. I went
toward him, with outstretched arms; and he pressed my lips in a long,
delicious kiss.
“‘All of a sudden, a slight sound, a faint rustling, that mysterious sensation
which indicates the presence of another person, made us start and turn round
abruptly. Jean, my son, stood there, livid, staring at us.
“‘There was a moment of atrocious confusion. I drew back, holding out
my hand toward my son as if in supplication; but I could not see him. He had
gone.
“‘We remained facing each other — my lover and I — crushed, unable to
utter a word. I sank into an armchair, and I felt a desire, a vague, powerful
desire, to flee, to go out into the night, and to disappear forever. Then
convulsive sobs rose in my throat, and I wept, shaken with spasms, my heart
breaking, all my nerves writhing with the horrible sensation of an
irreparable, misfortune, and with that dreadful sense of shame which, in such
moments as this, fills a mother’s heart.
“‘He looked at me in a terrified manner, not venturing to approach, to
speak to me, or to touch me, for fear of the boy’s return. At last he said:
“‘I am going to follow him-to talk to him — to explain matters to him. In
short, I must see him and let him know — — “
“‘And he hurried away.
“‘I waited — waited in a distracted frame of mind, trembling at the least
sound, starting with fear and with some unutterably strange and intolerable
emotion at every slight crackling of the fire in the grate.
“‘I waited an hour, two hours, feeling my heart swell with a dread I had
never before experienced, such anguish that I would not wish the greatest
criminal to endure ten minutes of such misery. Where was my son? What was
he doing?
“‘About midnight, a messenger brought me a note from my lover. I still
know its contents by heart:
“‘Has your son returned? I did not find him. I am down here. I do not want
to go up at this hour.”
 “‘I wrote in pencil on the same slip of paper:
“‘Jean has not returned. You must find him.”
“‘And I ‘remained all night in the armchair, waiting for him.
“‘I felt as if I were going mad. I longed to run wildly about, to roll on the
ground. And yet I did not even stir, but kept waiting hour after hour. What
was going to happen? I tried to imagine, to guess. But I could form no
conception, in spite of my efforts, in spite of the tortures of my soul!
“‘And now I feared that they might meet. What would they do in that case?
What would my son do? My mind was torn with fearful doubts, with terrible
suppositions.
“‘You can understand my feelings, can you not, monsieur? “‘My
chambermaid, who knew nothing, who understood nothing, came into the
room every moment, believing, naturally, that I had lost my reason. I sent her
away with a word or a movement of the hand. She went for the doctor, who
found me in the throes of a nervous attack.
“‘I was put to bed. I had brain fever.
“‘When I regained consciousness, after a long illness, I saw beside my
bed my — lover — alone.
“‘I exclaimed:
“‘My son? Where is my son?
“‘He made no reply. I stammered:
“‘Dead-dead. Has he committed suicide?
“‘No, no, I swear it. But we have not found him in spite of all my efforts.
“‘Then, becoming suddenly exasperated and even indignant — for women
are subject to such outbursts of unaccountable and unreasoning anger — I
said:
“‘I forbid you to come near me or to see me again unless you find him. Go
away!
“He did go away.
“‘I have never seen one or the other of them since, monsieur, and thus I
have lived for the last twenty years.
“‘Can you imagine what all this meant to me? Can you understand this
monstrous punishment, this slow, perpetual laceration of a mother’s heart,
this abominable, endless waiting? Endless, did I say? No; it is about to end,
for I am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing either of them — either
one or the other!
 “‘He — the man I loved — has written to me every day for the last twenty
years; and I — I have never consented to see him, even for one second; for I
had a strange feeling that, if he were to come back here, my son would make
his appearance at the same moment. Oh! my son! my son! Is he dead? Is he
living? Where is he hiding? Over there, perhaps, beyond the great ocean, in
some country so far away that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he
ever think of me? Ah! if he only knew! How cruel one’s children are! Did he
understand to what frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of
despair, into what tortures, he cast me while I was still in the prime of life,
leaving me to suffer until this moment, when I am about to die — me, his
mother, who loved him with all the intensity of a mother’s love? Oh! isn’t it
cruel, cruel?
“‘You will tell him all this, monsieur — will you not? You will repeat to
him my last words:
“‘My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh toward poor women! Life
is already brutal and savage enough in its dealings with them. My dear son,
think of what the existence of your poor mother has been ever since the day
you left her. My dear child, forgive her, and love her, now that she is dead,
for she has had to endure the most frightful penance ever inflicted on a
woman.”
“She gasped for breath, trembling, as if she had addressed the last words
to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.
“Then she added:
“‘You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw-the other.’
“Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice, she said:
“‘Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are not
with me.’”
Maitre Le Brument added:
“And I left the house, monsieurs, crying like a fool, so bitterly, indeed,
that my coachman turned round to stare at me.
“And to think that, every day, dramas like this are being enacted all
around us!
“I have not found the son — that son — well, say what you like about him,
but I call him that criminal son!”
 THE HAND

All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge, who was giving his
opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery. For a month this in explicable crime
had been the talk of Paris. Nobody could make head or tail of it.
M. Bermutier, standing with his back to the fireplace, was talking, citing
the evidence, discussing the various theories, but arriving at no conclusion.
Some women had risen, in order to get nearer to him, and were standing
with their eyes fastened on the clean-shaven face of the judge, who was
saying such weighty things. They, were shaking and trembling, moved by fear
and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the horrible, which
haunts the soul of every woman. One of them, paler than the others, said
during a pause:
“It’s terrible. It verges on the supernatural. The truth will never be
known.”
The judge turned to her:
“True, madame, it is likely that the actual facts will never be discovered.
As for the word ‘supernatural’ which you have just used, it has nothing to do
with the matter. We are in the presence of a very cleverly conceived and
executed crime, so well enshrouded in mystery that we cannot disentangle it
from the involved circumstances which surround it. But once I had to take
charge of an affair in which the uncanny seemed to play a part. In fact, the
case became so confused that it had to be given up.”
Several women exclaimed at once:
“Oh! Tell us about it!”
M. Bermutier smiled in a dignified manner, as a judge should, and went
on:
“Do not think, however, that I, for one minute, ascribed anything in the
case to supernatural influences. I believe only in normal causes. But if,
instead of using the word ‘supernatural’ to express what we do not
understand, we were simply to make use of the word ‘inexplicable,’ it would
be much better. At any rate, in the affair of which I am about to tell you, it is
especially the surrounding, preliminary circumstances which impressed me.
Here are the facts:
“I was, at that time, a judge at Ajaccio, a little white city on the edge of a
bay which is surrounded by high mountains.
“The majority of the cases which came up before me concerned vendettas.
There are some that are superb, dramatic, ferocious, heroic. We find there the
most beautiful causes for revenge of which one could dream, enmities
hundreds of years old, quieted for a time but never extinguished; abominable
stratagems, murders becoming massacres and almost deeds of glory. For two
years I heard of nothing but the price of blood, of this terrible Corsican
prejudice which compels revenge for insults meted out to the offending
person and all his descendants and relatives. I had seen old men, children,
cousins murdered; my head was full of these stories.
“One day I learned that an Englishman had just hired a little villa at the
end of the bay for several years. He had brought with him a French servant,
whom he had engaged on the way at Marseilles.
“Soon this peculiar person, living alone, only going out to hunt and fish,
aroused a widespread interest. He never spoke to any one, never went to the
town, and every morning he would practice for an hour or so with his
revolver and rifle.
“Legends were built up around him. It was said that he was some high
personage, fleeing from his fatherland for political reasons; then it was
affirmed that he was in hiding after having committed some abominable
crime. Some particularly horrible circumstances were even mentioned.
“In my judicial position I thought it necessary to get some information
about this man, but it was impossible to learn anything. He called himself Sir
John Rowell.
“I therefore had to be satisfied with watching him as closely as I could,
but I could see nothing suspicious about his actions.
“However, as rumors about him were growing and becoming more
widespread, I decided to try to see this stranger myself, and I began to hunt
regularly in the neighborhood of his grounds.
“For a long time I watched without finding an opportunity. At last it came
to me in the shape of a partridge which I shot and killed right in front of the
Englishman. My dog fetched it for me, but, taking the bird, I went at once to
Sir John Rowell and, begging his pardon, asked him to accept it.
 “He was a big man, with red hair and beard, very tall, very broad, a kind
of calm and polite Hercules. He had nothing of the so-called British stiffness,
and in a broad English accent he thanked me warmly for my attention. At the
end of a month we had had five or six conversations.
“One night, at last, as I was passing before his door, I saw him in the
garden, seated astride a chair, smoking his pipe. I bowed and he invited me
to come in and have a glass of beer. I needed no urging.
“He received me with the most punctilious English courtesy, sang the
praises of France and of Corsica, and declared that he was quite in love with
this country.
“Then, with great caution and under the guise of a vivid interest, I asked
him a few questions about his life and his plans. He answered without
embarrassment, telling me that he had travelled a great deal in Africa, in the
Indies, in America. He added, laughing:
“‘I have had many adventures.’
“Then I turned the conversation on hunting, and he gave me the most
curious details on hunting the hippopotamus, the tiger, the elephant and even
the gorilla.
“I said:
“‘Are all these animals dangerous?’
“He smiled:
“‘Oh, no! Man is the worst.’
“And he laughed a good broad laugh, the wholesome laugh of a contented
Englishman.
“‘I have also frequently been man-hunting.’
“Then he began to talk about weapons, and he invited me to come in and
see different makes of guns.
“His parlor was draped in black, black silk embroidered in gold. Big
yellow flowers, as brilliant as fire, were worked on the dark material.
“He said:
“‘It is a Japanese material.’
“But in the middle of the widest panel a strange thing attracted my
attention. A black object stood out against a square of red velvet. I went up to
it; it was a hand, a human hand. Not the clean white hand of a skeleton, but a
dried black hand, with yellow nails, the muscles exposed and traces of old
blood on the bones, which were cut off as clean as though it had been
chopped off with an axe, near the middle of the forearm.
 “Around the wrist, an enormous iron chain, riveted and soldered to this
unclean member, fastened it to the wall by a ring, strong enough to hold an
elephant in leash.
“I asked:
“‘What is that?’
“The Englishman answered quietly:
“‘That is my best enemy. It comes from America, too. The bones were
severed by a sword and the skin cut off with a sharp stone and dried in the
sun for a week.’
“I touched these human remains, which must have belonged to a giant. The
uncommonly long fingers were attached by enormous tendons which still had
pieces of skin hanging to them in places. This hand was terrible to see; it
made one think of some savage vengeance.
“I said:
“‘This man must have been very strong.’
“The Englishman answered quietly:
“‘Yes, but I was stronger than he. I put on this chain to hold him.’
“I thought that he was joking. I said:
“‘This chain is useless now, the hand won’t run away.’
“Sir John Rowell answered seriously:
“‘It always wants to go away. This chain is needed.’
“I glanced at him quickly, questioning his face, and I asked myself:
“‘Is he an insane man or a practical joker?’
“But his face remained inscrutable, calm and friendly. I turned to other
subjects, and admired his rifles.
“However, I noticed that he kept three loaded revolvers in the room, as
though constantly in fear of some attack.
“I paid him several calls. Then I did not go any more. People had become
used to his presence; everybody had lost interest in him.
“A whole year rolled by. One morning, toward the end of November, my
servant awoke me and announced that Sir John Rowell had been murdered
during the night.
“Half an hour later I entered the Englishman’s house, together with the
police commissioner and the captain of the gendarmes. The servant,
bewildered and in despair, was crying before the door. At first I suspected
this man, but he was innocent.
“The guilty party could never be found.
 “On entering Sir John’s parlor, I noticed the body, stretched out on its
back, in the middle of the room.
“His vest was torn, the sleeve of his jacket had been pulled off, everything
pointed to, a violent struggle.
“The Englishman had been strangled! His face was black, swollen and
frightful, and seemed to express a terrible fear. He held something between
his teeth, and his neck, pierced by five or six holes which looked as though
they had been made by some iron instrument, was covered with blood.
“A physician joined us. He examined the finger marks on the neck for a
long time and then made this strange announcement:
“‘It looks as though he had been strangled by a skeleton.’
“A cold chill seemed to run down my back, and I looked over to where I
had formerly seen the terrible hand. It was no longer there. The chain was
hanging down, broken.
“I bent over the dead man and, in his contracted mouth, I found one of the
fingers of this vanished hand, cut — or rather sawed off by the teeth down to
the second knuckle.
“Then the investigation began. Nothing could be discovered. No door,
window or piece of furniture had been forced. The two watch dogs had not
been aroused from their sleep.
“Here, in a few words, is the testimony of the servant:
“For a month his master had seemed excited. He had received many
letters, which he would immediately burn.
“Often, in a fit of passion which approached madness, he had taken a
switch and struck wildly at this dried hand riveted to the wall, and which had
disappeared, no one knows how, at the very hour of the crime.
“He would go to bed very late and carefully lock himself in. He always
kept weapons within reach. Often at night he would talk loudly, as though he
were quarrelling with some one.
“That night, somehow, he had made no noise, and it was only on going to
open the windows that the servant had found Sir John murdered. He
suspected no one.
“I communicated what I knew of the dead man to the judges and public
officials. Throughout the whole island a minute investigation was carried on.
Nothing could be found out.
“One night, about three months after the crime, I had a terrible nightmare. I
seemed to see the horrible hand running over my curtains and walls like an
immense scorpion or spider. Three times I awoke, three times I went to sleep
again; three times I saw the hideous object galloping round my room and
moving its fingers like legs.
“The following day the hand was brought me, found in the cemetery, on
the grave of Sir John Rowell, who had been buried there because we had
been unable to find his family. The first finger was missing.
“Ladies, there is my story. I know nothing more.”
The women, deeply stirred, were pale and trembling. One of them
exclaimed:
“But that is neither a climax nor an explanation! We will be unable to
sleep unless you give us your opinion of what had occurred.”
The judge smiled severely:
“Oh! Ladies, I shall certainly spoil your terrible dreams. I simply believe
that the legitimate owner of the hand was not dead, that he came to get it with
his remaining one. But I don’t know how. It was a kind of vendetta.”
One of the women murmured:
“No, it can’t be that.”
And the judge, still smiling, said:
“Didn’t I tell you that my explanation would not satisfy you?”
 A TRESS OF HAIR

OR

THE HEAD OF HAIR

The walls of the cell were bare and white washed. A narrow grated window,
placed so high that one could not reach it, lighted this sinister little room. The
mad inmate, seated on a straw chair, looked at us with a fixed, vacant and
haunted expression. He was very thin, with hollow cheeks and hair almost
white, which one guessed might have turned gray in a few months. His
clothes appeared to be too large for his shrunken limbs, his sunken chest and
empty paunch. One felt that this man’s mind was destroyed, eaten by his
thoughts, by one thought, just as a fruit is eaten by a worm. His craze, his idea
was there in his brain, insistent, harassing, destructive. It wasted his frame
little by little. It — the invisible, impalpable, intangible, immaterial idea —
was mining his health, drinking his blood, snuffing out his life.
What a mystery was this man, being killed by an ideal! He aroused
sorrow, fear and pity, this madman. What strange, tremendous and deadly
thoughts dwelt within this forehead which they creased with deep wrinkles
which were never still?
“He has terrible attacks of rage,” said the doctor to me. “His is one of the
most peculiar cases I have ever seen. He has seizures of erotic and
macaberesque madness. He is a sort of necrophile. He has kept a journal in
which he sets forth his disease with the utmost clearness. In it you can, as it
were, put your finger on it. If it would interest you, you may go over this
document.”
I followed the doctor into his office, where he handed me this wretched
man’s diary, saying: “Read it and tell me what you think of it.” I read as
follows:
“Until the age of thirty-two I lived peacefully, without knowing love. Life
appeared very simple, very pleasant and very easy. I was rich. I enjoyed so
many things that I had no passion for anything in particular. It was good to be
alive! I awoke happy every morning and did those things that pleased me
during the day and went to bed at night contented, in the expectation of a
peaceful tomorrow and a future without anxiety.
“I had had a few flirtations without my heart being touched by any true
passion or wounded by any of the sensations of true love. It is good to live
like that. It is better to love, but it is terrible. And yet those who love in the
ordinary way must experience ardent happiness, though less than mine
possibly, for love came to me in a remarkable manner.
“As I was wealthy, I bought all kinds of old furniture and old curiosities,
and I often thought of the unknown hands that had touched these objects, of
the eyes that had admired them, of the hearts that had loved them; for one
does love things! I sometimes remained hours and hours looking at a little
watch of the last century. It was so tiny, so pretty with its enamel and gold
chasing. And it kept time as on the day when a woman first bought it,
enraptured at owning this dainty trinket. It had not ceased to vibrate, to live
its mechanical life, and it had kept up its regular tick-tock since the last
century. Who had first worn it on her bosom amid the warmth of her clothing,
the heart of the watch beating beside the heart of the woman? What hand had
held it in its warm fingers, had turned it over and then wiped the enamelled
shepherds on the case to remove the slight moisture from her fingers? What
eyes had watched the hands on its ornamental face for the expected, the
beloved, the sacred hour?
“How I wished I had known her, seen her, the woman who had selected
this exquisite and rare object! She is dead! I am possessed with a longing for
women of former days. I love, from afar, all those who have loved. The story
of those dead and gone loves fills my heart with regrets. Oh, the beauty, the
smiles, the youthful caresses, the hopes! Should not all that be eternal?
“How I have wept whole nights-thinking of those poor women of former
days, so beautiful, so loving, so sweet, whose arms were extended in an
embrace, and who now are dead! A kiss is immortal! It goes from lips to
lips, from century to century, from age to age. Men receive them, give them
and die.
“The past attracts me, the present terrifies me because the future means
death. I regret all that has gone by. I mourn all who have lived; I should like
to check time, to stop the clock. But time goes, it goes, it passes, it takes from
me each second a little of myself for the annihilation of to-morrow. And I
shall never live again.
 “Farewell, ye women of yesterday. I love you!
“But I am not to be pitied. I found her, the one I was waiting for, and
through her I enjoyed inestimable pleasure.
“I was sauntering in Paris on a bright, sunny morning, with a happy heart
and a high step, looking in at the shop windows with the vague interest of an
idler. All at once I noticed in the shop of a dealer in antiques a piece of
Italian furniture of the seventeenth century. It was very handsome, very rare. I
set it down as being the work of a Venetian artist named Vitelli, who was
celebrated in his day.
“I went on my way.
“Why did the remembrance of that piece of furniture haunt me with such
insistence that I retraced my steps? I again stopped before the shop, in order
to take another look at it, and I felt that it tempted me.
“What a singular thing temptation is! One gazes at an object, and, little by
little, it charms you, it disturbs you, it fills your thoughts as a woman’s face
might do. The enchantment of it penetrates your being, a strange enchantment
of form, color and appearance of an inanimate object. And one loves it, one
desires it, one wishes to have it. A longing to own it takes possession of you,
gently at first, as though it were timid, but growing, becoming intense,
irresistible.
“And the dealers seem to guess, from your ardent gaze, your secret and
increasing longing.
“I bought this piece of furniture and had it sent home at once. I placed it in
my room.
“Oh, I am sorry for those who do not know the honeymoon of the collector
with the antique he has just purchased. One looks at it tenderly and passes
one’s hand over it as if it were human flesh; one comes back to it every
moment, one is always thinking of it, wherever ore goes, whatever one does.
The dear recollection of it pursues you in the street, in society, everywhere;
and when you return home at night, before taking off your gloves or your hat;
you go and look at it with the tenderness of a lover.
“Truly, for eight days I worshipped this piece of furniture. I opened its
doors and pulled out the drawers every few moments. I handled it with
rapture, with all the intense joy of possession.
“But one evening I surmised, while I was feeling the thickness of one of
the panels, that there must be a secret drawer in it: My heart began to beat,
and I spent the night trying to discover this secret cavity.
 “I succeeded on the following day by driving a knife into a slit in the
wood. A panel slid back and I saw, spread out on a piece of black velvet, a
magnificent tress of hair.
“Yes, a woman’s hair, an immense coil of fair hair, almost red, which
must have been cut off close to the head, tied with a golden cord.
“I stood amazed, trembling, confused. An almost imperceptible perfume,
so ancient that it seemed to be the spirit of a perfume, issued from this
mysterious drawer and this remarkable relic.
“I lifted it gently, almost reverently, and took it out of its hiding place. It at
once unwound in a golden shower that reached to the floor, dense but light;
soft and gleaming like the tail of a comet.
“A strange emotion filled me. What was this? When, how, why had this
hair been shut up in this drawer? What adventure, what tragedy did this
souvenir conceal? Who had cut it off? A lover on a day of farewell, a
husband on a day of revenge, or the one whose head it had graced on the day
of despair?
“Was it as she was about to take the veil that they had cast thither that love
dowry as a pledge to the world of the living? Was it when they were going to
nail down the coffin of the beautiful young corpse that the one who had
adored her had cut off her tresses, the only thing that he could retain of her,
the only living part of her body that would not suffer decay, the only thing he
could still love, and caress, and kiss in his paroxysms of grief?
“Was it not strange that this tress should have remained as it was in life,
when not an atom of the body on which it grew was in existence?
“It fell over my fingers, tickled the skin with a singular caress, the caress
of a dead woman. It affected me so that I felt as though I should weep.
“I held it in my hands for a long time, then it seemed as if it disturbed me,
as though something of the soul had remained in it. And I put it back on the
velvet, rusty from age, and pushed in the drawer, closed the doors of the
antique cabinet and went out for a walk to meditate.
“I walked along, filled with sadness and also with unrest, that unrest that
one feels when in love. I felt as though I must have lived before, as though I
must have known this woman.
“And Villon’s lines came to my mind like a sob:
Tell me where, and in what place
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman,
Hipparchia and Thais
 Who was her cousin-german?

Echo answers in the breeze

O’er river and lake that blows,
Their beauty was above all praise,
But where are last year’s snows?

The queen, white as lilies,

Who sang as sing the birds,
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
Ermengarde, princess of Maine,
And Joan, the good Lorraine,
Burned by the English at Rouen,
Where are they, Virgin Queen?
And where are last year’s snows?
“When I got home again I felt an irresistible longing to see my singular
treasure, and I took it out and, as I touched it, I felt a shiver go all through me.
“For some days, however, I was in my ordinary condition, although the
thought of that tress of hair was always present to my mind.
“Whenever I came into the house I had to see it and take it in my, hands. I
turned the key of the cabinet with the same hesitation that one opens the door
leading to one’s beloved, for in my hands and my heart I felt a confused,
singular, constant sensual longing to plunge my hands in the enchanting
golden flood of those dead tresses.
“Then, after I had finished caressing it and had locked the cabinet I felt as
if it were a living thing, shut up in there, imprisoned; and I longed to see it
again. I felt again the imperious desire to take it in my hands, to touch it, to
even feel uncomfortable at the cold, slippery, irritating, bewildering contact.
“I lived thus for a month or two, I forget how long. It obsessed me,
haunted me. I was happy and tormented by turns, as when one falls in love,
and after the first vows have been exchanged.
“I shut myself in the room with it to feel it on my skin, to bury my lips in
it, to kiss it. I wound it round my face, covered my eyes with the golden flood
so as to see the day gleam through its gold.
“I loved it! Yes, I loved it. I could not be without it nor pass an hour
without looking at it.
“And I waited — I waited — for what? I do not know — For her!
 “One night I woke up suddenly, feeling as though I were not alone in my
room.
“I was alone, nevertheless, but I could not go to sleep again, and, as I was
tossing about feverishly, I got up to look at the golden tress. It seemed softer
than usual, more life-like. Do the dead come back? I almost lost
consciousness as I kissed it. I took it back with me to bed and pressed it to
my lips as if it were my sweetheart.
“Do the dead come back? She came back. Yes, I saw her; I held her in my
arms, just as she was in life, tall, fair and round. She came back every
evening — the dead woman, the beautiful, adorable, mysterious unknown.
“My happiness was so great that I could not conceal it. No lover ever
tasted such intense, terrible enjoyment. I loved her so well that I could not be
separated from her. I took her with me always and everywhere. I walked
about the town with her as if she were my wife, and took her to the theatre,
always to a private box. But they saw her — they guessed — they arrested
me. They put me in prison like a criminal. They took her. Oh, misery!”
Here the manuscript stopped. And as I suddenly raised my astonished eyes
to the doctor a terrific cry, a howl of impotent rage and of exasperated
longing resounded through the asylum.
“Listen,” said the doctor. “We have to douse the obscene madman with
water five times a day. Sergeant Bertrand was the only one who was in love
with the dead.”
Filled with astonishment, horror and pity, I stammered out:
“But — that tress — did it really exist?”
The doctor rose, opened a cabinet full of phials and instruments and
tossed over a long tress of fair hair which flew toward me like a golden bird.
I shivered at feeling its soft, light touch on my hands. And I sat there, my
heart beating with disgust and desire, disgust as at the contact of anything
accessory to a crime and desire as at the temptation of some infamous and
mysterious thing.
The doctor said as he shrugged his shoulders:
“The mind of man is capable of anything.”
 THE CRIPPLE

The following adventure happened to me about 1882. I had just taken the
train and settled down in a corner, hoping that I should be left alone, when
the door suddenly opened again and I heard a voice say: “Take care,
monsieur, we are just at a crossing; the step is very high.”
Another voice answered: “That’s all right, Laurent, I have a firm hold on
the handle.”
Then a head appeared, and two hands seized the leather straps hanging on
either side of the door and slowly pulled up an enormous body, whose feet
striking on the step, sounded like two canes. When the man had hoisted his
torso into the compartment I noticed, at the loose edge of his trousers, the end
of a wooden leg, which was soon followed by its mate. A head appeared
behind this traveller and asked; “Are you all right, monsieur?”
“Yes, my boy.”
“Then here are your packages and crutches.”
And a servant, who looked like an old soldier, climbed in, carrying in his
arms a stack of bundles wrapped in black and yellow papers and carefully
tied; he placed one after the other in the net over his master’s head. Then he
said: “There, monsieur, that is all. There are five of them — the candy, the
doll the drum, the gun, and the pate de foies gras.”
“Very well, my boy.”
“Thank you, Laurent; good health!”
The man closed the door and walked away, and I looked at my neighbor.
He was about thirty-five, although his hair was almost white; he wore the
ribbon of the Legion of Honor; he had a heavy mustache and was quite stout,
with the stoutness of a strong and active man who is kept motionless on
account of some infirmity. He wiped his brow, sighed, and, looking me full in
the face, he asked: “Does smoking annoy you, monsieur?”
“No, monsieur.”
Surely I knew that eye, that voice, that face. But when and where had I
seen them? I had certainly met that man, spoken to him, shaken his hand. That
was a long, long time ago. It was lost in the haze wherein the mind seems to
feel around blindly for memories and pursues them like fleeing phantoms
without being able to seize them. He, too, was observing me, staring me out
of countenance, with the persistence of a man who remembers slightly but not
completely. Our eyes, embarrassed by this persistent contact, turned away;
then, after a few minutes, drawn together again by the obscure and tenacious
will of working memory, they met once more, and I said: “Monsieur, instead
of staring at each other for an hour or so, would it not be better to try to
discover where we have known each other?”
My neighbor answered graciously: “You are quite right, monsieur.”
I named myself: “I am Henri Bonclair, a magistrate.”
He hesitated for a few minutes; then, with the vague look and voice which
accompany great mental tension, he said: “Oh, I remember perfectly. I met
you twelve years ago, before the war, at the Poincels!”
“Yes, monsieur. Ah! Ah! You are Lieutenant Revaliere?”
“Yes. I was Captain Revaliere even up to the time when I lost my feet —
both of them together from one cannon ball.”
Now that we knew each other’s identity we looked at each other again. I
remembered perfectly the handsome, slender youth who led the cotillons with
such frenzied agility and gracefulness that he had been nicknamed “the fury.”
Going back into the dim, distant past, I recalled a story which I had heard and
forgotten, one of those stories to which one listens but forgets, and which
leave but a faint impression upon the memory.
There was something about love in it. Little by little the shadows cleared
up, and the face of a young girl appeared before my eyes. Then her name
struck me with the force of an explosion: Mademoiselle de Mandel. I
remembered everything now. It was indeed a love story, but quite
commonplace. The young girl loved this young man, and when I had met them
there was already talk of the approaching wedding. The youth seemed to be
very much in love, very happy.
I raised my eye to the net, where all the packages which had been brought
in by the servant were trembling from the motion of the train, and the voice of
the servant came back to me, as if he had just finished speaking. He had said:
“There, monsieur, that is all. There are five of them: the candy, the doll, the
drum, the gun, and the pate de foies gras.”
Then, in a second, a whole romance unfolded itself in my head. It was like
all those which I had already read, where the young lady married
notwithstanding the catastrophe, whether physical or financial; therefore, this
officer who had been maimed in the war had returned, after the campaign, to
the young girl who had given him her promise, and she had kept her word.
I considered that very beautiful, but simple, just as one, considers simple
all devotions and climaxes in books or in plays. It always seems, when one
reads or listens to these stories of magnanimity, that one could sacrifice one’s
self with enthusiastic pleasure and overwhelming joy. But the following day,
when an unfortunate friend comes to borrow some money, there is a strange
revulsion of feeling.
But, suddenly, another supposition, less poetic and more realistic,
replaced the first one. Perhaps he had married before the war, before this
frightful accident, and she, in despair and resignation, had been forced to
receive, care for, cheer, and support this husband, who had departed, a
handsome man, and had returned without his feet, a frightful wreck, forced
into immobility, powerless anger, and fatal obesity.
Was he happy or in torture? I was seized with an irresistible desire to
know his story, or, at least, the principal points, which would permit me to
guess that which he could not or would not tell me. Still thinking the matter
over, I began talking to him. We had exchanged a few commonplace words;
and I raised my eyes to the net, and thought: “He must have three children: the
bonbons are for his wife, the doll for his little girl, the drum and the gun for
his sons, and this pate de foies gras for himself.”
Suddenly I asked him: “Are you a father, monsieur?”
He answered: “No, monsieur.”
I suddenly felt confused, as if I had been guilty of some breach of
etiquette, and I continued: “I beg your pardon. I had thought that you were
when I heard your servant speaking about the toys. One listens and draws
conclusions unconsciously.”
He smiled and then murmured: “No, I am not even married. I am still at
the preliminary stage.”
I pretended suddenly to remember, and said:
“Oh! that’s true! When I knew you, you were engaged to Mademoiselle de
Mandel, I believe.”
“Yes, monsieur, your memory is excellent.”
I grew very bold and added: “I also seem to remember hearing that
Mademoiselle de Mandel married Monsieur — Monsieur— “
He calmly mentioned the name: “Monsieur de Fleurel.”
 “Yes, that’s it! I remember it was on that occasion that I heard of your
wound.”
I looked him full in the face, and he blushed. His full face, which was
already red from the oversupply of blood, turned crimson. He answered
quickly, with a sudden ardor of a man who is pleading a cause which is lost
in his mind and in his heart, but which he does not wish to admit.
“It is wrong, monsieur, to couple my name with that of Madame de
Fleurel. When I returned from the war-without my feet, alas! I never would
have permitted her to become my wife. Was it possible? When one marries,
monsieur, it is not in order to parade one’s generosity; it is in order to live
every day, every hour, every minute, every second beside a man; and if this
man is disfigured, as I am, it is a death sentence to marry him! Oh, I
understand, I admire all sacrifices and devotions when they have a limit, but
I do not admit that a woman should give up her whole life, all joy, all her
dreams, in order to satisfy the admiration of the gallery. When I hear, on the
floor of my room, the tapping of my wooden legs and of my crutches, I grow
angry enough to strangle my servant. Do you think that I would permit a
woman to do what I myself am unable to tolerate? And, then, do you think
that my stumps are pretty?”
He was silent. What could I say? He certainly was right. Could I blame
her, hold her in contempt, even say that she was wrong? No. However, the
end which conformed to the rule, to the truth, did not satisfy my poetic
appetite. These heroic deeds demand a beautiful sacrifice, which seemed to
be lacking, and I felt a certain disappointment. I suddenly asked: “Has
Madame de Fleurel any children?”
“Yes, one girl and two boys. It is for them that I am bringing these toys.
She and her husband are very kind to me.”
The train was going up the incline to Saint-Germain. It passed through the
tunnels, entered the station, and stopped. I was about to offer my arm to the
wounded officer, in order to help him descend, when two hands were
stretched up to him through the open door.
“Hello! my dear Revaliere!”
“Ah! Hello, Fleurel!”
Standing behind the man, the woman, still beautiful, was smiling and
waving her hands to him. A little girl, standing beside her, was jumping for
joy, and two young boys were eagerly watching the drum and the gun, which
were passing from the car into their father’s hands.
 When the cripple was on the ground, all the children kissed him. Then
they set off, the little girl holding in her hand the small varnished rung of a
crutch, just as she might walk beside her big friend and hold his thumb.
 A STROLL

When Old Man Leras, bookkeeper for Messieurs Labuze and Company, left
the store, he stood for a minute bewildered at the glory of the setting sun. He
had worked all day in the yellow light of a small jet of gas, far in the back of
the store, on a narrow court, as deep as a well. The little room where he had
been spending his days for forty years was so dark that even in the middle of
summer one could hardly see without gaslight from eleven until three.
It was always damp and cold, and from this hole on which his window
opened came the musty odor of a sewer.
For forty years Monsieur Leras had been arriving every morning in this
prison at eight o’clock, and he would remain there until seven at night,
bending over his books, writing with the industry of a good clerk.
He was now making three thousand francs a year, having started at fifteen
hundred. He had remained a bachelor, as his means did not allow him the
luxury of a wife, and as he had never enjoyed anything, he desired nothing.
From time to time, however, tired of this continuous and monotonous work,
he formed a platonic wish: “Gad! If I only had an income of fifteen thousand
francs, I would take life easy.”
He had never taken life easy, as he had never had anything but his monthly
salary. His life had been uneventful, without emotions, without hopes. The
faculty of dreaming with which every one is blessed had never developed in
the mediocrity of his ambitions.
When he was twenty-one he entered the employ of Messieurs Labuze and
Company. And he had never left them.
In 1856 he had lost his father and then his mother in 1859. Since then the
only incident in his life was when he moved, in 1868, because his landlord
had tried to raise his rent.
Every day his alarm clock, with a frightful noise of rattling chains, made
him spring out of bed at 6 o’clock precisely.
Twice, however, this piece of mechanism had been out of order — once
in 1866 and again in 1874; he had never been able to find out the reason why.
He would dress, make his bed, sweep his room, dust his chair and the top of
his bureau. All this took him an hour and a half.
Then he would go out, buy a roll at the Lahure Bakery, in which he had
seen eleven different owners without the name ever changing, and he would
eat this roll on the way to the office.
His entire existence had been spent in the narrow, dark office, which was
still decorated with the same wall paper. He had entered there as a young
man, as assistant to Monsieur Brument, and with the desire to replace him.
He had taken his place and wished for nothing more.
The whole harvest of memories which other men reap in their span of
years, the unexpected events, sweet or tragic loves, adventurous journeys, all
the occurrences of a free existence, all these things had remained unknown to
him.
Days, weeks, months, seasons, years, all were alike to him. He got up
every day at the same hour, started out, arrived at the office, ate luncheon,
went away, had dinner and went to bed without ever interrupting the regular
monotony of similar actions, deeds and thoughts.
Formerly he used to look at his blond mustache and wavy hair in the little
round mirror left by his predecessor. Now, every evening before leaving, he
would look at his white mustache and bald head in the same mirror. Forty
years had rolled by, long and rapid, dreary as a day of sadness and as similar
as the hours of a sleepless night. Forty years of which nothing remained, not
even a memory, not even a misfortune, since the death of his parents. Nothing.
That day Monsieur Leras stood by the door, dazzled at the brilliancy of the
setting sun; and instead of returning home he decided to take a little stroll
before dinner, a thing which happened to him four or five times a year.
He reached the boulevards, where people were streaming along under the
green trees. It was a spring evening, one of those first warm and pleasant
evenings which fill the heart with the joy of life.
Monsieur Leras went along with his mincing old man’s step; he was going
along with joy in his heart, at peace with the world. He reached the Champs-
Elysees, and he continued to walk, enlivened by the sight of the young people
trotting along.
The whole sky was aflame; the Arc de Triomphe stood out against the
brilliant background of the horizon, like a giant surrounded by fire. As he
approached the immense monument, the old bookkeeper noticed that he was
hungry, and he went into a wine dealer’s for dinner.
 The meal was served in front of the store, on the sidewalk. It consisted of
some mutton, salad and asparagus. It was the best dinner that Monsieur Leras
had had in a long time. He washed down his cheese with a small bottle of
burgundy, had his after-dinner cup of coffee, a thing which he rarely took, and
finally a little pony of brandy.
When he had paid he felt quite youthful, even a little moved. And he said
to himself: “What a fine evening! I will continue my stroll as far as the
entrance to the Bois de Boulogne. It will do me good.” He set out. An old
tune which one of his neighbors used to sing kept returning to his mind. He
kept on humming it over and over again. A hot, still night had fallen over
Paris. Monsieur Leras walked along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and
watched the cabs drive by. They kept coming with their shining lights, one
behind the other, giving horn a glimpse of the couples inside, the women in
their light dresses and the men dressed in black.
It was one long procession of lovers, riding under the warm, starlit sky.
They kept on coming in rapid succession. They passed by in the carriages,
silent, side by side, lost in their dreams, in the emotion of desire, in the
anticipation of the approaching embrace. The warm shadows seemed to be
full of floating kisses. A sensation of tenderness filled the air. All these
carriages full of tender couples, all these people intoxicated with the same
idea, with the same thought, seemed to give out a disturbing, subtle
emanation.
At last Monsieur Leras grew a little tired of walking, and he sat down on
a bench to watch these carriages pass by with their burdens of love. Almost
immediately a woman walked up to him and sat down beside him. “Good-
evening, papa,” she said.
He answered: “Madame, you are mistaken.”
She slipped her arm through his, saying: “Come along, now; don’t be
foolish. Listen — — “
He arose and walked away, with sadness in his heart. A few yards away
another woman walked up to him and asked: “Won’t you sit down beside
me?” He said: “What makes you take up this life?”
She stood before him and in an altered, hoarse, angry voice exclaimed:
“Well, it isn’t for the fun of it, anyhow!”
He insisted in a gentle voice: “Then what makes you?”
She grumbled: “I’ve got to live! Foolish question!” And she walked away,
humming.
 Monsieur Leras stood there bewildered. Other women were passing near
him, speaking to him and calling to him. He felt as though he were enveloped
in darkness by something disagreeable.
He sat down again on a bench. The carriages were still rolling by. He
thought: “I should have done better not to come here; I feel all upset.” He
began to think of all this venal or passionate love, of all these kisses, sold or
given, which were passing by it front of him. Love! He scarcely knew it. In
his lifetime he had only known two or three women, his means forcing him to
live a quiet life, and he looked back at the life which he had led, so different
from everybody else, so dreary, so mournful, so empty.
Some people are really unfortunate. And suddenly, as though a veil had
been torn from his eyes, he perceived the infinite misery, the monotony of his
existence: the past, present and future misery; his last day similar to his first
one, with nothing before him, behind him or about him, nothing in his heart or
any place.
The stream of carriages was still going by. In the rapid passage of the
open carriage he still saw the two silent, loving creatures. It seemed to him
that the whole of humanity was flowing on before him, intoxicated with joy,
pleasure and happiness. He alone was looking on. To-morrow he would
again be alone, always alone, more so than any one else. He stood up, took a
few steps, and suddenly he felt as tired as though he had taken a long journey
on foot, and he sat down on the next bench.
What was he waiting for? What was he hoping for? Nothing. He was
thinking of how pleasant it must be in old age to return home and find the
little children. It is pleasant to grow old when one is surrounded by those
beings who owe their life to you, who love you, who caress you, who tell
you charming and foolish little things which warm your heart and console you
for everything.
And, thinking of his empty room, clean and sad, where no one but himself
ever entered, a feeling of distress filled his soul; and the place seemed to him
more mournful even than his little office. Nobody ever came there; no one
ever spoke in it. It was dead, silent, without the echo of a human voice. It
seems as though walls retain something of the people who live within them,
something of their manner, face and voice. The very houses inhabited by
happy families are gayer than the dwellings of the unhappy. His room was as
barren of memories as his life. And the thought of returning to this place, all
alone, of getting into his bed, of again repeating all the duties and actions of
every evening, this thought terrified him. As though to escape farther from
this sinister home, and from the time when he would have to return to it, he
arose and walked along a path to a wooded corner, where he sat down on the
grass.
About him, above him, everywhere, he heard a continuous, tremendous,
confused rumble, composed of countless and different noises, a vague and
throbbing pulsation of life: the life breath of Paris, breathing like a giant.
The sun was already high and shed a flood of light on the Bois de
Boulogne. A few carriages were beginning to drive about and people were
appearing on horseback.
A couple was walking through a deserted alley.
Suddenly the young woman raised her eyes and saw something brown in
the branches. Surprised and anxious, she raised her hand, exclaiming: “Look!
what is that?”
Then she shrieked and fell into the arms of her companion, who was
forced to lay her on the ground.
The policeman who had been called cut down an old man who had hung
himself with his suspenders.
Examination showed that he had died the evening before. Papers found on
him showed that he was a bookkeeper for Messieurs Labuze and Company
and that his name was Leras.
His death was attributed to suicide, the cause of which could not be
suspected. Perhaps a sudden access of madness!
 ALEXANDRE

At four o’clock that day, as on every other day, Alexandre rolled the three-
wheeled chair for cripples up to the door of the little house; then, in
obedience to the doctor’s orders, he would push his old and infirm mistress
about until six o’clock.
When he had placed the light vehicle against the step, just at the place
where the old lady could most easily enter it, he went into the house; and
soon a furious, hoarse old soldier’s voice was heard cursing inside the
house: it issued from the master, the retired ex-captain of infantry, Joseph
Maramballe.
Then could be heard the noise of doors being slammed, chairs being
pushed about, and hasty footsteps; then nothing more. After a few seconds,
Alexandre reappeared on the threshold, supporting with all his strength
Madame Maramballe, who was exhausted from the exertion of descending
the stairs. When she was at last settled in the rolling chair, Alexandre passed
behind it, grasped the handle, and set out toward the river.
Thus they crossed the little town every day amid the respectful greeting, of
all. These bows were perhaps meant as much for the servant as for the
mistress, for if she was loved and esteemed by all, this old trooper, with his
long, white, patriarchal beard, was considered a model domestic.
The July sun was beating down unmercifully on the street, bathing the low
houses in its crude and burning light. Dogs were sleeping on the sidewalk in
the shade of the houses, and Alexandre, a little out of breath, hastened his
footsteps in order sooner to arrive at the avenue which leads to the water.
Madame Maramballe was already slumbering under her white parasol,
the point of which sometimes grazed along the man’s impassive face. As
soon as they had reached the Allee des Tilleuls, she awoke in the shade of
the trees, and she said in a kindly voice: “Go more slowly, my poor boy; you
will kill yourself in this heat.”
Along this path, completely covered by arched linden trees, the Mavettek
flowed in its winding bed bordered by willows.
 The gurgling of the eddies and the splashing of the little waves against the
rocks lent to the walk the charming music of babbling water and the freshness
of damp air. Madame Maramballe inhaled with deep delight the humid charm
of this spot and then murmured: “Ah! I feel better now! But he wasn’t in a
good humor to-day.”
Alexandre answered: “No, madame.”
For thirty-five years he had been in the service of this couple, first as
officer’s orderly, then as simple valet who did not wish to leave his masters;
and for the last six years, every afternoon, he had been wheeling his mistress
about through the narrow streets of the town. From this long and devoted
service, and then from this daily tete-a-tete, a kind of familiarity arose
between the old lady and the devoted servant, affectionate on her part,
deferential on his.
They talked over the affairs of the house exactly as if they were equals.
Their principal subject of conversation and of worry was the bad disposition
of the captain, soured by a long career which had begun with promise, run
along without promotion, end ended without glory.
Madame Maramballe continued: “He certainly was not in a good humor
today. This happens too often since he has left the service.”
And Alexandre, with a sigh, completed his mistress’s thoughts, “Oh,
madame might say that it happens every day and that it also happened before
leaving the army.”
“That is true. But the poor man has been so unfortunate. He began with a
brave deed, which obtained for him the Legion of Honor at the age of twenty;
and then from twenty to fifty he was not able to rise higher than captain,
whereas at the beginning he expected to retire with at least the rank of
colonel.”
“Madame might also admit that it was his fault. If he had not always been
as cutting as a whip, his superiors would have loved and protected him
better. Harshness is of no use; one should try to please if one wishes to
advance. As far as his treatment of us is concerned, it is also our fault, since
we are willing to remain with him, but with others it’s different.”
Madame Maramballe was thinking. Oh, for how many years had she thus
been thinking of the brutality of her husband, whom she had married long ago
because he was a handsome officer, decorated quite young, and full of
promise, so they said! What mistakes one makes in life!
 She murmured: “Let us stop a while, my poor Alexandre, and you rest on
that bench:”
It was a little worm-eaten bench, placed at a turn in the alley. Every time
they came in this direction Alexandre was accustomed to making a short
pause on this seat.
He sat down and with a proud and familiar gesture he took his beautiful
white beard in his hand, and, closing his, fingers over it, ran them down to
the point, which he held for a minute at the pit of his stomach, as if once more
to verify the length of this growth.
Madame Maramballe continued: “I married him; it is only just and natural
that I should bear his injustice; but what I do not understand is why you also
should have supported it, my good Alexandre!”
He merely shrugged his shoulders and answered: “Oh! I — madame.”
She added: “Really. I have often wondered. When I married him you were
his orderly and you could hardly do otherwise than endure him. But why did
you remain with us, who pay you so little and who treat you so badly, when
you could have done as every one else does, settle down, marry, have a
family?”
He answered: “Oh, madame! with me it’s different.”
Then he was silent; but he kept pulling his beard as if he were ringing a
bell within him, as if he were trying to pull it out, and he rolled his eyes like
a man who is greatly embarrassed.
Madame Maramballe was following her own train of thought: “You are
not a peasant. You have an education— “
He interrupted her proudly: “I studied surveying, madame.”
“Then why did you stay with us, and blast your prospects?”
He stammered: “That’s it! that’s it! it’s the fault of my dispositton.”
“How so, of your disposition?”
“Yes, when I become attached to a person I become attached to him, that’s
all.”
She began to laugh: “You are not going to try to tell me that Maramballe’s
sweet disposition caused you to become attached to him for life.”
He was fidgeting about on his bench visibly embarrassed, and he muttered
behind his long beard:
“It was not he, it was you!”
The old lady, who had a sweet face, with a snowy line of curly white hair
between her forehead and her bonnet, turned around in her chair and
observed her servant with a surprised look, exclaiming: “I, my poor
Alexandre! How so?”
He began to look up in the air, then to one side, then toward the distance,
turning his head as do timid people when forced to admit shameful secrets.
At last he exclaimed, with the courage of a trooper who is ordered to the line
of fire: “You see, it’s this way — the first time I brought a letter to
mademoiselle from the lieutenant, mademoiselle gave me a franc and a smile,
and that settled it.”
Not understanding well, she questioned him “Explain yourself.”
Then he cried out, like a malefactor who is admitting a fatal crime: “I had
a sentiment for madame! There!”
She answered nothing, stopped looking at him, hung her head, and thought.
She was good, full of justice, gentleness, reason, and tenderness. In a second
she saw the immense devotion of this poor creature, who had given up
everything in order to live beside her, without saying anything. And she felt
as if she could cry. Then, with a sad but not angry expression, she said: “Let
us return home.”
He rose and began to push the wheeled chair.
As they approached the village they saw Captain Maramballe coming
toward them. As soon as he joined them he asked his wife, with a visible
desire of getting angry: “What have we for dinner?”
“Some chicken with flageolets.”
He lost his temper: “Chicken! chicken! always chicken! By all that’s holy,
I’ve had enough chicken! Have you no ideas in your head, that you make me
eat chicken every day?”
She answered, in a resigned tone: “But, my dear, you know that the doctor
has ordered it for you. It’s the best thing for your stomach. If your stomach
were well, I could give you many things which I do not dare set before you
now.”
Then, exasperated, he planted himself in front of Alexandre, exclaiming:
“Well, if my stomach is out of order it’s the fault of that brute. For thirty-five
years he has been poisoning me with his abominable cooking.”
Madame Maramballe suddenly turned about completely, in order to see
the old domestic. Their eyes met, and in this single glance they both said
“Thank you!” to each other.
 THE LOG

The drawing-room was small, full of heavy draperies and discreetly fragrant.
A large fire burned in the grate and a solitary lamp at one end of the
mantelpiece threw a soft light on the two persons who were talking.
She, the mistress of the house, was an old lady with white hair, but one of
those old ladies whose unwrinkled skin is as smooth as the finest paper, and
scented, impregnated with perfume, with the delicate essences which she had
used in her bath for so many years.
He was a very old friend, who had never married, a constant friend, a
companion in the journey of life, but nothing more.
They had not spoken for about a minute, and were both looking at the fire,
dreaming of no matter what, in one of those moments of friendly silence
between people who have no need to be constantly talking in order to be
happy together, when suddenly a large log, a stump covered with burning
roots, fell out. It fell over the firedogs into the drawing-room and rolled on to
the carpet, scattering great sparks around it. The old lady, with a little
scream, sprang to her feet to run away, while he kicked the log back on to the
hearth and stamped out all the burning sparks with his boots.
When the disaster was remedied, there was a strong smell of burning, and,
sitting down opposite to his friend, the man looked at her with a smile and
said, as he pointed to the log:
“That is the reason why I never married.”
She looked at him in astonishment, with the inquisitive gaze of women
who wish to know everything, that eye which women have who are no longer
very young, — in which a complex, and often roguish, curiosity is reflected,
and she asked:
“How so?”
“Oh, it is a long story,” he replied; “a rather sad and unpleasant story.
“My old friends were often surprised at the coldness which suddenly
sprang up between one of my best friends whose Christian name was Julien,
and myself. They could not understand how two such intimate and
inseparable friends, as we had been, could suddenly become almost
strangers to one another, and I will tell you the reason of it.
“He and I used to live together at one time. We were never apart, and the
friendship that united us seemed so strong that nothing could break it.
“One evening when he came home, he told me that he was going to get
married, and it gave me a shock as if he had robbed me or betrayed me.
When a man’s friend marries, it is all over between them. The jealous
affection of a woman, that suspicious, uneasy and carnal affection, will not
tolerate the sturdy and frank attachment, that attachment of the mind, of the
heart, and that mutual confidence which exists between two men.
“You see, however great the love may be that unites them a man and a
woman are always strangers in mind and intellect; they remain belligerents,
they belong to different races. There must always be a conqueror and a
conquered, a master and a slave; now the one, now the other — they are
never two equals. They press each other’s hands, those hands trembling with
amorous passion; but they never press them with a long, strong, loyal
pressure, with that pressure which seems to open hearts and to lay them bare
in a burst of sincere, strong, manly affection. Philosophers of old, instead of
marrying, and procreating as a consolation for their old age children, who
would abandon them, sought for a good, reliable friend, and grew old with
him in that communion of thought which can only exist between men.
“Well, my friend Julien married. His wife was pretty, charming, a little,
curly-haired blonde, plump and lively, who seemed to worship him. At first I
went but rarely to their house, feeling myself de trop. But, somehow, they
attracted me to their home; they were constantly inviting me, and seemed very
fond of me. Consequently, by degrees, I allowed myself to be allured by the
charm of their life. I often dined with them, and frequently, when I returned
home at night, thought that I would do as he had done, and get married, as my
empty house now seemed very dull.
“They appeared to be very much in love, and were never apart.
“Well, one evening Julien wrote and asked me to go to dinner, and I
naturally went.
“‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I must go out directly afterward on business,
and I shall not be back until eleven o’clock; but I shall be back at eleven
precisely, and I reckon on you to keep Bertha company.’
“The young woman smiled.
“‘It was my idea,’ she said, ‘to send for you.’
 “I held out my hand to her.
“‘You are as nice as ever, I said, and I felt a long, friendly pressure of my
fingers, but I paid no attention to it; so we sat down to dinner, and at eight
o’clock Julien went out.
“As soon as he had gone, a kind of strange embarrassment immediately
seemed to arise between his wife and me. We had never been alone together
yet, and in spite of our daily increasing intimacy, this tete-a-tete placed us in
a new position. At first I spoke vaguely of those indifferent matters with
which one fills up an embarrassing silence, but she did not reply, and
remained opposite to me with her head down in an undecided manner, as if
she were thinking over some difficult subject, and as I was at a loss for small
talk, I held my tongue. It is surprising how hard it is at times to find anything
to say.
“And then also I felt something in the air, something I could not express,
one of those mysterious premonitions that warn one of another person’s
secret intentions in regard to yourself, whether they be good or evil.
“That painful silence lasted some time, and then Bertha said to me:
“‘Will you kindly put a log on the fire for it is going out.’
“So I opened the box where the wood was kept, which was placed just
where yours is, took out the largest log and put it on top of the others, which
were three parts burned, and then silence again reigned in the room.
“In a few minutes the log was burning so brightly that it scorched our
faces, and the young woman raised her eyes to mine — eyes that had a
strange look to me.
“‘It is too hot now,’ she said; ‘let us go and sit on the sofa over there.’
“So we went and sat on the sofa, and then she said suddenly, looking me
full in the face:
“‘What would you do if a woman were to tell you that she was in love
with you?’
“‘Upon my word,’ I replied, very much at a loss for an answer, ‘I cannot
foresee such a case; but it would depend very much upon the woman.’
“She gave a hard, nervous, vibrating laugh; one of those false laughs
which seem as if they must break thin glass, and then she added: ‘Men are
never either venturesome or spiteful.’ And, after a moment’s silence, she
continued: ‘Have you ever been in love, Monsieur Paul?’ I was obliged to
acknowledge that I certainly had, and she asked me to tell her all about it.
Whereupon I made up some story or other. She listened to me attentively,
with frequent signs of disapproval and contempt, and then suddenly she said:
“‘No, you understand nothing about the subject. It seems to me that real
love must unsettle the mind, upset the nerves and distract the head; that it
must — how shall I express it? — be dangerous, even terrible, almost
criminal and sacrilegious; that it must be a kind of treason; I mean to say that
it is bound to break laws, fraternal bonds, sacred obligations; when love is
tranquil, easy, lawful and without dangers, is it really love?’
“I did not know what answer to give her, and I made this philosophical
reflection to myself: ‘Oh! female brain, here; indeed, you show yourself!’
“While speaking, she had assumed a demure saintly air; and, resting on the
cushions, she stretched herself out at full length, with her head on my
shoulder, and her dress pulled up a little so as to show her red stockings,
which the firelight made look still brighter. In a minute or two she continued:
“‘I suppose I have frightened you?’ I protested against such a notion, and
she leaned against my breast altogether, and without looking at me, she said:
‘If I were to tell you that I love you, what would you do?’
“And before I could think of an answer, she had thrown her arms around
my neck, had quickly drawn my head down, and put her lips to mine.
“Oh! My dear friend, I can tell you that I did not feel at all happy! What!
deceive Julien? become the lover of this little, silly, wrong-headed, deceitful
woman, who was, no doubt, terribly sensual, and whom her husband no
longer satisfied.
“To betray him continually, to deceive him, to play at being in love merely
because I was attracted by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the
friendship betrayed! No, that did not suit me, but what was I to do? To
imitate Joseph would be acting a very stupid and, moreover, difficult part,
for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed by audacity,
palpitating and excited. Let the man who has never felt on his lips the warm
kiss of a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw the first stone at
me.
“Well, a minute more — you understand what I mean? A minute more, and
— I should have been — no, she would have been! — I beg your pardon, he
would have been — when a loud noise made us both jump up. The log had
fallen into the room, knocking over the fire irons and the fender, and on to the
carpet, which it had scorched, and had rolled under an armchair, which it
would certainly set alight.
 “I jumped up like a madman, and, as I was replacing on the fire that log
which had saved me, the door opened hastily, and Julien came in.
“‘I am free,’ he said, with evident pleasure. ‘The business was over two
hours sooner than I expected!’
“Yes, my dear friend, without that log, I should have been caught in the
very act, and you know what the consequences would have been!
“You may be sure that I took good care never to be found in a similar
situation again, never, never. Soon afterward I saw that Julien was giving me
the ‘cold shoulder,’ as they say. His wife was evidently undermining our
friendship. By degrees he got rid of me, and we have altogether ceased to
meet.
“I never married, which ought not to surprise you, I think.”
 JULIE ROMAIN

Two years ago this spring I was making a walking tour along the shore of the
Mediterranean. Is there anything more pleasant than to meditate while
walking at a good pace along a highway? One walks in the sunlight, through
the caressing breeze, at the foot of the mountains, along the coast of the sea.
And one dreams! What a flood of illusions, loves, adventures pass through a
pedestrian’s mind during a two hours’ march! What a crowd of confused and
joyous hopes enter into you with the mild, light air! You drink them in with
the breeze, and they awaken in your heart a longing for happiness which
increases with the hun ger induced by walking. The fleeting, charming ideas
fly and sing like birds.
I was following that long road which goes from Saint Raphael to Italy, or,
rather, that long, splendid panoramic highway which seems made for the
representation of all the love-poems of earth. And I thought that from Cannes,
where one poses, to Monaco, where one gambles, people come to this spot
of the earth for hardly any other purpose than to get embroiled or to throw
away money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in this
garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and
vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant
and full of cupidity.
Suddenly I saw some villas in one of those ravishing bays that one meets
at every turn of the mountain; there were only four or five fronting the sea at
the foot of the mountains, and behind them a wild fir wood slopes into two
great valleys, that were untraversed by roads. I stopped short before one of
these chalets, it was so pretty: a small white house with brown trimmings,
overrun with rambler roses up to the top.
The garden was a mass of flowers, of all colors and all kinds, mixed in a
coquettish, well-planned disorder. The lawn was full of them, big pots
flanked each side of every step of the porch, pink or yellow clusters framed
each window, and the terrace with the stone balustrade, which enclosed this
pretty little dwelling, had a garland of enormous red bells, like drops of
blood. Behind the house I saw a long avenue of orange trees in blossom,
which went up to the foot of the mountain.
Over the door appeared the name, “Villa d’Antan,” in small gold letters.
I asked myself what poet or what fairy was living there, what inspired,
solitary being had discovered this spot and created this dream house, which
seemed to nestle in a nosegay.
A workman was breaking stones up the street, and I went to him to ask the
name of the proprietor of this jewel.
“It is Madame Julie Romain,” he replied.
Julie Romain! In my childhood, long ago, I had heard them speak of this
great actress, the rival of Rachel.
No woman ever was more applauded and more loved — especially more
loved! What duets and suicides on her account and what sensational
adventures! How old was this seductive woman now? Sixty, seventy,
seventy-five! Julie Romain here, in this house! The woman who had been
adored by the greatest musician and the most exquisite poet of our land! I still
remember the sensation (I was then twelve years of age) which her flight to
Sicily with the latter, after her rupture with the former, caused throughout
France.
She had left one evening, after a premiere, where the audience had
applauded her for a whole half hour, and had recalled her eleven times in
succession. She had gone away with the poet, in a post-chaise, as was the
fashion then; they had crossed the sea, to love each other in that antique
island, the daughter of Greece, in that immense orange wood which
surrounds Palermo, and which is called the “Shell of Gold.”
People told of their ascension of Mount Etna and how they had leaned
over the immense crater, arm in arm, cheek to cheek, as if to throw
themselves into the very abyss.
Now he was dead, that maker of verses so touching and so profound that
they turned, the heads of a whole generation, so subtle and so mysterious that
they opened a new world to the younger poets.
The other one also was dead — the deserted one, who had attained
through her musical periods that are alive in the memories of all, periods of
triumph and of despair, intoxicating triumph and heartrending despair.
And she was there, in that house veiled by flowers.
I did not hesitate, but rang the bell.
 A small servant answered, a boy of eighteen with awkward mien and
clumsy hands. I wrote in pencil on my card a gallant compliment to the
actress, begging her to receive me. Perhaps, if she knew my name, she would
open her door to me.
The little valet took it in, and then came back, asking me to follow him.
He led me to a neat and decorous salon, furnished in the Louis-Philippe style,
with stiff and heavy furniture, from which a little maid of sixteen, slender but
not pretty, took off the covers in my honor.
Then I was left alone.
On the walls hung three portraits, that of the actress in one of her roles,
that of the poet in his close-fitting greatcoat and the ruffled shirt then in style,
and that of the musician seated at a piano.
She, blond, charming, but affected, according to the fashion of her day,
was smiling, with her pretty mouth and blue eyes; the painting was careful,
fine, elegant, but lifeless.
Those faces seemed to be already looking upon posterity.
The whole place had the air of a bygone time, of days that were done and
men who had vanished.
A door opened and a little woman entered, old, very old, very small, with
white hair and white eyebrows, a veritable white mouse, and as quick and
furtive of movement.
She held out her hand to me, saying in a voice still fresh, sonorous and
vibrant:
“Thank you, monsieur. How kind it is of the men of to-day to remember
the women of yesterday! Sit down.”
I told her that her house had attracted me, that I had inquired for the
proprietor’s name, and that, on learning it, I could not resist the desire to ring
her bell.
“This gives me all the more pleasure, monsieur,” she replied, “as it is the
first time that such a thing has happened. When I received your card, with the
gracious note, I trembled as if an old friend who had disappeared for twenty
years had been announced to me. I am like a dead body, whom no one
remembers, of whom no one will think until the day when I shall actually die;
then the newspapers will mention Julie Romain for three days, relating
anecdotes and details of my life, reviving memories, and praising me greatly.
Then all will be over with me.”
After a few moments of silence, she continued:
 “And this will not be so very long now. In a few months, in a few days,
nothing will remain but a little skeleton of this little woman who is now
alive.”
She raised her eyes toward her portrait, which smiled down upon this
caricature of herself; then she looked at those of the two men, the disdainful
poet and the inspired musician, who seemed to say: “What does this ruin
want of us?”
An indefinable, poignant, irresistible sadness overwhelmed my heart, the
sadness of existences that have had their day, but who are still debating with
their memories, like a person drowning in deep water.
From my seat I could see on the highroad the handsome carriages that
were whirling from Nice to Monaco; inside them I saw young, pretty, rich
and happy women and smiling, satisfied men. Following my eye, she
understood my thought and murmured with a smile of resignation:
“One cannot both be and have been.”
“How beautiful life must have been for you!” I said.
She heaved a great sigh.
“Beautiful and sweet! And for that reason I regret it so much.”
I saw that she was disposed to talk of herself, so I began to question her,
gently and discreetly, as one might touch bruised flesh.
She spoke of her successes, her intoxications and her friends, of her
whole triumphant existence.
“Was it on the stage that you found your most intense joys, your true
happiness?” I asked.
“Oh, no!” she replied quickly.
I smiled; then, raising her eyes to the two portraits, she said, with a sad
glance:
“It was with them.”
“Which one?” I could not help asking.
“Both. I even confuse them up a little now in my old woman’s memory,
and then I feel remorse.”
“Then, madame, your acknowledgment is not to them, but to Love itself.
They were merely its interpreters.”
“That is possible. But what interpreters!”
“Are you sure that you have not been, or that you might not have been,
loved as well or better by a simple man, but not a great man, who would
have offered to you his whole life and heart, all his thoughts, all his days, his
whole being, while these gave you two redoubtable rivals, Music and
Poetry?”
“No, monsieur, no!” she exclaimed emphatically, with that still youthful
voice, which caused the soul to vibrate. “Another one might perhaps have
loved me more, but he would not have loved me as these did. Ah! those two
sang to me of the music of love as no one else in the world could have sung
of it. How they intoxicated me! Could any other man express what they knew
so well how to express in tones and in words? Is it enough merely to love if
one cannot put all the poetry and all the music of heaven and earth into love?
And they knew how to make a woman delirious with songs and with words.
Yes, perhaps there was more of illusion than of reality in our passion; but
these illusions lift you into the clouds, while realities always leave you
trailing in the dust. If others have loved me more, through these two I have
understood, felt and worshipped love.”
Suddenly she began to weep.
She wept silently, shedding tears of despair.
I pretended not to see, looking off into the distance. She resumed, after a
few minutes:
“You see, monsieur, with nearly every one the heart ages with the body.
But this has not happened with me. My body is sixty-nine years old, while my
poor heart is only twenty. And that is the reason why I live all alone, with my
flowers and my dreams.”
There was a long silence between us. She grew calmer and continued,
smiling:
“How you would laugh at me, if you knew, if you knew how I pass my
evenings, when the weather is fine. I am ashamed and I pity myself at the
same time.”
Beg as I might, she would not tell me what she did. Then I rose to leave.
“Already!” she exclaimed.
And as I said that I wished to dine at Monte Carlo, she asked timidly:
“Will you not dine with me? It would give me a great deal of pleasure.”
I accepted at once. She rang, delighted, and after giving some orders to the
little maid she took me over her house.
A kind of glass-enclosed veranda, filled with shrubs, opened into the
dining-room, revealing at the farther end the long avenue of orange trees
extending to the foot of the mountain. A low seat, hidden by plants, indicated
that the old actress often came there to sit down.
 Then we went into the garden, to look at the flowers. Evening fell softly,
one of those calm, moist evenings when the earth breathes forth all her
perfumes. Daylight was almost gone when we sat down at table. The dinner
was good and it lasted a long time, and we became intimate friends, she and
I, when she understood what a profound sympathy she had aroused in my
heart. She had taken two thimblefuls of wine, as the phrase goes, and had
grown more confiding and expansive.
“Come, let us look at the moon,” she said. “I adore the good moon. She
has been the witness of my most intense joys. It seems to me that all my
memories are there, and that I need only look at her to bring them all back to
me. And even — some times — in the evening — I offer to myself a pretty
play — yes, pretty — if you only knew! But no, you would laugh at me. I
cannot — I dare not — no, no — really — no.”
I implored her to tell me what it was.
“Come, now! come, tell me; I promise you that I will not laugh. I swear it
to you — come, now!”
She hesitated. I took her hands — those poor little hands, so thin and so
cold! — and I kissed them one after the other, several times, as her lovers
had once kissed them. She was moved and hesitated.
“You promise me not to laugh?”
“Yes, I swear it to you.”
“Well, then, come.”
She rose, and as the little domestic, awkward in his green livery, removed
the chair behind her, she whispered quickly a few words into his ear.
“Yes, madame, at once,” he replied.
She took my arm and led me to the veranda.
The avenue of oranges was really splendid to see. The full moon made a
narrow path of silver, a long bright line, which fell on the yellow sand,
between the round, opaque crowns of the dark trees.
As these trees were in bloom, their strong, sweet perfume filled the night,
and swarming among their dark foliage I saw thousands of fireflies, which
looked like seeds fallen from the stars.
“Oh, what a setting for a love scene!” I exclaimed.
She smiled.
“Is it not true? Is it not true? You will see!”
And she made me sit down beside her.
 “This is what makes one long for more life. But you hardly think of these
things, you men of to-day. You are speculators, merchants and men of affairs.
“You no longer even know how to talk to us. When I say ‘you,’ I mean
young men in general. Love has been turned into a liaison which very often
begins with an unpaid dressmaker’s bill. If you think the bill is dearer than
the woman, you disappear; but if you hold the woman more highly, you pay it.
Nice morals — and a nice kind of love!”
She took my hand.
“Look!”
I looked, astonished and delighted. Down there at the end of the avenue, in
the moonlight, were two young people, with their arms around each other’s
waist. They were walking along, interlaced, charming, with short, little steps,
crossing the flakes of light; which illuminated them momentarily, and then
sinking back into the shadow. The youth was dressed in a suit of white satin,
such as men wore in the eighteenth century, and had on a hat with an ostrich
plume. The girl was arrayed in a gown with panniers, and the high,
powdered coiffure of the handsome dames of the time of the Regency.
They stopped a hundred paces from us, and standing in the middle of the
avenue, they kissed each other with graceful gestures.
Suddenly I recognized the two little servants. Then one of those dreadful
fits of laughter that convulse you made me writhe in my chair. But I did not
laugh aloud. I resisted, convulsed and feeling almost ill, as a man whose leg
is cut off resists the impulse to cry out.
As the young pair turned toward the farther end of the avenue they again
became delightful. They went farther and farther away, finally disappearing
as a dream disappears. I no longer saw them. The avenue seemed a sad
place.
I took my leave at once, so as not to see them again, for I guessed that this
little play would last a long time, awakening, as it did, a whole past of love
and of stage scenery; the artificial past, deceitful and seductive, false but
charming, which still stirred the heart of this amorous old comedienne.
 THE RONDOLI SISTERS

I set out to see Italy thoroughly on two occasions, and each time I was
stopped at the frontier and could not get any further. So I do not know Italy,
said my friend, Charles Jouvent. And yet my two attempts gave me a
charming idea of the manners of that beautiful country. Some time, however, I
must visit its cities, as well as the museums and works of art with which it
abounds. I will make another attempt to penetrate into the interior, which I
have not yet succeeded in doing.
You don’t understand me, so I will explain: In the spring of 1874 I was
seized with an irresistible desire to see Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples.
I am, as you know, not a great traveller; it appears to me a useless and
fatiguing business. Nights spent in a train, the disturbed slumbers of the
railway carriage, with the attendant headache, and stiffness in every limb, the
sudden waking in that rolling box, the unwashed feeling, with your eyes and
hair full of dust, the smell of the coal on which one’s lungs feed, those bad
dinners in the draughty refreshment rooms are, according to my ideas, a
horrible way of beginning a pleasure trip.
After this introduction, we have the miseries of the hotel; of some great
hotel full of people, and yet so empty; the strange room and the doubtful bed!
I am most particular about my bed; it is the sanctuary of life. We entrust
our almost naked and fatigued bodies to it so that they may be reanimated by
reposing between soft sheets and feathers.
There we find the most delightful hours of our existence, the hours of love
and of sleep. The bed is sacred, and should be respected, venerated and
loved by us as the best and most delightful of our earthly possessions.
I cannot lift up the sheets of a hotel bed without a shudder of disgust. Who
has occupied it the night before? Perhaps dirty, revolting people have slept in
it. I begin, then, to think of all the horrible people with whom one rubs
shoulders every day, people with suspicious-looking skin which makes one
think of the feet and all the rest! I call to mind those who carry about with
them the sickening smell of garlic or of humanity. I think of those who are
deformed and unhealthy, of the perspiration emanating from the sick, of
everything that is ugly and filthy in man.
And all this, perhaps, in the bed in which I am about to sleep! The mere
idea of it makes me feel ill as I get into it.
And then the hotel dinners — those dreary table d’hote dinners in the
midst of all sorts of extraordinary people, or else those terrible solitary
dinners at a small table in a restaurant, feebly lighted by a wretched
composite candle under a shade.
Again, those terribly dull evenings in some unknown town! Do you know
anything more wretched than the approach of dusk on such an occasion? One
goes about as if almost in a dream, looking at faces that one never has seen
before and never will see again; listening to people talking about matters
which are quite indifferent to you in a language that perhaps you do not
understand. You have a terrible feeling, almost as if you were lost, and you
continue to walk on so as not to be obliged to return to the hotel, where you
would feel more lost still because you are at home, in a home which belongs
to anyone who can pay for it; and at last you sink into a chair of some well-
lighted cafe, whose gilding and lights oppress you a thousand times more
than the shadows in the streets. Then you feel so abominably lonely sitting in
front of the glass of flat bock beer that a kind of madness seizes you, the
longing to go somewhere or other, no matter where, as long as you need not
remain in front of that marble table amid those dazzling lights.
And then, suddenly, you are aware that you are really alone in the world,
always and everywhere, and that in places which we know, the familiar
jostlings give us the illusion only of human fraternity. At such moments of
self-abandonment and sombre isolation in distant cities one thinks broadly,
clearly and profoundly. Then one suddenly sees the whole of life outside the
vision of eternal hope, apart from the deceptions of our innate habits, and of
our expectations of happiness, which we indulge in dreams never to be
realized.
It is only by going a long distance from home that we can fully understand
how short-lived and empty everything near at hand is; by searching for the
unknown, we perceive how commonplace and evanescent everything is; only
by wandering over the face of the earth can we understand how small the
world is, and how very much alike it is everywhere.
 How well I know, and how I hate and almost fear, those haphazard walks
through unknown streets; and this was the reason why, as nothing would
induce me to undertake a tour in Italy by myself, I made up my mind to
accompany my friend Paul Pavilly.
You know Paul, and how he idealizes women. To him the earth is
habitable only because they are there; the sun gives light and is warm
because it shines upon them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon
their skin and ruffles the soft hair on their temples; and the moon is charming
because it makes them dream and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every
act and action of Paul’s has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his
efforts and hopes are centered in them.
When I mentioned Italy to Paul he at first absolutely refused to leave
Paris. I, however, began to tell him of the adventures I had on my travels. I
assured him that all Italian women are charming, and I made him hope for the
most refined pleasures at Naples, thanks to certain letters of introduction
which I had; and so at last he allowed himself to be persuaded.

II

We took the express one Thursday evening, Paul and I. Hardly anyone goes
south at that time of the year, so that we had the carriages to ourselves, and
both of us were in a bad temper on leaving Paris, sorry for having yielded to
the temptation of this journey, and regretting Marly, the Seine, and our lazy
boating excursions, and all those pleasures in and near Paris which are so
dear to every true Parisian.
As soon as the train started Paul stuck himself in his corner, and said, “It
is most idiotic to go all that distance,” and as it was too late for him to
change his mind then, I said, “Well, you should not have come.”
He made no answer, and I felt very much inclined to laugh when I saw
how furious he looked. He is certainly always rather like a squirrel, but then
every one of us has retained the type of some animal or other as the mark of
his primitive origin. How many people have jaws like a bulldog, or heads
like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul is a squirrel turned into a
man. He has its bright, quick eyes, its hair, its pointed nose, its small, fine,
supple, active body, and a certain mysterious resemblance in his general
bearing; in fact, a similarity of movement, of gesture, and of bearing which
might almost be taken for a recollection.
 At last we both went to sleep with that uncomfortable slumber of the
railway carriage, which is interrupted by horrible cramps in the arms and
neck, and by the sudden stoppages of the train.
We woke up as we were passing along the Rhone. Soon the continued
noise of crickets came in through the windows, that cry which seems to be
the voice of the warm earth, the song of Provence; and seemed to instill into
our looks, our breasts, and our souls the light and happy feeling of the south,
that odor of the parched earth, of the stony and light soil of the olive with its
gray-green foliage.
When the train stopped again a railway guard ran along the train calling
out “Valence” in a sonorous voice, with an accent that again gave us a taste
of that Provence which the shrill note of the crickets had already imparted to
us.
Nothing fresh happened till we got to Marseilles, where we alighted for
breakfast, but when we returned to our carriage we found a woman installed
there.
Paul, with a delighted glance at me, gave his short mustache a mechanical
twirl, and passed his fingers through his, hair, which had become slightly out
of order with the night’s journey. Then he sat down opposite the newcomer.
Whenever I happen to see a striking new face, either in travelling or in
society, I always have the strongest inclination to find out what character,
mind, and intellectual capacities are hidden beneath those features.
She was a young and pretty woman, certainly a native of the south of
France, with splendid eyes, beautiful wavy black hair, which was so thick
and long that it seemed almost too heavy for her head. She was dressed with
a certain southern bad taste which made her look a little vulgar. Her regular
features had none of the grace and finish of the refined races, of that slight
delicacy which members of the aristocracy inherit from their birth, and which
is the hereditary mark of thinner blood.
Her bracelets were too big to be of gold; she wore earrings with large
white stones that were certainly not diamonds, and she belonged
unmistakably to the People. One surmised that she would talk too loud, and
shout on every occasion with exaggerated gestures.
When the train started she remained motionless in her place, in the attitude
of a woman who was indignant, without even looking at us.
Paul began to talk to me, evidently with an eye to effect, trying to attract
her attention, as shopkeepers expose their choice wares to catch the notice of
passersby.
She, however, did not appear to be paying the least attention.
“Toulon! Ten minutes to wait! Refreshment room!” the porters shouted.
Paul motioned to me to get out, and as soon as we had done so, he said:
“I wonder who on earth she can be?”
I began to laugh. “I am sure I don’t know, and I don’t in the least care.”
He was quite excited.
“She is an uncommonly fresh and pretty girl. What eyes she has, and how
cross she looks. She must have been dreadfully worried, for she takes no
notice of anything.”
“You will have all your trouble for nothing,” I growled.
He began to lose his temper.
“I am not taking any trouble, my dear fellow. I think her an extremely
pretty woman, that is all. If one could only speak to her! But I don’t know
how to begin. Cannot you give me an idea? Can’t you guess who she is?”
“Upon my word, I cannot. However, I should rather think she is some
strolling actress who is going to rejoin her company after a love adventure.”
He seemed quite upset, as if I had said something insulting.
“What makes you think that? On the contrary, I think she looks most
respectable.”
“Just look at her bracelets,” I said, “her earrings and her whole dress. I
should not be the least surprised if she were a dancer or a circus rider, but
most likely a dancer. Her whole style smacks very much of the theatre.”
He evidently did not like the idea.
“She is much too young, I am sure; why, she is hardly twenty.”
“Well,” I replied, “there are many things which one can do before one is
twenty; dancing and elocution are among them.”
“Take your seats for Nice, Vintimiglia,” the guards and porters called.
We got in; our fellow passenger was eating an orange, and certainly she
did not do it elegantly. She had spread her pocket-handkerchief on her knees,
and the way in which she tore off the peel and opened her mouth to put in the
pieces, and then spat the pips out of the window, showed that her training had
been decidedly vulgar.
She seemed, also, more put out than ever, and swallowed the fruit with an
exceedingly comic air of rage.
Paul devoured her with his eyes, and tried to attract her attention and
excite her curiosity; but in spite of his talk, and of the manner in which he
brought in well-known names, she did not pay the least attention to him.
After passing Frejus and St. Raphael, the train passed through a veritable
garden, a paradise of roses, and groves of oranges and lemons covered with
fruits and flowers at the same time. That delightful coast from Marseilles to
Genoa is a kingdom of perfumes in a home of flowers.
June is the time to see it in all its beauty, when in every narrow valley and
on every slope, the most exquisite flowers are growing luxuriantly. And the
roses! fields, hedges, groves of roses. They climb up the walls, blossom on
the roofs, hang from the trees, peep out from among the bushes; they are
white, red, yellow, large and small, single, with a simple self-colored dress,
or full and heavy in brilliant toilettes.
Their breath makes the air heavy and relaxing, and the still more
penetrating odor of the orange blossoms sweetens the atmosphere till it might
almost be called the refinement of odor.
The shore, with its brown rocks, was bathed by the motionless
Mediterranean. The hot summer sun stretched like a fiery cloth over the
mountains, over the long expanses of sand, and over the motionless,
apparently solid blue sea. The train went on through the tunnels, along the
slopes, above the water, on straight, wall-like viaducts, and a soft, vague,
saltish smell, a smell of drying seaweed, mingled at times with the strong,
heavy perfume of the flowers.
But Paul neither saw, looked at, nor smelled anything, for our fellow
traveller engrossed all his attention.
When we reached Cannes, as he wished to speak to me he signed to me to
get out, and as soon as I did so, he took me by the arm.
“Do you know, she is really charming. Just look at her eyes; and I never
saw anything like her hair.”
“Don’t excite yourself,” I replied, “or else address her, if you have any
intentions that way. She does not look unapproachable; I fancy, although she
appear to be a little bit grumpy.”
“Why don’t you speak to her?” he said.
“I don’t know what to say, for I am always terribly stupid at first; I can
never make advances to a woman in the street. I follow them, go round and
round them, and quite close to them, but never know what to say at first. I
only once tried to enter into conversation with a woman in that way. As I
clearly saw that she was waiting for me to make overtures, and as I felt
bound to say something, I stammered out, ‘I hope you are quite well,
madame?’ She laughed in my face, and I made my escape.”
I promised Paul to do all I could to bring about a conversation, and when
we had taken our places again, I politely asked our neighbor:
“Have you any objection to the smell of tobacco, madame?”
She merely replied, “Non capisco.”
So she was an Italian! I felt an absurd inclination to laugh. As Paul did not
understand a word of that language, I was obliged to act as his interpreter, so
I said in Italian:
“I asked you, madame, whether you had any objection to tobacco smoke?”
With an angry look she replied, “Che mi fa!”
She had neither turned her head nor looked at me, and I really did not
know whether to take this “What do I care” for an authorization, a refusal, a
real sign of indifference, or for a mere “Let me alone.”
“Madame,” I replied, “if you mind the smell of tobacco in the least— “
She again said, “Mica,” in a tone which seemed to mean, “I wish to
goodness you would leave me alone!” It was, however, a kind of permission,
so I said to Paul:
“You may smoke.”
He looked at me in that curious sort of way that people have when they try
to understand others who are talking in a strange language before them, and
asked me:
“What did you say to her?”
“I asked whether we might smoke, and she said we might do whatever we
liked.”
Whereupon I lighted my cigar.
“Did she say anything more?”
“If you had counted her words you would have noticed that she used
exactly six, two of which gave me to understand that she knew no French, so
four remained, and much can be said in four words.”
Paul seemed quite unhappy, disappointed, and at sea, so to speak.
But suddenly the Italian asked me, in that tone of discontent which seemed
habitual to her, “Do you know at what time we shall get to Genoa?”
“At eleven o’clock,” I replied. Then after a moment I went on:
“My friend and I are also going to Genoa, and if we can be of any service
to you, we shall be very happy, as you are quite alone.” But she interrupted
with such a “Mica!” that I did not venture on another word.
 “What did she say?” Paul asked.
“She said she thought you were charming.”
But he was in no humor for joking, and begged me dryly not to make fun of
him; so I translated her question and my polite offer, which had been so
rudely rejected.
Then he really became as restless as a caged squirrel.
“If we only knew,” he said, “what hotel she was going to, we would go to
the same. Try to find out so as to have another opportunity to make her talk.”
It was not particularly easy, and I did not know what pretext to invent,
desirous as I was to make the acquaintance of this unapproachable person.
We passed Nice, Monaco, Mentone, and the train stopped at the frontier
for the examination of luggage.
Although I hate those ill-bred people who breakfast and dine in railway-
carriages, I went and bought a quantity of good things to make one last attack
on her by their means. I felt sure that this girl must, ordinarily, be by no
means inaccessible. Something had put her out and made her irritable, but
very little would suffice, a mere word or some agreeable offer, to decide her
and vanquish her.
We started again, and we three were still alone. I spread my eatables on
the seat. I cut up the fowl, put the slices of ham neatly on a piece of paper,
and then carefully laid out our dessert, strawberries, plums, cherries and
cakes, close to the girl.
When she saw that we were about to eat she took a piece of chocolate and
two little crisp cakes out of her pocket and began to munch them.
“Ask her to have some of ours,” Paul said in a whisper.
“That is exactly what I wish to do, but it is rather a difficult matter.”
As she, however, glanced from time to time at our provisions, I felt sure
that she would still be hungry when she had finished what she had with her;
so, as soon as her frugal meal was over, I said to her:
“It would be very kind of you if you would take some of this fruit.”
Again she said “Mica!” but less crossly than before.
“Well, then,” I said, “may I offer you a little wine? I see you have not
drunk anything. It is Italian wine, and as we are now in your own country, we
should be very pleased to see such a pretty Italian mouth accept the offer of
its French neighbors.”
She shook her head slightly, evidently wishing to refuse, but very desirous
of accepting, and her mica this time was almost polite. I took the flask, which
was covered with straw in the Italian fashion, and filling the glass, I offered
it to her.
“Please drink it,” I said, “to bid us welcome to your country.”
She took the glass with her usual look, and emptied it at a draught, like a
woman consumed with thirst, and then gave it back to me without even saying
“Thank you.”
I then offered her the cherries. “Please take some,” I said; “we shall be so
glad if you will.”
Out of her corner she looked at all the fruit spread out beside her, and said
so rapidly that I could scarcely follow her: “A me non piacciono ne le
ciriegie ne le susine; amo soltano le fragole.”
“What does she say?” Paul asked.
“That she does riot care for cherries or plums, but only for strawberries.”
I put a newspaper full of wild strawberries on her lap, and she ate them
quickly, tossing them into her mouth from some distance in a coquettish and
charming manner.
When she had finished the little red heap, which soon disappeared under
the rapid action of her hands, I asked her:
“What may I offer you now?”
“I will take a little chicken,” she replied.
She certainly devoured half of it, tearing it to pieces with the rapid
movements of her jaws like some carnivorous animal. Then she made up her
mind to have some cherries, which she “did not like,” and then some plums,
then some little cakes. Then she said, “I have had enough,” and sat back in
her corner.
I was much amused, and tried to make her eat more, insisting, in fact, till
she suddenly flew into a rage, and flung such a furious mica at me, that I
would no longer run the risk of spoiling her digestion.
I turned to my friend. “My poor Paul,” I said, “I am afraid we have had
our trouble for nothing.”
The night came on, one of those hot summer nights which extend their
warm shade over the burning and exhausted earth. Here and there, in the
distance, by the sea, on capes and promontories, bright stars, which I was, at
times, almost inclined to confound with lighthouses, began to shine on the
dark horizon:
The scent of the orange trees became more penetrating, and we breathed
with delight, distending our lungs to inhale it more deeply. The balmy air was
soft, delicious, almost divine.
Suddenly I noticed something like a shower of stars under the dense shade
of the trees along the line, where it was quite dark. It might have been taken
for drops of light, leaping, flying, playing and running among the leaves, or
for small stars fallen from the skies in order to have an excursion on the
earth; but they were only fireflies dancing a strange fiery ballet in the
perfumed air.
One of them happened to come into our carriage, and shed its intermittent
light, which seemed to be extinguished one moment and to be burning the
next. I covered the carriage-lamp with its blue shade and watched the strange
fly careering about in its fiery flight. Suddenly it settled on the dark hair of
our neighbor, who was half dozing after dinner. Paul seemed delighted, with
his eyes fixed on the bright, sparkling spot, which looked like a living jewel
on the forehead of the sleeping woman.
The Italian woke up about eleven o’clock, with the bright insect still in
her hair. When I saw her move, I said: “We are just getting to Genoa,
madame,” and she murmured, without answering me, as if possessed by some
obstinate and embarrassing thought:
“What am I going to do, I wonder?”
And then she suddenly asked:
“Would you like me to come with you?”
I was so taken aback that I really did not understand her.
“With us? How do you mean?”
She repeated, looking more and more furious:
“Would you like me to be your guide now, as soon as we get out of the
train?”
“I am quite willing; but where do you want to go.”
She shrugged her shoulders with an air of supreme indifference.
“Wherever you like; what does it matter to me?” She repeated her “Che
mi fa” twice.
“But we are going to the hotel.”
“Very well, let us all go to the hotel,” she said, in a contemptuous voice.
I turned to Paul, and said:
“She wishes to know whether we should like her to come with us.”
My friend’s utter surprise restored my self-possession. He stammered:
“With us? Where to? What for? How?”
 “I don’t know, but she made this strange proposal to me in a most irritated
voice. I told her that we were going to the hotel, and she said: ‘Very well, let
us all go there!’ I suppose she is without a penny. She certainly has a very
strange way of making acquaintances.”
Paul, who ‘was very much excited, exclaimed:
“I am quite agreeable. Tell her that we will go wherever she likes.” Then,
after a moment’s hesitation, he said uneasily:
“We must know, however, with whom she wishes to go — with you or
with me?”
I turned to the Italian, who did not even seem to be listening to us, and
said:
“We shall be very happy to have you with us, but my friend wishes to
know whether you will take my arm or his?”
She opened her black eyes wide with vague surprise, and said, “Che ni
fa?”
I was obliged to explain myself. “In Italy, I believe, when a man looks
after a woman, fulfils all her wishes, and satisfies all her caprices, he is
called a patito. Which of us two will you take for your patito?”
Without the slightest hesitation she replied:
“You!”
I turned to Paul. “You see, my friend, she chooses me; you have no
chance.”
“All the better for you,” he replied in a rage. Then, after thinking for a few
moments, he went on:
“Do you really care about taking this creature with you? She will spoil
our journey. What are we to do with this woman, who looks like I don’t
know what? They will not take us in at any decent hotel.”
I, however, just began to find the Italian much nicer than I had thought her
at first, and I was now very desirous to take her with us. The idea delighted
me.
I replied, “My dear fellow, we have accepted, and it is too late to recede.
You were the first to advise me to say ‘Yes.’”
“It is very stupid,” he growled, “but do as you please.”
The train whistled, slackened speed, and we ran into the station.
I got out of the carriage, and offered my new companion my hand. She
jumped out lightly, and I gave her my arm, which she took with an air of
seeming repugnance. As soon as we had claimed our luggage we set off into
the town, Paul walking in utter silence.
“To what hotel shall we go?” I asked him. “It may be difficult to get into
the City of Paris with a woman, especially with this Italian.”
Paul interrupted me. “Yes, with an Italian who looks more like a dancer
than a duchess. However, that is no business of mine. Do just as you please.”
I was in a state of perplexity. I had written to the City of Paris to retain
our rooms, and now I did not know what to do.
Two commissionaires followed us with our luggage. I continued: “You
might as well go on first, and say that we are coming; and give the landlord
to understand that I have a — a friend with me and that we should like rooms
quite by themselves for us three, so as not to be brought in contact with other
travellers. He will understand, and we will decide according to his answer.”
But Paul growled, “Thank you, such commissions and such parts do not
suit me, by any means. I did not come here to select your apartments or to
minister to your pleasures.”
But I was urgent: “Look here, don’t be angry. It is surely far better to go to
a good hotel than to a bad one, and it is not difficult to ask the landlord for
three separate bedrooms and a dining-room.”
I put a stress on three, and that decided him.
He went on first, and I saw him go into a large hotel while I remained on
the other side of the street, with my fair Italian, who did not say a word, and
followed the porters with the luggage.
Paul came back at last, looking as dissatisfied as my companion.
“That is settled,” he said, “and they will take us in; but here are only two
bedrooms. You must settle it as you can.”
I followed him, rather ashamed of going in with such a strange companion.
There were two bedrooms separated by a small sitting-room. I ordered a
cold supper, and then I turned to the Italian with a perplexed look.
“We have only been able to get two rooms, so you must choose which you
like.”
She replied with her eternal “Che mi fa!” I thereupon took up her little
black wooden trunk, such as servants use, and took it into the room on the
right, which I had chosen for her. A bit of paper was fastened to the box, on
which was written, Mademoiselle Francesca Rondoli, Genoa.
“Your name is Francesca?” I asked, and she nodded her head, without
replying.
 “We shall have supper directly,” I continued. “Meanwhile, I dare say you
would like to arrange your toilette a little?”
She answered with a ‘mica’, a word which she employed just as
frequently as ‘Che me fa’, but I went on: “It is always pleasant after a
journey.”
Then I suddenly remembered that she had not, perhaps, the necessary
requisites, for she appeared to me in a very singular position, as if she had
just escaped from some disagreeable adventure, and I brought her my
dressing-case.
I put out all the little instruments for cleanliness and comfort which it
contained: a nail-brush, a new toothbrush — I always carry a selection of
them about with me — my nail-scissors, a nail-file, and sponges. I uncorked
a bottle of eau de cologne, one of lavender-water, and a little bottle of new-
mown hay, so that she might have a choice. Then I opened my powder-box,
and put out the powder-puff, placed my fine towels over the water-jug, and a
piece of new soap near the basin.
She watched my movements with a look of annoyance in her wide-open
eyes, without appearing either astonished or pleased at my forethought.
“Here is all that you require,” I then said; “I will tell you when supper is
ready.”
When I returned to the sitting-room I found that Paul had shut himself in
the other room, so I sat down to wait.
A waiter went to and fro, bringing plates and glasses. He laid the table
slowly, then put a cold chicken on it, and told me that all was ready.
I knocked gently at Mademoiselle Rondoli’s door. “Come in,” she said,
and when I did so I was struck by a strong, heavy smell of perfumes, as if I
were in a hairdresser’s shop.
The Italian was sitting on her trunk in an attitude either of thoughtful
discontent or absent-mindedness. The towel was still folded over the
waterjug that was full of water, and the soap, untouched and dry, was lying
beside the empty basin; but one would have thought that the young woman
had used half the contents of the bottles of perfume. The eau de cologne,
however, had been spared, as only about a third of it had gone; but to make
up for that she had used a surprising amount of lavender-water and new-
mown hay. A cloud of violet powder, a vague white mist, seemed still to be
floating in the air, from the effects of her over-powdering her face and neck.
It seemed to cover her eyelashes, eyebrows, and the hair on her temples like
snow, while her cheeks were plastered with it, and layers of it covered her
nostrils, the corners of her eyes, and her chin.
When she got up she exhaled such a strong odor of perfume that it almost
made me feel faint.
When we sat down to supper, I found that Paul was in a most execrable
temper, and I could get nothing out of him but blame, irritable words, and
disagreeable remarks.
Mademoiselle Francesca ate like an ogre, and as soon as she had finished
her meal she threw herself upon the sofa in the sitting-room. Sitting down
beside her, I said gallantly, kissing her hand:
“Shall I have the bed prepared, or will you sleep on the couch?”
“It is all the same to me. ‘Che mi fa’!”
Her indifference vexed me.
“Should you like to retire at once?”
“Yes; I am very sleepy.”
She got up, yawned, gave her hand to Paul, who took it with a furious
look, and I lighted her into the bedroom. A disquieting feeling haunted me.
“Here is all you want,” I said again.
The next morning she got up early, like a woman who is accustomed to
work. She woke me by doing so, and I watched her through my half-closed
eyelids.
She came and went without hurrying herself, as if she were astonished at
having nothing to do. At length she went to the dressing-table, and in a
moment emptied all my bottles of perfume. She certainly also used some
water, but very little.
When she was quite dressed, she sat down on her trunk again, and
clasping one knee between her hands, she seemed to be thinking.
At that moment I pretended to first notice her, and said:
“Good-morning, Francesca.”
Without seeming in at all a better temper than the previous night, she
murmured, “Good-morning!”
When I asked her whether she had slept well, she nodded her head, and
jumping out of bed, I went and kissed her.
She turned her face toward me like a child who is being kissed against its
will; but I took her tenderly in my arms, and gently pressed my lips on her
eyelids, which she closed with evident distaste under my kisses on her fresh
cheek and full lips, which she turned away.
 “You don’t seem to like being kissed,” I said to her.
“Mica!” was her only answer.
I sat down on the trunk by her side, and passing my arm through hers, I
said: “Mica! mica! mica! in reply to everything. I shall call you
Mademoiselle Mica, I think.”
For the first time I fancied that I saw the shadow of a smile on her lips,
but it passed by so quickly that I may have been mistaken.
“But if you never say anything but Mica, I shall not know what to do to
please you. Let me see; what shall we do to-day?”
She hesitated a moment, as if some fancy had flitted through her head, and
then she said carelessly: “It is all the same to me; whatever you like.”
“Very well, Mademoiselle Mica, we will have a carriage and go for a
drive.”
“As you please,” she said.
Paul was waiting for us in the dining-room, looking as bored as third
parties usually do in love affairs. I assumed a delighted air, and shook hands
with him with triumphant energy.
“What are you thinking of doing?” he asked.
“First of all, we will go and see a little of the town, and then we might get
a carriage and take a drive in the neighborhood.”
We breakfasted almost in silence, and then set out. I dragged Francesca
from palace to palace, and she either looked at nothing or merely glanced
carelessly at the various masterpieces. Paul followed us, growling all sorts
of disagreeable things. Then we all three took a drive in silence into the
country and returned to dinner.
The next day it was the same thing and the next day again; and on the third
Paul said to me: “Look here, I am going to leave you; I am not going to stop
here for three weeks watching you make love to this creature.”
I was perplexed and annoyed, for to my great surprise I had become
singularly attached to Francesca. A man is but weak and foolish, carried
away by the merest trifle, and a coward every time that his senses are excited
or mastered. I clung to this unknown girl, silent and dissatisfied as she
always was. I liked her somewhat ill-tempered face, the dissatisfied droop
of her mouth, the weariness of her look; I liked her fatigued movements, the
contemptuous way in which she let me kiss her, the very indifference of her
caresses. A secret bond, that mysterious bond of physical love, which does
not satisfy, bound me to her. I told Paul so, quite frankly. He treated me as if I
were a fool, and then said:
“Very well, take her with you.”
But she obstinately refused to leave Genoa, without giving any reason. I
besought, I reasoned, I promised, but all was of no avail, and so I stayed on.
Paul declared that he would go by himself, and went so far as to pack up
his portmanteau; but he remained all the same.
Thus a fortnight passed. Francesca was always silent and irritable, lived
beside me rather than with me, responded to all my requirements and all my
propositions with her perpetual Che mi fa, or with her no less perpetual
Mica.
My friend became more and more furious, but my only answer was, “You
can go if you are tired of staying. I am not detaining you.”
Then he called me names, overwhelmed me with reproaches, and
exclaimed: “Where do you think I can go now? We had three weeks at our
disposal, and here is a fortnight gone! I cannot continue my journey now; and,
in any case, I am not going to Venice, Florence and Rome all by myself. But
you will pay for it, and more dearly than you think, most likely. You are not
going to bring a man all the way from Paris in order to shut him up at a hotel
in Genoa with an Italian adventuress.”
When I told him, very calmly, to return to Paris, he exclaimed that he
intended to do so the very next day; but the next day he was still there, still in
a rage and swearing.
By this time we began to be known in the streets through which we
wandered from morning till night. Sometimes French people would turn
round astonished at meeting their fellow-countrymen in the company of this
girl with her striking costume, who looked singularly out of place, not to say
compromising, beside us.
She used to walk along, leaning on my arm, without looking at anything.
Why did she remain with me, with us, who seemed to do so little to amuse
her? Who was she? Where did she come from? What was she doing? Had
she any plan or idea? Where did she live? As an adventuress, or by chance
meetings? I tried in vain to find out and to explain it. The better I knew her
the more enigmatical she became. She seemed to be a girl of poor family
who had been taken away, and then cast aside and lost. What did she think
would become of her, or whom was she waiting for? She certainly did not
appear to be trying to make a conquest of me, or to make any real profit out
of me.
I tried to question her, to speak to her of her childhood and family; but she
never gave me an answer. I stayed with her, my heart unfettered and my
senses enchained, never wearied of holding her in my arms, that proud and
quarrelsome woman, captivated by my senses, or rather carried away,
overcome by a youthful, healthy, powerful charm, which emanated from her
fragrant person and from the well-molded lines of her body.
Another week passed, and the term of my journey was drawing on, for I
had to be back in Paris by the eleventh of July. By this time Paul had come to
take his part in the adventure, though still grumbling at me, while I invented
pleasures, distractions and excursions to amuse Francesca and my friend; and
in order to do this I gave myself a great amount of trouble.
One day I proposed an excursion to Sta Margarita, that charming little
town in the midst of gardens, hidden at the foot of a slope which stretches far
into the sea up to the village of Portofino. We three walked along the
excellent road which goes along the foot of the mountain. Suddenly
Francesca said to me: “I shall not be able to go with you to-morrow; I must
go and see some of my relatives.”
That was all; I did not ask her any questions, as I was quite sure she
would not answer me.
The next morning she got up very early. When she spoke to me it was in a
constrained and hesitating voice:
“If I do not come back again, shall you come and fetch me?”
“Most certainly I shall,” was my reply. “Where shall I go to find you?”
Then she explained: “You must go into the Street Victor-Emmanuel, down
the Falcone road and the side street San-Rafael and into the furniture shop in
the building at the right at the end of a court, and there you must ask for
Madame Rondoli. That is the place.”
And so she went away, leaving me rather astonished.
When Paul saw that I was alone, he stammered out: “Where; is
Francesca?” And when I told him what had happened, he exclaimed:
“My dear fellow, let us make use of our opportunity, and bolt; as it is, our
time is up. Two days, more or less, make no difference. Let us go at once; go
and pack up your things. Off we go!”
But I refused. I could not, as I told him, leave the girl in that manner after
such companionship for nearly three weeks. At any rate, I ought to say good-
by to her, and make her accept a present; I certainly had no intention of
behaving badly to her.
But he would not listen; he pressed and worried me, but I would not give
way.
I remained indoors for several hours, expecting Francesca’s return, but
she did not come, and at last, at dinner, Paul said with a triumphant air:
“She has flown, my dear fellow; it is certainly very strange.”
I must acknowledge that I was surprised and rather vexed. He laughed in
my face, and made fun of me.
“It is not exactly a bad way of getting rid of you, though rather primitive.
‘Just wait for me, I shall be back in a moment,’ they often say. How long are
you going to wait? I should not wonder if you were foolish enough to go and
look for her at the address she gave you. ‘Does Madame Rondoli live here,
please?’ ‘No, monsieur.’ I’ll bet that you are longing to go there.”
“Not in the least,” I protested, “and I assure you that if she does not come
back to-morrow morning I shall leave by the express at eight o’clock. I shall
have waited twenty-four hours, and that is enough; my conscience will be
quite clear.”
I spent an uneasy and unpleasant evening, for I really had at heart a very
tender feeling for her. I went to bed at twelve o’clock, and hardly slept at all.
I got up at six, called Paul, packed up my things, and two hours later we set
out for France together.

III

The next year, at just about the same period, I was seized as one is with a
periodical fever, with a new desire to go to Italy, and I immediately made up
my mind to carry it into effect. There is no doubt that every really well-
educated man ought to see Florence, Venice and Rome. This travel has, also,
the additional advantage of providing many subjects of conversation in
society, and of giving one an opportunity for bringing forward artistic
generalities which appear profound.
This time I went alone, and I arrived at Genoa at the same time as the year
before, but without any adventure on the road. I went to the same hotel, and
actually happened to have the same room.
I was hardly in bed when the recollection of Francesca which, since the
evening before, had been floating vaguely through my mind, haunted me with
strange persistency. I thought of her nearly the whole night, and by degrees
the wish to see her again seized me, a confused desire at first, which
gradually grew stronger and more intense. At last I made up my mind to
spend the next day in Genoa to try to find her, and if I should not succeed, to
take the evening train.
Early in the morning I set out on my search. I remembered the directions
she had given me when she left me, perfectly — Victor-Emmanuel Street,
house of the furniture-dealer, at the bottom of the yard on the right.
I found it without the least difficulty, and I knocked at the door of a
somewhat dilapidated-looking dwelling. It was opened by a stout woman,
who must have been very handsome, but who actually was only very dirty.
Although she had too much embonpoint, she still bore the lines of majestic
beauty; her untidy hair fell over her forehead and shoulders, and one fancied
one could see her floating about in an enormous dressing-gown covered with
spots of dirt and grease. Round her neck she wore a great gilt necklace, and
on her wrists were splendid bracelets of Genoa filigree work.
In rather a hostile manner she asked me what I wanted, and I replied by
requesting her to tell me whether Francesca Rondoli lived there.
“What do you want with her?” she asked.
“I had the pleasure of meeting her last year, and I should like to see her
again.”
The old woman looked at me suspiciously.
“Where did you meet her?” she asked.
“Why, here in Genoa itself.”
“What is your name?”
I hesitated a moment, and then I told her. I had hardly done so when the
Italian put out her arms as if to embrace me. “Oh! you are the Frenchman how
glad I am to see you! But what grief you caused the poor child! She waited
for you a month; yes, a whole month. At first she thought you would come to
fetch her. She wanted to see whether you loved her. If you only knew how she
cried when she saw that you were not coming! She cried till she seemed to
have no tears left. Then she went to the hotel, but you had gone. She thought
that most likely you were travelling in Italy, and that you would return by
Genoa to fetch her, as she would not go with you. And she waited more than
a month, monsieur; and she was so unhappy; so unhappy. I am her mother.”
I really felt a little disconcerted, but I regained my self-possession, and
asked:
 “Where is she now?”
“She has gone to Paris with a painter, a delightful man, who loves her
very much, and who gives her everything that she wants. Just look at what she
sent me; they are very pretty, are they not?”
And she showed me, with quite southern animation, her heavy bracelets
and necklace. “I have also,” she continued, “earrings with stones in them, a
silk dress, and some rings; but I only wear them on grand occasions. Oh! she
is very happy, monsieur, very happy. She will be so pleased when I tell her
you have been here. But pray come in and sit down. You will take something
or other, surely?”
But I refused, as I now wished to get away by the first train; but she took
me by the arm and pulled me in, saying:
“Please, come in; I must tell her that you have been in here.”
I found myself in a small, rather dark room, furnished with only a table
and a few chairs.
She continued: “Oh, she is very happy now, very happy. When you met her
in the train she was very miserable; she had had an unfortunate love affair in
Marseilles, and she was coming home, poor child. But she liked you at once,
though she was still rather sad, you understand. Now she has all she wants,
and she writes and tells me everything that she does. His name is Bellemin,
and they say he is a great painter in your country. He fell in love with her at
first sight. But you will take a glass of sirup?-it is very good. Are you quite
alone, this year?”
“Yes,” I said, “quite alone.”
I felt an increasing inclination to laugh, as my first disappointment was
dispelled by what Mother Rondoli said. I was obliged; however, to drink a
glass of her sirup.
“So you are quite alone?” she continued. “How sorry I am that Francesca
is not here now; she would have been company for you all the time you
stayed. It is not very amusing to go about all by oneself, and she will be very
sorry also.”
Then, as I was getting up to go, she exclaimed:
“But would you not like Carlotta to go with you? She knows all the walks
very well. She is my second daughter, monsieur.”
No doubt she took my look of surprise for consent, for she opened the
inner door and called out up the dark stairs which I could not see:
“Carlotta! Carlotta! make haste down, my dear child.”
 I tried to protest, but she would not listen.
“No; she will be very glad to go with you; she is very nice, and much
more cheerful than her sister, and she is a good girl, a very good girl, whom I
love very much.”
In a few moments a tall, slender, dark girl appeared, her hair hanging
down, and her youthful figure showing unmistakably beneath an old dress of
her mother’s.
The latter at once told her how matters stood.
“This is Francesca’s Frenchman, you know, the one whom she knew last
year. He is quite alone, and has come to look for her, poor fellow; so I told
him that you would go with him to keep him company.”
The girl looked at me with her handsome dark eyes, and said, smiling:
“I have no objection, if he wishes it”
I could not possibly refuse, and merely said:
“Of course, I shall be very glad of your company.”
Her mother pushed her out. “Go and get dressed directly; put on your blue
dress and your hat with the flowers, and make haste.”
As soon as she had left the room the old woman explained herself: “I have
two others, but they are much younger. It costs a lot of money to bring up four
children. Luckily the eldest is off my hands at present.”
Then she told all about herself, about her husband, who had been an
employee on the railway, but who was dead, and she expatiated on the good
qualities of Carlotta, her second girl, who soon returned, dressed, as her
sister had been, in a striking, peculiar manner.
Her mother examined her from head to foot, and, after finding everything
right, she said:
“Now, my children, you can go.” Then turning to the girl, she said: “Be
sure you are back by ten o’clock to-night; you know the door is locked then.”
The answer was:
“All right, mamma; don’t alarm yourself.”
She took my arm and we went wandering about the streets, just as I had
wandered the previous year with her sister.
We returned to the hotel for lunch, and then I took my new friend to Santa
Margarita, just as I had taken her sister the year previously.
During the whole fortnight which I had at my disposal, I took Carlotta to
all the places of interest in and about Genoa. She gave me no cause to regret
her sister.
 She cried when I left her, and the morning of my departure I gave her four
bracelets for her mother, besides a substantial token of my affection for
herself.
One of these days I intend to return to Italy, and I cannot help remembering
with a certain amount of uneasiness, mingled with hope, that Madame
Rondoli has two more daughters.
 THE FALSE GEMS

Monsieur Lantin had met the young girl at a reception at the house of the
second head of his department, and had fallen head over heels in love with
her.
She was the daughter of a provincial tax collector, who had been dead
several years. She and her mother came to live in Paris, where the latter, who
made the acquaintance of some of the families in her neighborhood, hoped to
find a husband for her daughter.
They had very moderate means, and were honorable, gentle, and quiet.
The young girl was a perfect type of the virtuous woman in whose hands
every sensible young man dreams of one day intrusting his happiness. Her
simple beauty had the charm of angelic modesty, and the imperceptible smile
which constantly hovered about the lips seemed to be the reflection of a pure
and lovely soul. Her praises resounded on every side. People never tired of
repeating: “Happy the man who wins her love! He could not find a better
wife.”
Monsieur Lantin, then chief clerk in the Department of the Interior,
enjoyed a snug little salary of three thousand five hundred francs, and he
proposed to this model young girl, and was accepted.
He was unspeakably happy with her. She governed his household with
such clever economy that they seemed to live in luxury. She lavished the most
delicate attentions on her husband, coaxed and fondled him; and so great was
her charm that six years after their marriage, Monsieur Lantin discovered that
he loved his wife even more than during the first days of their honeymoon.
He found fault with only two of her tastes: Her love for the theatre, and
her taste for imitation jewelry. Her friends (the wives of some petty officials)
frequently procured for her a box at the theatre, often for the first
representations of the new plays; and her husband was obliged to accompany
her, whether he wished it or not, to these entertainments which bored him
excessively after his day’s work at the office.
After a time, Monsieur Lantin begged his wife to request some lady of her
acquaintance to accompany her, and to bring her home after the theatre. She
opposed this arrangement, at first; but, after much persuasion, finally
consented, to the infinite delight of her husband.
Now, with her love for the theatre, came also the desire for ornaments.
Her costumes remained as before, simple, in good taste, and always modest;
but she soon began to adorn her ears with huge rhinestones, which glittered
and sparkled like real diamonds. Around her neck she wore strings of false
pearls, on her arms bracelets of imitation gold, and combs set with glass
jewels.
Her husband frequently remonstrated with her, saying:
“My dear, as you cannot afford to buy real jewelry, you ought to appear
adorned with your beauty and modesty alone, which are the rarest ornaments
of your sex.”
But she would smile sweetly, and say:
“What can I do? I am so fond of jewelry. It is my only weakness. We
cannot change our nature.”
Then she would wind the pearl necklace round her fingers, make the
facets of the crystal gems sparkle, and say:
“Look! are they not lovely? One would swear they were real.”
Monsieur Lantin would then answer, smilingly:
“You have bohemian tastes, my dear.”
Sometimes, of an evening, when they were enjoying a tete-a-tote by the
fireside, she would place on the tea table the morocco leather box containing
the “trash,” as Monsieur Lantin called it. She would examine the false gems
with a passionate attention, as though they imparted some deep and secret
joy; and she often persisted in passing a necklace around her husband’s neck,
and, laughing heartily, would exclaim: “How droll you look!” Then she
would throw herself into his arms, and kiss him affectionately.
One evening, in winter, she had been to the opera, and returned home
chilled through and through. The next morning she coughed, and eight days
later she died of inflammation of the lungs.
Monsieur Lantin’s despair was so great that his hair became white in one
month. He wept unceasingly; his heart was broken as he remembered her
smile, her voice, every charm of his dead wife.
Time did not assuage his grief. Often, during office hours, while his
colleagues were discussing the topics of the day, his eyes would suddenly fill
with tears, and he would give vent to his grief in heartrending sobs.
Everything in his wife’s room remained as it was during her lifetime; all her
furniture, even her clothing, being left as it was on the day of her death. Here
he was wont to seclude himself daily and think of her who had been his
treasure-the joy of his existence.
But life soon became a struggle. His income, which, in the hands of his
wife, covered all household expenses, was now no longer sufficient for his
own immediate wants; and he wondered how she could have managed to buy
such excellent wine and the rare delicacies which he could no longer procure
with his modest resources.
He incurred some debts, and was soon reduced to absolute poverty. One
morning, finding himself without a cent in his pocket, he resolved to sell
something, and immediately the thought occurred to him of disposing of his
wife’s paste jewels, for he cherished in his heart a sort of rancor against
these “deceptions,” which had always irritated him in the past. The very sight
of them spoiled, somewhat, the memory of his lost darling.
To the last days of her life she had continued to make purchases, bringing
home new gems almost every evening, and he turned them over some time
before finally deciding to sell the heavy necklace, which she seemed to
prefer, and which, he thought, ought to be worth about six or seven francs; for
it was of very fine workmanship, though only imitation.
He put it in his pocket, and started out in search of what seemed a reliable
jeweler’s shop. At length he found one, and went in, feeling a little ashamed
to expose his misery, and also to offer such a worthless article for sale.
“Sir,” said he to the merchant, “I would like to know what this is worth.”
The man took the necklace, examined it, called his clerk, and made some
remarks in an undertone; he then put the ornament back on the counter, and
looked at it from a distance to judge of the effect.
Monsieur Lantin, annoyed at all these ceremonies, was on the point of
saying: “Oh! I know well ‘enough it is not worth anything,” when the jeweler
said: “Sir, that necklace is worth from twelve to fifteen thousand francs; but I
could not buy it, unless you can tell me exactly where it came from.”
The widower opened his eyes wide and remained gaping, not
comprehending the merchant’s meaning. Finally he stammered: “You say —
are you sure?” The other replied, drily: “You can try elsewhere and see if
any one will offer you more. I consider it worth fifteen thousand at the most.
Come back; here, if you cannot do better.”
Monsieur Lantin, beside himself with astonishment, took up the necklace
and left the store. He wished time for reflection.
 Once outside, he felt inclined to laugh, and said to himself: “The fool! Oh,
the fool! Had I only taken him at his word! That jeweler cannot distinguish
real diamonds from the imitation article.”
A few minutes after, he entered another store, in the Rue de la Paix. As
soon as the proprietor glanced at the necklace, he cried out:
“Ah, parbleu! I know it well; it was bought here.”
Monsieur Lantin, greatly disturbed, asked:
“How much is it worth?”
“Well, I sold it for twenty thousand francs. I am willing to take it back for
eighteen thousand, when you inform me, according to our legal formality,
how it came to be in your possession.”
This time, Monsieur Lantin was dumfounded. He replied:
“But — but — examine it well. Until this moment I was under the
impression that it was imitation.”
The jeweler asked:
“What is your name, sir?”
“Lantin — I am in the employ of the Minister of the Interior. I live at
number sixteen Rue des Martyrs.”
The merchant looked through his books, found the entry, and said: “That
necklace was sent to Madame Lantin’s address, sixteen Rue des Martyrs,
July 20, 1876.”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes — the widower speechless
with astonishment; the jeweler scenting a thief. The latter broke the silence.
“Will you leave this necklace here for twenty-four hours?” said he; “I will
give you a receipt.”
Monsieur Lantin answered hastily: “Yes, certainly.” Then, putting the
ticket in his pocket, he left the store.
He wandered aimlessly through the streets, his mind in a state of dreadful
confusion. He tried to reason, to understand. His wife could not afford to
purchase such a costly ornament. Certainly not.
But, then, it must have been a present! — a present! — a present, from
whom? Why was it given her?
He stopped, and remained standing in the middle of the street. A horrible
doubt entered his mind — She? Then, all the other jewels must have been
presents, too! The earth seemed to tremble beneath him — the tree before
him to be falling; he threw up his arms, and fell to the ground, unconscious.
He recovered his senses in a pharmacy, into which the passers-by had borne
him. He asked to be taken home, and, when he reached the house, he shut
himself up in his room, and wept until nightfall. Finally, overcome with
fatigue, he went to bed and fell into a heavy sleep.
The sun awoke him next morning, and he began to dress slowly to go to
the office. It was hard to work after such shocks. He sent a letter to his
employer, requesting to be excused. Then he remembered that he had to
return to the jeweler’s. He did not like the idea; but he could not leave the
necklace with that man. He dressed and went out.
It was a lovely day; a clear, blue sky smiled on the busy city below. Men
of leisure were strolling about with their hands in their pockets.
Monsieur Lantin, observing them, said to himself: “The rich, indeed, are
happy. With money it is possible to forget even the deepest sorrow. One can
go where one pleases, and in travel find that distraction which is the surest
cure for grief. Oh if I were only rich!”
He perceived that he was hungry, but his pocket was empty. He again
remembered the necklace. Eighteen thousand francs! Eighteen thousand
francs! What a sum!
He soon arrived in the Rue de la Paix, opposite the jeweler’s. Eighteen
thousand francs! Twenty times he resolved to go in, but shame kept him back.
He was hungry, however — very hungry — and not a cent in his pocket. He
decided quickly, ran across the street, in order not to have time for reflection,
and rushed into the store.
The proprietor immediately came forward, and politely offered him a
chair; the clerks glanced at him knowingly.
“I have made inquiries, Monsieur Lantin,” said the jeweler, “and if you
are still resolved to dispose of the gems, I am ready to pay you the price I
offered.”
“Certainly, sir,” stammered Monsieur Lantin.
Whereupon the proprietor took from a drawer eighteen large bills,
counted, and handed them to Monsieur Lantin, who signed a receipt; and,
with trembling hand, put the money into his pocket.
As he was about to leave the store, he turned toward the merchant, who
still wore the same knowing smile, and lowering his eyes, said:
“I have — I have other gems, which came from the same source. Will you
buy them, also?”
The merchant bowed: “Certainly, sir.”
 Monsieur Lantin said gravely: “I will bring them to you.” An hour later, he
returned with the gems.
The large diamond earrings were worth twenty thousand francs; the
bracelets, thirty-five thousand; the rings, sixteen thousand; a set of emeralds
and sapphires, fourteen thousand; a gold chain with solitaire pendant, forty
thousand — making the sum of one hundred and forty-three thousand francs.
The jeweler remarked, jokingly:
“There was a person who invested all her savings in precious stones.”
Monsieur Lantin replied, seriously:
“It is only another way of investing one’s money.”
That day he lunched at Voisin’s, and drank wine worth twenty francs a
bottle. Then he hired a carriage and made a tour of the Bois. He gazed at the
various turnouts with a kind of disdain, and could hardly refrain from crying
out to the occupants:
“I, too, am rich! — I am worth two hundred thousand francs.”
Suddenly he thought of his employer. He drove up to the bureau, and
entered gaily, saying:
“Sir, I have come to resign my position. I have just inherited three hundred
thousand francs.”
He shook hands with his former colleagues, and confided to them some of
his projects for the future; he then went off to dine at the Cafe Anglais.
He seated himself beside a gentleman of aristocratic bearing; and, during
the meal, informed the latter confidentially that he had just inherited a fortune
of four hundred thousand francs.
For the first time in his life, he was not bored at the theatre, and spent the
remainder of the night in a gay frolic.
Six months afterward, he married again. His second wife was a very
virtuous woman; but had a violent temper. She caused him much sorrow.
 FASCINATION

I can tell you neither the name of the country, nor the name of the man. It was
a long, long way from here on a fertile and burning shore. We had been
walking since the morning along the coast, with the blue sea bathed in
sunlight on one side of us, and the shore covered with crops on the other.
Flowers were growing quite close to the waves, those light, gentle, lulling
waves. It was very warm, a soft warmth permeated with the odor of the rich,
damp, fertile soil. One fancied one was inhaling germs.
I had been told, that evening, that I should meet with hospitality at the
house of a Frenchman who lived in an orange grove at the end of a
promontory. Who was he? I did not know. He had come there one morning
ten years before, and had bought land which he planted with vines and sowed
with grain. He had worked, this man, with passionate energy, with fury. Then
as he went on from month to month, year to year, enlarging his boundaries,
cultivating incessantly the strong virgin soil, he accumulated a fortune by his
indefatigable labor.
But he kept on working, they said. Rising at daybreak, he would remain in
the fields till evening, superintending everything without ceasing, tormented
by one fixed idea, the insatiable desire for money, which nothing can quiet,
nothing satisfy. He now appeared to be very rich. The sun was setting as I
reached his house. It was situated as described, at the end of a promontory in
the midst of a grove of orange trees. It was a large square house, quite plain,
and overlooked the sea. As I approached, a man wearing a long beard
appeared in the doorway. Having greeted him, I asked if he would give me
shelter for the night. He held out his hand and said, smiling:
“Come in, monsieur, consider yourself at home.”
He led me into a room, and put a man servant at my disposal with the
perfect ease and familiar graciousness of a man-of-the-world. Then he left
me saying:
“We will dine as soon as you are ready to come downstairs.”
We took dinner, sitting opposite each other, on a terrace facing the sea. I
began to talk about this rich, distant, unknown land. He smiled, as he replied
carelessly:
“Yes, this country is beautiful. But no country satisfies one when they are
far from the one they love.”
“You regret France?”
“I regret Paris.”
“Why do you not go back?”
“Oh, I will return there.”
And gradually we began to talk of French society, of the boulevards, and
things Parisian. He asked me questions that showed he knew all about these
things, mentioned names, all the familiar names in vaudeville known on the
sidewalks.
“Whom does one see at Tortoni’s now?
“Always the same crowd, except those who died.” I looked at him
attentively, haunted by a vague recollection. I certainly had seen that head
somewhere. But where? And when? He seemed tired, although he was
vigorous; and sad, although he was determined. His long, fair beard fell on
his chest. He was somewhat bald and had heavy eyebrows and a thick
mustache.
The sun was sinking into the sea, turning the vapor from the earth into a
fiery mist. The orange blossoms exhaled their powerful, delicious fragrance.
He seemed to see nothing besides me, and gazing steadfastly he appeared to
discover in the depths of my mind the far-away, beloved and well-known
image of the wide, shady pavement leading from the Madeleine to the Rue
Drouot.
“Do you know Boutrelle?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Has he changed much?”
“Yes, his hair is quite white.”
“And La Ridamie?”
“The same as ever.”
“And the women? Tell me about the women. Let’s see. Do you know
Suzanne Verner?”
“Yes, very much. But that is over.”
“Ah! And Sophie Astier?”
“Dead.”
“Poor girl. Did you — did you know— “
 But he ceased abruptly: And then, in a changed voice, his face suddenly
turning pale, he continued:
“No, it is best that I should not speak of that any more, it breaks my heart.”
Then, as if to change the current of his thoughts he rose.
“Would you like to go in?” he said.
“Yes, I think so.”
And he preceded me into the house. The downstairs rooms were
enormous, bare and mournful, and had a deserted look. Plates and glasses
were scattered on the tables, left there by the dark-skinned servants who
wandered incessantly about this spacious dwelling.
Two rifles were banging from two nails, on the wall; and in the corners of
the rooms were spades, fishing poles, dried palm leaves, every imaginable
thing set down at random when people came home in the evening and ready
to hand when they went out at any time, or went to work.
My host smiled as he said:
“This is the dwelling, or rather the kennel, of an exile, but my own room
is cleaner. Let us go there.”
As I entered I thought I was in a second-hand store, it was so full of things
of all descriptions, strange things of various kinds that one felt must be
souvenirs. On the walls were two pretty paintings by well-known artists,
draperies, weapons, swords and pistols, and exactly in the middle, on the
principal panel, a square of white satin in a gold frame.
Somewhat surprised, I approached to look at it, and perceived a hairpin
fastened in the centre of the glossy satin. My host placed his hand on my
shoulder.
“That,” said he, “is the only thing that I look at here, and the only thing that
I have seen for ten years. M. Prudhomme said: ‘This sword is the most
memorable day of my life.’ I can say: ‘This hairpin is all my life.’”
I sought for some commonplace remark, and ended by saying:
“You have suffered on account of some woman?”
He replied abruptly:
“Say, rather, that I am suffering like a wretch.”
“But come out on my balcony. A name rose to my lips just now which I
dared not utter; for if you had said ‘Dead’ as you did of Sophie Astier, I
should have fired a bullet into my brain, this very day.”
We had gone out on the wide balcony from whence we could see two
gulfs, one to the right and the other to the left, enclosed by high gray
mountains. It was just twilight and the reflection of the sunset still lingered in
the sky.
He continued:
“Is Jeanne de Limours still alive?”
His eyes were fastened on mine and were full of a trembling anxiety. I
smiled.
“Parbleu — she is prettier than ever.”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated and then said:
“Very well?”
“No.”
He took my hand.
“Tell me about her,” he said.
“Why, I have nothing to tell. She is one of the most charming women, or,
rather, girls, and the most admired in Paris. She leads a delightful existence
and lives like a princess, that is all.”
“I love her,” he murmured in a tone in which he might have said “I am
going to die.” Then suddenly he continued:
“Ah! For three years we lived in a state of terror and delight. I almost
killed her five or six times. She tried to pierce my eyes with that hairpin that
you saw just now. Look, do you see that little white spot beneath my left eye?
We loved each other. How can I explain that infatuation? You would not
understand it.”
“There must be a simple form of love, the result of the mutual impulse of
two hearts and two souls. But there is also assuredly an atrocious form, that
tortures one cruelly, the result of the occult blending of two unlike
personalities who detest each other at the same time that they adore one
another.”
“In three years this woman had ruined me. I had four million francs which
she squandered in her calm manner, quietly, eat them up with a gentle smile
that seemed to fall from her eyes on to her lips.”
“You know her? There is something irresistible about her. What is it? I do
not know. Is it those gray eyes whose glance penetrates you like a gimlet and
remains there like the point of an arrow? It is more likely the gentle,
indifferent and fascinating smile that she wears like a mask. Her slow grace
pervades you little by little; exhales from her like a perfume, from her slim
figure that scarcely sways as she passes you, for she seems to glide rather
than walk; from her pretty voice with its slight drawl that would seem to be
the music of her smile; from her gestures, also, which are never exaggerated,
but always appropriate, and intoxicate your vision with their harmony. For
three years she was the only being that existed for me on the earth! How I
suffered; for she deceived me as she deceived everyone! Why? For no
reason; just for the pleasure of deceiving. And when I found it out, when I
treated her as a common girl and a beggar, she said quietly: ‘Are we
married?’
“Since I have been here I have thought so much about her that at last I
understand her. She is Manon Lescaut come back to life. It is Manon, who
could not love without deceiving; Marion for whom love, amusement, money,
are all one.”
He was silent. After a few minutes he resumed:
“When I had spent my last sou on her she said simply:
“‘You understand, my dear boy, that I cannot live on air and weather. I
love you very much, better than anyone, but I must live. Poverty and I could
not keep house together.”
“And if I should tell you what a horrible life I led with her! When I looked
at her I would just as soon have killed her as kissed her. When I looked at her
. . . I felt a furious desire to open my arms to embrace and strangle her. She
had, back of her eyes, something false and intangible that made me execrate
her; and that was, perhaps, the reason I loved her so well. The eternal
feminine, the odious and seductive feminine, was stronger in her than in any
other woman. She was full of it, overcharged, as with a venomous and
intoxicating fluid. She was a woman to a greater extent than any one has ever
been.”
“And when I went out with her she would look at all men in such a manner
that she seemed to offer herself to each in a single glance. This exasperated
me, and still it attached me to her all the more. This creature in just walking
along the street belonged to everyone, in spite of me, in spite of herself, by
the very fact of her nature, although she had a modest, gentle carriage. Do you
understand?
“And what torture! At the theatre, at the restaurant she seemed to belong to
others under my very eyes. And as soon as I left her she did belong to others.
“It is now ten years since I saw her and I love her better than ever.”
 Night spread over the earth. A strong perfume of orange blossoms
pervaded the air. I said:
“Will you see her again?”
“Parbleu! I now have here, in land and money, seven to eight thousand
francs. When I reach a million I shall sell out and go away. I shall have
enough to live on with her for a year — one whole year. And then, good-bye,
my life will be finished.”
“But after that?” I asked.
“After that, I do not know. That will be all, I may possibly ask her to take
me as a valet de chambre.”
 YVETTE SAMORIS

“The Comtesse Samoris.”

“That lady in black over there?”
“The very one. She’s wearing mourning for her daughter, whom she
killed.”
“You don’t mean that seriously? How did she die?”
“Oh! it is a very simple story, without any crime in it, any violence.”
“Then what really happened?”
“Almost nothing. Many courtesans are born to be virtuous women, they
say; and many women called virtuous are born to be courtesans — is that not
so? Now, Madame Samoris, who was born a courtesan, had a daughter born
a virtuous woman, that’s all.”
“I don’t quite understand you.”
“I’ll — explain what I mean. The comtesse is nothing but a common,
ordinary parvenue originating no one knows where. A Hungarian or
Wallachian countess or I know not what. She appeared one winter in
apartments she had taken in the Champs Elysees, that quarter for adventurers
and adventuresses, and opened her drawing-room to the first comer or to any
one that turned up.
“I went there. Why? you will say. I really can’t tell you. I went there, as
every one goes to such places because the women are facile and the men are
dishonest. You know that set composed of filibusters with varied
decorations, all noble, all titled, all unknown at the embassies, with the
exception of those who are spies. All talk of their honor without the slightest
occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you about their lives,
braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false cards they have up their
sleeves, as delusive as their names — in short, the aristocracy of the bagnio.
“I adore these people. They are interesting to study, interesting to know,
amusing to understand, often clever, never commonplace like public
functionaries. Their wives are always pretty, with a slight flavor of foreign
roguery, with the mystery of their existence, half of it perhaps spent in a
house of correction. They have, as a rule, magnificent eyes and incredible
hair. I adore them also.
“Madame Samoris is the type of these adventuresses, elegant, mature and
still beautiful. Charming feline creatures, you feel that they are vicious to the
marrow of their bones. You find them very amusing when you visit them; they
give card parties; they have dances and suppers; in short, they offer you all
the pleasures of social life.
“And she had a daughter — a tall, fine-looking girl, always ready for
amusement, always full of laughter and reckless gaiety — a true adventuress’
daughter — but, at the same time, an innocent, unsophisticated, artless girl,
who saw nothing, knew nothing, understood nothing of all the things that
happened in her father’s house.
“The girl was simply a puzzle to me. She was a mystery. She lived amid
those infamous surroundings with a quiet, tranquil ease that was either
terribly criminal or else the result of innocence. She sprang from the filth of
that class like a beautiful flower fed on corruption.”
“How do you know about them?”
“How do I know? That’s the funniest part of the business! One morning
there was a ring at my door, and my valet came up to tell me that M. Joseph
Bonenthal wanted to speak to me. I said directly:
“‘And who is this gentleman?’ My valet replied: ‘I don’t know, monsieur;
perhaps ’tis some one that wants employment.’ And so it was. The man
wanted me to take him as a servant. I asked him where he had been last. He
answered: ‘With the Comtesse Samoris.’ ‘Ah!’ said I, ‘but my house is not a
bit like hers.’ ‘I know that well, monsieur,’ he said, ‘and that’s the very
reason I want to take service with monsieur. I’ve had enough of these people:
a man may stay a little while with them, but he won’t remain long with them.’
I required an additional man servant at the time and so I took him.
“A month later Mademoiselle Yvette Samoris died mysteriously, and here
are all the details of her death I could gather from Joseph, who got them from
his sweetheart, the comtesse’s chambermaid.
“It was a ball night, and two newly arrived guests were chatting behind a
door. Mademoiselle Yvette, who had just been dancing, leaned against this
door to get a little air.
“They did not see her approaching, but she heard what they were saying.
And this was what they said:
“‘But who is the father of the girl?’
 “‘A Russian, it appears; Count Rouvaloff. He never comes near the
mother now.’
“‘And who is the reigning prince to-day?’
“‘That English prince standing near the window; Madame Samoris adores
him. But her adoration of any one never lasts longer than a month or six
weeks. Nevertheless, as you see, she has a large circle of admirers. All are
called — and nearly all are chosen. That kind of thing costs a good deal, but
— hang it, what can you expect?’
“‘And where did she get this name of Samoris?’
“‘From the only man perhaps that she ever loved — a Jewish banker from
Berlin who goes by the name of Samuel Morris.’
“‘Good. Thanks. Now that I know what kind of woman she is and have
seen her, I’m off!’
“What a shock this was to the mind of a young girl endowed with all the
instincts of a virtuous woman! What despair overwhelmed that simple soul!
What mental tortures quenched her unbounded gaiety, her delightful laughter,
her exultant satisfaction with life! What a conflict took place in that youthful
heart up to the moment when the last guest had left! Those were things that
Joseph could not tell me. But, the same night, Yvette abruptly entered her
mother’s room just as the comtesse was getting into bed, sent out the lady’s
maid, who was close to the door, and, standing erect and pale and with great
staring eyes, she said:
“‘Mamma, listen to what I heard a little while ago during the ball.’
“And she repeated word for word the conversation just as I told it to you.
“The comtesse was so stunned that she did not know what to say in reply
at first. When she recovered her self-possession she denied everything and
called God to witness that there was no truth in the story.
“The young girl went away, distracted but not convinced. And she began
to watch her mother.
“I remember distinctly the strange alteration that then took place in her.
She became grave and melancholy. She would fix on us her great earnest
eyes as if she wanted to read what was at the bottom of our hearts. We did
not know what to think of her and used to imagine that she was looking out
for a husband.
“One evening she overheard her mother talking to her admirer and later
saw them together, and her doubts were confirmed. She was heartbroken, and
after telling her mother what she had seen, she said coldly, like a man of
business laying down the terms of an agreement:
“‘Here is what I have determined to do, mamma: We will both go away to
some little town, or rather into the country. We will live there quietly as well
as we can. Your jewelry alone may be called a fortune. If you wish to marry
some honest man, so much the better; still better will it be if I can find one. If
you don’t consent to do this, I will kill myself.’
“This time the comtesse ordered her daughter to go to bed and never to
speak again in this manner, so unbecoming in the mouth of a child toward her
mother.
“Yvette’s answer to this was: ‘I give you a month to reflect. If, at the end
of that month, we have not changed our way of living, I will kill myself, since
there is no other honorable issue left to my life.’
“And she left the room.
“At the end of a month the Comtesse Samoris had resumed her usual
entertainments, as though nothing had occurred. One day, under the pretext
that she had a bad toothache, Yvette purchased a few drops of chloroform
from a neighboring chemist. The next day she purchased more, and every
time she went out she managed to procure small doses of the narcotic. She
filled a bottle with it.
“One morning she was found in bed, lifeless and already quite cold, with
a cotton mask soaked in chloroform over her face.
“Her coffin was covered with flowers, the church was hung in white.
There was a large crowd at the funeral ceremony.
“Ah! well, if I had known — but you never can know — I would have
married that girl, for she was infernally pretty.”
“And what became of the mother?”
“Oh! she shed a lot of tears over it. She has only begun to receive visits
again for the past week.”
“And what explanation is given of the girl’s death?”
“Oh! they pretended that it was an accident caused by a new stove, the
mechanism of which got out of order. As a good many such accidents have
occurred, the thing seemed probable enough.”
 A VENDETTA

The widow of Paolo Saverini lived alone with her son in a poor little house
on the outskirts of Bonifacio. The town, built on an outjutting part of the
mountain, in places even overhanging the sea, looks across the straits, full of
sandbanks, towards the southernmost coast of Sardinia. Beneath it, on the
other side and almost surrounding it, is a cleft in the cliff like an immense
corridor which serves as a harbor, and along it the little Italian and Sardinian
fishing boats come by a circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as
the first houses, and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes
the trip to Ajaccio.
On the white mountain the houses, massed together, makes an even whiter
spot. They look like the nests of wild birds, clinging to this peak,
overlooking this terrible passage, where vessels rarely venture. The wind,
which blows uninterruptedly, has swept bare the forbidding coast; it drives
through the narrow straits and lays waste both sides. The pale streaks of
foam, clinging to the black rocks, whose countless peaks rise up out of the
water, look like bits of rag floating and drifting on the surface of the sea.
The house of widow Saverini, clinging to the very edge of the precipice,
looks out, through its three windows, over this wild and desolate picture.
She lived there alone, with her son Antonia and their dog “Semillante,” a
big, thin beast, with a long rough coat, of the sheep-dog breed. The young
man took her with him when out hunting.
One night, after some kind of a quarrel, Antoine Saverini was
treacherously stabbed by Nicolas Ravolati, who escaped the same evening to
Sardinia.
When the old mother received the body of her child, which the neighbors
had brought back to her, she did not cry, but she stayed there for a long time
motionless, watching him. Then, stretching her wrinkled hand over the body,
she promised him a vendetta. She did not wish anybody near her, and she shut
herself up beside the body with the dog, which howled continuously, standing
at the foot of the bed, her head stretched towards her master and her tail
between her legs. She did not move any more than did the mother, who, now
leaning over the body with a blank stare, was weeping silently and watching
it.
The young man, lying on his back, dressed in his jacket of coarse cloth,
torn at the chest, seemed to be asleep. But he had blood all over him; on his
shirt, which had been torn off in order to administer the first aid; on his vest,
on his trousers, on his face, on his hands. Clots of blood had hardened in his
beard and in his hair.
His old mother began to talk to him. At the sound of this voice the dog
quieted down.
“Never fear, my boy, my little baby, you shall be avenged. Sleep, sleep;
you shall be avenged. Do you hear? It’s your mother’s promise! And she
always keeps her word, your mother does, you know she does.”
Slowly she leaned over him, pressing her cold lips to his dead ones.
Then Semillante began to howl again with a long, monotonous,
penetrating, horrible howl.
The two of them, the woman and the dog, remained there until morning.
Antoine Saverini was buried the next day and soon his name ceased to be
mentioned in Bonifacio.
He had neither brothers nor cousins. No man was there to carry on the
vendetta. His mother, the old woman, alone pondered over it.
On the other side of the straits she saw, from morning until night, a little
white speck on the coast. It was the little Sardinian village Longosardo,
where Corsican criminals take refuge when they are too closely pursued.
They compose almost the entire population of this hamlet, opposite their
native island, awaiting the time to return, to go back to the “maquis.” She
knew that Nicolas Ravolati had sought refuge in this village.
All alone, all day long, seated at her window, she was looking over there
and thinking of revenge. How could she do anything without help — she, an
invalid and so near death? But she had promised, she had sworn on the body.
She could not forget, she could not wait. What could she do? She no longer
slept at night; she had neither rest nor peace of mind; she thought persistently.
The dog, dozing at her feet, would sometimes lift her head and howl. Since
her master’s death she often howled thus, as though she were calling him, as
though her beast’s soul, inconsolable too, had also retained a recollection
that nothing could wipe out.
One night, as Semillante began to howl, the mother suddenly got hold of
an idea, a savage, vindictive, fierce idea. She thought it over until morning.
Then, having arisen at daybreak she went to church. She prayed, prostrate on
the floor, begging the Lord to help her, to support her, to give to her poor,
broken-down body the strength which she needed in order to avenge her son.
She returned home. In her yard she had an old barrel, which acted as a
cistern. She turned it over, emptied it, made it fast to the ground with sticks
and stones. Then she chained Semillante to this improvised kennel and went
into the house.
She walked ceaselessly now, her eyes always fixed on the distant coast of
Sardinia. He was over there, the murderer.
All day and all night the dog howled. In the morning the old woman
brought her some water in a bowl, but nothing more; no soup, no bread.
Another day went by. Semillante, exhausted, was sleeping. The following
day her eyes were shining, her hair on end and she was pulling wildly at her
chain.
All this day the old woman gave her nothing to eat. The beast, furious,
was barking hoarsely. Another night went by.
Then, at daybreak, Mother Saverini asked a neighbor for some straw. She
took the old rags which had formerly been worn by her husband and stuffed
them so as to make them look like a human body.
Having planted a stick in the ground, in front of Semillante’s kennel, she
tied to it this dummy, which seemed to be standing up. Then she made a head
out of some old rags.
The dog, surprised, was watching this straw man, and was quiet, although
famished. Then the old woman went to the store and bought a piece of black
sausage. When she got home she started a fire in the yard, near the kennel,
and cooked the sausage. Semillante, frantic, was jumping about, frothing at
the mouth, her eyes fixed on the food, the odor of which went right to her
stomach.
Then the mother made of the smoking sausage a necktie for the dummy.
She tied it very tight around the neck with string, and when she had finished
she untied the dog.
With one leap the beast jumped at the dummy’s throat, and with her paws
on its shoulders she began to tear at it. She would fall back with a piece of
food in her mouth, then would jump again, sinking her fangs into the string,
and snatching few pieces of meat she would fall back again and once more
spring forward. She was tearing up the face with her teeth and the whole
neck was in tatters.
 The old woman, motionless and silent, was watching eagerly. Then she
chained the beast up again, made her fast for two more days and began this
strange performance again.
For three months she accustomed her to this battle, to this meal conquered
by a fight. She no longer chained her up, but just pointed to the dummy.
She had taught her to tear him up and to devour him without even leaving
any traces in her throat.
Then, as a reward, she would give her a piece of sausage.
As soon as she saw the man, Semillante would begin to tremble. Then she
would look up to her mistress, who, lifting her finger, would cry, “Go!” in a
shrill tone.
When she thought that the proper time had come, the widow went to
confession and, one Sunday morning she partook of communion with an
ecstatic fervor. Then, putting on men’s clothes and looking like an old tramp,
she struck a bargain with a Sardinian fisherman who carried her and her dog
to the other side of the straits.
In a bag she had a large piece of sausage. Semillante had had nothing to
eat for two days. The old woman kept letting her smell the food and whetting
her appetite.
They got to Longosardo. The Corsican woman walked with a limp. She
went to a baker’s shop and asked for Nicolas Ravolati. He had taken up his
old trade, that of carpenter. He was working alone at the back of his store.
The old woman opened the door and called:
“Hallo, Nicolas!”
He turned around. Then releasing her dog, she cried:
“Go, go! Eat him up! eat him up!”
The maddened animal sprang for his throat. The man stretched out his
arms, clasped the dog and rolled to the ground. For a few seconds he
squirmed, beating the ground with his feet. Then he stopped moving, while
Semillante dug her fangs into his throat and tore it to ribbons. Two neighbors,
seated before their door, remembered perfectly having seen an old beggar
come out with a thin, black dog which was eating something that its master
was giving him.
At nightfall the old woman was at home again. She slept well that night.
 MY TWENTY-FIVE DAYS

I had just taken possession of my room in the hotel, a narrow den between
two papered partitions, through which I could hear every sound made by my
neighbors; and I was beginning to arrange my clothes and linen in the
wardrobe with a long mirror, when I opened the drawer which is in this
piece of furniture. I immediately noticed a roll of paper. Having opened it, I
spread it out before me, and read this title:
My Twenty-five Days.
It was the diary of a guest at the watering place, of the last occupant of my
room, and had been forgotten at the moment of departure.
These notes may be of some interest to sensible and healthy persons who
never leave their own homes. It is for their benefit that I transcribe them
without altering a letter.
“CHATEL-GUYON, July 15th.
“At the first glance it is not lively, this country. However, I am going to
spend twenty-five days here, to have my liver and stomach treated, and to get
thin. The twenty-five days of any one taking the baths are very like the
twenty-eight days of the reserves; they are all devoted to fatigue duty, severe
fatigue duty. To-day I have done nothing as yet; I have been getting settled. I
have made the acquaintance of the locality and of the doctor. Chatel-Guyon
consists of a stream in which flows yellow water, in the midst of several
hillocks on which are a casino, some houses, and some stone crosses. On the
bank of the stream, at the end of the valley, may be seen a square building
surrounded by a little garden; this is the bathing establishment. Sad people
wander around this building — the invalids. A great silence reigns in the
walks shaded by trees, for this is not a pleasure resort, but a true health
resort; one takes care of one’s health as a business, and one gets well, so it
seems.
“Those who know affirm, even, that the mineral springs perform true
miracles here. However, no votive offering is hung around the cashier’s
office.
 “From time to time a gentleman or a lady comes over to a kiosk with a
slate roof, which shelters a woman of smiling and gentle aspect, and a spring
boiling in a basin of cement: Not a word is exchanged between the invalid
and the female custodian of the healing water. She hands the newcomer a
little glass in which air bubbles sparkle in the transparent liquid. The guest
drinks and goes off with a grave step to resume his interrupted walk beneath
the trees.
“No noise in the little park, no breath of air in the leaves; no voice passes
through this silence. One ought to write at the entrance to this district: ‘No
one laughs here; they take care of their health.’
“The people who chat resemble mutes who merely open their mouths to
simulate sounds, so afraid are they that their voices might escape.
“In the hotel, the same silence. It is a big hotel, where you dine solemnly
with people of good position, who have nothing to say to each other. Their
manners bespeak good breeding, and their faces reflect the conviction of a
superiority of which it might be difficult for some to give actual proofs.
“At two o’clock I made my way up to the Casino, a little wooden but
perched on a hillock, which one reaches by a goat path. But the view from
that height is admirable. Chatel-Guyon is situated in a very narrow valley,
exactly between the, plain and the mountain. I perceive, at the left, the first
great billows of the mountains of Auvergne, covered with woods, and here
and there big gray patches, hard masses of lava, for we are at the foot of the
extinct volcanoes. At the right, through the narrow cut of the valley, I
discover a plain, infinite as the sea, steeped in a bluish fog which lets one
only dimly discern the villages, the towns, the yellow fields of ripe grain,
and the green squares of meadowland shaded with apple trees. It is the
Limagne, an immense level, always enveloped in a light veil of vapor.
“The night has come. And now, after having dined alone, I write these
lines beside my open window. I hear, over there, in front of me, the little
orchestra of the Casino, which plays airs just as a foolish bird might sing all
alone in the desert.
“A dog barks at intervals. This great calm does one good. Goodnight.
“July 16th. — Nothing new. I have taken a bath and then a shower bath. I
have swallowed three glasses of water, and I have walked along the paths in
the park, a quarter of an hour between each glass, then half an hour after the
last. I have begun my twenty-five days.
 “July 17th. — Remarked two mysterious, pretty women who are taking
their baths and their meals after every one else has finished.
“July 18th. — Nothing new.
“July 19th. — Saw the two pretty women again. They have style and a
little indescribable air which I like very much.
“July 20th. — Long walk in a charming wooded valley, as far as the
Hermitage of Sans-Souci. This country is delightful, although sad; but so
calm; so sweet, so green. One meets along the mountain roads long wagons
loaded with hay, drawn by two cows at a slow pace or held back by them in
going down the slopes with a great effort of their heads, which are yoked
together. A man with a big black hat on his head is driving them with a
slender stick, tipping them on the side or on the forehead; and often with a
simple gesture, an energetic and serious gesture, he suddenly halts them when
the excessive load precipitates their journey down the too rugged descents.
“The air is good to inhale in these valleys. And, if it is very warm, the
dust bears with it a light odor of vanilla and of the stable, for so many cows
pass over these routes that they leave reminders everywhere. And this odor
is a perfume, when it would be a stench if it came from other animals.
“July 21st. — Excursion to the valley of the Enval. It is a narrow gorge
inclosed by superb rocks at the very foot of the mountain. A stream flows
amid the heaped-up boulders.
“As I reached the bottom of this ravine I heard women’s voices, and I
soon perceived the two mysterious ladies of my hotel, who were chatting,
seated on a stone.
“The occasion appeared to me a good one, and I introduced myself
without hesitation. My overtures were received without embarrassment. We
walked back together to the hotel. And we talked about Paris. They knew, it
seemed, many people whom I knew, too. Who can they be?
“I shall see them to-morrow. There is nothing more amusing than such
meetings as this.
“July 22d. — Day passed almost entirely with the two unknown ladies.
They are very pretty, by Jove! — one a brunette and the other a blonde. They
say they are widows. H’m?
“I offered to accompany them to Royat tomorrow, and they accepted my
offer.
“Chatel-Guyon is less sad than I thought on my arrival.
 “July 23d. — Day spent at Royat. Royat is a little patch of hotels at the
bottom of a valley, at the gate of Clermont-Ferrand. A great many people
there. A large park full of life. Superb view of the Puyde-Dome, seen at the
end of a perspective of valleys.
“My fair companions are very popular, which is flattering to me. The man
who escorts a pretty woman always believes himself crowned with an
aureole; with much more reason, the man who is accompanied by one on
each side of him. Nothing is so pleasant as to dine in a fashionable restaurant
with a female companion at whom everybody stares, and there is nothing
better calculated to exalt a man in the estimation of his neighbors.
“To go to the Bois, in a trap drawn by a sorry nag, or to go out into the
boulevard escorted by a plain woman, are the two most humiliating things
that could happen to a sensitive heart that values the opinion of others. Of all
luxuries, woman is the rarest and the most distinguished; she is the one that
costs most and which we desire most; she is, therefore the one that we should
seek by preference to exhibit to the jealous eyes of the world.
“To exhibit to the world a pretty woman leaning on your arm is to excite,
all at once, every kind of jealousy. It is as much as to say: ‘Look here! I am
rich, since I possess this rare and costly object; I have taste, since I have
known how to discover this pearl; perhaps, even, I am loved by her, unless I
am deceived by her, which would still prove that others also consider her
charming.
“But, what a disgrace it is to walk about town with an ugly woman!
“And how many humiliating things this gives people to understand!
“In the first place, they assume she must be your wife, for how could it be
supposed that you would have an unattractive sweetheart? A true woman may
be ungraceful; but then, her ugliness implies a thousand disagreeable things
for you. One supposes you must be a notary or a magistrate, as these two
professions have a monopoly of grotesque and well-dowered spouses. Now,
is this not distressing to a man? And then, it seems to proclaim to the public
that you have the odious courage, and are even under a legal obligation, to
caress that ridiculous face and that ill-shaped body, and that you will,
without doubt, be shameless enough to make a mother of this by no means
desirable being — which is the very height of the ridiculous.
“July 24th. — I never leave the side of the two unknown widows, whom I
am beginning to know quite well. This country is delightful and our hotel is
excellent. Good season. The treatment is doing me an immense amount of
good.
“July 25th. — Drive in a landau to the lake of Tazenat. An exquisite and
unexpected jaunt decided on at luncheon. We started immediately on rising
from table. After a long journey through the mountains we suddenly
perceived an admirable little lake, quite round, very blue, clear as glass, and
situated at the bottom of an extinct crater. One side of this immense basin is
barren, the other is wooded. In the midst of the trees is a small house where
sleeps a good-natured, intellectual man, a sage who passes his days in this
Virgilian region. He opens his dwelling for us. An idea comes into my head. I
exclaim:
“‘Supposing we bathe?’
“‘Yes,’ they said, ‘but costumes.’
“‘Bah! we are in the wilderness.’
“And we did bathe!
“If I were a poet, how I would describe this unforgettable vision of those
lissome young forms in the transparency of the water! The high, sloping sides
shut in the lake, motionless, gleaming and round, as a silver coin; the sun
pours into it a flood of warm light; and along the rocks the fair forms move in
the almost invisible water in which the swimmers seemed suspended. On the
sand at the bottom of the lake one could see their shadows as they moved
along.
“July 26th. — Some persons seem to look with shocked and disapproving
eyes at my rapid intimacy with the two fair widows. There are some people,
then, who imagine that life consists in being bored. Everything that appears to
be amusing becomes immediately a breach of good breeding or morality. For
them duty has inflexible and mortally tedious rules.
“I would draw their attention, with all respect, to the fact that duty is not
the same for Mormons, Arabs Zulus, Turks, Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and
that there are very virtuous people among all these nations.
“I will cite a single example. As regards women, duty begins in England
at nine years of age; in France at fifteen. As for me, I take a little of each
people’s notion of duty, and of the whole I make a result comparable to the
morality of good King Solomon.
“July 27th. — Good news. I have lost 620 grams in weight. Excellent, this
water of Chatel-Guyon! I am taking the widows to dine at Riom. A sad town
whose anagram constitutes it an objectionable neighbor to healing springs:
Riom, Mori.
“July 28th. — Hello, how’s this! My two widows have been visited by
two gentlemen who came to look for them. Two widowers, without doubt.
They are leaving this evening. They have written to me on fancy notepaper.
“July 29th. — Alone! Long excursion on foot to the extinct crater of
Nachere. Splendid view.
“July 30th. — Nothing. I am taking the treatment.
“July 31st. — Ditto. Ditto. This pretty country is full of polluted streams. I
am drawing the notice of the municipality to the abominable sewer which
poisons the road in front of the hotel. All the kitchen refuse of the
establishment is thrown into it. This is a good way to breed cholera.
“August 1st. — Nothing. The treatment.
“August 2d. — Admirable walk to Chateauneuf, a place of sojourn for
rheumatic patients, where everybody is lame. Nothing can be queerer than
this population of cripples!
“August 3d. — Nothing. The treatment.
“August 4th. — Ditto. Ditto.
“August 5th. — Ditto. Ditto.
“August 6th. — Despair! I have just weighed myself. I have gained 310
grams. But then?
“August 7th. — Drove sixty-six kilometres in a carriage on the mountain. I
will not mention the name of the country through respect for its women.
“This excursion had been pointed out to me as a beautiful one, and one
that was rarely made. After four hours on the road, I arrived at a rather pretty
village on the banks of a river in the midst of an admirable wood of walnut
trees. I had not yet seen a forest of walnut trees of such dimensions in
Auvergne. It constitutes, moreover, all the wealth of the district, for it is
planted on the village common. This common was formerly only a hillside
covered with brushwood. The authorities had tried in vain to get it
cultivated. There was scarcely enough pasture on it to feed a few sheep.
“To-day it is a superb wood, thanks to the women, and it has a curious
name: it is called the Sins of the Cure.
“Now I must say that the women of the mountain districts have the
reputation of being light, lighter than in the plain. A bachelor who meets them
owes them at least a kiss; and if he does not take more he is only a
blockhead. If we consider this fairly, this way of looking at the matter is the
only one that is logical and reasonable. As woman, whether she be of the
town or the country, has her natural mission to please man, man should
always show her that she pleases him. If he abstains from every sort of
demonstration, this means that he considers her ugly; it is almost an insult to
her. If I were a woman, I would not receive, a second time, a man who failed
to show me respect at our first meeting, for I would consider that he had
failed in appreciation of my beauty, my charm, and my feminine qualities.
“So the bachelors of the village X often proved to the women of the
district that they found them to their taste, and, as the cure was unable to
prevent these demonstrations, as gallant as they were natural, he resolved to
utilize them for the benefit of the general prosperity. So he imposed as a
penance on every woman who had gone wrong that she should plant a walnut
tree on the common. And every night lanterns were seen moving about like
will-o’-the-wisps on the hillock, for the erring ones scarcely like to perform
their penance in broad daylight.
“In two years there was no longer any room on the lands belonging to the
village, and to-day they calculate that there are more than three thousand
trees around the belfry which rings out the services amid their foliage. These
are the Sins of the Cure.
“Since we have been seeking for so many ways of rewooding France, the
Administration of Forests might surely enter into some arrangement with the
clergy to employ a method so simple as that employed by this humble cure.
“August 7th. — Treatment.
“August 8th. — I am packing up my trunks and saying good-by to the
charming little district so calm and silent, to the green mountain, to the quiet
valleys, to the deserted Casino, from which you can see, almost veiled by its
light, bluish mist, the immense plain of the Limagne.
“I shall leave to-morrow.”
Here the manuscript stopped. I will add nothing to it, my impressions of
the country not having been exactly the same as those of my predecessor. For
I did not find the two widows!
 THE TERROR

You say you cannot possibly understand it, and I believe you. You think I am
losing my mind? Perhaps I am, but for other reasons than those you imagine,
my dear friend.
Yes, I am going to be married, and will tell you what has led me to take
that step.
I may add that I know very little of the girl who is going to become my
wife to-morrow; I have only seen her four or five times. I know that there is
nothing unpleasing about her, and that is enough for my purpose. She is small,
fair, and stout; so, of course, the day after to-morrow I shall ardently wish for
a tall, dark, thin woman.
She is not rich, and belongs to the middle classes. She is a girl such as
you may find by the gross, well adapted for matrimony, without any apparent
faults, and with no particularly striking qualities. People say of her:
“Mlle. Lajolle is a very nice girl,” and tomorrow they will say: “What a
very nice woman Madame Raymon is.” She belongs, in a word, to that
immense number of girls whom one is glad to have for one’s wife, till the
moment comes when one discovers that one happens to prefer all other
women to that particular woman whom one has married.
“Well,” you will say to me, “what on earth did you get married for?”
I hardly like to tell you the strange and seemingly improbable reason that
urged me on to this senseless act; the fact, however, is that I am afraid of
being alone.
I don’t know how to tell you or to make you understand me, but my state of
mind is so wretched that you will pity me and despise me.
I do not want to be alone any longer at night. I want to feel that there is
some one close to me, touching me, a being who can speak and say
something, no matter what it be.
I wish to be able to awaken somebody by my side, so that I may be able to
ask some sudden question, a stupid question even, if I feel inclined, so that I
may hear a human voice, and feel that there is some waking soul close to me,
some one whose reason is at work; so that when I hastily light the candle I
may see some human face by my side — because — because — I am
ashamed to confess it — because I am afraid of being alone.
Oh, you don’t understand me yet.
I am not afraid of any danger; if a man were to come into the room, I
should kill him without trembling. I am not afraid of ghosts, nor do I believe
in the supernatural. I am not afraid of dead people, for I believe in the total
annihilation of every being that disappears from the face of this earth.
Well — yes, well, it must be told: I am afraid of myself, afraid of that
horrible sensation of incomprehensible fear.
You may laugh, if you like. It is terrible, and I cannot get over it. I am
afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar objects; which are
animated, as far as I am concerned, by a kind of animal life. Above all, I am
afraid of my own dreadful thoughts, of my reason, which seems as if it were
about to leave me, driven away by a mysterious and invisible agony.
At first I feel a vague uneasiness in my mind, which causes a cold shiver
to run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to be seen, and I
wish that there were something there, no matter what, as long as it were
something tangible. I am frightened merely because I cannot understand my
own terror.
If I speak, I am afraid of my own voice. If I walk, I am afraid of I know
not what, behind the door, behind the curtains, in the cupboard, or under my
bed, and yet all the time I know there is nothing anywhere, and I turn round
suddenly because I am afraid of what is behind me, although there is nothing
there, and I know it.
I become agitated. I feel that my fear increases, and so I shut myself up in
my own room, get into bed, and hide under the clothes; and there, cowering
down, rolled into a ball, I close my eyes in despair, and remain thus for an
indefinite time, remembering that my candle is alight on the table by my
bedside, and that I ought to put it out, and yet — I dare not do it.
It is very terrible, is it not, to be like that?
Formerly I felt nothing of all that. I came home quite calm, and went up
and down my apartment without anything disturbing my peace of mind. Had
any one told me that I should be attacked by a malady — for I can call it
nothing else — of most improbable fear, such a stupid and terrible malady as
it is, I should have laughed outright. I was certainly never afraid of opening
the door in the dark. I went to bed slowly, without locking it, and never got
up in the middle of the night to make sure that everything was firmly closed.
 It began last year in a very strange manner on a damp autumn evening.
When my servant had left the room, after I had dined, I asked myself what I
was going to do. I walked up and down my room for some time, feeling tired
without any reason for it, unable to work, and even without energy to read. A
fine rain was falling, and I felt unhappy, a prey to one of those fits of
despondency, without any apparent cause, which make us feel inclined to cry,
or to talk, no matter to whom, so as to shake off our depressing thoughts.
I felt that I was alone, and my rooms seemed to me to be more empty than
they had ever been before. I was in the midst of infinite and overwhelming
solitude. What was I to do? I sat down, but a kind of nervous impatience
seemed to affect my legs, so I got up and began to walk about again. I was,
perhaps, rather feverish, for my hands, which I had clasped behind me, as
one often does when walking slowly, almost seemed to burn one another.
Then suddenly a cold shiver ran down my back, and I thought the damp air
might have penetrated into my rooms, so I lit the fire for the first time that
year, and sat down again and looked at the flames. But soon I felt that I could
not possibly remain quiet, and so I got up again and determined to go out, to
pull myself together, and to find a friend to bear me company.
I could not find anyone, so I walked to the boulevard to try and meet some
acquaintance or other there.
It was wretched everywhere, and the wet pavement glistened in the
gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay
heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the light of the lamps.
I went on slowly, saying to myself: “I shall not find a soul to talk to.”
I glanced into several cafes, from the Madeleine as far as the Faubourg
Poissoniere, and saw many unhappy-looking individuals sitting at the tables
who did not seem even to have enough energy left to finish the refreshments
they had ordered.
For a long time I wandered aimlessly up and down, and about midnight I
started for home. I was very calm and very tired. My janitor opened the door
at once, which was quite unusual for him, and I thought that another lodger
had probably just come in.
When I go out I always double-lock the door of my room, and I found it
merely closed, which surprised me; but I supposed that some letters had been
brought up for me in the course of the evening.
I went in, and found my fire still burning so that it lighted up the room a
little, and, while in the act of taking up a candle, I noticed somebody sitting
in my armchair by the fire, warming his feet, with his back toward me.
I was not in the slightest degree frightened. I thought, very naturally, that
some friend or other had come to see me. No doubt the porter, to whom I had
said I was going out, had lent him his own key. In a moment I remembered all
the circumstances of my return, how the street door had been opened
immediately, and that my own door was only latched and not locked.
I could see nothing of my friend but his head, and he had evidently gone to
sleep while waiting for me, so I went up to him to rouse him. I saw him quite
distinctly; his right arm was hanging down and his legs were crossed; the
position of his head, which was somewhat inclined to the left of the armchair,
seemed to indicate that he was asleep. “Who can it be?” I asked myself. I
could not see clearly, as the room was rather dark, so I put out my hand to
touch him on the shoulder, and it came in contact with the back of the chair.
There was nobody there; the seat was empty.
I fairly jumped with fright. For a moment I drew back as if confronted by
some terrible danger; then I turned round again, impelled by an imperious
standing upright, panting with fear, so upset that I could not collect my
thoughts, and ready to faint.
But I am a cool man, and soon recovered myself. I thought: “It is a mere
hallucination, that is all,” and I immediately began to reflect on this
phenomenon. Thoughts fly quickly at such moments.
I had been suffering from an hallucination, that was an incontestable fact.
My mind had been perfectly lucid and had acted regularly and logically, so
there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only my eyes that had been
deceived; they had had a vision, one of those visions which lead simple folk
to believe in miracles. It was a nervous seizure of the optical apparatus,
nothing more; the eyes were rather congested, perhaps.
I lit my candle, and when I stooped down to the fire in doing so I noticed
that I was trembling, and I raised myself up with a jump, as if somebody had
touched me from behind.
I was certainly not by any means calm.
I walked up and down a little, and hummed a tune or two. Then I double-
locked the door and felt rather reassured; now, at any rate, nobody could
come in.
I sat down again and thought over my adventure for a long time; then I
went to bed and blew out my light.
 For some minutes all went well; I lay quietly on my back, but presently an
irresistible desire seized me to look round the room, and I turned over on my
side.
My fire was nearly out, and the few glowing embers threw a faint light on
the floor by the chair, where I fancied I saw the man sitting again.
I quickly struck a match, but I had been mistaken; there was nothing there.
I got up, however, and hid the chair behind my bed, and tried to get to sleep,
as the room was now dark; but I had not forgotten myself for more than five
minutes, when in my dream I saw all the scene which I had previously
witnessed as clearly as if it were reality. I woke up with a start, and having
lit the candle, sat up in bed, without venturing even to try to go to sleep again.
Twice, however, sleep overcame me for a few moments in spite of
myself, and twice I saw the same thing again, till I fancied I was going mad.
When day broke, however, I thought that I was cured, and slept peacefully till
noon.
It was all past and over. I had been feverish, had had the nightmare. I
know not what. I had been ill, in fact, but yet thought I was a great fool.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly that evening. I dined at a restaurant and
afterward went to the theatre, and then started for home. But as I got near the
house I was once more seized by a strange feeling of uneasiness. I was afraid
of seeing him again. I was not afraid of him, not afraid of his presence, in
which I did not believe; but I was afraid of being deceived again. I was
afraid of some fresh hallucination, afraid lest fear should take possession of
me.
For more than an hour I wandered up and down the pavement; then,
feeling that I was really too foolish, I returned home. I breathed so hard that I
could hardly get upstairs, and remained standing outside my door for more
than ten minutes; then suddenly I had a courageous impulse and my will
asserted itself. I inserted my key into the lock, and went into the apartment
with a candle in my hand. I kicked open my bedroom door, which was partly
open, and cast a frightened glance toward the fireplace. There was nothing
there. A-h! What a relief and what a delight! What a deliverance! I walked up
and down briskly and boldly, but I was not altogether reassured, and kept
turning round with a jump; the very shadows in the corners disquieted me.
I slept badly, and was constantly disturbed by imaginary noises, but did
not see him; no, that was all over.
 Since that time I have been afraid of being alone at night. I feel that the
spectre is there, close to me, around me; but it has not appeared to me again.
And supposing it did, what would it matter, since I do not believe in it,
and know that it is nothing?
However, it still worries me, because I am constantly thinking of it. His
right arm hanging down and his head inclined to the left like a man who was
asleep — I don’t want to think about it!
Why, however, am I so persistently possessed with this idea? His feet
were close to the fire!
He haunts me; it is very stupid, but who and what is he? I know that he
does not exist except in my cowardly imagination, in my fears, and in my
agony. There — enough of that!
Yes, it is all very well for me to reason with myself, to stiffen my
backbone, so to say; but I cannot remain at home because I know he is there. I
know I shall not see him again; he will not show himself again; that is all
over. But he is there, all the same, in my thoughts. He remains invisible, but
that does not prevent his being there. He is behind the doors, in the closed
cupboard, in the wardrobe, under the bed, in every dark corner. If I open the
door or the cupboard, if I take the candle to look under the bed and throw a
light on the dark places he is there no longer, but I feel that he is behind me. I
turn round, certain that I shall not see him, that I shall never see him again;
but for all that, he is behind me.
It is very stupid, it is dreadful; but what am I to do? I cannot help it.
But if there were two of us in the place I feel certain that he would not be
there any longer, for he is there just because I am alone, simply and solely
because I am alone!
 LEGEND OF MONT ST. MICHEL

I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got an indistinct
impression of it as of a gray shadow outlined against the misty sky. I saw it
again from Avranches at sunset. The immense stretch of sand was red, the
horizon was red, the whole boundless bay was red. The rocky castle rising
out there in the distance like a weird, seignorial residence, like a dream
palace, strange and beautiful-this alone remained black in the crimson light
of the dying day.
The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my eyes
fastened on this, gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a cameo, and
as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my admiration grew,
for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or more perfect.
As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I wandered
through those halls supported by frail or massive columns, raising my eyes in
wonder to those spires which looked like rockets starting for the sky, and to
that marvellous assemblage of towers, of gargoyles, of slender and charming
ornaments, a regular fireworks of stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of
colossal and delicate architecture.
As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me
and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and the
devil.
A sceptical genius has said: “God made man in his image and man has
returned the compliment.”
This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write the
history of the local divinity of every continent as well as the history of the
patron saints in each one of our provinces. The negro has his ferocious man-
eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan fills his paradise with women; the
Greeks, like a practical people, deified all the passions.
Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting saint,
modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant
and victorious angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the victorious,
the conqueror of Satan.
But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and
tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint and the
devil.
To escape from the malice of his neighbor, the devil, Saint Michael built
himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an archangel; and only
such a saint could build a residence of such magnificence.
But as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he surrounded his
domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the sea.
The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the salt
marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded valleys and
all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint a ruled only over the sands.
Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint Michael was as poor as a church
mouse.
After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of affairs and
began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the matter was by no
means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.
He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he
walked across to the shore. The demon was eating his soup in front of his
door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him, kissed the
hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him refreshments.
Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: “I have come here to
propose to you a good bargain.”
The devil, candid and trustful, answered: “That will suit me.”
“Here it is. Give me all your lands.”
Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak “But— “
She saint continued: “Listen first. Give me all your lands. I will take care
of all the work, the ploughing, the sowing, the fertilizing, everything, and we
will share the crops equally. How does that suit you?”
The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He only demanded in
addition a few of those delicious gray mullet which are caught around the
solitary mount. Saint Michael promised the fish.
They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show that it was a bargain,
and the saint continued: “See here, so that you will have nothing to complain
of, choose that part of the crops which you prefer: the part that grows above
ground or the part that stays in the ground.” Satan cried out: “I will take all
that will be above ground.”
 “It’s a bargain!” said the saint. And he went away.
Six months later, all over the immense domain of the devil, one could see
nothing but carrots, turnips, onions, salsify, all the plants whose juicy roots
are good and savory and whose useless leaves are good for nothing but for
feeding animals.
Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint Michael a swindler.
But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for agriculture, went back
to see the devil and said:
“Really, I hadn’t thought of that at all; it was just an accident, no fault of
mine. And to make things fair with you, this year I’ll let you take everything
that is under the ground.”
“Very well,” answered Satan.
The following spring all the evil spirit’s lands were covered with golden
wheat, oats as big as beans, flax, magnificent colza, red clover, peas,
cabbage, artichokes, everything that develops into grains or fruit in the
sunlight.
Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he completely lost his
temper. He took back his fields and remained deaf to all the fresh
propositions of his neighbor.
A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely manor Saint Michael
looked at the distant and fertile lands and watched the devil direct the work,
take in his crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry, exasperated at his
powerlessness.
As he was no longer able to deceive Satan, he decided to wreak
vengeance on him, and he went out to invite him to dinner for the following
Monday.
“You have been very unfortunate in your dealings with me,” he said; “I
know it, but I don’t want any ill feeling between us, and I expect you to dine
with me. I’ll give you some good things to eat.”
Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted eagerly. On the day
appointed he donned his finest clothes and set out for the castle.
Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal. First there was a ‘vol-
au-vent’, full of cocks’ crests and kidneys, with meat-balls, then two big gray
mullet with cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with chestnuts soaked in wine,
some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake, vegetables which melted in the
mouth and nice hot pancake which was brought on smoking and spreading a
delicious odor of butter.
 They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady red wine, and after
each course they whetted their appetites with some old apple brandy.
The devil drank and ate to his heart’s content; in fact he took so much that
he was very uncomfortable, and began to retch.
Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a voice like thunder:
“What! before me, rascal! You dare — before me— “
Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a stick, pursued him. They
ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up the staircases,
galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle to gargoyle. The poor
devil, who was woefully ill, was running about madly and trying hard to
escape. At last he found himself at the top of the last terrace, right at the top,
from which could be seen the immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and
pastures. He could no longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and
gave him a furious kick, which shot him through space like a cannonball.
He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily before the town of
Mortain. His horns and claws stuck deep into the rock, which keeps through
eternity the traces of this fall of Satan.
He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end of time, and as he
looked at this fatal castle in the distance, standing out against the setting sun,
he understood well that he would always be vanquished in this unequal
struggle, and he went away limping, heading for distant countries, leaving to
his enemy his fields, his hills, his valleys and his marshes.
And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of Normandy, vanquished
the devil.
Another people would have dreamed of this battle in an entirely different
manner.
 A NEW YEAR’S GIFT

Jacques de Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might go
out, and he sat down at his table to write some letters.
He ended every year in this manner, writing and dreaming. He reviewed
the events of his life since last New Year’s Day, things that were now all
over and dead; and, in proportion as the faces of his friends rose up before
his eyes, he wrote them a few lines, a cordial New Year’s greeting on the
first of January.
So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman’s photograph,
gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside a sheet
of notepaper, he began:
“MY DEAR IRENE: You must by this time have received the little
souvenir I sent, you addressed to the maid. I have shut myself up
this evening in order to tell you — — “
The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and
down the room.
For the last ten months he had had a sweetheart, not like the others, a
woman with whom one engages in a passing intrigue, of the theatrical world
or the demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and won. He was no longer
a young man, although he was still comparatively young for a man, and he
looked on life seriously in a positive and practical spirit.
Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew up
every year the balance sheet of friendships that were ended or freshly
contracted, of circumstances and persons that had entered into his life.
His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the
precision of a merchant making a calculation what was the state of his heart
with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it would be in the
future.
He found there a great and deep affection; made up of tenderness,
gratitude and the thousand subtleties which give birth to long and powerful
attachments.
 A ring at the bell made him start. He hesitated. Should he open the door?
But he said to himself that one must always open the door on New Year’s
night, to admit the unknown who is passing by and knocks, no matter who it
may be.
So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, drew back the
bolts, turned the key, pulled the door back, and saw his sweetheart standing
pale as a corpse, leaning against the wall.
He stammered:
“What is the matter with you?”
She replied:
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Without servants?”
“Yes.”
“You are not going out?”
“No.”
She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she
was in the drawing-room, she sank down on the sofa, and, covering her face
with her hands, began to weep bitterly.
He knelt down at her feet, and tried to remove her hands from her eyes, so
that he might look at them, and exclaimed:
“Irene, Irene, what is the matter with you? I implore you to tell me what is
the matter with you?”
Then, amid her sobs, she murmured:
“I can no longer live like this.”
“Live like this? What do you mean?”
“Yes. I can no longer live like this. I have endured so much. He struck me
this afternoon.”
“Who? Your husband?”
“Yes, my husband.”
“Ah!”
He was astonished, having never suspected that her husband could be
brutal. He was a man of the world, of the better class, a clubman, a lover of
horses, a theatergoer and an expert swordsman; he was known, talked about,
appreciated everywhere, having very courteous manners, a very mediocre
intellect, an absence of education and of the real culture needed in order to
think like all well-bred people, and finally a respect for conventionalities.
 He appeared to devote himself to his wife, as a man ought to do in the
case of wealthy and well-bred people. He displayed enough of anxiety about
her wishes, her health, her dresses, and, beyond that, left her perfectly free.
Randal, having become Irene’s friend, had a right to the affectionate hand-
clasp which every husband endowed with good manners owes to his wife’s
intimate acquaintance. Then, when Jacques, after having been for some time
the friend, became the lover, his relations with the husband were more
cordial, as is fitting.
Jacques had never dreamed that there were storms in this household, and
he was bewildered at this unexpected revelation.
He asked:
“How did it happen? Tell me.”
Thereupon she related a long story, the entire history of her life since the
day of her marriage, the first disagreement arising out of a mere nothing, then
becoming accentuated at every new difference of opinion between two
dissimilar dispositions.
Then came quarrels, a complete separation, not apparent, but real; next,
her husband showed himself aggressive, suspicious, violent. Now, he was
jealous, jealous of Jacques, and that very day, after a scene, he had struck
her.
She added with decision: “I will not go back to him. Do with me what you
like.”
Jacques sat down opposite to her, their knees touching. He took her hands:
“My dear love, you are going to commit a gross, an irreparable folly. If
you want to leave your husband, put him in the wrong, so that your position
as a woman of the world may be saved.”
She asked, as she looked at him uneasily:
“Then, what do you advise me?”
“To go back home and to put up with your life there till the day when you
can obtain either a separation or a divorce, with the honors of war.”
“Is not this thing which you advise me to do a little cowardly?”
“No; it is wise and sensible. You have a high position, a reputation to
protect, friends to preserve and relations to deal with. You must not lose all
these through a mere caprice.”
She rose up, and said with violence:
“Well, no! I cannot stand it any longer! It is at an end! it is at an end!”
 Then, placing her two hands on her lover’s shoulders, and looking him
straight in the face, she asked:
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Really and truly?”
“Yes.”
“Then take care of me.”
He exclaimed:
“Take care of you? In my own house? Here? Why, you are mad. It would
mean losing you forever; losing you beyond hope of recall! You are mad!”
She replied, slowly and seriously, like a woman who feels the weight of
her words:
“Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not
play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either lose me
or take me.”
“My dear Irene, in that case, obtain your divorce, and I will marry you.”
“Yes, you will marry me in — two years at the soonest. Yours is a patient
love.”
“Look here! Reflect! If you remain here he’ll come to-morrow to take you
away, seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has right and law on his
side.”
“I did not ask you to keep me in your own house, Jacques, but to take me
anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have made a
mistake. Good-by!”
She turned round and went toward the door so quickly that he was only
able to catch hold of her when she was outside the room:
“Listen, Irene.”
She struggled, and would not listen to him. Her eyes were full of tears,
and she stammered:
“Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!”
He made her sit down by force, and once more falling on his knees at her
feet, he now brought forward a number of arguments and counsels to make
her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He omitted nothing
which he deemed necessary to convince her, finding even in his very
affection for her incentives to persuasion.
As she remained silent and cold as ice, he begged of her, implored of her
to listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.
 When he had finished speaking, she only replied:
“Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that
I may rise to my feet.”
“Look here, Irene.”
“Will you let me go?”
“Irene — is your resolution irrevocable?”
“Will you let me go.”
“Tell me only whether this resolution, this mad resolution of yours, which
you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?”
“Yes — let me go!”
“Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away
to-morrow morning.”
She rose to her feet in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:
“No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion.”
“Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to say. I
have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is at peace. Tell
me what you want me to do, and I will obey.”’
She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked, in a
very calm voice:
“Well, then, explain.”
“Explain what? What do you wish me to explain?”
“Everything — everything that you thought about before changing your
mind. Then I will see what I ought to do.”
“But I thought about nothing at all. I had to warn you that you were going
to commit an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to share in this act of folly,
and I even insist on it.”
“It is not natural to change one’s mind so quickly.”
“Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or devotion.
On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said to myself what every lover
ought to say to himself in the same case: ‘The man who loves a woman, who
makes an effort to win her, who gets her, and who takes her, enters into a
sacred contract with himself and with her. That is, of course, in dealing with
a woman like you, not a woman with a fickle heart and easily impressed.’
“Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value, possesses
in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into account the conditions
under which it generally takes place.
 “Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no
attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart is
free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him, when a man
who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that they pledge
themselves toward each other by this mutual and free agreement much more
than by the ‘Yes’ uttered in the presence of the mayor.
“I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be more
intimate, more real, more wholesome, than if all the sacraments had
consecrated it.
“This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it,
because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her honor, her
life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers all catastrophes,
because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid act, because she is prepared,
determined to brave everything — her husband, who might kill her, and
society, which may cast her out. This is why she is worthy of respect in the
midst of her conjugal infidelity; this is why her lover, in taking her, should
also foresee everything, and prefer her to every one else whatever may
happen. I have nothing more to say. I spoke in the beginning like a sensible
man whose duty it was to warn you; and now I am only a man — a man who
loves you — Command, and I obey.”
Radiant, she closed his mouth with a kiss, and said in a low tone:
“It is not true, darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does not
suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you would do I
wished for a New Year’s gift — the gift of your heart — another gift besides
the necklace you sent me. You have given it to me. Thanks! thanks! God be
thanked for the happiness you have given me!”
 FRIEND PATIENCE

“What became of Leremy?”

“He is captain in the Sixth Dragoons.”
“And Pinson?”
“He’s a subprefect.”
“And Racollet?”
“Dead.”
We were searching for other names which would remind us of the youthful
faces of our younger days. Once in a while we had met some of these old
comrades, bearded, bald, married, fathers of several children, and the
realization of these changes had given us an unpleasant shudder, reminding us
how short life is, how everything passes away, how everything changes. My
friend asked me:
“And Patience, fat Patience?”
I almost, howled:
“Oh! as for him, just listen to this. Four or five years ago I was in
Limoges, on a tour of inspection, and I was waiting for dinner time. I was
seated before the big cafe in the Place du Theatre, just bored to death. The
tradespeople were coming by twos, threes or fours, to take their absinthe or
vermouth, talking all the time of their own or other people’s business,
laughing loudly, or lowering their voices in order to impart some important
or delicate piece of news.
“I was saying to myself: ‘What shall I do after dinner?’ And I thought of
the long evening in this provincial town, of the slow, dreary walk through
unknown streets, of the impression of deadly gloom which these provincial
people produce on the lonely traveller, and of the whole oppressive
atmosphere of the place.
“I was thinking of all these things as I watched the little jets of gas flare
up, feeling my loneliness increase with the falling shadows.
“A big, fat man sat down at the next table and called in a stentorian voice:
“‘Waiter, my bitters!’
 “The ‘my’ came out like the report of a cannon. I immediately understood
that everything was his in life, and not another’s; that he had his nature, by
Jove, his appetite, his trousers, his everything, his, more absolutely and more
completely than anyone else’s. Then he looked round him with a satisfied air.
His bitters were brought, and he ordered:
“‘My newspaper!’
“I wondered: ‘Which newspaper can his be?’ The title would certainly
reveal to me his opinions, his theories, his principles, his hobbies, his
weaknesses.
“The waiter brought the Temps. I was surprised. Why the Temps, a
serious, sombre, doctrinaire, impartial sheet? I thought:
“‘He must be a serious man with settled and regular habits; in short, a
good bourgeois.’
“He put on his gold-rimmed spectacles, leaned back before beginning to
read, and once more glanced about him. He noticed me, and immediately
began to stare at me in an annoying manner. I was even going to ask the
reason for this attention, when he exclaimed from his seat:
“‘Well, by all that’s holy, if this isn’t Gontran Lardois.’
“I answered:
“‘Yes, monsieur, you are not mistaken.’
“Then he quickly rose and came toward me with hands outstretched:
“‘Well, old man, how are you?’
“As I did not recognize him at all I was greatly embarrassed. I stammered:
“‘Why-very well-and-you?’
“He began to laugh “‘I bet you don’t recognize me.’
“‘No, not exactly. It seems — however— ‘
“He slapped me on the back:
“‘Come on, no joking! I am Patience, Robert Patience, your friend, your
chum.’
“I recognized him. Yes, Robert Patience, my old college chum. It was he. I
took his outstretched hand:
“‘And how are you?’
“‘Fine!’
“His smile was like a paean of victory.
“He asked:
“‘What are you doing here?’
“I explained that I was government inspector of taxes.
 “He continued, pointing to my red ribbon:
“‘Then you have-been a success?’
“I answered:
“‘Fairly so. And you?’
“‘I am doing well!’
“‘What are you doing?’
“‘I’m in business.’
“‘Making money?’
“‘Heaps. I’m very rich. But come around to lunch, to-morrow noon, 17
Rue du Coq-qui-Chante; you will see my place.’
“He seemed to hesitate a second, then continued:
“‘Are you still the good sport that you used to be?’
“‘I — I hope so.’
“‘Not married?’
“‘No.’
“‘Good. And do you still love a good time and potatoes?’
“I was beginning to find him hopelessly vulgar. Nevertheless, I answered
“‘Yes.’
“‘And pretty girls?’
“‘Most assuredly.’
“He began to laugh good-humoredly.
“‘Good, good! Do you remember our first escapade, in Bordeaux, after
that dinner at Routie’s? What a spree!’
“I did, indeed, remember that spree; and the recollection of it cheered me
up. This called to mind other pranks. He would say:
“‘Say, do you remember the time when we locked the proctor up in old
man Latoque’s cellar?’
“And he laughed and banged the table with his fist, and then he continued:
“‘Yes-yes-yes-and do you remember the face of the geography teacher, M.
Marin, the day we set off a firecracker in the globe, just as he was haranguing
about the principal volcanoes of the earth?’
“Then suddenly I asked him:
“‘And you, are you married?’
“He exclaimed:
“‘Ten years, my boy, and I have four children, remarkable youngsters; but
you’ll see them and their mother.’
 “We were talking rather loud; the people around us looked at us in
surprise.
“Suddenly my friend looked at his watch, a chronometer the size of a
pumpkin, and he cried:
“‘Thunder! I’m sorry, but I’ll have to leave you; I am never free at night.’
“He rose, took both my hands, shook them as though he were trying to
wrench my arms from their sockets, and exclaimed:
“‘So long, then; till to-morrow noon!’
“‘So long!’
“I spent the morning working in the office of the collector-general of the
Department. The chief wished me to stay to luncheon, but I told him that I had
an engagement with a friend. As he had to go out, he accompanied me.
“I asked him:
“‘Can you tell me how I can find the Rue du Coq-qui-Chante?’
“He answered:
“‘Yes, it’s only five minutes’ walk from here. As I have nothing special to
do, I will take you there.’
“We started out and soon found ourselves there. It was a wide, fine-
looking street, on the outskirts of the town. I looked at the houses and I
noticed No. 17. It was a large house with a garden behind it. The facade,
decorated with frescoes, in the Italian style, appeared to me as being in bad
taste. There were goddesses holding vases, others swathed in clouds. Two
stone cupids supported the number of the house.
“I said to the treasurer:
“‘Here is where I am going.’
“I held my hand out to him. He made a quick, strange gesture, said nothing
and shook my hand.
“I rang. A maid appeared. I asked:
“‘Monsieur Patience, if you please?’
“She answered:
“‘Right here, sir. Is it to monsieur that you wish to speak?’
“‘Yes.’
“The hall was decorated with paintings from the brush of some local
artist. Pauls and Virginias were kissing each other under palm trees bathed in
a pink light. A hideous Oriental lantern was ranging from the ceiling. Several
doors were concealed by bright hangings.
 “But what struck me especially was the odor. It was a sickening and
perfumed odor, reminding one of rice powder and the mouldy smell of a
cellar. An indefinable odor in a heavy atmosphere as oppressive as that of
public baths. I followed the maid up a marble stairway, covered with a
green, Oriental carpet, and was ushered into a sumptubus parlor.
“Left alone, I looked about me.
“The room was richly furnished, but in the pretentious taste of a parvenu.
Rather fine engravings of the last century represented women with powdered
hair dressed high surprised by gentlemen in interesting positions. Another
lady, lying in a large bed, was teasing with her foot a little dog, lost in the
sheets. One drawing showed four feet, bodies concealed behind a curtain.
The large room, surrounded by soft couches, was entirely impregnated with
that enervating and insipid odor which I had already noticed. There seemed
to be something suspicious about the walls, the hangings, the exaggerated
luxury, everything.
“I approached the window to look into the garden. It was very big, shady,
beautiful. A wide path wound round a grass plot in the midst of which was a
fountain, entered a shrubbery and came out farther away. And, suddenly,
yonder, in the distance, between two clumps of bushes, three women
appeared. They were walking slowly, arm in arm, clad in long, white tea-
gowns covered with lace. Two were blondes and the other was dark-haired.
Almost immediately they disappeared again behind the trees. I stood there
entranced, delighted with this short and charming apparition, which brought
to my mind a whole world of poetry. They had scarcely allowed themselves
to be seen, in just the proper light, in that frame of foliage, in the midst of that
mysterious, delightful park. It seemed to me that I had suddenly seen before
me the great ladies of the last century, who were depicted in the engravings
on the wall. And I began to think of the happy, joyous, witty and amorous
times when manners were so graceful and lips so approachable.
“A deep voice male me jump. Patience had come in, beaming, and held
out his hands to me.
“He looked into my eyes with the sly look which one takes when
divulging secrets of love, and, with a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his
sumptuous parlor, his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the back
of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the note of pride was prominent, he
said:
 “‘And to think that I began with nothing — my wife and my sister-in-
law!’”
 ABANDONED

“I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such
weather as this. You have had some very strange notions for the last two
months. You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have never
once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been
married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting
me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you
who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on the
hottest day of the year. Ask d’Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify
all your whims. As for me, I am going back to have a nap.”
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:
“Will you come with me, Monsieur d’Apreval?”
He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former years:
“I will go wherever you go,” he replied.
“Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke,” Monsieur de Cadour said; and
he went back to the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an hour or two.
As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off,
and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand:
“At last! at last!”
“You are mad,” he said in a whisper. “I assure you that you are mad.
Think of the risk you are running. If that man— “
She started.
“Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him.”
“Very well,” he said abruptly, “if our son guesses anything, if he has any
suspicions, he will have you, he will have us both in his power. You have got
on without seeing him for the last forty years. What is the matter with you to-
day?”
They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea to the town,
and now they turned to the right, to go to Etretat. The white road stretched in
front of him, then under a blaze of brilliant sunshine, so they went on slowly
in the burning heat. She had taken her old friend’s arm, and was looking
straight in front of her, with a fixed and haunted gaze, and at last she said:
 “And so you have not seen him again, either?”
“No, never.”
“Is it possible?”
“My dear friend, do not let us begin that discussion again. I have a wife
and children and you have a husband, so we both of us have much to fear
from other people’s opinion.”
She did not reply; she was thinking of her long past youth and of many sad
things that had occurred. How well she recalled all the details of their early
friendship, his smiles, the way he used to linger, in order to watch her until
she was indoors. What happy days they were, the only really delicious days
she had ever enjoyed, and how quickly they were over!
And then — her discovery — of the penalty she paid! What anguish!
Of that journey to the South, that long journey, her sufferings, her constant
terror, that secluded life in the small, solitary house on the shores of the
Mediterranean, at the bottom of a garden, which she did not venture to leave.
How well she remembered those long days which she spent lying under an
orange tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amid the green leaves. How
she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose fresh breezes came to her
over the wall, and whose small waves she could hear lapping on the beach.
She dreamed of its immense blue expanse sparkling under the sun, with the
white sails of the small vessels, and a mountain on the horizon. But she did
not dare to go outside the gate. Suppose anybody had recognized her!
And those days of waiting, those last days of misery and expectation! The
impending suffering, and then that terrible night! What misery she had
endured, and what a night it was! How she had groaned and screamed! She
could still see the pale face of her lover, who kissed her hand every moment,
and the clean-shaven face of the doctor and the nurse’s white cap.
And what she felt when she heard the child’s feeble cries, that wail, that
first effort of a human’s voice!
And the next day! the next day! the only day of her life on which she had
seen and kissed her son; for, from that time, she had never even caught a
glimpse of him.
And what a long, void existence hers had been since then, with the thought
of that child always, always floating before her. She had never seen her son,
that little creature that had been part of herself, even once since then; they had
taken him from her, carried him away, and had hidden him. All she knew was
that he had been brought up by some peasants in Normandy, that he had
become a peasant himself, had married well, and that his father, whose name
he did not know, had settled a handsome sum of money on him.
How often during the last forty years had she wished to go and see him
and to embrace him! She could not imagine to herself that he had grown! She
always thought of that small human atom which she had held in her arms and
pressed to her bosom for a day.
How often she had said to M. d’Apreval: “I cannot bear it any longer; I
must go and see him.”
But he had always stopped her and kept her from going. She would be
unable to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and take
advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be lost.
“What is he like?” she said.
“I do not know. I have not seen him again, either.”
“Is it possible? To have a son and not to know him; to be afraid of him
and to reject him as if he were a disgrace! It is horrible.”
They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun, and
continually ascending that interminable hill.
“One might take it for a punishment,” she continued; “I have never had
another child, and I could no longer resist the longing to see him, which has
possessed me for forty years. You men cannot understand that. You must
remember that I shall not live much longer, and suppose I should never see
him, never have seen him! . . . Is it possible? How could I wait so long? I
have thought about him every day since, and what a terrible existence mine
has been! I have never awakened, never, do you understand, without my first
thoughts being of him, of my child. How is he? Oh, how guilty I feel toward
him! Ought one to fear what the world may say in a case like this? I ought to
have left everything to go after him, to bring him up and to show my love for
him. I should certainly have been much happier, but I did not dare, I was a
coward. How I have suffered! Oh, how those poor, abandoned children must
hate their mothers!”
She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley
was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and
only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse
yellow grass on both sides of the road.
“Sit down a little,” he said.
She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch and sank down with
her face in her hands. Her white hair, which hung in curls on both sides of her
face, had become tangled. She wept, overcome by profound grief, while he
stood facing her, uneasy and not knowing what to say, and he merely
murmured: “Come, take courage.”
She got up.
“I will,” she said, and wiping her eyes, she began to walk again with the
uncertain step of an elderly woman.
A little farther on the road passed beneath a clump of trees, which hid a
few houses, and they could distinguish the vibrating and regular blows of a
blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil; and presently they saw a wagon standing
on the right side of the road in front of a low cottage, and two men shoeing a
horse under a shed.
Monsieur d’Apreval went up to them.
“Where is Pierre Benedict’s farm?” he asked.
“Take the road to the left, close to the inn, and then go straight on; it is the
third house past Poret’s. There is a small spruce fir close to the gate; you
cannot make a mistake.”
They turned to the left. She was walking very slowly now, her legs
threatened to give way, and her heart was beating so violently that she felt as
if she should suffocate, while at every step she murmured, as if in prayer:
“Oh! Heaven! Heaven!”
Monsieur d’Apreval, who was also nervous and rather pale, said to her
somewhat gruffly:
“If you cannot manage to control your feelings, you will betray yourself at
once. Do try and restrain yourself.”
“How can I?” she replied. “My child! When I think that I am going to see
my child.”
They were going along one of those narrow country lanes between
farmyards, that are concealed beneath a double row of beech trees at either
side of the ditches, and suddenly they found themselves in front of a gate,
beside which there was a young spruce fir.
“This is it,” he said.
She stopped suddenly and looked about her. The courtyard, which was
planted with apple trees, was large and extended as far as the small thatched
dwelling house. On the opposite side were the stable, the barn, the cow
house and the poultry house, while the gig, the wagon and the manure cart
were under a slated outhouse. Four calves were grazing under the shade of
the trees and black hens were wandering all about the enclosure.
 All was perfectly still; the house door was open, but nobody was to be
seen, and so they went in, when immediately a large black dog came out of a
barrel that was standing under a pear tree, and began to bark furiously.
There were four bee-hives on boards against the wall of the house.
Monsieur d’Apreval stood outside and called out:
“Is anybody at home?”
Then a child appeared, a little girl of about ten, dressed in a chemise and
a linen, petticoat, with dirty, bare legs and a timid and cunning look. She
remained standing in the doorway, as if to prevent any one going in.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Is your father in?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“And your mother?”
“Gone after the cows.”
“Will she be back soon?”
“I don’t know.”
Then suddenly the lady, as if she feared that her companion might force
her to return, said quickly:
“I shall not go without having seen him.”
“We will wait for him, my dear friend.”
As they turned away, they saw a peasant woman coming toward the house,
carrying two tin pails, which appeared to be heavy and which glistened
brightly in the sunlight.
She limped with her right leg, and in her brown knitted jacket, that was
faded by the sun and washed out by the rain, she looked like a poor,
wretched, dirty servant.
“Here is mamma,” the child said.
When she got close to the house, she looked at the strangers angrily and
suspiciously, and then she went in, as if she had not seen them. She looked
old and had a hard, yellow, wrinkled face, one of those wooden faces that
country people so often have.
Monsieur d’Apreval called her back.
“I beg your pardon, madame, but we came in to know whether you could
sell us two glasses of milk.”
 She was grumbling when she reappeared in the door, after putting down
her pails.
“I don’t sell milk,” she replied.
“We are very thirsty,” he said, “and madame is very tired. Can we not get
something to drink?”
The peasant woman gave them an uneasy and cunning glance and then she
made up her mind.
“As you are here, I will give you some,” she said, going into the house,
and almost immediately the child came out and brought two chairs, which she
placed under an apple tree, and then the mother, in turn, brought out two
bowls of foaming milk, which she gave to the visitors. She did not return to
the house, however, but remained standing near them, as if to watch them and
to find out for what purpose they had come there.
“You have come from Fecamp?” she said.
“Yes,” Monsieur d’Apreval replied, “we are staying at Fecamp for the
summer.”
And then, after a short silence, he continued:
“Have you any fowls you could sell us every week?”
The woman hesitated for a moment and then replied:
“Yes, I think I have. I suppose you want young ones?”
“Yes, of course.”
“‘What do you pay for them in the market?”
D’Apreval, who had not the least idea, turned to his companion:
“What are you paying for poultry in Fecamp, my dear lady?”
“Four francs and four francs fifty centimes,” she said, her eyes full of
tears, while the farmer’s wife, who was looking at her askance, asked in
much surprise:
“Is the lady ill, as she is crying?”
He did not know what to say, and replied with some hesitation:
“No — no — but she lost her watch as we came along, a very handsome
watch, and that troubles her. If anybody should find it, please let us know.”
Mother Benedict did not reply, as she thought it a very equivocal sort of
answer, but suddenly she exclaimed:
“Oh, here is my husband!”
She was the only one who had seen him, as she was facing the gate.
D’Apreval started and Madame de Cadour nearly fell as she turned round
suddenly on her chair.
 A man bent nearly double, and out of breath, stood there, ten-yards from
them, dragging a cow at the end of a rope. Without taking any notice of the
visitors, he said:
“Confound it! What a brute!”
And he went past them and disappeared in the cow house.
Her tears had dried quickly as she sat there startled, without a word and
with the one thought in her mind, that this was her son, and D’Apreval, whom
the same thought had struck very unpleasantly, said in an agitated voice:
“Is this Monsieur Benedict?”
“Who told you his name?” the wife asked, still rather suspiciously.
“The blacksmith at the corner of the highroad,” he replied, and then they
were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house, which
formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing could be seen
inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and footsteps and the sound
of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the floor, and soon the man
reappeared in the door, wiping his forehead, and came toward the house with
long, slow strides. He passed the strangers without seeming to notice them
and said to his wife:
“Go and draw me a jug of cider; I am very thirsty.”
Then he went back into the house, while his wife went into the cellar and
left the two Parisians alone.
“Let us go, let us go, Henri,” Madame de Cadour said, nearly distracted
with grief, and so d’Apreval took her by the arm, helped her to rise, and
sustaining her with all his strength, for he felt that she was nearly fainting, he
led her out, after throwing five francs on one of the chairs.
As soon as they were outside the gate, she began to sob and said, shaking
with grief:
“Oh! oh! is that what you have made of him?”
He was very pale and replied coldly:
“I did what I could. His farm is worth eighty thousand francs, and that is
more than most of the sons of the middle classes have.”
They returned slowly, without speaking a word. She was still crying; the
tears ran down her cheeks continually for a time, but by degrees they
stopped, and they went back to Fecamp, where they found Monsieur de
Cadour waiting dinner for them. As soon as he saw them, he began to laugh
and exclaimed:
 “So my wife has had a sunstroke, and I am very glad of it. I really think
she has lost her head for some time past!”
Neither of them replied, and when the husband asked them, rubbing his
hands:
“Well, I hope that, at least, you have had a pleasant walk?”
Monsieur d’Apreval replied:
“A delightful walk, I assure you; perfectly delightful.”
 DENIS

To Leon Chapron.
Marambot opened the letter which his servant Denis gave him and smiled.
For twenty years Denis has been a servant in this house. He was a short,
stout, jovial man, who was known throughout the countryside as a model
servant. He asked:
“Is monsieur pleased? Has monsieur received good news?”
M. Marambot was not rich. He was an old village druggist, a bachelor,
who lived on an income acquired with difficulty by selling drugs to the
farmers. He answered:
“Yes, my boy. Old man Malois is afraid of the law-suit with which I am
threatening him. I shall get my money to-morrow. Five thousand francs are
not liable to harm the account of an old bachelor.”
M. Marambot rubbed his hands with satisfaction. He was a man of quiet
temperament, more sad than gay, incapable of any prolonged effort, careless
in business.
He could undoubtedly have amassed a greater income had he taken
advantage of the deaths of colleagues established in more important centers,
by taking their places and carrying on their business. But the trouble of
moving and the thought of all the preparations had always stopped him. After
thinking the matter over for a few days, he would be satisfied to say:
“Bah! I’ll wait until the next time. I’ll not lose anything by the delay. I may
even find something better.”
Denis, on the contrary, was always urging his master to new enterprises.
Of an energetic temperament, he would continually repeat:
“Oh! If I had only had the capital to start out with, I could have made a
fortune! One thousand francs would do me.”
M. Marambot would smile without answering and would go out in his
little garden, where, his hands behind his back, he would walk about
dreaming.
All day long, Denis sang the joyful refrains of the folk-songs of the
district. He even showed an unusual activity, for he cleaned all the windows
of the house, energetically rubbing the glass, and singing at the top of his
voice.
M. Marambot, surprised at his zeal, said to him several times, smiling:
“My boy, if you work like that there will be nothing left for you to do to-
morrow.”
The following day, at about nine o’clock in the morning, the postman gave
Denis four letters for his master, one of them very heavy. M. Marambot
immediately shut himself up in his room until late in the afternoon. He then
handed his servant four letters for the mail. One of them was addressed to M.
Malois; it was undoubtedly a receipt for the money.
Denis asked his master no questions; he appeared to be as sad and gloomy
that day as he had seemed joyful the day before.
Night came. M. Marambot went to bed as usual and slept.
He was awakened by a strange noise. He sat up in his bed and listened.
Suddenly the door opened, and Denis appeared, holding in one hand a candle
and in the other a carving knife, his eyes staring, his face contracted as though
moved by some deep emotion; he was as pale as a ghost.
M. Marambot, astonished, thought that he was sleep-walking, and he was
going to get out of bed and assist him when the servant blew out the light and
rushed for the bed. His master stretched out his hands to receive the shock
which knocked him over on his back; he was trying to seize the hands of his
servant, whom he now thought to be crazy, in order to avoid the blows which
the latter was aiming at him.
He was struck by the knife; once in the shoulder, once in the forehead and
the third time in the chest. He fought wildly, waving his arms around in the
darkness, kicking and crying:
“Denis! Denis! Are you mad? Listen, Denis!”
But the latter, gasping for breath, kept up his furious attack always
striking, always repulsed, sometimes with a kick, sometimes with a punch,
and rushing forward again furiously.
M. Marambot was wounded twice more, once in the leg and once in the
stomach. But, suddenly, a thought flashed across his mind, and he began to
shriek:
“Stop, stop, Denis, I have not yet received my money!”
The man immediately ceased, and his master could hear his labored
breathing in the darkness.
M. Marambot then went on:
 “I have received nothing. M. Malois takes back what he said, the law-suit
will take place; that is why you carried the letters to the mail. Just read those
on my desk.”
With a final effort, he reached for his matches and lit the candle.
He was covered with blood. His sheets, his curtains, and even the walls,
were spattered with red. Denis, standing in the middle of the room, was also
bloody from head to foot.
When he saw the blood, M. Marambot thought himself dead, and fell
unconscious.
At break of day he revived. It was some time, however, before he
regained his senses, and was able to understand or remember. But, suddenly,
the memory of the attack and of his wounds returned to him, and he was filled
with such terror that he closed his eyes in order not to see anything. After a
few minutes he grew calmer and began to think. He had not died’
immediately, therefore he might still recover. He felt weak, very weak; but he
had no real pain, although he noticed an uncomfortable smarting sensation in
several parts of his body. He also felt icy cold, and all wet, and as though
wrapped up in bandages. He thought that this dampness came from the blood
which he had lost; and he shivered at the dreadful thought of this red liquid
which had come from his veins and covered his bed. The idea of seeing this
terrible spectacle again so upset him that he kept his eyes closed with all his
strength, as though they might open in spite of himself.
What had become of Denis? He had probably escaped.
But what could he, Marambot, do now? Get up? Call for help? But if he
should make the slightest motions, his wounds would undoubtedly open up
again and he would die from loss of blood.
Suddenly he heard the door of his room open. His heart almost stopped. It
was certainly Denis who was coming to finish him up. He held his breath in
order to make the murderer think that he had been successful.
He felt his sheet being lifted up, and then someone feeling his stomach. A
sharp pain near his hip made him start. He was being very gently washed
with cold water. Therefore, someone must have discovered the misdeed and
he was being cared for. A wild joy seized him; but prudently, he did not wish
to show that he was conscious. He opened one eye, just one, with the greatest
precaution.
He recognized Denis standing beside him, Denis himself! Mercy! He
hastily closed his eye again.
 Denis! What could he be doing? What did he want? What awful scheme
could he now be carrying out?
What was he doing? Well, he was washing him in order to hide the traces
of his crime! And he would now bury him in the garden, under ten feet of
earth, so that no one could discover him! Or perhaps under the wine cellar!
And M. Marambot began to tremble like a leaf. He kept saying to himself: “I
am lost, lost!” He closed his eyes so as not to see the knife as it descended
for the final stroke. It did not come. Denis was now lifting him up and
bandaging him. Then he began carefully to dress the wound on his leg, as his
master had taught him to do.
There was no longer any doubt. His servant, after wishing to kill him, was
trying to save him.
Then M. Marambot, in a dying voice, gave him the practical piece of
advice:
“Wash the wounds in a dilute solution of carbolic acid!”
Denis answered:
“This is what I am doing, monsieur.”
M. Marambot opened both his eyes. There was no sign of blood either on
the bed, on the walls, or on the murderer. The wounded man was stretched
out on clean white sheets.
The two men looked at each other.
Finally M. Marambot said calmly:
“You have been guilty of a great crime.”
Denis answered:
“I am trying to make up for it, monsieur. If you will not tell on me, I will
serve you as faithfully as in the past.”
This was no time to anger his servant. M. Marambot murmured as he
closed his eyes:
“I swear not to tell on you.”
Denis saved his master. He spent days and nights without sleep, never
leaving the sick room, preparing drugs, broths, potions, feeling his pulse,
anxiously counting the beats, attending him with the skill of a trained nurse
and the devotion of a son.
He continually asked:
“Well, monsieur, how do you feel?”
M. Marambot would answer in a weak voice:
“A little better, my boy, thank you.”
 And when the sick man would wake up at night, he would often see his
servant seated in an armchair, weeping silently.
Never had the old druggist been so cared for, so fondled, so spoiled. At
first he had said to himself:
“As soon as I am well I shall get rid of this rascal.”
He was now convalescing, and from day to day he would put off
dismissing his murderer. He thought that no one would ever show him such
care and attention, for he held this man through fear; and he warned him that
he had left a document with a lawyer denouncing him to the law if any new
accident should occur.
This precaution seemed to guarantee him against any future attack; and he
then asked himself if it would not be wiser to keep this man near him, in
order to watch him closely.
Just as formerly, when he would hesitate about taking some larger place of
business, he could not make up his mind to any decision.
“There is always time,” he would say to himself.
Denis continued to show himself an admirable servant. M. Marambot was
well. He kept him.
One morning, just as he was finishing breakfast, he suddenly heard a great
noise in the kitchen. He hastened in there. Denis was struggling with two
gendarmes. An officer was taking notes on his pad.
As soon as he saw his master, the servant began to sob, exclaiming:
“You told on me, monsieur, that’s not right, after what you had promised
me. You have broken your word of honor, Monsieur Marambot; that is not
right, that’s not right!”
M. Marambot, bewildered and distressed at being suspected, lifted his
hand:
“I swear to you before the Lord, my boy that I did not tell on you. I haven’t
the slightest idea how the police could have found out about your attack on
me.”
The officer started:
“You say that he attacked you, M. Marambot?”
The bewildered druggist answered:
“Yes — but I did not tell on him — I haven’t said a word — I swear it —
he has served me excellently from that time on— “
The officer pronounced severely:
 “I will take down your testimony. The law will take notice of this new
action, of which it was ignorant, Monsieur Marambot. I was commissioned
to arrest your servant for the theft of two ducks surreptitiously taken by him
from M. Duhamel of which act there are witnesses. I shall make a note of
your information.”
Then, turning toward his men, he ordered:
“Come on, bring him along!”
The two gendarmes dragged Denis out.
The lawyer used a plea of insanity, contrasting the two misdeeds in order
to strengthen his argument. He had clearly proved that the theft of the two
ducks came from the same mental condition as the eight knife-wounds in the
body of Maramlot. He had cunningly analyzed all the phases of this transitory
condition of mental aberration, which could, doubtless, be cured by a few
months’ treatment in a reputable sanatorium. He had spoken in enthusiastic
terms of the continued devotion of this faithful servant, of the care with which
he had surrounded his master, wounded by him in a moment of alienation.
Touched by this memory, M. Marambot felt the tears rising to his eyes.
The lawyer noticed it, opened his arms with a broad gesture, spreading
out the long black sleeves of his robe like the wings of a bat, and exclaimed:
“Look, look, gentleman of the jury, look at those tears. What more can I
say for my client? What speech, what argument, what reasoning would be
worth these tears of his master? They, speak louder than I do, louder than the
law; they cry: ‘Mercy, for the poor wandering mind of a while ago! They
implore, they pardon, they bless!”
He was silent and sat down.
Then the judge, turning to Marambot, whose testimony had been excellent
for his servant, asked him:
“But, monsieur, even admitting that you consider this man insane, that does
not explain why you should have kept him. He was none the less dangerous.”
Marambot, wiping his eyes, answered:
“Well, your honor, what can you expect? Nowadays it’s so hard to find
good servants — I could never have found a better one.”
Denis was acquitted and put in a sanatorium at his master’s expense.
 MY WIFE

It had been a stag dinner. These men still came together once in a while
without their wives as they had done when they were bachelors. They would
eat for a long time, drink for a long time; they would talk of everything, stir
up those old and joyful memories which bring a smile to the lip and a tremor
to the heart. One of them was saying: “Georges, do you remember our
excursion to Saint-Germain with those two little girls from Montmartre?”
“I should say I do!”
And a little detail here or there would be remembered, and all these things
brought joy to the hearts.
The conversation turned on marriage, and each one said with a sincere
air: “Oh, if it were to do over again!” Georges Duportin added: “It’s strange
how easily one falls into it. You have fully decided never to marry; and then,
in the springtime, you go to the country; the weather is warm; the summer is
beautiful; the fields are full of flowers; you meet a young girl at some friend’s
house — crash! all is over. You return married!”
Pierre Letoile exclaimed: “Correct! that is exactly my case, only there
were some peculiar incidents— “
His friend interrupted him: “As for you, you have no cause to complain.
You have the most charming wife in the world, pretty, amiable, perfect! You
are undoubtedly the happiest one of us all.”
The other one continued: “It’s not my fault.”
“How so?”
“It is true that I have a perfect wife, but I certainly married her much
against my will.”
“Nonsense!”
“Yes — this is the adventure. I was thirty-five, and I had no more idea of
marrying than I had of hanging myself. Young girls seemed to me to be inane,
and I loved pleasure.
“During the month of May I was invited to the wedding of my cousin,
Simon d’Erabel, in Normandy. It was a regular Normandy wedding. We sat
down at the table at five o’clock in the evening and at eleven o’clock we
were still eating. I had been paired off, for the occasion, with a
Mademoiselle Dumoulin, daughter of a retired colonel, a young, blond,
soldierly person, well formed, frank and talkative. She took complete
possession of me for the whole day, dragged me into the park, made me
dance willy-nilly, bored me to death. I said to myself: ‘That’s all very well
for to-day, but tomorrow I’ll get out. That’s all there is to it!’
“Toward eleven o’clock at night the women retired to their rooms; the
men stayed, smoking while they drank or drinking while they smoked,
whichever you will.
“Through the open window we could see the country folks dancing.
Farmers and peasant girls were jumping about in a circle yelling at the top of
their lungs a dance air which was feebly accompanied by two violins and a
clarinet. The wild song of the peasants often completely drowned the sound
of the instruments, and the weak music, interrupted by the unrestrained
voices, seemed to come to us in little fragments of scattered notes. Two
enormous casks, surrounded by flaming torches, contained drinks for the
crowd. Two men were kept busy rinsing the glasses or bowls in a bucket and
immediately holding them under the spigots, from which flowed the red
stream of wine or the golden stream of pure cider; and the parched dancers,
the old ones quietly, the girls panting, came up, stretched out their arms and
grasped some receptacle, threw back their heads and poured down their
throats the drink which they preferred. On a table were bread, butter, cheese
and sausages. Each one would step up from time to time and swallow a
mouthful, and under the starlit sky this healthy and violent exercise was a
pleasing sight, and made one also feel like drinking from these enormous
casks and eating the crisp bread and butter with a raw onion.
“A mad desire seized me to take part in this merrymaking, and I left my
companions. I must admit that I was probably a little tipsy, but I was soon
entirely so.
“I grabbed the hand of a big, panting peasant woman and I jumped her
about until I was out of breath.
“Then I drank some wine and reached for another girl. In order to refresh
myself afterward, I swallowed a bowlful of cider, and I began to bounce
around as if possessed.
“I was very light on my feet. The boys, delighted, were watching me and
trying to imitate me; the girls all wished to dance with me, and jumped about
heavily with the grace of cows.
 “After each dance I drank a glass of wine or a glass of cider, and toward
two o’clock in the morning I was so drunk that I could hardly stand up.
“I realized my condition and tried to reach my room. Everybody was
asleep and the house was silent and dark.
“I had no matches and everybody was in bed. As soon as I reached the
vestibule I began to, feel dizzy. I had a lot of trouble to find the banister. At
last, by accident, my hand came in contact with it, and I sat down on the first
step of the stairs in order to try to gather my scattered wits.
“My room was on the second floor; it was the third door to the left.
Fortunately I had not forgotten that. Armed with this knowledge, I arose, not
without difficulty, and I began to ascend, step by step. In my hands I firmly
gripped the iron railing in order not to fall, and took great pains to make no
noise.
“Only three or four times did my foot miss the steps, and I went down on
my knees; but thanks to the energy of my arms and the strength of my will, I
avoided falling completely.
“At last I reached the second floor and I set out in my journey along the
hall, feeling my way by the walls. I felt one door; I counted: ‘One’; but a
sudden dizziness made me lose my hold on the wall, make a strange turn and
fall up against the other wall. I wished to turn in a straight line: The crossing
was long and full of hardships. At last I reached the shore, and, prudently, I
began to travel along again until I met another door. In order to be sure to
make no mistake, I again counted out loud: ‘Two.’ I started out on my walk
again. At last I found the third door. I said: ‘Three, that’s my room,’ and I
turned the knob. The door opened. Notwithstanding my befuddled state, I
thought: ‘Since the door opens, this must be home.’ After softly closing the
door, I stepped out in the darkness. I bumped against something soft: my
easy-chair. I immediately stretched myself out on it.
“In my condition it would not have been wise to look for my bureau, my
candles, my matches. It would have taken me at least two hours. It would
probably have taken me that long also to undress; and even then I might not
have succeeded. I gave it up.
“I only took my shoes off; I unbuttoned my waistcoat, which was choking
me, I loosened my trousers and went to sleep.
“This undoubtedly lasted for a long time. I was suddenly awakened by a
deep voice which was saying: ‘What, you lazy girl, still in bed? It’s ten
o’clock!’
 “A woman’s voice answered: ‘Already! I was so tired yesterday.’
“In bewilderment I wondered what this dialogue meant. Where was I?
What had I done? My mind was wandering, still surrounded by a heavy fog.
The first voice continued: ‘I’m going to raise your curtains.’
“I heard steps approaching me. Completely at a loss what to do, I sat up.
Then a hand was placed on my head. I started. The voice asked: ‘Who is
there?’ I took good care not to answer. A furious grasp seized me. I in turn
seized him, and a terrific struggle ensued. We were rolling around, knocking
over the furniture and crashing against the walls. A woman’s voice was
shrieking: ‘Help! help!’
“Servants, neighbors, frightened women crowded around us. The blinds
were open and the shades drawn. I was struggling with Colonel Dumoulin.
“I had slept beside his daughter’s bed!
“When we were separated, I escaped to my room, dumbfounded. I locked
myself in and sat down with my feet on a chair, for my shoes had been left in
the young girl’s room.
“I heard a great noise through the whole house, doors being opened and
closed, whisperings and rapid steps.
“After half an hour some one knocked on my door. I cried: ‘Who is there?’
It was my uncle, the bridegroom’s father. I opened the door:
“He was pale and furious, and he treated me harshly: ‘You have behaved
like a scoundrel in my house, do you hear?’ Then he added more gently ‘But,
you young fool, why the devil did you let yourself get caught at ten o’clock in
the morning? You go to sleep like a log in that room, instead of leaving
immediately — immediately after.’
“I exclaimed: ‘But, uncle, I assure you that nothing occurred. I was drunk
and got into the wrong room.’
“He shrugged his shoulders! ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’ I raised my hand,
exclaiming: ‘I swear to you on my honor.’ My uncle continued: ‘Yes, that’s
all right. It’s your duty to say that.’
“I in turn grew angry and told him the whole unfortunate occurrence. He
looked at me with a bewildered expression, not knowing what to believe.
Then he went out to confer with the colonel.
“I heard that a kind of jury of the mothers had been formed, to which were
submitted the different phases of the situation.
“He came back an hour later, sat down with the dignity of a judge and
began: ‘No matter what may be the situation, I can see only one way out of it
for you; it is to marry Mademoiselle Dumoulin.’
“I bounded out of the chair, crying: ‘Never! never!’
“Gravely he asked: ‘Well, what do you expect to do?’
“I answered simply: ‘Why — leave as soon as my shoes are returned to
me.’
“My uncle continued: ‘Please do not jest. The colonel has decided to
blow your brains out as soon as he sees you. And you may be sure that he
does not threaten idly. I spoke of a duel and he answered: “No, I tell you that
I will blow his brains out.”’
“‘Let us now examine the question from another point of view. Either you
have misbehaved yourself — and then so much the worse for you, my boy;
one should not go near a young girl — or else, being drunk, as you say, you
made a mistake in the room. In this case, it’s even worse for you. You
shouldn’t get yourself into such foolish situations. Whatever you may say, the
poor girl’s reputation is lost, for a drunkard’s excuses are never believed.
The only real victim in the matter is the girl. Think it over.’
“He went away, while I cried after him: ‘Say what you will, I’ll not marry
her!’
“I stayed alone for another hour. Then my aunt came. She was crying. She
used every argument. No one believed my story. They could not imagine that
this young girl could have forgotten to lock her door in a house full of
company. The colonel had struck her. She had been crying the whole
morning. It was a terrible and unforgettable scandal. And my good aunt
added: ‘Ask for her hand, anyhow. We may, perhaps, find some way out of it
when we are drawing up the papers.’
“This prospect relieved me. And I agreed to write my proposal. An hour
later I left for Paris. The following day I was informed that I had been
accepted.
“Then, in three weeks, before I had been able to find any excuse, the
banns were published, the announcement sent out, the contract signed, and
one Monday morning I found myself in a church, beside a weeping young
girl, after telling the magistrate that I consented to take her as my companion
— for better, for worse.
“I had not seen her since my adventure, and I glanced at her out of the
corner of my eye with a certain malevolent surprise. However, she was not
ugly — far from it. I said to myself: ‘There is some one who won’t laugh
every day.’
 “She did not look at me once until, the evening, and she did not say a
single word.
“Toward the middle of the night I entered the bridal chamber with the full
intention of letting her know my resolutions, for I was now master. I found
her sitting in an armchair, fully dressed, pale and with red eyes. As soon as I
entered she rose and came slowly toward me saying: ‘Monsieur, I am ready
to do whatever you may command. I will kill myself if you so desire’
“The colonel’s daughter was as pretty as she could be in this heroic role. I
kissed her; it was my privilege.
“I soon saw that I had not got a bad bargain. I have now been married five
years. I do not regret it in the least.”
Pierre Letoile was silent. His companions were laughing. One of them
said: “Marriage is indeed a lottery; you must never choose your numbers.
The haphazard ones are the best.”
Another added by way of conclusion: “Yes, but do not forget that the god
of drunkards chose for Pierre.”
 THE UNKNOWN

We were speaking of adventures, and each one of us was relating his story of
delightful experiences, surprising meetings, on the train, in a hotel, at the
seashore. According to Roger des Annettes, the seashore was particularly
favorable to the little blind god.
Gontran, who was keeping mum, was asked what he thought of it.
“I guess Paris is about the best place for that,” he said. “Woman is like a
precious trinket, we appreciate her all the more when we meet her in the
most unexpected places; but the rarest ones are only to be found in Paris.”
He was silent for a moment, and then continued:
“By Jove, it’s great! Walk along the streets on some spring morning. The
little women, daintily tripping along, seem to blossom out like flowers. What
a delightful, charming sight! The dainty perfume of violet is everywhere. The
city is gay, and everybody notices the women. By Jove, how tempting they
are in their light, thin dresses, which occasionally give one a glimpse of the
delicate pink flesh beneath!
“One saunters along, head up, mind alert, and eyes open. I tell you it’s
great! You see her in the distance, while still a block away; you already
know that she is going to please you at closer quarters. You can recognize her
by the flower on her hat, the toss of her head, or her gait. She approaches,
and you say to yourself: ‘Look out, here she is!’ You come closer to her and
you devour her with your eyes.
“Is it a young girl running errands for some store, a young woman
returning from church, or hastening to see her lover? What do you care? Her
well-rounded bosom shows through the thin waist. Oh, if you could only take
her in your arms and fondle and kiss her! Her glance may be timid or bold,
her hair light or dark. What difference does it make? She brushes against you,
and a cold shiver runs down your spine. Ah, how you wish for her all day!
How many of these dear creatures have I met this way, and how wildly in
love I would have been had I known them more intimately.
“Have you ever noticed that the ones we would love the most distractedly
are those whom we never meet to know? Curious, isn’t it? From time to time
we barely catch a glimpse of some woman, the mere sight of whom thrills
our senses. But it goes no further. When I think of all the adorable creatures
that I have elbowed in the streets of Paris, I fairly rave. Who are they! Where
are they? Where can I find them again? There is a proverb which says that
happiness often passes our way; I am sure that I have often passed alongside
the one who could have caught me like a linnet in the snare of her fresh
beauty.”
Roger des Annettes had listened smilingly. He answered: “I know that as
well as you do. This is what happened to me: About five years ago, for the
first time I met, on the Pont de la Concorde, a young woman who made a
wonderful impression on me. She was dark, rather stout, with glossy hair,
and eyebrows which nearly met above two dark eyes. On her lip was a
scarcely perceptible down, which made one dream-dream as one dreams of
beloved woods, on seeing a bunch of wild violets. She had a small waist and
a well-developed bust, which seemed to present a challenge, offer a
temptation. Her eyes were like two black spots on white enamel. Her glance
was strange, vacant, unthinking, and yet wonderfully beautiful.
“I imagined that she might be a Jewess. I followed her, and then turned
round to look at her, as did many others. She walked with a swinging gait that
was not graceful, but somehow attracted one. At the Place de la Concorde
she took a carriage, and I stood there like a fool, moved by the strongest
desire that had ever assailed me.
“For about three weeks I thought only of her; and then her memory passed
out of my mind.
“Six months later I descried her in the Rue de la Paix again. On seeing her
I felt the same shock that one experiences on seeing a once dearly loved
woman. I stopped that I might better observe her. When she passed close
enough to touch me I felt as though I were standing before a red hot furnace.
Then, when she had passed by, I noticed a delicious sensation, as of a
cooling breeze blowing over my face. I did not follow her. I was afraid of
doing something foolish. I was afraid of myself.
“She haunted all my dreams.
“It was a year before I saw her again. But just as the sun was going down
on one beautiful evening in May I recognized her walking along the Avenue
des Champs-Elysees. The Arc de Triomphe stood out in bold relief against
the fiery glow of the sky. A golden haze filled the air; it was one of those
delightful spring evenings which are the glory of Paris.
 “I followed her, tormented by a desire to address her, to kneel before her,
to pour forth the emotion which was choking me. Twice I passed by her only
to fall back, and each time as I passed by I felt this sensation, as of scorching
heat, which I had noticed in the Rue de la Paix.
“She glanced at me, and then I saw her enter a house on the Rue de
Presbourg. I waited for her two hours and she did not come out. Then I
decided to question the janitor. He seemed not to understand me. ‘She must
be visiting some one,’ he said.
“The next time I was eight months without seeing her. But one freezing
morning in January, I was walking along the Boulevard Malesherbes at a dog
trot, so as to keep warm, when at the corner I bumped into a woman and
knocked a small package out of her hand. I tried to apologize. It was she!
“At first I stood stock still from the shock; then having returned to her the
package which she had dropped, I said abruptly:
“‘I am both grieved and delighted, madame, to have jostled you. For more
than two years I have known you, admired you, and had the most ardent wish
to be presented to you; nevertheless I have been unable to find out who you
are, or where you live. Please excuse these foolish words. Attribute them to
a passionate desire to be numbered among your acquaintances. Such
sentiments can surely offend you in no way! You do not know me. My name is
Baron Roger des Annettes. Make inquiries about me, and you will find that I
am a gentleman. Now, if you refuse my request, you will throw me into abject
misery. Please be good to me and tell me how I can see you.’
“She looked at me with her strange vacant stare, and answered smilingly:
“‘Give me your address. I will come and see you.’
“I was so dumfounded that I must have shown my surprise. But I quickly
gathered my wits together and gave her a visiting card, which she slipped
into her pocket with a quick, deft movement.
“Becoming bolder, I stammered:
“‘When shall I see you again?’
“She hesitated, as though mentally running over her list of engagements,
and then murmured:
“‘Will Sunday morning suit you?’
“‘I should say it would!’
“She went on, after having stared at me, judged, weighed and analyzed me
with this heavy and vacant gaze which seemed to leave a quieting and
deadening impression on the person towards whom it was directed.
 “Until Sunday my mind was occupied day and night trying to guess who
she might be and planning my course of conduct towards her. I finally
decided to buy her a jewel, a beautiful little jewel, which I placed in its box
on the mantelpiece, and left it there awaiting her arrival.
“I spent a restless night waiting for her.
“At ten o’clock she came, calm and quiet, and with her hand outstretched,
as though she had known me for years. Drawing up a chair, I took her hat and
coat and furs, and laid them aside. And then, timidly, I took her hand in mine;
after that all went on without a hitch.
“Ah, my friends! what a bliss it is, to stand at a discreet distance and
watch the hidden pink and blue ribbons, partly concealed, to observe the
hazy lines of the beloved one’s form, as they become visible through the last
of the filmy garments! What a delight it is to watch the ostrich-like modesty
of those who are in reality none too modest. And what is so pretty as their
motions!
“Her back was turned towards me, and suddenly, my eyes were
irresistibly drawn to a large black spot right between her shoulders. What
could it be? Were my eyes deceiving me? But no, there it was, staring me in
the face! Then my mind reverted to the faint down on her lip, the heavy
eyebrows almost meeting over her coal-black eyes, her glossy black hair — I
should have been prepared for some surprise.
“Nevertheless I was dumfounded, and my mind was haunted by dim
visions of strange adventures. I seemed to see before me one of the evil genii
of the Thousand and One Nights, one of these dangerous and crafty creatures
whose mission it is to drag men down to unknown depths. I thought of
Solomon, who made the Queen of Sheba walk on a mirror that he might be
sure that her feet were not cloven.
“And when the time came for me to sing of love to her, my voice forsook
me. At first she showed surprise, which soon turned to anger; and she said,
quickly putting on her wraps:
“‘It was hardly worth while for me to go out of my way to come here.’
“I wanted her to accept the ring which I had bought for her, but she replied
haughtily: ‘For whom do you take me, sir?’ I blushed to the roots of my hair.
She left without saying another word.
“There is my whole adventure. But the worst part of it is that I am now
madly in love with her. I can’t see a woman without thinking of her. All the
others disgust me, unless they remind me of her. I cannot kiss a woman
without seeing her face before me, and without suffering the torture of
unsatisfied desire. She is always with me, always there, dressed or nude, my
true love. She is there, beside the other one, visible but intangible. I am
almost willing to believe that she was bewitched, and carried a talisman
between her shoulders.
“Who is she? I don’t know yet. I have met her once or twice since. I
bowed, but she pretended not to recognize me. Who is she? An Oriental?
Yes, doubtless an oriental Jewess! I believe that she must be a Jewess! But
why? Why? I don’t know!”
 THE APPARITION

The subject of sequestration of the person came up in speaking of a recent

lawsuit, and each of us had a story to tell — a true story, he said. We had
been spending the evening together at an old family mansion in the Rue de
Grenelle, just a party of intimate friends. The old Marquis de la Tour-
Samuel, who was eighty-two, rose, and, leaning his elbow on the
mantelpiece, said in his somewhat shaky voice:
“I also know of something strange, so strange that it has haunted me all my
life. It is now fifty-six years since the incident occurred, and yet not a month
passes that I do not see it again in a dream, so great is the impression of fear
it has left on my mind. For ten minutes I experienced such horrible fright that
ever since then a sort of constant terror has remained with me. Sudden noises
startle me violently, and objects imperfectly distinguished at night inspire me
with a mad desire to flee from them. In short, I am afraid of the dark!
“But I would not have acknowledged that before I reached my present age.
Now I can say anything. I have never receded before real danger, ladies. It is,
therefore, permissible, at eighty-two years of age, not to be brave in presence
of imaginary danger.
“That affair so completely upset me, caused me such deep and mysterious
and terrible distress, that I never spoke of it to any one. I will now tell it to
you exactly as it happened, without any attempt at explanation.
“In July, 1827, I was stationed at Rouen. One day as I was walking along
the quay I met a man whom I thought I recognized without being able to recall
exactly who he was. Instinctively I made a movement to stop. The stranger
perceived it and at once extended his hand.
“He was a friend to whom I had been deeply attached as a youth. For five
years I had not seen him; he seemed to have aged half a century. His hair was
quite white and he walked bent over as though completely exhausted. He
apparently understood my surprise, and he told me of the misfortune which
had shattered his life.
“Having fallen madly in love with a young girl, he had married her, but
after a year of more than earthly happiness she died suddenly of an affection
of the heart. He left his country home on the very day of her burial and came
to his town house in Rouen, where he lived, alone and unhappy, so sad and
wretched that he thought constantly of suicide.
“‘Since I have found you again in this manner,’ he said, ‘I will ask you to
render me an important service. It is to go and get me out of the desk in my
bedroom — our bedroom — some papers of which I have urgent need. I
cannot send a servant or a business clerk, as discretion and absolute silence
are necessary. As for myself, nothing on earth would induce me to reenter
that house. I will give you the key of the room, which I myself locked on
leaving, and the key of my desk, also a few words for my gardener, telling
him to open the chateau for you. But come and breakfast with me tomorrow
and we will arrange all that.’
“I promised to do him the slight favor he asked. It was, for that matter,
only a ride which I could make in an hour on horseback, his property being
but a few miles distant from Rouen.
“At ten o’clock the following day I breakfasted, tete-a-tete, with my
friend, but he scarcely spoke.
“He begged me to pardon him; the thought of the visit I was about to make
to that room, the scene of his dead happiness, overcame him, he said. He,
indeed, seemed singularly agitated and preoccupied, as though undergoing
some mysterious mental struggle.
“At length he explained to me exactly what I had to do. It was very
simple. I must take two packages of letters and a roll of papers from the first
right-hand drawer of the desk, of which I had the key. He added:
“‘I need not beg you to refrain from glancing at them.’
“I was wounded at that remark and told him so somewhat sharply. He
stammered:
“‘Forgive me, I suffer so,’ and tears came to his eyes.
“At about one o’clock I took leave of him to accomplish my mission.
“‘The weather was glorious, and I trotted across the fields, listening to the
song of the larks and the rhythmical clang of my sword against my boot. Then
I entered the forest and walked my horse. Branches of trees caressed my face
as I passed, and now and then I caught a leaf with my teeth and chewed it,
from sheer gladness of heart at being alive and vigorous on such a radiant
day.
“As I approached the chateau I took from my pocket the letter I had for the
gardener, and was astonished at finding it sealed. I was so irritated that I was
about to turn back without having fulfilled my promise, but reflected that I
should thereby display undue susceptibility. My friend in his troubled
condition might easily have fastened the envelope without noticing that he did
so.
“The manor looked as if it had been abandoned for twenty years. The
open gate was falling from its hinges, the walks were overgrown with grass
and the flower beds were no longer distinguishable.
“The noise I made by kicking at a shutter brought out an old man from a
side door. He seemed stunned with astonishment at seeing me. On receiving
my letter, he read it, reread it, turned it over and over, looked me up and
down, put the paper in his pocket and finally said:
“‘Well, what is it you wish?’
“I replied shortly:
“‘You ought to know, since you have just read your master’s orders. I
wish to enter the chateau.’
“He seemed overcome.
“‘Then you are going in — into her room?’
“I began to lose patience.
“‘Damn it! Are you presuming to question me?’
“He stammered in confusion:
“‘No — sir — but — but it has not been opened since — since the-death.
If you will be kind enough to wait five minutes I will go and — and see if—
‘
“I interrupted him angrily:
“‘See here, what do you mean by your tricks?
“‘You know very well you cannot enter the room, since here is the key!’
“He no longer objected.
“‘Then, sir, I will show you the way.’
“‘Show me the staircase and leave me. I’ll find my way without you.’
“‘But — sir — indeed— ‘
“This time I lost patience, and pushing him aside, went into the house.
“I first went through the kitchen, then two rooms occupied by this man and
his wife. I then crossed a large hall, mounted a staircase and recognized the
door described by my friend.
“I easily opened it, and entered the apartment. It was so dark that at first I
could distinguish nothing. I stopped short, disagreeably affected by that
disagreeable, musty odor of closed, unoccupied rooms. As my eyes slowly
became accustomed to the darkness I saw plainly enough a large and
disordered bedroom, the bed without sheets but still retaining its mattresses
and pillows, on one of which was a deep impression, as though an elbow or
a head had recently rested there.
“The chairs all seemed out of place. I noticed that a door, doubtless that of
a closet, had remained half open.
“I first went to the window, which I opened to let in the light, but the
fastenings of the shutters had grown so rusty that I could not move them. I
even tried to break them with my sword, but without success. As I was
growing irritated over my useless efforts and could now see fairly well in the
semi-darkness, I gave up the hope of getting more light, and went over to the
writing desk.
“I seated myself in an armchair and, letting down the lid of the desk, I
opened the drawer designated. It was full to the top. I needed but three
packages, which I knew how to recognize, and began searching for them.
“I was straining my eyes in the effort to read the superscriptions when I
seemed to hear, or, rather, feel, something rustle back of me. I paid no
attention, believing that a draught from the window was moving some
drapery. But in a minute or so another movement, almost imperceptible, sent
a strangely disagreeable little shiver over my skin. It was so stupid to be
affected, even slightly, that self-respect prevented my turning around. I had
just found the second package I needed and was about to lay my hand on the
third when a long and painful sigh, uttered just at my shoulder, made me
bound like a madman from my seat and land several feet off. As I jumped I
had turned round my hand on the hilt of my sword, and, truly, if I had not felt
it at my side I should have taken to my heels like a coward.
“A tall woman dressed in white, stood gazing at me from the back of the
chair where I had been sitting an instant before.
“Such a shudder ran through all my limbs that I nearly fell backward. No
one who has not experienced it can understand that frightful, unreasoning
terror! The mind becomes vague, the heart ceases to beat, the entire body
grows as limp as a sponge.
“I do not believe in ghosts, nevertheless I collapsed from a hideous dread
of the dead, and I suffered, oh! I suffered in a few moments more than in all
the rest of my life from the irresistible terror of the supernatural. If she had
not spoken I should have died perhaps. But she spoke, she spoke in a sweet,
sad voice that set my nerves vibrating. I dare not say that I became master of
myself and recovered my reason. No! I was terrified and scarcely knew what
I was doing. But a certain innate pride, a remnant of soldierly instinct, made
me, almost in spite of myself, maintain a bold front. She said:
“‘Oh, sir, you can render me a great service.’
“I wanted to reply, but it was impossible for me to pronounce a word.
Only a vague sound came from my throat. She continued:
“‘Will you? You can save me, cure me. I suffer frightfully. I suffer, oh!
how I suffer!’ and she slowly seated herself in my armchair, still looking at
me.
“‘Will you?’ she said.
“I nodded in assent, my voice still being paralyzed.
“Then she held out to me a tortoise-shell comb and murmured:
“‘Comb my hair, oh! comb my hair; that will cure me; it must be combed.
Look at my head — how I suffer; and my hair pulls so!’
“Her hair, unbound, very long and very black, it seemed to me, hung over
the back of the armchair and touched the floor.
“Why did I promise? Why did I take that comb with a shudder, and why
did I hold in my hands her long black hair that gave my skin a frightful cold
sensation, as though I were handling snakes? I cannot tell.
“That sensation has remained in my fingers, and I still tremble in recalling
it.
“I combed her hair. I handled, I know not how, those icy locks. I twisted,
knotted, and unknotted, and braided them. She sighed, bowed her head,
seemed happy. Suddenly she said, ‘Thank you!’ snatched the comb from my
hands and fled by the door that I had noticed ajar.
“Left alone, I experienced for several seconds the horrible agitation of
one who awakens from a nightmare. At length I regained my senses. I ran to
the window and with a mighty effort burst open the shutters, letting a flood of
light into the room. Immediately I sprang to the door by which that being had
departed. I found it closed and immovable!
“Then the mad desire to flee overcame me like a panic the panic which
soldiers know in battle. I seized the three packets of letters on the open desk,
ran from the room, dashed down the stairs four steps at a time, found myself
outside, I know not how, and, perceiving my horse a few steps off, leaped
into the saddle and galloped away.
“I stopped only when I reached Rouen and alighted at my lodgings.
Throwing the reins to my orderly, I fled to my room and shut myself in to
reflect. For an hour I anxiously asked myself if I were not the victim of a
hallucination. Undoubtedly I had had one of those incomprehensible nervous
attacks those exaltations of mind that give rise to visions and are the
stronghold of the supernatural. And I was about to believe I had seen a
vision, had a hallucination, when, as I approached the window, my eyes fell,
by chance, upon my breast. My military cape was covered with long black
hairs! One by one, with trembling fingers, I plucked them off and threw them
away.
“I then called my orderly. I was too disturbed, too upset to go and see my
friend that day, and I also wished to reflect more fully upon what I ought to
tell him. I sent him his letters, for which he gave the soldier a receipt. He
asked after me most particularly, and, on being told I was ill — had had a
sunstroke — appeared exceedingly anxious. Next morning I went to him,
determined to tell him the truth. He had gone out the evening before and had
not yet returned. I called again during the day; my friend was still absent.
After waiting a week longer without news of him, I notified the authorities
and a judicial search was instituted. Not the slightest trace of his
whereabouts or manner of disappearance was discovered.
“A minute inspection of the abandoned chateau revealed nothing of a
suspicious character. There was no indication that a woman had been
concealed there.
“After fruitless researches all further efforts were abandoned, and for
fifty-six years I have heard nothing; I know no more than before.”
 CLOCHETTE

How strange those old recollections are which haunt us, without our being
able to get rid of them.
This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so
vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many
sinister things, which were either affecting or terrible, that I am astonished at
not being able to pass a single day without the face of Mother Bellflower
recurring to my mind’s eye, just as I knew her formerly, now so long ago,
when I was ten or twelve years old.
She was an old seamstress who came to my parents’ house once a week,
every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those country
houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with gable roofs, to
which are attached three or four farms lying around them.
The village, a large village, almost a market town, was a few hundred
yards away, closely circling the church, a red brick church, black with age.
Well, every Thursday Mother Clochette came between half-past six and
seven in the morning, and went immediately into the linen-room and began to
work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or rather hairy woman, for she had a
beard all over her face, a surprising, an unexpected beard, growing in
improbable tufts, in curly bunches which looked as if they had been sown by
a madman over that great face of a gendarme in petticoats. She had them on
her nose, under her nose, round her nose, on her chin, on her cheeks; and her
eyebrows, which were extraordinarily thick and long, and quite gray, bushy
and bristling, looked exactly like a pair of mustaches stuck on there by
mistake.
She limped, not as lame people generally do, but like a ship at anchor.
When she planted her great, bony, swerving body on her sound leg, she
seemed to be preparing to mount some enormous wave, and then suddenly
she dipped as if to disappear in an abyss, and buried herself in the ground.
Her walk reminded one of a storm, as she swayed about, and her head, which
was always covered with an enormous white cap, whose ribbons fluttered
down her back, seemed to traverse the horizon from north to south and from
south to north, at each step.
 I adored Mother Clochette. As soon as I was up I went into the linen-room
where I found her installed at work, with a foot-warmer under her feet. As
soon as I arrived, she made me take the foot-warmer and sit upon it, so that I
might not catch cold in that large, chilly room under the roof.
“That draws the blood from your throat,” she said to me.
She told me stories, whilst mending the linen with her long crooked
nimble fingers; her eyes behind her magnifying spectacles, for age had
impaired her sight, appeared enormous to me, strangely profound, double.
She had, as far as I can remember the things which she told me and by
which my childish heart was moved, the large heart of a poor woman. She
told me what had happened in the village, how a cow had escaped from the
cow-house and had been found the next morning in front of Prosper Malet’s
windmill, looking at the sails turning, or about a hen’s egg which had been
found in the church belfry without any one being able to understand what
creature had been there to lay it, or the story of Jean-Jean Pila’s dog, who
had been ten leagues to bring back his master’s breeches which a tramp had
stolen whilst they were hanging up to dry out of doors, after he had been in
the rain. She told me these simple adventures in such a manner, that in my
mind they assumed the proportions of never-to-be -forgotten dramas, of grand
and mysterious poems; and the ingenious stories invented by the poets which
my mother told me in the evening, had none of the flavor, none of the breadth
or vigor of the peasant woman’s narratives.
Well, one Tuesday, when I had spent all the morning in listening to Mother
Clochette, I wanted to go upstairs to her again during the day after picking
hazelnuts with the manservant in the wood behind the farm. I remember it all
as clearly as what happened only yesterday.
On opening the door of the linen-room, I saw the old seamstress lying on
the ground by the side of her chair, with her face to the ground and her arms
stretched out, but still holding her needle in one hand and one of my shirts in
the other. One of her legs in a blue stocking, the longer one, no doubt, was
extended under her chair, and her spectacles glistened against the wall, as
they had rolled away from her.
I ran away uttering shrill cries. They all came running, and in a few
minutes I was told that Mother Clochette was dead.
I cannot describe the profound, poignant, terrible emotion which stirred
my childish heart. I went slowly down into the drawing-room and hid myself
in a dark corner, in the depths of an immense old armchair, where I knelt
down and wept. I remained there a long time, no doubt, for night came on.
Suddenly somebody came in with a lamp, without seeing me, however, and I
heard my father and mother talking with the medical man, whose voice I
recognized.
He had been sent for immediately, and he was explaining the causes of the
accident, of which I understood nothing, however. Then he sat down and had
a glass of liqueur and a biscuit.
He went on talking, and what he then said will remain engraved on my
mind until I die! I think that I can give the exact words which he used.
“Ah!” said he, “the poor woman! She broke her leg the day of my arrival
here, and I had not even had time to wash my hands after getting off the
diligence before I was sent for in all haste, for it was a bad case, very bad.
“She was seventeen, and a pretty girl, very pretty! Would any one believe
it? I have never told her story before, and nobody except myself and one
other person who is no longer living in this part of the country ever knew it.
Now that she is dead, I may be less discreet.
“Just then a young assistant-teacher came to live in the village; he was a
handsome, well-made fellow, and looked like a non-commissioned officer.
All the girls ran after him, but he paid no attention to them, partly because he
was very much afraid of his superior, the schoolmaster, old Grabu, who
occasionally got out of bed the wrong foot first.
“Old Grabu already employed pretty Hortense who has just died here, and
who was afterwards nicknamed Clochette. The assistant master singled out
the pretty young girl, who was, no doubt, flattered at being chosen by this
impregnable conqueror; at any rate, she fell in love with him, and he
succeeded in persuading her to give him a first meeting in the hay-loft behind
the school, at night, after she had done her day’s sewing.
“She pretended to go home, but instead of going downstairs when she left
the Grabus’ she went upstairs and hid among the hay, to wait for her lover.
He soon joined her, and was beginning to say pretty things to her, when the
door of the hay-loft opened and the schoolmaster appeared, and asked: ‘What
are you doing up there, Sigisbert?’ Feeling sure that he would be caught, the
young schoolmaster lost his presence of mind and replied stupidly: ‘I came
up here to rest a little amongst the bundles of hay, Monsieur Grabu.’
“The loft was very large and absolutely dark, and Sigisbert pushed the
frightened girl to the further end and said: ‘Go over there and hide yourself. I
shall lose my position, so get away and hide yourself.’
 “When the schoolmaster heard the whispering, he continued: ‘Why, you
are not by yourself?’ ‘Yes, I am, Monsieur Grabu!’ ‘But you are not, for you
are talking.’ ‘I swear I am, Monsieur Grabu.’ ‘I will soon find out,’ the old
man replied, and double locking the door, he went down to get a light.
“Then the young man, who was a coward such as one frequently meets,
lost his head, and becoming furious all of a sudden, he repeated: ‘Hide
yourself, so that he may not find you. You will keep me from making a living
for the rest of my life; you will ruin my whole career. Do hide yourself!’
They could hear the key turning in the lock again, and Hortense ran to the
window which looked out on the street, opened it quickly, and then said in a
low and determined voice: ‘You will come and pick me up when he is gone,’
and she jumped out.
“Old Grabu found nobody, and went down again in great surprise, and a
quarter of an hour later, Monsieur Sigisbert came to me and related his
adventure. The girl had remained at the foot of the wall unable to get up, as
she had fallen from the second story, and I went with him to fetch her. It was
raining in torrents, and I brought the unfortunate girl home with me, for the
right leg was broken in three places, and the bones had come trough the flesh.
She did not complain, and merely said, with admirable resignation: ‘I am
punished, well punished!’
“I sent for assistance and for the work-girl’s relatives and told them a,
made-up story of a runaway carriage which had knocked her down and lamed
her outside my door. They believed me, and the gendarmes for a whole month
tried in vain to find the author of this accident.
“That is all! And I say that this woman was a heroine and belonged to the
race of those who accomplish the grandest deeds of history.
“That was her only love affair, and she died a virgin. She was a martyr, a
noble soul, a sublimely devoted woman! And if I did not absolutely admire
her, I should not have told you this story, which I would never tell any one
during her life; you understand why.”
The doctor ceased. Mamma cried and papa said some words which I did
not catch; then they left the room and I remained on my knees in the armchair
and sobbed, whilst I heard a strange noise of heavy footsteps and something
knocking against the side of the staircase.
They were carrying away Clochette’s body.
 THE KISS

My Little Darling: So you are crying from morning until night and from night
until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do
and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you must consider her quite an
expert. I don’t know as much as you think I do, and yet I am not entirely
ignorant of the art of loving, or, rather, of making one’s self loved, in which
you are a little lacking. I can admit that at my age.
You say that you are all attention, love, kisses and caresses for him.
Perhaps that is the very trouble; I think you kiss him too much.
My dear, we have in our hands the most terrible power in the world:
LOVE.
Man is gifted with physical strength, and he exercises force. Woman is
gifted with charm, and she rules with caresses. It is our weapon, formidable
and invincible, but we should know how to use it.
Know well that we are the mistresses of the world! To tell the history of
Love from the beginning of the world would be to tell the history of man
himself: Everything springs from it, the arts, great events, customs, wars, the
overthrow of empires.
In the Bible you find Delila, Judith; in fables we find Omphale, Helen; in
history the Sabines, Cleopatra and many others.
Therefore we reign supreme, all-powerful. But, like kings, we must make
use of delicate diplomacy.
Love, my dear, is made up of imperceptible sensations. We know that it is
as strong as death, but also as frail as glass. The slightest shock breaks it, and
our power crumbles, and we are never able to raise it again.
We have the power of making ourselves adored, but we lack one tiny
thing, the understanding of the various kinds of caresses. In embraces we lose
the sentiment of delicacy, while the man over whom we rule remains master
of himself, capable of judging the foolishness of certain words. Take care,
my dear; that is the defect in our armor. It is our Achilles’ heel.
Do you know whence comes our real power? From the kiss, the kiss
alone! When we know how to hold out and give up our lips we can become
queens.
The kiss is only a preface, however, but a charming preface. More
charming than the realization itself. A preface which can always be read over
again, whereas one cannot always read over the book.
Yes, the meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation
given to human beings, the supreme limit of happiness: It is in the kiss alone
that one sometimes seems to feel this union of souls after which we strive,
the intermingling of hearts, as it were.
Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme:
Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss,
Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss.
One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one
— it is the kiss. No violent delirium of complete possession is worth this
trembling approach of the lips, this first moist and fresh contact, and then the
long, lingering, motionless rapture.
Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take
care not to dull it. Do not forget that its value is only relative, purely
conventional. It continually changes according to circumstances, the state of
expectancy and the ecstasy of the mind. I will call attention to one example.
Another poet, Francois Coppee, has written a line which we all
remember, a line which we find delightful, which moves our very hearts.
After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one winter’s
evening, his anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear of not seeing
her, he describes the arrival of the beloved woman, who at last enters
hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of the winter breeze, and he
exclaims:
Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.
Is that not a line of exquisite sentiment, a delicate and charming
observation, a perfect truth? All those who have hastened to a clandestine
meeting, whom passion has thrown into the arms of a man, well do they know
these first delicious kisses through the veil; and they tremble at the memory
of them. And yet their sole charm lies in the circumstances, from being late,
from the anxious expectancy, but from the purely — or, rather, impurely, if
you prefer — sensual point of view, they are detestable.
Think! Outside it is cold. The young woman has walked quickly; the veil
is moist from her cold breath. Little drops of water shine in the lace. The
lover seizes her and presses his burning lips to her liquid breath. The moist
veil, which discolors and carries the dreadful odor of chemical dye,
penetrates into the young man’s mouth, moistens his mustache. He does not
taste the lips of his beloved, he tastes the dye of this lace moistened with
cold breath. And yet, like the poet, we would all exclaim:
Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.
Therefore, the value of this caress being entirely a matter of convention,
we must be careful not to abuse it.
Well, my dear, I have several times noticed that you are very clumsy.
However, you were not alone in that fault; the majority of women lose their
authority by abusing the kiss with untimely kisses. When they feel that their
husband or their lover is a little tired, at those times when the heart as well
as the body needs rest, instead of understanding what is going on within him,
they persist in giving inopportune caresses, tire him by the obstinacy of
begging lips and give caresses lavished with neither rhyme nor reason.
Trust in the advice of my experience. First, never kiss your husband in
public, in the train, at the restaurant. It is bad taste; do not give in to your
desires. He would feel ridiculous and would never forgive you.
Beware of useless kisses lavished in intimacy. I am sure that you abuse
them. For instance, I remember one day that you did something quite
shocking. Probably you do not remember it.
All three of us were together in the drawing-room, and, as you did not
stand on ceremony before me, your husband was holding you on his knees
and kissing you at great length on the neck, the lips and throat. Suddenly you
exclaimed: “Oh! the fire!” You had been paying no attention to it, and it was
almost out. A few lingering embers were glowing on the hearth. Then he
rose, ran to the woodbox, from which he dragged two enormous logs with
great difficulty, when you came to him with begging lips, murmuring:
“Kiss me!” He turned his head with difficulty and tried to hold up the logs
at the same time. Then you gently and slowly placed your mouth on that of the
poor fellow, who remained with his neck out of joint, his sides twisted, his
arms almost dropping off, trembling with fatigue and tired from his desperate
effort. And you kept drawing out this torturing kiss, without seeing or
understanding. Then when you freed him, you began to grumble: “How badly
you kiss!” No wonder!
Oh, take care of that! We all have this foolish habit, this unconscious need
of choosing the most inconvenient moments. When he is carrying a glass of
water, when he is putting on his shoes, when he is tying his scarf — in short,
when he finds himself in any uncomfortable position — then is the time
which we choose for a caress which makes him stop for a whole minute in
the middle of a gesture with the sole desire of getting rid of us!
Do not think that this criticism is insignificant. Love, my dear, is a delicate
thing. The least little thing offends it; know that everything depends on the
tact of our caresses. An ill-placed kiss may do any amount of harm.
Try following my advice.
Your old aunt,
COLLETTE.
This story appeared in the Gaulois in November, 1882, under the
pseudonym of “Maufrigneuse.”
 THE LEGION OF HONOR

HOW HE GOT THE LEGION OF HONOR

From the time some people begin to talk they seem to have an
overmastering desire or vocation.
Ever since he was a child, M. Caillard had only had one idea in his head
— to wear the ribbon of an order. When he was still quite a small boy he
used to wear a zinc cross of the Legion of Honor pinned on his tunic, just as
other children wear a soldier’s cap, and he took his mother’s hand in the
street with a proud air, sticking out his little chest with its red ribbon and
metal star so that it might show to advantage.
His studies were not a success, and he failed in his examination for
Bachelor of Arts; so, not knowing what to do, he married a pretty girl, as he
had plenty of money of his own.
They lived in Paris, as many rich middle-class people do, mixing with
their own particular set, and proud of knowing a deputy, who might perhaps
be a minister some day, and counting two heads of departments among their
friends.
But M. Caillard could not get rid of his one absorbing idea, and he felt
constantly unhappy because he had not the right to wear a little bit of colored
ribbon in his buttonhole.
When he met any men who were decorated on the boulevards, he looked
at them askance, with intense jealousy. Sometimes, when he had nothing to do
in the afternoon, he would count them, and say to himself: “Just let me see
how many I shall meet between the Madeleine and the Rue Drouot.”
Then he would walk slowly, looking at every coat with a practiced eye
for the little bit of red ribbon, and when he had got to the end of his walk he
always repeated the numbers aloud.
“Eight officers and seventeen knights. As many as that! It is stupid to sow
the cross broadcast in that fashion. I wonder how many I shall meet going
back?”
And he returned slowly, unhappy when the crowd of passers-by interfered
with his vision.
 He knew the places where most were to be found. They swarmed in the
Palais Royal. Fewer were seen in the Avenue de l’Opera than in the Rue de
la Paix, while the right side of the boulevard was more frequented by them
than the left.
They also seemed to prefer certain cafes and theatres. Whenever he saw a
group of white-haired old gentlemen standing together in the middle of the
pavement, interfering with the traffic, he used to say to himself:
“They are officers of the Legion of Honor,” and he felt inclined to take off
his hat to them.
He had often remarked that the officers had a different bearing to the mere
knights. They carried their head differently, and one felt that they enjoyed a
higher official consideration and a more widely extended importance.
Sometimes, however, the worthy man would be seized with a furious
hatred for every one who was decorated; he felt like a Socialist toward them.
Then, when he got home, excited at meeting so many crosses — just as a
poor, hungry wretch might be on passing some dainty provision shop — he
used to ask in a loud voice:
“When shall we get rid of this wretched government?”
And his wife would be surprised, and ask:
“What is the matter with you to-day?”
“I am indignant,” he replied, “at the injustice I see going on around us. Oh,
the Communards were certainly right!”
After dinner he would go out again and look at the shops where the
decorations were sold, and he examined all the emblems of various shapes
and colors. He would have liked to possess them all, and to have walked
gravely at the head of a procession, with his crush hat under his arm and his
breast covered with decorations, radiant as a star, amid a buzz of admiring
whispers and a hum of respect.
But, alas! he had no right to wear any decoration whatever.
He used to say to himself: “It is really too difficult for any man to obtain
the Legion of Honor unless he is some public functionary. Suppose I try to be
appointed an officer of the Academy!”
But he did not know how to set about it, and spoke on the subject to his
wife, who was stupefied.
“Officer of the Academy! What have you done to deserve it?”
He got angry. “I know what I am talking about. I only want to know how to
set about it. You are quite stupid at times.”
 She smiled. “You are quite right. I don’t understand anything about it.”
An idea struck him: “Suppose you were to speak to M. Rosselin, the
deputy; he might be able to advise me. You understand I cannot broach the
subject to him directly. It is rather difficult and delicate, but coming from you
it might seem quite natural.”
Mme. Caillard did what he asked her, and M. Rosselin promised to speak
to the minister about it; and then Caillard began to worry him, till the deputy
told him he must make a formal application and put forward his claims.
“What were his charms?” he said. “He was not even a Bachelor of Arts.”
However, he set to work and produced a pamphlet, with the title, “The
People’s Right to Instruction,” but he could not finish it for want of ideas.
He sought for easier subjects, and began several in succession. The first
was, “The Instruction of Children by Means of the Eye.” He wanted
gratuitous theatres to be established in every poor quarter of Paris for little
children. Their parents were to take them there when they were quite young,
and, by means of a magic lantern, all the notions of human knowledge were to
be imparted to them. There were to be regular courses. The sight would
educate the mind, while the pictures would remain impressed on the brain,
and thus science would, so to say, be made visible. What could be more
simple than to teach universal history, natural history, geography, botany,
zoology, anatomy, etc., etc., in this manner?
He had his ideas printed in pamphlets, and sent a copy to each deputy, ten
to each minister, fifty to the President of the Republic, ten to each Parisian,
and five to each provincial newspaper.
Then he wrote on “Street Lending-Libraries.” His idea was to have little
pushcarts full of books drawn about the streets. Everyone would have a right
to ten volumes a month in his home on payment of one sou.
“The people,” M. Caillard said, “will only disturb itself for the sake of its
pleasures, and since it will not go to instruction, instruction must come to it,”
etc., etc.
His essays attracted no attention, but he sent in his application, and he got
the usual formal official reply. He thought himself sure of success, but
nothing came of it.
Then he made up his mind to apply personally. He begged for an
interview with the Minister of Public Instruction, and he was received by a
young subordinate, who was very grave and important, and kept touching the
knobs of electric bells to summon ushers, and footmen, and officials inferior
to himself. He declared to M. Caillard that his matter was going on quite
favorably, and advised him to continue his remarkable labors, and M.
Caillard set at it again.
M. Rosselin, the deputy, seemed now to take a great interest in his
success, and gave him a lot of excellent, practical advice. He, himself, was
decorated, although nobody knew exactly what he had done to deserve such a
distinction.
He told Caillard what new studies he ought to undertake; he introduced
him to learned societies which took up particularly obscure points of
science, in the hope of gaining credit and honors thereby; and he even took
him under his wing at the ministry.
One day, when he came to lunch with his friend — for several months past
he had constantly taken his meals there — he said to him in a whisper as he
shook hands: “I have just obtained a great favor for you. The Committee of
Historical Works is going to intrust you with a commission. There are some
researches to be made in various libraries in France.”
Caillard was so delighted that he could scarcely eat or drink, and a week
later he set out. He went from town to town, studying catalogues, rummaging
in lofts full of dusty volumes, and was hated by all the librarians.
One day, happening to be at Rouen, he thought he should like to go and
visit his wife, whom he had not seen for more than a week, so he took the
nine o’clock train, which would land him at home by twelve at night.
He had his latchkey, so he went in without making any noise, delighted at
the idea of the surprise he was going to give her. She had locked herself in.
How tiresome! However, he cried out through the door:
“Jeanne, it is I!”
She must have been very frightened, for he heard her jump out of her bed
and speak to herself, as if she were in a dream. Then she went to her dressing
room, opened and closed the door, and went quickly up and down her room
barefoot two or three times, shaking the furniture till the vases and glasses
sounded. Then at last she asked:
“Is it you, Alexander?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied; “make haste and open the door.”
As soon as she had done so, she threw herself into his arms, exclaiming:
“Oh, what a fright! What a surprise! What a pleasure!”
He began to undress himself methodically, as he did everything, and took
from a chair his overcoat, which he was in the habit of hanging up in the hall.
But suddenly he remained motionless, struck dumb with astonishment —
there was a red ribbon in the buttonhole:
“Why,” he stammered, “this — this — this overcoat has got the ribbon in
it!”
In a second, his wife threw herself on him, and, taking it from his hands,
she said:
“No! you have made a mistake — give it to me.”
But he still held it by one of the sleeves, without letting it go, repeating in
a half-dazed manner:
“Oh! Why? Just explain — Whose overcoat is it? It is not mine, as it has
the Legion of Honor on it.”
She tried to take it from him, terrified and hardly able to say:
“Listen — listen! Give it to me! I must not tell you! It is a secret. Listen to
me!”
But he grew angry and turned pale.
“I want to know how this overcoat comes to be here? It does not belong to
me.”
Then she almost screamed at him:
“Yes, it does; listen! Swear to me — well — you are decorated!”
She did not intend to joke at his expense.
He was so overcome that he let the overcoat fall and dropped into an
armchair.
“I am — you say I am — decorated?”
“Yes, but it is a secret, a great secret.”
She had put the glorious garment into a cupboard, and came to her
husband pale and trembling.
“Yes,” she continued, “it is a new overcoat that I have had made for you.
But I swore that I would not tell you anything about it, as it will not be
officially announced for a month or six weeks, and you were not to have
known till your return from your business journey. M. Rosselin managed it
for you.”
“Rosselin!” he contrived to utter in his joy. “He has obtained the
decoration for me? He — Oh!”
And he was obliged to drink a glass of water.
A little piece of white paper fell to the floor out of the pocket of the
overcoat. Caillard picked it up; it was a visiting card, and he read out:
“Rosselin-Deputy.”
 “You see how it is,” said his wife.
He almost cried with joy, and, a week later, it was announced in the
Journal Officiel that M. Caillard had been awarded the Legion of Honor on
account of his exceptional services.
 THE TEST

The Bondels were a happy family, and although they frequently quarrelled
about trifles, they soon became friends again.
Bondel was a merchant who had retired from active business after saving
enough to allow him to live quietly; he had rented a little house at Saint-
Germain and lived there with his wife. He was a quiet man with very
decided opinions; he had a certain degree of education and read serious
newspapers; nevertheless, he appreciated the gaulois wit. Endowed with a
logical mind, and that practical common sense which is the master quality of
the industrial French bourgeois, he thought little, but clearly, and reached a
decision only after careful consideration of the matter in hand. He was of
medium size, with a distinguished look, and was beginning to turn gray.
His wife, who was full of serious qualities, had also several faults. She
had a quick temper and a frankness that bordered upon violence. She bore a
grudge a long time. She had once been pretty, but had now become too stout
and too red; but in her neighborhood at Saint-Germain she still passed for a
very beautiful woman, who exemplified health and an uncertain temper.
Their dissensions almost always began at breakfast, over some trivial
matter, and they often continued all day and even until the following day.
Their simple, common, limited life imparted seriousness to the most
unimportant matters, and every topic of conversation became a subject of
dispute. This had not been so in the days when business occupied their
minds, drew their hearts together, and gave them common interests and
occupation.
But at Saint-Germain they saw fewer people. It had been necessary to
make new acquaintances, to create for themselves a new world among
strangers, a new existence devoid of occupations. Then the monotony of
loneliness had soured each of them a little; and the quiet happiness which
they had hoped and waited for with the coming of riches did not appear.
One June morning, just as they were sitting down to breakfast, Bondel
asked:
 “Do you know the people who live in the little red cottage at the end of
the Rue du Berceau?”
Madame Bondel was out of sorts. She answered:
“Yes and no; I am acquainted with them, but I do not care to know them.”
“Why not? They seem to be very nice.”
“Because— “
“This morning I met the husband on the terrace and we took a little walk
together.”
Seeing that there was danger in the air, Bendel added: “It was he who
spoke to me first.”
His wife looked at him in a displeased manner. She continued: “You
would have done just as well to avoid him.”
“Why?”
“Because there are rumors about them.”
“What kind?”
“Oh! rumors such as one often hears!”
M. Bondel was, unfortunately, a little hasty. He exclaimed:
“My dear, you know that I abhor gossip. As for those people, I find them
very pleasant.”
She asked testily: “The wife also?”
“Why, yes; although I have barely seen her.”
The discussion gradually grew more heated, always on the same subject
for lack of others. Madame Bondel obstinately refused to say what she had
heard about these neighbors, allowing things to be understood without saying
exactly what they were. Bendel would shrug his shoulders, grin, and
exasperate his wife. She finally cried out: “Well! that gentleman is deceived
by his wife, there!”
The husband answered quietly: “I can’t see how that affects the honor of a
man.”
She seemed dumfounded: “What! you don’t see? — you don’t see? —
well, that’s too much! You don’t see! — why, it’s a public scandal! he is
disgraced!”
He answered: “Ah! by no means! Should a man be considered disgraced
because he is deceived, because he is betrayed, robbed? No, indeed! I’ll
grant you that that may be the case for the wife, but as for him— “
She became furious, exclaiming: “For him as well as for her. They are
both in disgrace; it’s a public shame.”
 Bondel, very calm, asked: “First of all, is it true? Who can assert such a
thing as long as no one has been caught in the act?”
Madame Bondel was growing uneasy; she snapped: “What? Who can
assert it? Why, everybody! everybody! it’s as clear as the nose on your face.
Everybody knows it and is talking about it. There is not the slightest doubt.”
He was grinning: “For a long time people thought that the sun revolved
around the earth. This man loves his wife and speaks of her tenderly and
reverently. This whole business is nothing but lies!”
Stamping her foot, she stammered: “Do you think that that fool, that idiot,
knows anything about it?”
Bondel did not grow angry; he was reasoning clearly: “Excuse me. This
gentleman is no fool. He seemed to me, on the contrary, to be very intelligent
and shrewd; and you can’t make me believe that a man with brains doesn’t
notice such a thing in his own house, when the neighbors, who are not there,
are ignorant of no detail of this liaison — for I’ll warrant that they know
everything.”
Madame Bondel had a fit of angry mirth, which irritated her husband’s
nerves. She laughed: “Ha! ha! ha! they’re all the same! There’s not a man
alive who could discover a thing like that unless his nose was stuck into it!”
The discussion was wandering to other topics now. She was exclaiming
over the blindness of deceived husbands, a thing which he doubted and
which she affirmed with such airs of personal contempt that he finally grew
angry. Then the discussion became an angry quarrel, where she took the side
of the women and he defended the men. He had the conceit to declare: “Well,
I swear that if I had ever been deceived, I should have noticed it, and
immediately, too. And I should have taken away your desire for such things in
such a manner that it would have taken more than one doctor to set you on
foot again!”
Boiling with anger, she cried out to him: “You! you! why, you’re as big a
fool as the others, do you hear!”
He still maintained: “I can swear to you that I am not!”
She laughed so impertinently that he felt his heart beat and a chill run
down his back. For the third time he said:
“I should have seen it!”
She rose, still laughing in the same manner. She slammed the door and left
the room, saying: “Well! if that isn’t too much!”
 Bondel remained alone, ill at ease. That insolent, provoking laugh had
touched him to the quick. He went outside, walked, dreamed. The realization
of the loneliness of his new life made him sad and morbid. The neighbor,
whom he had met that morning, came to him with outstretched hands. They
continued their walk together. After touching on various subjects they came to
talk of their wives. Both seemed to have something to confide, something
inexpressible, vague, about these beings associated with their lives; their
wives. The neighbor was saying:
“Really, at times, one might think that they bear some particular ill-will
toward their husband, just because he is a husband. I love my wife — I love
her very much; I appreciate and respect her; well! there are times when she
seems to have more confidence and faith in our friends than in me.”
Bondel immediately thought: “There is no doubt; my wife was right!”
When he left this man he began to think things over again. He felt in his
soul a strange confusion of contradictory ideas, a sort of interior burning; that
mocking, impertinent laugh kept ringing in his ears and seemed to say: “Why;
you are just the same as the others, you fool!” That was indeed bravado, one
of those pieces of impudence of which a woman makes use when she dares
everything, risks everything, to wound and humiliate the man who has
aroused her ire. This poor man must also be one of those deceived husbands,
like so many others. He had said sadly: “There are times when she seems to
have more confidence and faith in our friends than in me.” That is how a
husband formulated his observations on the particular attentions of his wife
for another man. That was all. He had seen nothing more. He was like the
rest — all the rest!
And how strangely Bondel’s own wife had laughed as she said: “You, too
— you, too.” How wild and imprudent these creatures are who can arouse
such suspicions in the heart for the sole purpose of revenge!
He ran over their whole life since their marriage, reviewed his mental list
of their acquaintances, to see whether she had ever appeared to show more
confidence in any one else than in himself. He never had suspected any one,
he was so calm, so sure of her, so confident.
But, now he thought of it, she had had a friend, an intimate friend, who for
almost a year had dined with them three times a week. Tancret, good old
Tancret, whom he, Bendel, loved as a brother and whom he continued to see
on the sly, since his wife, he did not know why, had grown angry at the
charming fellow.
 He stopped to think, looking over the past with anxious eyes. Then he
grew angry at himself for harboring this shameful insinuation of the defiant,
jealous, bad ego which lives in all of us. He blamed and accused himself
when he remembered the visits and the demeanor of this friend whom his
wife had dismissed for no apparent reason. But, suddenly, other memories
returned to him, similar ruptures due to the vindictive character of Madame
Bondel, who never pardoned a slight. Then he laughed frankly at himself for
the doubts which he had nursed; and he remembered the angry looks of his
wife as he would tell her, when he returned at night: “I saw good old Tancret,
and he wished to be remembered to you,” and he reassured himself.
She would invariably answer: “When you see that gentleman you can tell
him that I can very well dispense with his remembrances.” With what an
irritated, angry look she would say these words! How well one could feel
that she did not and would not forgive — and he had suspected her even for a
second? Such foolishness!
But why did she grow so angry? She never had given the exact reason for
this quarrel. She still bore him that grudge! Was it? — But no — no — and
Bondel declared that he was lowering himself by even thinking of such
things.
Yes, he was undoubtedly lowering himself, but he could not help thinking
of it, and he asked himself with terror if this thought which had entered into
his mind had not come to stop, if he did not carry in his heart the seed of
fearful torment. He knew himself; he was a man to think over his doubts, as
formerly he would ruminate over his commercial operations, for days and
nights, endlessly weighing the pros and the cons.
He was already becoming excited; he was walking fast and losing his
calmness. A thought cannot be downed. It is intangible, cannot be caught,
cannot be killed.
Suddenly a plan occurred to him; it was bold, so bold that at first he
doubted whether he would carry it out.
Each time that he met Tancret, his friend would ask for news of Madame
Bondel, and Bondel would answer: “She is still a little angry.” Nothing
more. Good Lord! What a fool he had been! Perhaps!
Well, he would take the train to Paris, go to Tancret, and bring him back
with him that very evening, assuring him that his wife’s mysterious anger had
disappeared. But how would Madame Bondel act? What a scene there would
be! What anger! what scandal! What of it? — that would be revenge! When
she should come face to face with him, unexpectedly, he certainly ought to be
able to read the truth in their expressions.
He immediately went to the station, bought his ticket, got into the car, and
as soon as he felt him self being carried away by the train, he felt a fear, a
kind of dizziness, at what he was going to do. In order not to weaken, back
down, and return alone, he tried not to think of the matter any longer, to bring
his mind to bear on other affairs, to do what he had decided to do with a
blind resolution; and he began to hum tunes from operettas and music halls
until he reached Paris.
As soon as he found himself walking along the streets that led to
Tancret’s, he felt like stopping, He paused in front of several shops, noticed
the prices of certain objects, was interested in new things, felt like taking a
glass of beer, which was not his usual custom; and as he approached his
friend’s dwelling he ardently hoped not meet him. But Tancret was at home,
alone, reading. He jumped up in surprise, crying: “Ah! Bondel! what luck!”
Bondel, embarrassed, answered: “Yes, my dear fellow, I happened to be
in Paris, and I thought I’d drop in and shake hands with you.”
“That’s very nice, very nice! The more so that for some time you have not
favored me with your presence very often.”
“Well, you see — even against one’s will, one is often influenced by
surrounding conditions, and as my wife seemed to bear you some ill-will”
“Jove! ‘seemed’ — she did better than that, since she showed me the
door.”
“What was the reason? I never heard it.”
“Oh! nothing at all — a bit of foolishness — a discussion in which we did
not both agree.”
“But what was the subject of this discussion?”
“A lady of my acquaintance, whom you may perhaps know by name,
Madame Boutin.”
“Ah! really. Well, I think that my wife has forgotten her grudge, for this
very morning she spoke to me of you in very pleasant terms.”
Tancret started and seemed so dumfounded that for a few minutes he could
find nothing to say. Then he asked: “She spoke of me — in pleasant terms?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I am. I am not dreaming.”
“And then?”
 “And then — as I was coming to Paris I thought that I would please you by
coming to tell you the good news.”
“Why, yes — why, yes— “
Bondel appeared to hesitate; then, after a short pause, he added: “I even
had an idea.”
“What is it?”
“To take you back home with me to dinner.”
Tancret, who was naturally prudent, seemed a little worried by this
proposition, and he asked: “Oh! really — is it possible? Are we not
exposing ourselves to — to — a scene?”
“No, no, indeed!”
“Because, you know, Madame Bendel bears malice for a long time.”
“Yes, but I can assure you that she no longer bears you any ill — will. I
am even convinced that it will be a great pleasure for her to see you thus,
unexpectedly.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really!”
“Well, then! let us go along. I am delighted. You see, this
misunderstanding was very unpleasant for me.”
They set out together toward the Saint-Lazare station, arm in arm. They
made the trip in silence. Both seemed absorbed in deep meditation. Seated in
the car, one opposite the other, they looked at each other without speaking,
each observing that the other was pale.
Then they left the train and once more linked arms as if to unite against
some common danger. After a walk of a few minutes they stopped, a little out
of breath, before Bondel’s house. Bondel ushered his friend into the parlor,
called the servant, and asked: “Is madame at home?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Please ask her to come down at once.”
They dropped into two armchairs and waited. Both were filled with the
same longing to escape before the appearance of the much-feared person.
A well-known, heavy tread could be heard descending the stairs. A hand
moved the knob, and both men watched the brass handle turn. Then the door
opened wide, and Madame Bondel stopped and looked to see who was there
before she entered. She looked, blushed, trembled, retreated a step, then
stood motionless, her cheeks aflame and her hands resting against the sides of
the door frame.
 Tancret, as pale as if about to faint, had arisen, letting fall his hat, which
rolled along the floor. He stammered out: “Mon Dieu — madame — it is I —
I thought — I ventured — I was so sorry— “
As she did not answer, he continued: “Will you forgive me?”
Then, quickly, carried away by some impulse, she walked toward him
with her hands outstretched; and when he had taken, pressed, and held these
two hands, she said, in a trembling, weak little voice, which was new to her
husband:
“Ah! my dear friend — how happy I am!”
And Bondel, who was watching them, felt an icy chill run over him, as if
he had been dipped in a cold bath.
 FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN

Madame, you ask me whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe that a
man has never been in love. Well, then, no, no, I have never loved, never!
Why is this? I really cannot tell. I have never experienced that intoxication
of the heart which we call love! Never have I lived in that dream, in that
exaltation, in that state of madness into which the image of a woman casts us.
I have never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever heat, lifted up to
Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being who had
suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune, more
beautiful than any other creature, of more consequence than the whole world!
I have never wept, I have never suffered on account of any of you. I have not
passed my nights sleepless, while thinking of her. I have no experience of
waking thoughts bright with thought and memories of her. I have never known
the wild rapture of hope before her arrival, or the divine sadness of regret
when she went from me, leaving behind her a delicate odor of violet powder.
I have never been in love.
I have also often asked myself why this is. And truly I can scarcely tell.
Nevertheless I have found some reasons for it; but they are of a metaphysical
character, and perhaps you will not be able to appreciate them.
I suppose I am too critical of women to submit to their fascination. I ask
you to forgive me for this remark. I will explain what I mean. In every
creature there is a moral being and a physical being. In order to love, it
would be necessary for me to find a harmony between these two beings
which I have never found. One always predominates; sometimes the moral,
sometimes the physical.
The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to
love her, is not the same as the virile intellect. It is more, and it is less. A
woman must be frank, delicate, sensitive, refined, impressionable. She has
no need of either power or initiative in thought, but she must have kindness,
elegance, tenderness, coquetry and that faculty of assimilation which, in a
little while, raises her to an equality with him who shares her life. Her
greatest quality must be tact, that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch
is to the body. It reveals to her a thousand little things, contours, angles and
forms on the plane of the intellectual.
Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to correspond with their
personal charms. Now, the slightest lack of harmony strikes me and pains me
at the first glance. In friendship this is not of importance. Friendship is a
compact in which one fairly shares defects and merits. We may judge of
friends, whether man or woman, giving them credit for what is good, and
overlooking what is bad in them, appreciating them at their just value, while
giving ourselves up to an intimate, intense and charming sympathy.
In order to love, one must be blind, surrender one’s self absolutely, see
nothing, question nothing, understand nothing. One must adore the weakness
as well as the beauty of the beloved object, renounce all judgment, all
reflection, all perspicacity.
I am incapable of such blindness and rebel at unreasoning subjugation.
This is not all. I have such a high and subtle idea of harmony that nothing can
ever fulfill my ideal. But you will call me a madman. Listen to me. A woman,
in my opinion, may have an exquisite soul and charming body without that
body and that soul being in perfect harmony with one another. I mean that
persons who have noses made in a certain shape should not be expected to
think in a certain fashion. The fat have no right to make use of the same
words and phrases as the thin. You, who have blue eyes, madame, cannot
look at life and judge of things and events as if you had black eyes. The shade
of your eyes should correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the shade of your
thought. In perceiving these things, I have the scent of a bloodhound. Laugh if
you like, but it is so.
And yet, once I imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I had
foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I allowed
myself to be beguiled by a mirage of Dawn. Would you like me to tell you
this short story?
I met, one evening, a pretty, enthusiastic little woman who took a poetic
fancy to spend a night with me in a boat on a river. I would have preferred a
room and a bed; however, I consented to the river and the boat.
It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a moonlight night in
order the better to stimulate her imagination.
We had dined at a riverside inn and set out in the boat about ten o’clock. I
thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure, but as my companion pleased me
I did not worry about it. I sat down on the seat facing her; I seized the oars,
and off we starred.
I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We glided past a wooded
isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us rapidly over the river
covered with silvery ripples. The tree toads uttered their shrill, monotonous
cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river’s bank, and the lapping of the
water as it flowed on made around us a kind of confused murmur almost
imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us a vague sensation of mysterious fear.
The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams glittering in the moonlight
penetrated us. It was delightful to be alive and to float along thus, and to
dream and to feel at one’s side a sympathetic and beautiful young woman.
I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat intoxicated by the
pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my proximity to a lovely
woman.
“Come and sit beside me,” she said.
I obeyed.
She went on:
“Recite some poetry for me.”
This appeared to be rather too much. I declined; she persisted. She
certainly wanted to play the game, to have a whole orchestra of sentiment,
from the moon to the rhymes of poets. In the end I had to yield, and, as if in
mockery, I repeated to her a charming little poem by Louis Bouilhet, of which
the following are the last verses:
“I hate the poet who with tearful eye
Murmurs some name while gazing tow’rds a star,
Who sees no magic in the earth or sky,
Unless Lizette or Ninon be not far.

“The bard who in all Nature nothing sees

Divine, unless a petticoat he ties
Amorously to the branches of the trees
Or nightcap to the grass, is scarcely wise.

“He has not heard the Eternal’s thunder tone,

The voice of Nature in her various moods,
Who cannot tread the dim ravines alone,
And of no woman dream mid whispering woods.”
 I expected some reproaches. Nothing of the sort. She murmured:
“How true it is!”
I was astonished. Had she understood?
Our boat had gradually approached the bank and become entangled in the
branches of a willow which impeded its progress. I placed my arm round my
companion’s waist, and very gently approached my lips towards her neck.
But she repulsed me with an abrupt, angry movement.
“Have done, pray! How rude you are!”
I tried to draw her toward me. She resisted, caught hold of the tree, and
was near flinging us both into the water. I deemed it prudent to cease my
importunities.
She said:
“I would rather capsize you. I feel so happy. I want to dream. This is so
delightful.” Then, in a slightly malicious tone, she added:
“Have you already forgotten the verses you repeated to me just now?”
She was right. I became silent.
She went on:
“Come, now!”
And I plied the oars once more.
I began to think the night long and my position ridiculous.
My companion said to me:
“Will you make me a promise?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“To remain quiet, well-behaved and discreet, if I permit you— “
“What? Say what you mean!”
“Here is what I mean: I want to lie down on my back at the bottom of the
boat with you by my side. But I forbid you to touch me, to embrace me — in
short — to caress me.”
I promised. She said warningly:
“If you move, ‘I’ll capsize the boat.”
And then we lay down side by side, our eyes turned toward the sky, while
the boat glided slowly through the water. We were rocked by its gentle
motion. The slight sounds of the night came to us more distinctly in the
bottom of the boat, sometimes causing us to start. And I felt springing up
within me a strange, poignant emotion, an infinite tenderness, something like
an irresistible impulse to open my arms in order to embrace, to open my
heart in order to love, to give myself, to give my thoughts, my body, my life,
my entire being to some one.
My companion murmured, like one in a dream:
“Where are we; Where are we going? It seems to me that I am leaving the
earth. How sweet it is! Ah, if you loved me — a little!!!”
My heart began to throb. I had no answer to give. It seemed to me that I
loved her. I had no longer any violent desire. I felt happy there by her side,
and that was enough for me.
And thus we remained for a long, long time without stirring. We had
clasped each other’s hands; some delightful force rendered us motionless, an
unknown force stronger than ourselves, an alliance, chaste, intimate,
absolute, of our beings lying there side by side, belonging to each other
without contact. What was this? How do I know? Love, perhaps?
Little by little the dawn appeared. It was three o’clock in the morning.
Slowly a great brightness spread over the sky. The boat knocked up against
something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny islet.
But I remained enchanted, in an ecstasy. Before us stretched the
firmament, red, pink, violet, spotted with fiery clouds resembling golden
vapor. The river was glowing with purple and three houses on one side of it
seemed to be burning.
I bent toward my companion. I was going to say, “Oh! look!” But I held
my tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer see anything except her. She,
too, was rosy, with rosy flesh tints with a deeper tinge that was partly a
reflection of the hue of the sky. Her tresses were rosy; her eyes were rosy;
her teeth were rosy; her dress, her laces, her smile, all were rosy. And in
truth I believed, so overpowering was the illusion, that the dawn was there in
the flesh before me.
She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to me; and I moved toward
her, trembling, delirious feeling indeed that I was going to kiss Heaven, to
kiss happiness, to kiss a dream that had become a woman, to kiss the ideal
which had descended into human flesh.
She said to me: “You have a caterpillar in your hair.” And, suddenly, I felt
as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.
That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that since that
day it would be impossible for me to love. And yet — who can tell?
[The young man upon whom this letter was found was yesterday taken out
of the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging bargeman, who had
searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the deceased, brought
this paper to the author.]
 THE ORPHAN

Mademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
She was at the time thirty-six years old. Being disfigured through having as a
child slipped off her nurse’s lap into the fireplace and burned her face
shockingly, she had determined not to marry, for she did not want any man to
marry her for her money.
A neighbor of hers, left a widow just before her child was born, died in
giving birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took the new-born
child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a boarding-school, then
brought him home in his fourteenth year, in order to have in her empty house
somebody who would love her, who would look after her, and make her old
age pleasant.
She had a little country place four leagues from Rennes, and she now
dispensed with a servant; her expenses having increased to more than double
since this orphan’s arrival, her income of three thousand francs was no
longer sufficient to support three persons.
She attended to the housekeeping and cooking herself, and sent out the boy
on errands, letting him also occupy himself in cultivating the garden. He was
gentle, timid, silent, and affectionate. And she experienced a deep happiness,
a fresh happiness when he kissed her without surprise or horror at her
disfigurement. He called her “Aunt,” and treated her as a mother.
In the evening they both sat down at the fireside, and she made nice little
dainties for him. She heated some wine and toasted a slice of bread, and it
made a charming little meal before going to bed. She often took him on her
knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring tender words in his ear. She
called him: “My little flower, my cherub, my adored angel, my divine
jewel.” He softly accepted her caresses, hiding his head on the old maid’s
shoulder. Although he was now nearly fifteen, he had remained small and
weak, and had a rather sickly appearance.
Sometimes Mademoiselle Source took him to the city, to see two married
female relatives of hers, distant cousins, who were living in the suburbs, and
who were the only members of her family in existence. The two women had
always found fault with her, for having adopted this boy, on account of the
inheritance; but for all that, they gave her a cordial welcome, having still
hopes of getting a share for themselves, a third, no doubt, if what she
possessed were only equally divided.
She was happy, very happy, always occupied with her adopted child. She
bought books for him to improve his mind, and he became passionately fond
of reading.
He no longer climbed on her knee to pet her as he had formerly done; but,
instead, would go and sit down in his little chair in the chimney-corner and
open a volume. The lamp placed at the edge of the Tittle table above his head
shone on his curly hair, and on a portion of his forehead; he did not move, he
did not raise his eyes or make any gesture. He read on, interested, entirely
absorbed in the story he was reading.
Seated opposite to him, she would gaze at him earnestly, astonished at his
studiousness, often on the point of bursting into tears.
She said to him occasionally: “You will fatigue yourself, my treasure!”
hoping that he would raise his head, and come across to embrace her; but he
did not even answer her; he had not heard or understood what she was
saying; he paid no attention to anything save what he read in those pages.
For two years he devoured an incalculable number of volumes. His
character changed.
After this, he asked Mademoiselle Source several times for money, which
she gave him. As he always wanted more, she ended by refusing, for she was
both methodical and decided, and knew how to act rationally when it was
necessary to do so. By dint of entreaties he obtained a large sum from her one
night; but when he begged her for more a few days later, she showed herself
inflexible, and did not give way to him further, in fact.
He appeared to be satisfied with her decision.
He again became quiet, as he had formerly been, remaining seated for
entire hours, without moving, plunged in deep reverie. He now did not even
talk to Madame Source, merely answering her remarks with short, formal
words. Nevertheless, he was agreeable and attentive in his manner toward
her; but he never embraced her now.
She had by this time grown slightly afraid of him when they sat facing one
another at night on opposite sides of the fireplace. She wanted to wake him
up, to make him say something, no matter what, that would break this
dreadful silence, which was like the darkness of a wood. But he did not
appear to listen to her, and she shuddered with the terror of a poor feeble
woman when she had spoken to him five or six times successively without
being able to get a word out of him.
What was the matter with him? What was going on in that closed-up head?
When she had remained thus two or three hours opposite him, she felt as if
she were going insane, and longed to rush away and to escape into the open
country in order to avoid that mute, eternal companionship and also some
vague danger, which she could not define, but of which she had a
presentiment.
She frequently wept when she was alone. What was the matter with him?
When she expressed a wish, he unmurmuringly carried it into execution.
When she wanted anything brought from the city, he immediately went there
to procure it. She had no complaint to make of him; no, indeed! And yet —
Another year flitted by, and it seemed to her that a fresh change had taken
place in the mind of the young man. She perceived it; she felt it; she divined
it. How? No matter! She was sure she was not mistaken; but she could not
have explained in what manner the unknown thoughts of this strange youth
had changed.
It seemed to her that, until now, he had been like a person in a hesitating
frame of mind, who had suddenly arrived at a determination. This idea came
to her one evening as she met his glance, a fixed, singular glance which she
had not seen in his face before.
Then he commenced to watch her incessantly, and she wished she could
hide herself in order to avoid that cold eye riveted on her.
He kept staring at her, evening after evening, for hours together, only
averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:
“Do not look at me like that, my child!”
Then he would lower his head.
But the moment her back was turned she once more felt that his eyes were
upon her. Wherever she went, he pursued her with his persistent gaze.
Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly
noticed him hidden behind a bush, as if he were lying in wait for her; and,
again, when she sat in front of the house mending stockings while he was
digging some vegetable bed, he kept continually watching her in a
surreptitious manner, as he worked.
It was in vain that she asked him:
 “What’s the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years, you have
become very different. I don’t recognize you. Do tell me what ails you, and
what you are thinking of.”
He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:
“Why, nothing ails me, aunt!”
And when she persisted:
“Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew
what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not look
at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I’ll comfort you!”
He went away, with a tired air, murmuring:
“But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you.”
He had not grown much, having always a childish look, although his
features were those of a man. They were, however, hard and badly cut. He
seemed incomplete, abortive, only half finished, and disquieting as a mystery.
He was a self-contained, unapproachable being, in whom there seemed
always to be some active, dangerous mental labor going on. Mademoiselle
Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not sleep at night, so
great was her anxiety. Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She
shut herself up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.
What was she afraid of? She could not tell.
She feared everything, the night, the walls, the shadows thrown by the
moon on the white curtains of the windows, and, above all, she feared him.
Why?
What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?
She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune
threatened her, a frightful misfortune.
She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her
relatives. She told them about the matter in a gasping voice. The two women
thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her.
She said:
“If you knew the way he looks at me from morning till night. He never
takes his eyes off me! At times, I feel a longing to cry for help, to call in the
neighbors, so much am I afraid. But what could I say to them? He does
nothing but look at me.”
The two female cousins asked:
“Is he ever brutal to you? Does he give you sharp answers?”
She replied:
 “No, never; he does everything I wish; he works hard: he is steady; but I
am so frightened that I care nothing for that. He is planning something, I am
certain of that — quite certain. I don’t care to remain all alone like that with
him in the country.”
The relatives, astonished at her words, declared that people would be
amazed, would not understand; and they advised her to keep silent about her
fears and her plans, without, however, dissuading her from coming to reside
in the city, hoping in that way that the entire inheritance would eventually fall
into their hands.
They even promised to assist her in selling her house, and in finding
another, near them.
Mademoiselle Source returned home. But her mind was so much upset that
she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any trifling
disturbance agitated her.
Twice she went again to consult her relatives, quite determined now not to
remain any longer in this way in her lonely dwelling. At last, she found a
little cottage in the suburbs, which suited her, and she privately bought it.
The signature of the contract took place on a Tuesday morning, and
Mademoiselle Source devoted the rest of the day to the preparations for her
change of residence.
At eight o’clock in the evening she got into the diligence which passed
within a few hundred yards of her house, and she told the conductor to put
her down in the place where she usually alighted. The man called out to her
as he whipped his horses:
“Good evening, Mademoiselle Source — good night!”
She replied as she walked on:
“Good evening, Pere Joseph.” Next morning, at half-past seven, the
postman who conveyed letters to the village noticed at the cross-road, not far
from the high road, a large splash of blood not yet dry. He said to himself:
“Hallo! some boozer must have had a nose bleed.”
But he perceived ten paces farther on a pocket handkerchief also stained
with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the postman, in alarm,
made his way over to the ditch, where he fancied he saw a strange object.
Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat cut
with a knife.
An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other
authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.
 The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old
maid’s fears and her last plans.
The orphan was arrested. After the death of the woman who had adopted
him, he wept from morning till night, plunged, at least to all appearance, in
the most violent grief.
He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o’clock in a cafe.
Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his departure.
The driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the murdered
woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o’clock.
The accused was acquitted. A will, drawn up a long time before, which
had been left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him sole heir. So he
inherited everything.
For a long time, the people of the country boycotted him, as they still
suspected him. His house, that of the dead woman, was looked upon as
accursed. People avoided him in the street.
But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that
gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous, obliging,
ready to talk to the humblest about anything, as long as they cared to talk to
him.
The notary, Maitre Rameau, was one of the first to take his part, attracted
by his smiling loquacity. He said at a dinner, at the tax collector’s house:
“A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor
could not have such a crime on his conscience.”
Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and they
recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who would almost
compel them to stop at the road corners to listen to his ideas, who insisted on
their going into his house when they were passing by his garden, who could
crack a joke better than the lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who
possessed such contagious gaiety that, in spite of the repugnance with which
he inspired them, they could not keep from always laughing in his company.
All doors were opened to him after a time.
He is to-day the mayor of his township.
 THE BEGGAR

He had seen better days, despite his present misery and infirmities.
At the age of fifteen both his legs had been crushed by a carriage on the
Varville highway. From that time forth he begged, dragging himself along the
roads and through the farmyards, supported by crutches which forced his
shoulders up to his ears. His head looked as if it were squeezed in between
two mountains.
A foundling, picked up out of a ditch by the priest of Les Billettes on the
eve of All Saints’ Day and baptized, for that reason, Nicholas Toussaint,
reared by charity, utterly without education, crippled in consequence of
having drunk several glasses of brandy given him by the baker (such a funny
story!) and a vagabond all his life afterward — the only thing he knew how
to do was to hold out his hand for alms.
At one time the Baroness d’Avary allowed him to sleep in a kind of
recess spread with straw, close to the poultry yard in the farm adjoining the
chateau, and if he was in great need he was sure of getting a glass of cider
and a crust of bread in the kitchen. Moreover, the old lady often threw him a
few pennies from her window. But she was dead now.
In the villages people gave him scarcely anything — he was too well
known. Everybody had grown tired of seeing him, day after day for forty
years, dragging his deformed and tattered person from door to door on his
wooden crutches. But he could not make up his mind to go elsewhere,
because he knew no place on earth but this particular corner of the country,
these three or four villages where he had spent the whole of his miserable
existence. He had limited his begging operations and would not for worlds
have passed his accustomed bounds.
He did not even know whether the world extended for any distance
beyond the trees which had always bounded his vision. He did not ask
himself the question. And when the peasants, tired of constantly meeting him
in their fields or along their lanes, exclaimed: “Why don’t you go to other
villages instead of always limping about here?” he did not answer, but slunk
away, possessed with a vague dread of the unknown — the dread of a poor
wretch who fears confusedly a thousand things — new faces, taunts, insults,
the suspicious glances of people who do not know him and the policemen
walking in couples on the roads. These last he always instinctively avoided,
taking refuge in the bushes or behind heaps of stones when he saw them
coming.
When he perceived them in the distance, ‘With uniforms gleaming in the
sun, he was suddenly possessed with unwonted agility — the agility of a
wild animal seeking its lair. He threw aside his crutches, fell to the ground
like a limp rag, made himself as small as possible and crouched like a bare
under cover, his tattered vestments blending in hue with the earth on which he
cowered.
He had never had any trouble with the police, but the instinct to avoid
them was in his blood. He seemed to have inherited it from the parents he
had never known.
He had no refuge, no roof for his head, no shelter of any kind. In summer
he slept out of doors and in winter he showed remarkable skill in slipping
unperceived into barns and stables. He always decamped before his
presence could be discovered. He knew all the holes through which one
could creep into farm buildings, and the handling of his crutches having made
his arms surprisingly muscular he often hauled himself up through sheer
strength of wrist into hay-lofts, where he sometimes remained for four or five
days at a time, provided he had collected a sufficient store of food
beforehand.
He lived like the beasts of the field. He was in the midst of men, yet knew
no one, loved no one, exciting in the breasts of the peasants only a sort of
careless contempt and smoldering hostility. They nicknamed him “Bell,”
because he hung between his two crutches like a church bell between its
supports.
For two days he had eaten nothing. No one gave him anything now. Every
one’s patience was exhausted. Women shouted to him from their doorsteps
when they saw him coming:
“Be off with you, you good-for-nothing vagabond! Why, I gave you a
piece of bread only three days ago!”
And he turned on his crutches to the next house, where he was received in
the same fashion.
The women declared to one another as they stood at their doors:
“We can’t feed that lazy brute all the year round!”
 And yet the “lazy brute” needed food every day.
He had exhausted Saint-Hilaire, Varville and Les Billettes without getting
a single copper or so much as a dry crust. His only hope was in Tournolles,
but to reach this place he would have to walk five miles along the highroad,
and he felt so weary that he could hardly drag himself another yard. His
stomach and his pocket were equally empty, but he started on his way.
It was December and a cold wind blew over the fields and whistled
through the bare branches of the trees; the clouds careered madly across the
black, threatening sky. The cripple dragged himself slowly along, raising one
crutch after the other with a painful effort, propping himself on the one
distorted leg which remained to him.
Now and then he sat down beside a ditch for a few moments’ rest. Hunger
was gnawing his vitals, and in his confused, slow-working mind he had only
one idea-to eat-but how this was to be accomplished he did not know. For
three hours he continued his painful journey. Then at last the sight of the trees
of the village inspired him with new energy.
The first peasant he met, and of whom he asked alms, replied:
“So it’s you again, is it, you old scamp? Shall I never be rid of you?”
And “Bell” went on his way. At every door he got nothing but hard words.
He made the round of the whole village, but received not a halfpenny for his
pains.
Then he visited the neighboring farms, toiling through the muddy land, so
exhausted that he could hardly raise his crutches from the ground. He met
with the same reception everywhere. It was one of those cold, bleak days,
when the heart is frozen and the temper irritable, and hands do not open
either to give money or food.
When he had visited all the houses he knew, “Bell” sank down in the
corner of a ditch running across Chiquet’s farmyard. Letting his crutches slip
to the ground, he remained motionless, tortured by hunger, but hardly
intelligent enough to realize to the full his unutterable misery.
He awaited he knew not what, possessed with that vague hope which
persists in the human heart in spite of everything. He awaited in the corner of
the farmyard in the biting December wind, some mysterious aid from Heaven
or from men, without the least idea whence it was to arrive. A number of
black hens ran hither and thither, seeking their food in the earth which
supports all living things. Ever now and then they snapped up in their beaks a
grain of corn or a tiny insect; then they continued their slow, sure search for
nutriment.
“Bell” watched them at first without thinking of anything. Then a thought
occurred rather to his stomach than to his mind — the thought that one of
those fowls would be good to eat if it were cooked over a fire of dead wood.
He did not reflect that he was going to commit a theft. He took up a stone
which lay within reach, and, being of skillful aim, killed at the first shot the
fowl nearest to him. The bird fell on its side, flapping its wings. The others
fled wildly hither and thither, and “Bell,” picking up his crutches, limped
across to where his victim lay.
Just as he reached the little black body with its crimsoned head he
received a violent blow in his back which made him let go his hold of his
crutches and sent him flying ten paces distant. And Farmer Chiquet, beside
himself with rage, cuffed and kicked the marauder with all the fury of a
plundered peasant as “Bell” lay defenceless before him.
The farm hands came up also and joined their master in cuffing the lame
beggar. Then when they were tired of beating him they carried him off and
shut him up in the woodshed, while they went to fetch the police.
“Bell,” half dead, bleeding and perishing with hunger, lay on the floor.
Evening came — then night — then dawn. And still he had not eaten.
About midday the police arrived. They opened the door of the woodshed
with the utmost precaution, fearing resistance on the beggar’s part, for
Farmer Chiquet asserted that he had been attacked by him and had had great,
difficulty in defending himself.
The sergeant cried:
“Come, get up!”
But “Bell” could not move. He did his best to raise himself on his
crutches, but without success. The police, thinking his weakness feigned,
pulled him up by main force and set him between the crutches.
Fear seized him — his native fear of a uniform, the fear of the game in
presence of the sportsman, the fear of a mouse for a cat-and by the exercise
of almost superhuman effort he succeeded in remaining upright.
“Forward!” said the sergeant. He walked. All the inmates of the farm
watched his departure. The women shook their fists at him the men scoffed at
and insulted him. He was taken at last! Good riddance! He went off between
his two guards. He mustered sufficient energy — the energy of despair — to
drag himself along until the evening, too dazed to know what was happening
to him, too frightened to understand.
People whom he met on the road stopped to watch him go by and peasants
muttered:
“It’s some thief or other.”
Toward evening he reached the country town. He had never been so far
before. He did not realize in the least what he was there for or what was to
become of him. All the terrible and unexpected events of the last two days,
all these unfamiliar faces and houses struck dismay into his heart.
He said not a word, having nothing to say because he understood nothing.
Besides, he had spoken to no one for so many years past that he had almost
lost the use of his tongue, and his thoughts were too indeterminate to be put
into words.
He was shut up in the town jail. It did not occur to the police that he might
need food, and he was left alone until the following day. But when in the
early morning they came to examine him he was found dead on the floor.
Such an astonishing thing!
 THE RABBIT

Old Lecacheur appeared at the door of his house between five and a quarter
past five in the morning, his usual hour, to watch his men going to work.
He was only half awake, his face was red, and with his right eye open and
the left nearly closed, he was buttoning his braces over his fat stomach with
some difficulty, at the same time looking into every corner of the farmyard
with a searching glance. The sun darted its oblique rays through the beech
trees by the side of the ditch and athwart the apple trees outside, and was
making the cocks crow on the dunghill, and the pigeons coo on the roof. The
smell of the cow stable came through the open door, and blended in the fresh
morning air with the pungent odor of the stable, where the horses were
neighing, with their heads turned toward the light.
As soon as his trousers were properly fastened, Lecacheur came out, and
went, first of all, toward the hen house to count the morning’s eggs, for he had
been afraid of thefts for some time; but the servant girl ran up to him with
lifted arms and cried:
“Master! master! they have stolen a rabbit during the night.”
“A rabbit?”
“Yes, master, the big gray rabbit, from the hutch on the left”; whereupon
the farmer completely opened his left eye, and said, simply:
“I must see about that.”
And off he went to inspect it. The hutch had been broken open and the
rabbit was gone. Then he became thoughtful, closed his right eye again, and
scratched his nose, and after a little consideration, he said to the frightened
girl, who was standing stupidly before her master:
“Go and fetch the gendarmes; say I expect them as soon as possible.”
Lecacheur was mayor of the village, Pavigny-le-Gras, and ruled it like a
master, on account of his money and position, and as soon as the servant had
disappeared in the direction of the village, which was only about five
hundred yards off, he went into the house to have his morning coffee and to
discuss the matter with his wife, whom he found on her knees in front of the
fire, trying to make it burn quickly, and as soon as he got to the door, he said:
 “Somebody has stolen the gray rabbit.”
She turned round so suddenly that she found herself sitting on the floor,
and looking at her husband with distressed eyes, she said:
“What is it, Cacheux? Somebody has stolen a rabbit?”
“The big gray one.”
She sighed.
“What a shame! Who can have done it?”
She was a little, thin, active, neat woman, who knew all about farming.
Lecacheur had his own ideas about the matter.
“It must be that fellow, Polyte.”
His wife got up suddenly and said in a furious voice:
“He did it! he did it! You need not look for any one else. He did it! You
have said it, Cacheux!”
All her peasant’s fury, all her avarice, all her rage of a saving woman
against the man of whom she had always been suspicious, and against the girl
whom she had always suspected, showed themselves in the contraction of her
mouth, and the wrinkles in the cheeks and forehead of her thin, exasperated
face.
“And what have you done?” she asked.
“I have sent for the gendarmes.”
This Polyte was a laborer, who had been employed on the farm for a few
days, and who had been dismissed by Lecacheur for an insolent answer. He
was an old soldier, and was supposed to have retained his habits of
marauding and debauchery front his campaigns in Africa. He did anything for
a livelihood, but whether he were a mason, a navvy, a reaper, whether he
broke stones or lopped trees, he was always lazy, and so he remained
nowhere for long, and had, at times, to change his neighborhood to obtain
work.
From the first day that he came to the farm, Lecacheur’s wife had detested
him, and now she was sure that he had committed the theft.
In about half an hour the two gendarmes arrived. Brigadier Senateur was
very tall and thin, and Gendarme Lenient short and fat. Lecacheur made them
sit down, and told them the affair, and then they went and saw the scene of the
theft, in order to verify the fact that the hutch had been broken open, and to
collect all the proofs they could. When they got back to the kitchen, the
mistress brought in some wine, filled their glasses, and asked with a
distrustful look:
 “Shall you catch him?”
The brigadier, who had his sword between his legs, appeared thoughtful.
Certainly, he was sure of taking him, if he was pointed out to him, but if not,
he could not answer for being able to discover him, himself, and after
reflecting for a long time, he put this simple question:
“Do you know the thief?”
And Lecacheur replied, with a look of Normandy slyness in his eyes:
“As for knowing him, I do not, as I did not see him commit the theft. If I
had seen him, I should have made him eat it raw, skin and flesh, without a
drop of cider to wash it down. But as for saying who it is, I cannot, although I
believe it is that good-for-nothing Polyte.”
Then he related at length his troubles with Polyte, his leaving his service,
his bad reputation, things which had been told him, accumulating insignificant
and minute proofs, and then, the brigadier, who had been listening very
attentively while he emptied his glass and filled it again with an indifferent
air, turned to his gendarme and said:
“We must go and look in the cottage of Severin’s wife.” At which the
gendarme smiled and nodded three times.
Then Madame Lecacheur came to them, and very quietly, with all a
peasant’s cunning, questioned the brigadier in her turn. That shepherd
Severin, a simpleton, a sort of brute who had been brought up and had grown
up among his bleating flocks, and who knew scarcely anything besides them
in the world, had nevertheless preserved the peasant’s instinct for saving, at
the bottom of his heart. For years and years he must have hidden in hollow
trees and crevices in the rocks all that he earned, either as a shepherd or by
curing animals’ sprains — for the bonesetter’s secret had been handed down
to him by the old shepherd whose place he took-by touch or word, and one
day he bought a small property, consisting of a cottage and a field, for three
thousand francs.
A few months later it became known that he was going to marry a servant,
notorious for her bad morals, the innkeeper’s servant. The young fellows
said that the girl, knowing that he was pretty well off, had been to his cottage
every night, and had taken him, captured him, led him on to matrimony, little
by little night by night.
And then, having been to the mayor’s office and to church, she now lived
in the house which her man had bought, while he continued to tend his flocks,
day and night, on the plains.
 And the brigadier added:
“Polyte has been sleeping there for three weeks, for the thief has no place
of his own to go to!”
The gendarme made a little joke:
“He takes the shepherd’s blankets.”
Madame Lecacheur, who was seized by a fresh access of rage, of rage
increased by a married woman’s anger against debauchery, exclaimed:
“It is she, I am sure. Go there. Ah, the blackguard thieves!”
But the brigadier was quite unmoved.
“One minute,” he said. “Let us wait until twelve o’clock, as he goes and
dines there every day. I shall catch them with it under their noses.”
The gendarme smiled, pleased at his chief’s idea, and Lecacheur also
smiled now, for the affair of the shepherd struck him as very funny; deceived
husbands are always a joke.
Twelve o’clock had just struck when the brigadier, followed by his man,
knocked gently three times at the door of a little lonely house, situated at the
corner of a wood, five hundred yards from the village.
They had been standing close against the wall, so as not to be seen from
within, and they waited. As nobody answered, the brigadier knocked again in
a minute or two. It was so quiet that the house seemed uninhabited; but
Lenient, the gendarme, who had very quick ears, said that he heard somebody
moving about inside, and then Senateur got angry. He would not allow any
one to resist the authority of the law for a moment, and, knocking at the door
with the hilt of his sword, he cried out:
“Open the door, in the name of the law.”
As this order had no effect, he roared out:
“If you do not obey, I shall smash the lock. I am the brigadier of the
gendarmerie, by G — ! Here, Lenient.”
He had not finished speaking when the door opened and Senateur saw
before him a fat girl, with a very red, blowzy face, with drooping breasts, a
big stomach and broad hips, a sort of animal, the wife of the shepherd
Severin, and he went into the cottage.
“I have come to pay you a visit, as I want to make a little search,” he said,
and he looked about him. On the table there was a plate, a jug of cider and a
glass half full, which proved that a meal was in progress. Two knives were
lying side by side, and the shrewd gendarme winked at his superior officer.
“It smells good,” the latter said.
 “One might swear that it was stewed rabbit,” Lenient added, much
amused.
“Will you have a glass of brandy?” the peasant woman asked.
“No, thank you; I only want the skin of the rabbit that you are eating.”
She pretended not to understand, but she was trembling.
“What rabbit?”
The brigadier had taken a seat, and was calmly wiping his forehead.
“Come, come, you are not going to try and make us believe that you live
on couch grass. What were you eating there all by yourself for your dinner?”
“I? Nothing whatever, I swear to you. A mite of butter on my bread.”
“You are a novice, my good woman. A mite of butter on your bread. You
are mistaken; you ought to have said: a mite of butter on the rabbit. By G — ,
your butter smells good! It is special butter, extra good butter, butter fit for a
wedding; certainly, not household butter!”
The gendarme was shaking with laughter, and repeated:
“Not household butter certainly.”
As Brigadier Senateur was a joker, all the gendarmes had grown
facetious, and the officer continued:
“Where is your butter?”
“My butter?”
“Yes, your butter.”
“In the jar.”
“Then where is the butter jar?”
“Here it is.”
She brought out an old cup, at the bottom of which there was a layer of
rancid salt butter, and the brigadier smelled of it, and said, with a shake of
his head:
“It is not the same. I want the butter that smells of the rabbit. Come,
Lenient, open your eyes; look under the sideboard, my good fellow, and I
will look under the bed.”
Having shut the door, he went up to the bed and tried to move it; but it was
fixed to the wall, and had not been moved for more than half a century,
apparently. Then the brigadier stooped, and made his uniform crack. A button
had flown off.
“Lenient,” he said.
“Yes, brigadier?”
 “Come here, my lad, and look under the bed; I am too tall. I will look after
the sideboard.”
He got up and waited while his man executed his orders.
Lenient, who was short and stout, took off his kepi, laid himself on his
stomach, and, putting his face on the floor, looked at the black cavity under
the bed, and then, suddenly, he exclaimed:
“All right, here we are!”
“What have you got? The rabbit?”
“No, the thief.”
“The thief! Pull him out, pull him out!”
The gendarme had put his arms under the bed and laid hold of something,
and he was pulling with all his might, and at last a foot, shod in a thick boot,
appeared, which he was holding in his right hand. The brigadier took it,
crying:
“Pull! Pull!”
And Lenient, who was on his knees by that time, was pulling at the other
leg. But it was a hard job, for the prisoner kicked out hard, and arched up his
back under the bed.
“Courage! courage! pull! pull!” Senateur cried, and they pulled him with
all their strength, so that the wooden slat gave way, and he came out as far as
his head; but at last they got that out also, and they saw the terrified and
furious face of Polyte, whose arms remained stretched out under the bed.
“Pull away!” the brigadier kept on exclaiming. Then they heard a strange
noise, and as the arms followed the shoulders, and the hands the arms, they
saw in the hands the handle of a saucepan, and at the end of the handle the
saucepan itself, which contained stewed rabbit.
“Good Lord! good Lord!” the brigadier shouted in his delight, while
Lenient took charge of the man; the rabbit’s skin, an overwhelming proof,
was discovered under the mattress, and then the gendarmes returned in
triumph to the village with their prisoner and their booty.
A week later, as the affair had made much stir, Lecacheur, on going into
the mairie to consult the schoolmaster, was told that the shepherd Severin had
been waiting for him for more than an hour, and he found him sitting on a
chair in a corner, with his stick between his legs. When he saw the mayor, he
got up, took off his cap, and said:
“Good-morning, Maitre Cacheux”; and then he remained standing, timid
and embarrassed.
 “What do you want?” the former said.
“This is it, monsieur. Is it true that somebody stole one of your rabbits last
week?”
“Yes, it is quite true, Severin.”
“Who stole the rabbit?”
“Polyte Ancas, the laborer.”
“Right! right! And is it also true that it was found under my bed?”
“What do you mean, the rabbit?”
“The rabbit and then Polyte.”
“Yes, my poor Severin, quite true, but who told you?”
“Pretty well everybody. I understand! And I suppose you know all about
marriages, as you marry people?”
“What about marriage?”
“With regard to one’s rights.”
“What rights?”
“The husband’s rights and then the wife’s rights.”
“Of course I do.”
“Oh! Then just tell me, M’sieu Cacheux, has my wife the right to go to bed
with Polyte?”
“What, to go to bed with Polyte?”
“Yes, has she any right before the law, and, seeing that she is my wife, to
go to bed with Polyte?”
“Why, of course not, of course not.”
“If I catch him there again, shall I have the right to thrash him and her
also?”
“Why — why — why, yes.”
“Very well, then; I will tell you why I want to know. One night last week,
as I had my suspicions, I came in suddenly, and they were not behaving
properly. I chucked Polyte out, to go and sleep somewhere else; but that was
all, as I did not know what my rights were. This time I did not see them; I
only heard of it from others. That is over, and we will not say any more about
it; but if I catch them again — by G — , if I catch them again, I will make
them lose all taste for such nonsense, Maitre Cacheux, as sure as my name is
Severin.”
 HIS AVENGER

When M. Antoine Leuillet married the widow, Madame Mathilde Souris, he

had already been in love with her for ten years.
M. Souris has been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very
much attached to him, but thought he was somewhat of a simpleton. He would
often remark: “That poor Souris who will never set the world on fire.”
When Souris married Miss Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was astonished and
somewhat annoyed, as he was slightly devoted to her, himself. She was the
daughter of a neighbor, a former proprietor of a draper’s establishment who
had retired with quite a small fortune. She married Souris for his money.
Then Leuillet thought he would start a flirtation with his friend’s wife. He
was a good-looking man, intelligent and also rich. He thought it would be all
plain sailing, but he was mistaken. Then he really began to admire her with
an admiration that his friendship for the husband obliged him to keep within
the bounds of discretion, making him timid and embarrassed. Madame Souris
believing that his presumptions had received a wholesome check now treated
him as a good friend. This went on for nine years.
One morning a messenger brought Leuillet a distracted note from the poor
woman. Souris had just died suddenly from the rupture of an aneurism. He
was dreadfully shocked, for they were just the same age. But almost
immediately a feeling of profound joy, of intense relief, of emancipation
filled his being. Madame Souris was free.
He managed, however, to assume the sad, sympathetic expression that was
appropriate, waited the required time, observed all social appearances. At
the end of fifteen months he married the widow.
This was considered to be a very natural, and even a generous action. It
was the act of a good friend of an upright man.
He was happy at last, perfectly happy.
They lived in the most cordial intimacy, having understood and
appreciated each other from the first. They had no secrets from one another
and even confided to each other their most secret thoughts. Leuillet loved his
wife now with a quiet and trustful affection; he loved her as a tender, devoted
companion who is an equal and a confidante. But there lingered in his mind a
strange and inexplicable bitterness towards the defunct Souris, who had first
been the husband of this woman, who had had the flower of her youth and of
her soul, and had even robbed her of some of her poetry. The memory of the
dead husband marred the happiness of the living husband, and this
posthumous jealousy tormented his heart by day and by night.
The consequence was he talked incessantly of Souris, asked about a
thousand personal and secret minutia, wanted to know all about his habits
and his person. And he sneered at him even in his grave, recalling with self-
satisfaction his whims, ridiculing his absurdities, dwelling on his faults.
He would call to his wife all over the house:
“Hallo, Mathilde!”
“Here I am, dear.”
“Come here a moment.”
She would come, always smiling, knowing well that he would say
something about Souris and ready to flatter her new husband’s inoffensive
mania.
“Tell me, do you remember one day how Souris insisted on explaining to
me that little men always commanded more affection than big men?”
And he made some remarks that were disparaging to the deceased, who
was a small man, and decidedly flattering to himself, Leuillet, who was a tall
man.
Mme. Leuillet allowed him to think he was right, quite right, and she
laughed heartily, gently ridiculing her former husband for the sake of pleasing
the present one, who always ended by saying:
“All the same, what a ninny that Souris was!”
They were happy, quite happy, and Leuillet never ceased to show his
devotion to his wife.
One night, however, as they lay awake, Leuillet said as he kissed his wife:
“See here, dearie.”
“Well?”
“Was Souris — I don’t exactly know how to say it — was Souris very
loving?”
She gave him a kiss for reply and murmured “Not as loving as you are,
mon chat.”
He was flattered in his self-love and continued:
“He must have been — a ninny — was he not?”
 She did not reply. She only smiled slyly and hid her face in her husband’s
neck.
“He must have been a ninny and not — not — not smart?”
She shook her head slightly to imply, “No — not at all smart.”
He continued:
“He must have been an awful nuisance, eh?”
This time she was frank and replied:
“Oh yes!”
He kissed her again for this avowal and said:
“What a brute he was! You were not happy with him?”
“No,” she replied. “It was not always pleasant.”
Leuillet was delighted, forming in his mind a comparison, much in his
own favor, between his wife’s former and present position. He was silent for
a time, and then with a burst of laughter he asked:
“Tell me?”
“What?”
“Will you be frank, very frank with me?”
“Why yes, my dear.”
“Well then, tell me truly did you never feel tempted to — to — to deceive
that imbecile Souris?”
Mme. Leuillet said: “Oh!” pretending to be shocked and hid her face again
on her husband’s shoulder. But he saw that she was laughing.
“Come now, own up,” he persisted. “He looked like a ninny, that creature!
It would be funny, so funny! Good old Souris! Come, come, dearie, you do
not mind telling me, me, of all people.”
He insisted on the “me” thinking that if she had wished to deceive Souris
she would have chosen him, and he was trembling in anticipation of her
avowal, sure that if she had not been a virtuous woman she would have
encouraged his own attentions.
But she did not answer, laughing still, as at the recollection of something
exceedingly comical.
Leuillet, in his turn began to laugh, thinking he might have been the lucky
man, and he muttered amid his mirth: “That poor Souris, that poor Souris, oh,
yes, he looked like a fool!”
Mme. Leuillet was almost in spasms of laughter.
“Come, confess, be frank. You know I will not mind.”
Then she stammered out, almost choking with laughter: “Yes, yes.”
 “Yes, what?” insisted her husband. “Come, tell all.”
She was quieter now and putting her mouth to her husband’s ear, she
whispered: “Yes, I did deceive him.”
He felt a chill run down his back and to his very bones, and he stammered
out, dumfounded: “You — you — deceived him — criminally?”
She still thought he was amused and replied: “Yes — yes, absolutely.”
He was obliged to sit up to recover his breath, he was so shocked and
upset at what he had heard.
She had become serious, understanding too late what she had done.
“With whom?” said Leuillet at length.
She was silent seeking some excuse.
“A young man,” she replied at length.
He turned suddenly toward her and said drily:
“I did not suppose it was the cook. I want to know what young man, do
you hear?”
She did not answer.
He snatched the covers from her face, repeating:
“I want to know what young man, do you hear?”
Then she said sorrowfully: “I was only in fun.” But he was trembling with
rage. “What? How? You were only in fun? You were making fun of me, then?
But I am not satisfied, do you hear? I want the name of the young man!”
She did not reply, but lay there motionless.
He took her by the arm and squeezed it, saying: “Do you understand me,
finally? I wish you to reply when I speak to you.”
“I think you are going crazy,” she said nervously, “let me alone!”
He was wild with rage, not knowing what to say, exasperated, and he
shook her with all his might, repeating:
“Do you hear me, do you hear me?”
She made an abrupt effort to disengage herself and the tips of her fingers
touched her husband’s nose. He was furious, thinking she had tried to hit him,
and he sprang upon her holding her down; and boxing her ears with all his
might, he cried: “Take that, and that, there, there, wretch!”
When he was out of breath and exhausted, he rose and went toward the
dressing table to prepare a glass of eau sucree with orange flower, for he felt
as if he should faint.
She was weeping in bed, sobbing bitterly, for she felt as if her happiness
was over, through her own fault.
 Then, amidst her tears, she stammered out:
“Listen, Antoine, come here, I told you a lie, you will understand, listen.”
And prepared to defend herself now, armed with excuses and artifice, she
raised her disheveled head with its nightcap all awry.
Turning toward her, he approached, ashamed of having struck her, but
feeling in the bottom of his heart as a husband, a relentless hatred toward this
woman who had deceived the former husband, Souris.
 MY UNCLE JULES

A white-haired old man begged us for alms. My companion, Joseph

Davranche, gave him five francs. Noticing my surprised look, he said:
“That poor unfortunate reminds me of a story which I shall tell you, the
memory of which continually pursues me. Here it is:
“My family, which came originally from Havre, was not rich. We just
managed to make both ends meet. My father worked hard, came home late
from the office, and earned very little. I had two sisters.
“My mother suffered a good deal from our reduced circumstances, and she
often had harsh words for her husband, veiled and sly reproaches. The poor
man then made a gesture which used to distress me. He would pass his open
hand over his forehead, as if to wipe away perspiration which did not exist,
and he would answer nothing. I felt his helpless suffering. We economized on
everything, and never would accept an invitation to dinner, so as not to have
to return the courtesy. All our provisions were bought at bargain sales. My
sisters made their own gowns, and long discussions would arise on the price
of a piece of braid worth fifteen centimes a yard. Our meals usually
consisted of soup and beef, prepared with every kind of sauce.
“They say it is wholesome and nourishing, but I should have preferred a
change.
“I used to go through terrible scenes on account of lost buttons and torn
trousers.
“Every Sunday, dressed in our best, we would take our walk along the
breakwater. My father, in a frock coat, high hat and kid gloves, would offer
his arm to my mother, decked out and beribboned like a ship on a holiday.
My sisters, who were always ready first, would await the signal for leaving;
but at the last minute some one always found a spot on my father’s frock coat,
and it had to be wiped away quickly with a rag moistened with benzine.
“My father, in his shirt sleeves, his silk hat on his head, would await the
completion of the operation, while my mother, putting on her spectacles, and
taking off her gloves in order not to spoil them, would make haste.
 “Then we set out ceremoniously. My sisters marched on ahead, arm in
arm. They were of marriageable age and had to be displayed. I walked on the
left of my mother and my father on her right. I remember the pompous air of
my poor parents in these Sunday walks, their stern expression, their stiff
walk. They moved slowly, with a serious expression, their bodies straight,
their legs stiff, as if something of extreme importance depended upon their
appearance.
“Every Sunday, when the big steamers were returning from unknown and
distant countries, my father would invariably utter the same words:
“‘What a surprise it would be if Jules were on that one! Eh?’
“My Uncle Jules, my father’s brother, was the only hope of the family,
after being its only fear. I had heard about him since childhood, and it seemed
to me that I should recognize him immediately, knowing as much about him as
I did. I knew every detail of his life up to the day of his departure for
America, although this period of his life was spoken of only in hushed tones.
“It seems that he had led a bad life, that is to say, he had squandered a
little money, which action, in a poor family, is one of the greatest crimes.
With rich people a man who amuses himself only sows his wild oats. He is
what is generally called a sport. But among needy families a boy who forces
his parents to break into the capital becomes a good-for-nothing, a rascal, a
scamp. And this distinction is just, although the action be the same, for
consequences alone determine the seriousness of the act.
“Well, Uncle Jules had visibly diminished the inheritance on which my
father had counted, after he had swallowed his own to the last penny. Then,
according to the custom of the times, he had been shipped off to America on a
freighter going from Havre to New York.
“Once there, my uncle began to sell something or other, and he soon wrote
that he was making a little money and that he soon hoped to be able to
indemnify my father for the harm he had done him. This letter caused a
profound emotion in the family. Jules, who up to that time had not been worth
his salt, suddenly became a good man, a kind-hearted fellow, true and honest
like all the Davranches.
“One of the captains told us that he had rented a large shop and was doing
an important business.
“Two years later a second letter came, saying: ‘My dear Philippe, I am
writing to tell you not to worry about my health, which is excellent. Business
is good. I leave to-morrow for a long trip to South America. I may be away
for several years without sending you any news. If I shouldn’t write, don’t
worry. When my fortune is made I shall return to Havre. I hope that it will not
be too long and that we shall all live happily together . . . .’
“This letter became the gospel of the family. It was read on the slightest
provocation, and it was shown to everybody.
“For ten years nothing was heard from Uncle Jules; but as time went on
my father’s hope grew, and my mother, also, often said:
“‘When that good Jules is here, our position will be different. There is
one who knew how to get along!’
“And every Sunday, while watching the big steamers approaching from
the horizon, pouring out a stream of smoke, my father would repeat his
eternal question:
“‘What a surprise it would be if Jules were on that one! Eh?’
“We almost expected to see him waving his handkerchief and crying:
“‘Hey! Philippe!’
“Thousands of schemes had been planned on the strength of this expected
return; we were even to buy a little house with my uncle’s money — a little
place in the country near Ingouville. In fact, I wouldn’t swear that my father
had not already begun negotiations.
“The elder of my sisters was then twenty-eight, the other twenty-six. They
were not yet married, and that was a great grief to every one.
“At last a suitor presented himself for the younger one. He was a clerk,
not rich, but honorable. I have always been morally certain that Uncle Jules’
letter, which was shown him one evening, had swept away the young man’s
hesitation and definitely decided him.
“He was accepted eagerly, and it was decided that after the wedding the
whole family should take a trip to Jersey.
“Jersey is the ideal trip for poor people. It is not far; one crosses a strip
of sea in a steamer and lands on foreign soil, as this little island belongs to
England. Thus, a Frenchman, with a two hours’ sail, can observe a
neighboring people at home and study their customs.
“This trip to Jersey completely absorbed our ideas, was our sole
anticipation, the constant thought of our minds.
“At last we left. I see it as plainly as if it had happened yesterday. The
boat was getting up steam against the quay at Granville; my father,
bewildered, was superintending the loading of our three pieces of baggage;
my mother, nervous, had taken the arm of my unmarried sister, who seemed
lost since the departure of the other one, like the last chicken of a brood;
behind us came the bride and groom, who always stayed behind, a thing that
often made me turn round.
“The whistle sounded. We got on board, and the vessel, leaving the
breakwater, forged ahead through a sea as flat as a marble table. We watched
the coast disappear in the distance, happy and proud, like all who do not
travel much.
“My father was swelling out his chest in the breeze, beneath his frock
coat, which had that morning been very carefully cleaned; and he spread
around him that odor of benzine which always made me recognize Sunday.
Suddenly he noticed two elegantly dressed ladies to whom two gentlemen
were offering oysters. An old, ragged sailor was opening them with his knife
and passing them to the gentlemen, who would then offer them to the ladies.
They ate them in a dainty manner, holding the shell on a fine handkerchief and
advancing their mouths a little in order not to spot their dresses. Then they
would drink the liquid with a rapid little motion and throw the shell
overboard.
“My father was probably pleased with this delicate manner of eating
oysters on a moving ship. He considered it good form, refined, and, going up
to my mother and sisters, he asked:
“‘Would you like me to offer you some oysters?’
“My mother hesitated on account of the expense, but my two sisters
immediately accepted. My mother said in a provoked manner:
“‘I am afraid that they will hurt my stomach. Offer the children some, but
not too much, it would make them sick.’ Then, turning toward me, she added:
“‘As for Joseph, he doesn’t need any. Boys shouldn’t be spoiled.’
“However, I remained beside my mother, finding this discrimination
unjust. I watched my father as he pompously conducted my two sisters and
his son-in-law toward the ragged old sailor.
“The two ladies had just left, and my father showed my sisters how to eat
them without spilling the liquor. He even tried to give them an example, and
seized an oyster. He attempted to imitate the ladies, and immediately spilled
all the liquid over his coat. I heard my mother mutter:
“‘He would do far better to keep quiet.’
“But, suddenly, my father appeared to be worried; he retreated a few
steps, stared at his family gathered around the old shell opener, and quickly
came toward us. He seemed very pale, with a peculiar look. In a low voice
he said to my mother:
“‘It’s extraordinary how that man opening the oysters looks like Jules.’
“Astonished, my mother asked:
“‘What Jules?’
“My father continued:
“‘Why, my brother. If I did not know that he was well off in America, I
should think it was he.’
“Bewildered, my mother stammered:
“‘You are crazy! As long as you know that it is not he, why do you say
such foolish things?’
“But my father insisted:
“‘Go on over and see, Clarisse! I would rather have you see with your
own eyes.’
“She arose and walked to her daughters. I, too, was watching the man. He
was old, dirty, wrinkled, and did not lift his eyes from his work.
“My mother returned. I noticed that she was trembling. She exclaimed
quickly:
“‘I believe that it is he. Why don’t you ask the captain? But be very
careful that we don’t have this rogue on our hands again!’
“My father walked away, but I followed him. I felt strangely moved.
“The captain, a tall, thin man, with blond whiskers, was walking along the
bridge with an important air as if he were commanding the Indian mail
steamer.
“My father addressed him ceremoniously, and questioned him about his
profession, adding many compliments:
“‘What might be the importance of Jersey? What did it produce? What
was the population? The customs? The nature of the soil?’ etc., etc.
“‘You have there an old shell opener who seems quite interesting. Do you
know anything about him?’
“The captain, whom this conversation began to weary, answered dryly:
“‘He is some old French tramp whom I found last year in America, and I
brought him back. It seems that he has some relatives in Havre, but that he
doesn’t wish to return to them because he owes them money. His name is
Jules — Jules Darmanche or Darvanche or something like that. It seems that
he was once rich over there, but you can see what’s left of him now.’
 “My father turned ashy pale and muttered, his throat contracted, his eyes
haggard.
“‘Ah! ah! very well, very well. I’m not in the least surprised. Thank you
very much, captain.’
“He went away, and the astonished sailor watched him disappear. He
returned to my mother so upset that she said to him:
“‘Sit down; some one will notice that something is the matter.’
“He sank down on a bench and stammered:
“‘It’s he! It’s he!’
“Then he asked:
“‘What are we going to do?’
“She answered quickly:
“‘We must get the children out of the way. Since Joseph knows everything,
he can go and get them. We must take good care that our son-in-law doesn’t
find out.’
“My father seemed absolutely bewildered. He murmured:
“‘What a catastrophe!’
“Suddenly growing furious, my mother exclaimed:
“‘I always thought that that thief never would do anything, and that he
would drop down on us again! As if one could expect anything from a
Davranche!’
“My father passed his hand over his forehead, as he always did when his
wife reproached him. She added:
“‘Give Joseph some money so that he can pay for the oysters. All that it
needed to cap the climax would be to be recognized by that beggar. That
would be very pleasant! Let’s get down to the other end of the boat, and take
care that that man doesn’t come near us!’
“They gave me five francs and walked away.
“Astonished, my sisters were awaiting their father. I said that mamma had
felt a sudden attack of sea-sickness, and I asked the shell opener:
“‘How much do we owe you, monsieur?’
“I felt like laughing: he was my uncle! He answered:
“‘Two francs fifty.’
“I held out my five francs and he returned the change. I looked at his hand;
it was a poor, wrinkled, sailor’s hand, and I looked at his face, an unhappy
old face. I said to myself:
“‘That is my uncle, the brother of my father, my uncle!’
 “I gave him a ten-cent tip. He thanked me:
“‘God bless you, my young sir!’
“He spoke like a poor man receiving alms. I couldn’t help thinking that he
must have begged over there! My sisters looked at me, surprised at my
generosity. When I returned the two francs to my father, my mother asked me
in surprise:
“‘Was there three francs’ worth? That is impossible.’
“I answered in a firm voice
“‘I gave ten cents as a tip.’
“My mother started, and, staring at me, she exclaimed:
“‘You must be crazy! Give ten cents to that man, to that vagabond— ‘
“She stopped at a look from my father, who was pointing at his son-in-
law. Then everybody was silent.
“Before us, on the distant horizon, a purple shadow seemed to rise out of
the sea. It was Jersey.
“As we approached the breakwater a violent desire seized me once more
to see my Uncle Jules, to be near him, to say to him something consoling,
something tender. But as no one was eating any more oysters, he had
disappeared, having probably gone below to the dirty hold which was the
home of the poor wretch.”
 THE MODEL

Curving like a crescent moon, the little town of Etretat, with its white cliffs,
its white, shingly beach and its blue sea, lay in the sunlight at high noon one
July day. At either extremity of this crescent its two “gates,” the smaller to
the right, the larger one at the left, stretched forth — one a dwarf and the
other a colossal limb — into the water, and the bell tower, almost as tall as
the cliff, wide below, narrowing at the top, raised its pointed summit to the
sky.
On the sands beside the water a crowd was seated watching the bathers.
On the terrace of, the Casino another crowd, seated or walking, displayed
beneath the brilliant sky a perfect flower patch of bright costumes, with red
and blue parasols embroidered with large flowers in silk.
On the walk at the end of the terrace, other persons, the restful, quiet ones,
were walking slowly, far from the dressy throng.
A young man, well known and celebrated as a painter, Jean Sumner, was
walking with a dejected air beside a wheeled chair in which sat a young
woman, his wife. A manservant was gently pushing the chair, and the
crippled woman was gazing sadly at the brightness of the sky, the gladness of
the day, and the happiness of others.
They did not speak. They did not look at each other.
“Let us stop a while,” said the young woman.
They stopped, and the painter sat down on a camp stool that the servant
handed him.
Those who were passing behind the silent and motionless couple looked
at them compassionately. A whole legend of devotion was attached to them.
He had married her in spite of her infirmity, touched by her affection for him,
it was said.
Not far from there, two young men were chatting, seated on a bench and
looking out into the horizon.
“No, it is not true; I tell you that I am well acquainted with Jean Sumner.”
“But then, why did he marry her? For she was a cripple when she
married, was she not?”
 “Just so. He married her — he married her — just as every one marries,
parbleu! because he was an idiot!”
“But why?”
“But why — but why, my friend? There is no why. People do stupid things
just because they do stupid things. And, besides, you know very well that
painters make a specialty of foolish marriages. They almost always marry
models, former sweethearts, in fact, women of doubtful reputation,
frequently. Why do they do this? Who can say? One would suppose that
constant association with the general run of models would disgust them
forever with that class of women. Not at all. After having posed them they
marry them. Read that little book, so true, so cruel and so beautiful, by
Alphonse Daudet: ‘Artists’ Wives.’
“In the case of the couple you see over there the accident occurred in a
special and terrible manner. The little woman played a frightful comedy, or,
rather, tragedy. She risked all to win all. Was she sincere? Did she love
Jean? Shall we ever know? Who is able to determine precisely how much is
put on and how much is real in the actions of a woman? They are always
sincere in an eternal mobility of impressions. They are furious, criminal,
devoted, admirable and base in obedience to intangible emotions. They tell
lies incessantly without intention, without knowing or understanding why, and
in spite of it all are absolutely frank in their feelings and sentiments, which
they display by violent, unexpected, incomprehensible, foolish resolutions
which overthrow our arguments, our customary poise and all our selfish
plans. The unforeseenness and suddenness of their determinations will
always render them undecipherable enigmas as far as we are concerned. We
continually ask ourselves:
“‘Are they sincere? Are they pretending?’
“But, my friend, they are sincere and insincere at one and the same time,
because it is their nature to be extremists in both and to be neither one nor the
other.
“See the methods that even the best of them employ to get what they
desire. They are complex and simple, these methods. So complex that we can
never guess at them beforehand, and so simple that after having been
victimized we cannot help being astonished and exclaiming: ‘What! Did she
make a fool of me so easily as that?’
“And they always succeed, old man, especially when it is a question of
getting married.
 “But this is Sumner’s story:
“The little woman was a model, of course. She posed for him. She was
pretty, very stylish-looking, and had a divine figure, it seems. He fancied that
he loved her with his whole soul. That is another strange thing. As soon as
one likes a woman one sincerely believes that they could not get along
without her for the rest of their life. One knows that one has felt the same way
before and that disgust invariably succeeded gratification; that in order to
pass one’s existence side by side with another there must be not a brutal,
physical passion which soon dies out, but a sympathy of soul, temperament
and temper. One should know how to determine in the enchantment to which
one is subjected whether it proceeds from the physical, from a certain
sensuous intoxication, or from a deep spiritual charm.
“Well, he believed himself in love; he made her no end of promises of
fidelity, and was devoted to her.
“She was really attractive, gifted with that fashionable flippancy that little
Parisians so readily affect. She chattered, babbled, made foolish remarks that
sounded witty from the manner in which they were uttered. She used graceful
gesture’s which were calculated to attract a painter’s eye. When she raised
her arms, when she bent over, when she got into a carriage, when she held
out her hand to you, her gestures were perfect and appropriate.
“For three months Jean never noticed that, in reality, she was like all other
models.
“He rented a little house for her for the summer at Andresy.
“I was there one evening when for the first time doubts came into my
friend’s mind.
“As it was a beautiful evening we thought we would take a stroll along the
bank of the river. The moon poured a flood of light on the trembling water,
scattering yellow gleams along its ripples in the currents and all along the
course of the wide, slow river.
“We strolled along the bank, a little enthused by that vague exaltation that
these dreamy evenings produce in us. We would have liked to undertake
some wonderful task, to love some unknown, deliciously poetic being. We
felt ourselves vibrating with raptures, longings, strange aspirations. And we
were silent, our beings pervaded by the serene and living coolness of the
beautiful night, the coolness of the moonlight, which seemed to penetrate
one’s body, permeate it, soothe one’s spirit, fill it with fragrance and steep it
in happiness.
 “Suddenly Josephine (that is her name) uttered an exclamation:
“‘Oh, did you see the big fish that jumped, over there?’
“He replied without looking, without thinking:
“‘Yes, dear.’
“She was angry.
“‘No, you did not see it, for your back was turned.’
“He smiled.
“‘Yes, that’s true. It is so delightful that I am not thinking of anything.’
“She was silent, but at the end of a minute she felt as if she must say
something and asked:
“‘Are you going to Paris to-morrow?’
“‘I do not know,’ he replied.
“She was annoyed again.
“‘Do you think it is very amusing to walk along without speaking? People
talk when they are not stupid.’
“He did not reply. Then, feeling with her woman’s instinct that she was
going to make him angry, she began to sing a popular air that had harassed
our ears and our minds for two years:
“‘Je regardais en fair.’
“He murmured:
“‘Please keep quiet.’
“She replied angrily:
“‘Why do you wish me to keep quiet?’
“‘You spoil the landscape for us!’ he said.
“Then followed a scene, a hateful, idiotic scene, with unexpected
reproaches, unsuitable recriminations, then tears. Nothing was left unsaid.
They went back to the house. He had allowed her to talk without replying,
enervated by the beauty of the scene and dumfounded by this storm of abuse.
“Three months later he strove wildly to free himself from those invincible
and invisible bonds with which such a friendship chains our lives. She kept
him under her influence, tyrannizing over him, making his life a burden to
him. They quarreled continually, vituperating and finally fighting each other.
“He wanted to break with her at any cost. He sold all his canvases,
borrowed money from his friends, realizing twenty thousand francs (he was
not well known then), and left them for her one morning with a note of
farewell.
“He came and took refuge with me.
 “About three o’clock that afternoon there was a ring at the bell. I went to
the door. A woman sprang toward me, pushed me aside, came in and went
into my atelier. It was she!
“He had risen when he saw her coming.’
“She threw the envelope containing the banknotes at his feet with a truly
noble gesture and said in a quick tone:
“‘There’s your money. I don’t want it!’
“She was very pale, trembling and ready undoubtedly to commit any folly.
As for him, I saw him grow pale also, pale with rage and exasperation, ready
also perhaps to commit any violence.
“He asked:
“‘What do you want?’
“She replied:
“‘I do not choose to be treated like a common woman. You implored me
to accept you. I asked you for nothing. Keep me with you!’
“He stamped his foot.
“‘No, that’s a little too much! If you think you are going— ‘
“I had seized his arm.
“‘Keep still, Jean. . . Let me settle it.’
“I went toward her and quietly, little by little, I began to reason with her,
exhausting all the arguments that are used under similar circumstances. She
listened to me, motionless, with a fixed gaze, obstinate and silent.
“Finally, not knowing what more to say, and seeing that there would be a
scene, I thought of a last resort and said:
“‘He loves you still, my dear, but his family want him to marry some one,
and you understand— ‘
“She gave a start and exclaimed:
“‘Ah! Ah! Now I understand:
“And turning toward him, she said:
“‘You are — you are going to get married?’
“He replied decidedly” ‘Yes.’
“She took a step forward.
“‘If you marry, I will kill myself! Do you hear?’
“He shrugged his shoulders and replied:
“‘Well, then kill yourself!’
“She stammered out, almost choking with her violent emotion:
“‘What do you say? What do you say? What do you say? Say it again!’
 “He repeated:
“‘Well, then kill yourself if you like!’
“With her face almost livid, she replied:
“‘Do not dare me! I will throw myself from the window!’
“He began to laugh, walked toward the window, opened it, and bowing
with the gesture of one who desires to let some one else precede him, he
said:
“‘This is the way. After you!’
“She looked at him for a second with terrible, wild, staring eyes. Then,
taking a run as if she were going to jump a hedge in the country, she rushed
past me and past him, jumped over the sill and disappeared.
“I shall never forget the impression made on me by that open window
after I had seen that body pass through it to fall to the ground. It appeared to
me in a second to be as large as the heavens and as hollow as space. And I
drew back instinctively, not daring to look at it, as though I feared I might fall
out myself.
“Jean, dumfounded, stood motionless.
“They brought the poor girl in with both legs broken. She will never walk
again.
“Jean, wild with remorse and also possibly touched with gratitude, made
up his mind to marry her.
“There you have it, old man.”
It was growing dusk. The young woman felt chilly and wanted to go home,
and the servant wheeled the invalid chair in the direction of the village. The
painter walked beside his wife, neither of them having exchanged a word for
an hour.
This story appeared in Le Gaulois, December 17, 1883.
 A VAGABOND

He was a journeyman carpenter, a good workman and a steady fellow,

twenty-seven years old, but, although the eldest son, Jacques Randel had
been forced to live on his family for two months, owing to the general lack of
work. He had walked about seeking work for over a month and had left his
native town, Ville-Avary, in La Manche, because he could find nothing to do
and would no longer deprive his family of the bread they needed themselves,
when he was the strongest of them all. His two sisters earned but little as
charwomen. He went and inquired at the town hall, and the mayor’s secretary
told him that he would find work at the Labor Agency, and so he started, well
provided with papers and certificates, and carrying another pair of shoes, a
pair of trousers and a shirt in a blue handkerchief at the end of his stick.
And he had walked almost without stopping, day and night, along
interminable roads, in sun and rain, without ever reaching that mysterious
country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must
only work as a carpenter, but at every carpenter’s shop where he applied he
was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack,
and, finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to
undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he
was a navvy, stableman, stonecutter; he split wood, lopped the branches of
trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up fagots, tended goats on a mountain,
and all for a few pence, for he only obtained two or three days’ work
occasionally by offering himself at a shamefully low price, in order to tempt
the avarice of employers and peasants.
And now for a week he had found nothing, and had no money left, and
nothing to eat but a piece of bread, thanks to the charity of some women from
whom he had begged at house doors on the road. It was getting dark, and
Jacques Randel, jaded, his legs failing him, his stomach empty, and with
despair in his heart, was walking barefoot on the grass by the side of the
road, for he was taking care of his last pair of shoes, as the other pair had
already ceased to exist for a long time. It was a Saturday, toward the end of
autumn. The heavy gray clouds were being driven rapidly through the sky by
the gusts of wind which whistled among the trees, and one felt that it would
rain soon. The country was deserted at that hour on the eve of Sunday. Here
and there in the fields there rose up stacks of wheat straw, like huge yellow
mushrooms, and the fields looked bare, as they had already been sown for the
next year.
Randel was hungry, with the hunger of some wild animal, such a hunger as
drives wolves to attack men. Worn out and weakened with fatigue, he took
longer strides, so as not to take so many steps, and with heavy head, the
blood throbbing in his temples, with red eyes and dry mouth, he grasped his
stick tightly in his hand, with a longing to strike the first passerby who might
be going home to supper.
He looked at the sides of the road, imagining he saw potatoes dug up and
lying on the ground before his eyes; if he had found any he would have
gathered some dead wood, made a fire in the ditch and have had a capital
supper off the warm, round vegetables with which he would first of all have
warmed his cold hands. But it was too late in the year, and he would have to
gnaw a raw beetroot which he might pick up in a field as he had done the day
before.
For the last two days he had talked to himself as he quickened his steps
under the influence of his thoughts. He had never thought much hitherto, as he
had given all his mind, all his simple faculties to his mechanical work. But
now fatigue and this desperate search for work which he could not get,
refusals and rebuffs, nights spent in the open air lying on the grass, long
fasting, the contempt which he knew people with a settled abode felt for a
vagabond, and that question which he was continually asked, “Why do you
not remain at home?” distress at not being able to use his strong arms which
he felt so full of vigor, the recollection of the relations he had left at home
and who also had not a penny, filled him by degrees with rage, which had
been accumulating every day, every hour, every minute, and which now
escaped his lips in spite of himself in short, growling sentences.
As he stumbled over the stones which tripped his bare feet, he grumbled:
“How wretched! how miserable! A set of hogs — to let a man die of hunger
— a carpenter — a set of hogs — not two sous — not two sous — and now
it is raining — a set of hogs!”
He was indignant at the injustice of fate, and cast the blame on men, on all
men, because nature, that great, blind mother, is unjust, cruel and perfidious,
and he repeated through his clenched teeth:
 “A set of hogs” as he looked at the thin gray smoke which rose from the
roofs, for it was the dinner hour. And, without considering that there is
another injustice which is human, and which is called robbery and violence,
he felt inclined to go into one of those houses to murder the inhabitants and to
sit down to table in their stead.
He said to himself: “I have no right to live now, as they are letting me die
of hunger, and yet I only ask for work — a set of hogs!” And the pain in his
limbs, the gnawing in his heart rose to his head like terrible intoxication, and
gave rise to this simple thought in his brain: “I have the right to live because I
breathe and because the air is the common property of everybody. So nobody
has the right to leave me without bread!”
A fine, thick, icy cold rain was coming down, and he stopped and
murmured: “Oh, misery! Another month of walking before I get home.” He
was indeed returning home then, for he saw that he should more easily find
work in his native town, where he was known — and he did not mind what
he did — than on the highroads, where everybody suspected him. As the
carpentering business was not prosperous, he would turn day laborer, be a
mason’s hodman, a ditcher, break stones on the road. If he only earned a franc
a day, that would at any rate buy him something to eat.
He tied the remains of his last pocket handkerchief round his neck to
prevent the cold rain from running down his back and chest, but he soon
found that it was penetrating the thin material of which his clothes were
made, and he glanced about him with the agonized look of a man who does
not know where to hide his body and to rest his head, and has no place of
shelter in the whole world.
Night came on and wrapped the country in obscurity, and in the distance,
in a meadow, he saw a dark spot on the grass; it was a cow, and so he got
over the ditch by the roadside and went up to her without exactly knowing
what he was doing. When he got close to her she raised her great head to
him, and he thought: “If I only had a jug I could get a little milk.” He looked
at the cow and the cow looked at him and then, suddenly giving her a kick in
the side, he said: “Get up!”
The animal got up slowly, letting her heavy udders bang down. Then the
man lay down on his back between the animal’s legs and drank for a long
time, squeezing her warm, swollen teats, which tasted of the cowstall, with
both hands, and he drank as long as she gave any milk. But the icy rain began
to fall more heavily, and he saw no place of shelter on the whole of that bare
plain. He was cold, and he looked at a light which was shining among the
trees in the window of a house.
The cow had lain down again heavily, and he sat down by her side and
stroked her head, grateful for the nourishment she had given him. The
animal’s strong, thick breath, which came out of her nostrils like two jets of
steam in the evening air, blew on the workman’s face, and he said: “You are
not cold inside there!” He put his hands on her chest and under her stomach
to find some warmth there, and then the idea struck him that he might pass the
night beside that large, warm animal. So he found a comfortable place and
laid his head on her side, and then, as he was worn out with fatigue, fell
asleep immediately.
He woke up, however, several times, with his back or his stomach half
frozen, according as he put one or the other against the animal’s flank. Then
he turned over to warm and dry that part of his body which had remained
exposed to the night air, and soon went soundly to sleep again. The crowing
of a cock woke him; the day was breaking, it was no longer raining, and the
sky was bright. The cow was resting with her muzzle on the ground, and he
stooped down, resting on his hands, to kiss those wide, moist nostrils, and
said: “Good-by, my beauty, until next time. You are a nice animal. Good-by.”
Then he put on his shoes and went off, and for two hours walked straight
before him, always following the same road, and then he felt so tired that he
sat down on the grass. It was broad daylight by that time, and the church bells
were ringing; men in blue blouses, women in white caps, some on foot, some
in carts, began to pass along the road, going to the neighboring villages to
spend Sunday with friends or relations.
A stout peasant came in sight, driving before him a score of frightened,
bleating sheep, with the help of an active dog. Randel got up, and raising his
cap, said: “You do not happen to have any work for a man who is dying of
hunger?” But the other, giving an angry look at the vagabond, replied: “I have
no work for fellows whom I meet on the road.”
And the carpenter went back and sat down by the side of the ditch again.
He waited there for a long time, watching the country people pass and
looking for a kind, compassionate face before he renewed his request, and
finally selected a man in an overcoat, whose stomach was adorned with a
gold chain. “I have been looking for work,” he said, “for the last two months
and cannot find any, and I have not a sou in my pocket.” But the would-be
gentleman replied: “You should have read the notice which is stuck up at the
entrance to the village: ‘Begging is prohibited within the boundaries of this
parish.’ Let me tell you that I am the mayor, and if you do not get out of here
pretty quickly I shall have you arrested.”
Randel, who was getting angry, replied: “Have me arrested if you like; I
should prefer it, for, at any rate, I should not die of hunger.” And he went
back and sat down by the side of his ditch again, and in about a quarter of an
hour two gendarmes appeared on the road. They were walking slowly side
by side, glittering in the sun with their shining hats, their yellow
accoutrements and their metal buttons, as if to frighten evildoers, and to put
them to flight at a distance. He knew that they were coming after him, but he
did not move, for he was seized with a sudden desire to defy them, to be
arrested by them, and to have his revenge later.
They came on without appearing to have seen him, walking heavily, with
military step, and balancing themselves as if they were doing the goose step;
and then, suddenly, as they passed him, appearing to have noticed him, they
stopped and looked at him angrily and threateningly, and the brigadier came
up to him and asked: “What are you doing here?” “I am resting,” the man
replied calmly. “Where do you come from?” “If I had to tell you all the
places I have been to it would take me more than an hour.” “Where are you
going to?” “To Ville-Avary.” “Where is that?” “In La Manche.” “Is that
where you belong?” “It is.” “Why did you leave it?” “To look for work.”
The brigadier turned to his gendarme and said in the angry voice of a man
who is exasperated at last by an oft-repeated trick: “They all say that, these
scamps. I know all about it.” And then he continued: “Have you any papers?”
“Yes, I have some.” “Give them to me.”
Randel took his papers out of his pocket, his certificates, those poor,
worn-out, dirty papers which were falling to pieces, and gave them to the
soldier, who spelled them through, hemming and hawing, and then, having
seen that they were all in order, he gave them back to Randel with the
dissatisfied look of a man whom some one cleverer than himself has tricked.
After a few moments’ further reflection, he asked him: “Have you any
money on you?” “No.” “None whatever?” “None.” “Not even a sou?” “Not
even a son!” “How do you live then?” “On what people give me.” “Then you
beg?” And Randel answered resolutely: “Yes, when I can.”
Then the gendarme said: “I have caught you on the highroad in the act of
vagabondage and begging, without any resources or trade, and so I command
you to come with me.” The carpenter got up and said: “Wherever you
please.” And, placing himself between the two soldiers, even before he had
received the order to do so, he added: “Well, lock me up; that will at any rate
put a roof over my head when it rains.”
And they set off toward the village, the red tiles of which could be seen
through the leafless trees, a quarter of a league off. Service was about to
begin when they went through the village. The square was full of people,
who immediately formed two lines to see the criminal pass. He was being
followed by a crowd of excited children. Male and female peasants looked
at the prisoner between the two gendarmes, with hatred in their eyes and a
longing to throw stones at him, to tear his skin with their nails, to trample him
under their feet. They asked each other whether he had committed murder or
robbery. The butcher, who was an ex-’spahi’, declared that he was a
deserter. The tobacconist thought that he recognized him as the man who had
that very morning passed a bad half-franc piece off on him, and the
ironmonger declared that he was the murderer of Widow Malet, whom the
police had been looking for for six months.
In the municipal court, into which his custodians took him, Randel saw the
mayor again, sitting on the magisterial bench, with the schoolmaster by his
side. “Aha! aha!” the magistrate exclaimed, “so here you are again, my fine
fellow. I told you I should have you locked up. Well, brigadier, what is he
charged with?”
“He is a vagabond without house or home, Monsieur le Maire, without
any resources or money, so he says, who was arrested in the act of begging,
but he is provided with good testimonials, and his papers are all in order.”
“Show me his papers,” the mayor said. He took them, read them, reread,
returned them and then said: “Search him.” So they searched him, but found
nothing, and the mayor seemed perplexed, and asked the workman:
“What were you doing on the road this morning?” “I was looking for
work.” “Work? On the highroad?” “How do you expect me to find any if I
hide in the woods?”
They looked at each other with the hatred of two wild beasts which
belong to different hostile species, and the magistrate continued: “I am going
to have you set at liberty, but do not be brought up before me again.” To
which the carpenter replied: “I would rather you locked me up; I have had
enough running about the country.” But the magistrate replied severely: “be
silent.” And then he said to the two gendarmes: “You will conduct this man
two hundred yards from the village and let him continue his journey.”
 “At any rate, give me something to eat,” the workman said, but the other
grew indignant: “Have we nothing to do but to feed you? Ah! ah! ah! that is
rather too much!” But Randel went on firmly: “If you let me nearly die of
hunger again, you will force me to commit a crime, and then, so much the
worse for you other fat fellows.”
The mayor had risen and he repeated: “Take him away immediately or I
shall end by getting angry.”
The two gendarmes thereupon seized the carpenter by the arms and
dragged him out. He allowed them to do it without resistance, passed through
the village again and found himself on the highroad once more; and when the
men had accompanied him two hundred yards beyond the village, the
brigadier said: “Now off with you and do not let me catch you about here
again, for if I do, you will know it.”
Randel went off without replying or knowing where he was going. He
walked on for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, so stupefied that he no
longer thought of anything. But suddenly, as he was passing a small house,
where the window was half open, the smell of the soup and boiled meat
stopped him suddenly, and hunger, fierce, devouring, maddening hunger,
seized him and almost drove him against the walls of the house like a wild
beast.
He said aloud in a grumbling voice: “In Heaven’s name! they must give
me some this time!” And he began to knock at the door vigorously with his
stick, and as no one came he knocked louder and called out: “Hey! hey! you
people in there, open the door!” And then, as nothing stirred, he went up to
the window and pushed it wider open with his hand, and the close warm air
of the kitchen, full of the smell of hot soup, meat and cabbage, escaped into
the cold outer air, and with a bound the carpenter was in the house. Two
places were set at the table, and no doubt the proprietors of the house, on
going to church, had left their dinner on the fire, their nice Sunday boiled
beef and vegetable soup, while there was a loaf of new bread on the
chimney-piece, between two bottles which seemed full.
Randel seized the bread first of all and broke it with as much violence as
if he were strangling a man, and then he began to eat voraciously, swallowing
great mouthfuls quickly. But almost immediately the smell of the meat
attracted him to the fireplace, and, having taken off the lid of the saucepan, he
plunged a fork into it and brought out a large piece of beef tied with a string.
Then he took more cabbage, carrots and onions until his plate was full, and,
having put it on the table, he sat down before it, cut the meat into four pieces,
and dined as if he had been at home. When he had eaten nearly all the meat,
besides a quantity of vegetables, he felt thirsty and took one of the bottles off
the mantelpiece.
Scarcely had he poured the liquor into his glass when he saw it was
brandy. So much the better; it was warming and would instill some fire into
his veins, and that would be all right, after being so cold; and he drank some.
He certainly enjoyed it, for he had grown unaccustomed to it, and he poured
himself out another glassful, which he drank at two gulps. And then almost
immediately he felt quite merry and light-hearted from the effects of the
alcohol, just as if some great happiness filled his heart.
He continued to eat, but more slowly, and dipping his bread into the soup.
His skin had become burning, and especially his forehead, where the veins
were throbbing. But suddenly the church bells began to ring. Mass was over,
and instinct rather than fear, the instinct of prudence, which guides all beings
and makes them clear-sighted in danger, made the carpenter get up. He put the
remains of the loaf into one pocket and the brandy bottle into the other, and he
furtively went to the window and looked out into the road. It was still
deserted, so he jumped out and set off walking again, but instead of following
the highroad he ran across the fields toward a wood he saw a little way off.
He felt alert, strong, light-hearted, glad of what he had done, and so
nimble that he sprang over the enclosure of the fields at a single bound, and
as soon as he was under the trees he took the bottle out of his pocket again
and began to drink once more, swallowing it down as he walked, and then
his ideas began to get confused, his eyes grew dim, and his legs as elastic as
springs, and he started singing the old popular song:
“Oh! what joy, what joy it is,
To pick the sweet, wild strawberries.”
He was now walking on thick, damp, cool moss, and that soft carpet under
his feet made him feel absurdly inclined to turn head over heels as he used to
do when a child, so he took a run, turned a somersault, got up and began over
again. And between each time he began to sing again:
“Oh! what joy, what joy it is,
To pick the sweet, wild strawberries.”
Suddenly he found himself above a deep road, and in the road he saw a
tall girl, a servant, who was returning to the village with two pails of milk.
He watched, stooping down, and with his eyes as bright as those of a dog
who scents a quail, but she saw him raised her head and said: “Was that you
singing like that?” He did not reply, however, but jumped down into the road,
although it was a fall of at least six feet and when she saw him suddenly
standing in front of her, she exclaimed: “Oh! dear, how you frightened me!”
But he did not hear her, for he was drunk, he was mad, excited by another
requirement which was more imperative than hunger, more feverish than
alcohol; by the irresistible fury of the man who has been deprived of
everything for two months, and who is drunk; who is young, ardent and
inflamed by all the appetites which nature has implanted in the vigorous flesh
of men.
The girl started back from him, frightened at his face, his eyes, his half-
open mouth, his outstretched hands, but he seized her by the shoulders, and
without a word, threw her down in the road.
She let her two pails fall, and they rolled over noisily, and all the milk
was spilt, and then she screamed lustily, but it was of no avail in that lonely
spot.
When she got up the thought of her overturned pails suddenly filled her
with fury, and, taking off one of her wooden sabots, she threw it at the man to
break his head if he did not pay her for her milk.
But he, mistaking the reason of this sudden violent attack, somewhat
sobered, and frightened at what he had done, ran off as fast as he could,
while she threw stones at him, some of which hit him in the back.
He ran for a long time, very long, until he felt more tired than he had ever
been before. His legs were so weak that they could scarcely carry him; all
his ideas were confused, he lost recollection of everything and could no
longer think about anything, and so he sat down at the foot of a tree, and in
five minutes was fast asleep. He was soon awakened, however, by a rough
shake, and, on opening his eyes, he saw two cocked hats of shiny leather
bending over him, and the two gendarmes of the morning, who were holding
him and binding his arms.
“I knew I should catch you again,” said the brigadier jeeringly. But Randel
got up without replying. The two men shook him, quite ready to ill treat him
if he made a movement, for he was their prey now. He had become a jailbird,
caught by those hunters of criminals who would not let him go again.
“Now, start!” the brigadier said, and they set off. It was late afternoon,
and the autumn twilight was setting in over the land, and in half an hour they
reached the village, where every door was open, for the people had heard
what had happened. Peasants and peasant women and girls, excited with
anger, as if every man had been robbed and every woman attacked, wished to
see the wretch brought back, so that they might overwhelm him with abuse.
They hooted him from the first house in the village until they reached the
Hotel de Ville, where the mayor was waiting for him to be himself avenged
on this vagabond, and as soon as he saw him approaching he cried:
“Ah! my fine fellow! here we are!” And he rubbed his hands, more
pleased than he usually was, and continued: “I said so. I said so, the moment
I saw him in the road.”
And then with increased satisfaction:
“Oh, you blackguard! Oh, you dirty blackguard! You will get your twenty
years, my fine fellow!”
 THE FISHING HOLE

“Cuts and wounds which caused death.” Such was the charge upon which
Leopold Renard, upholsterer, was summoned before the Court of Assizes.
Round him were the principal witnesses, Madame Flameche, widow of
the victim, and Louis Ladureau, cabinetmaker, and Jean Durdent, plumber.
Near the criminal was his wife, dressed in black, an ugly little woman,
who looked like a monkey dressed as a lady.
This is how Renard (Leopold) recounted the drama.
“Good heavens, it is a misfortune of which I was the prime victim all the
time, and with which my will has nothing to do. The facts are their own
commentary, Monsieur le President. I am an honest man, a hard-working man,
an upholsterer, living in the same street for the last sixteen years, known,
liked, respected and esteemed by all, as my neighbors can testify, even the
porter’s wife, who is not amiable every day. I am fond of work, I am fond of
saving, I like honest men and respectable amusements. That is what has
ruined me, so much the worse for me; but as my will had nothing to do with
it, I continue to respect myself.
“Every Sunday for the last five years my wife and I have spent the day at
Passy. We get fresh air, and, besides, we are fond of fishing. Oh! we are as
fond of it as we are of little onions. Melie inspired me with that enthusiasm,
the jade, and she is more enthusiastic than I am, the scold, seeing that all the
mischief in this business is her fault, as you will see immediately.
“I am strong and mild tempered, without a pennyworth of malice in me.
But she! oh! la! la! she looks like nothing; she is short and thin. Very well,
she does more mischief than a weasel. I do not deny that she has some good
qualities; she has some, and very important ones for a man in business. But
her character! Just ask about it in the neighborhood, and even the porter’s
wife, who has just sent me about my business — she will tell you something
about it.
“Every day she used to find fault with my mild temper: ‘I would not put up
with this! I would not put up with that.’ If I had listened to her, Monsieur le
President, I should have had at least three hand-to-hand fights a month . . . .”
 Madame Renard interrupted him: “And for good reasons, too; they laugh
best who laugh last.”
He turned toward her frankly: “Well, I can’t blame you, since you were
not the cause of it.”
Then, facing the President again, he said:
“I will continue. We used to go to Passy every Saturday evening, so as to
begin fishing at daybreak the next morning. It is a habit which has become
second nature with us, as the saying is. Three years ago this summer I
discovered a place, oh! such a spot. Oh, dear, dear! In the shade, eight feet of
water at least and perhaps ten, a hole with cavities under the bank, a regular
nest for fish and a paradise for the fisherman. I might look upon that fishing
hole as my property, Monsieur le President, as I was its Christopher
Columbus. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it, without making any
opposition. They would say: ‘That is Renard’s place’; and nobody would
have gone there, not even Monsieur Plumeau, who is well known, be it said
without any offense, for poaching on other people’s preserves.
“Well, I returned to this place of which I felt certain, just as if I had
owned it. I had scarcely got there on Saturday, when I got into Delila, with
my wife. Delila is my Norwegian boat, which I had built by Fournaire, and
which is light and safe. Well, as I said, we got into the boat and we were
going to set bait, and for setting bait there is none to be compared with me,
and they all know it. You want to know with what I bait? I cannot answer that
question; it has nothing to do with the accident. I cannot answer; that is my
secret. There are more than three hundred people who have asked me; I have
been offered glasses of brandy and liqueur, fried fish, matelotes, to make me
tell. But just go and try whether the chub will come. Ah! they have tempted
my stomach to get at my secret, my recipe. Only my wife knows, and she will
not tell it any more than I will. Is not that so, Melie?”
The president of the court interrupted him.
“Just get to the facts as soon as you can,” and the accused continued: “I am
getting to them, I am getting to them. Well, on Saturday, July 8, we left by the
twenty-five past five train and before dinner we went to set bait as usual. The
weather promised to keep fine and I said to Melie: ‘All right for tomorrow.’
And she replied: ‘If looks like it,’ We never talk more than that together.
“And then we returned to dinner. I was happy and thirsty, and that was the
cause of everything. I said to Melie: ‘Look here, Melie, it is fine weather,
suppose I drink a bottle of ‘Casque a meche’.’ That is a weak white wine
which we have christened so, because if you drink too much of it it prevents
you from sleeping and takes the place of a nightcap. Do you understand me?
“She replied: ‘You can do as you please, but you will be ill again and
will not be able to get up tomorrow.’ That was true, sensible and prudent,
clear-sighted, I must confess. Nevertheless I could not resist, and I drank my
bottle. It all came from that.
“Well, I could not sleep. By Jove! it kept me awake till two o’clock in the
morning, and then I went to sleep so soundly that I should not have heard the
angel sounding his trump at the last judgment.
“In short, my wife woke me at six o’clock and I jumped out of bed, hastily
put on my trousers and jersey, washed my face and jumped on board Delila.
But it was too late, for when I arrived at my hole it was already occupied!
Such a thing had never happened to me in three years, and it made me feel as
if I were being robbed under my own eyes. I said to myself: ‘Confound it all!
confound it!’ And then my wife began to nag at me. ‘Eh! what about your
‘Casque a meche’? Get along, you drunkard! Are you satisfied, you great
fool?’ I could say nothing, because it was all true, but I landed all the same
near the spot and tried to profit by what was left. Perhaps after all the fellow
might catch nothing and go away.
“He was a little thin man in white linen coat and waistcoat and a large
straw hat, and his wife, a fat woman, doing embroidery, sat behind him.
“When she saw us take up our position close to them she murmured: ‘Are
there no other places on the river?’ My wife, who was furious, replied:
‘People who have any manners make inquiries about the habits of the
neighborhood before occupying reserved spots.’
“As I did not want a fuss, I said to her: ‘Hold your tongue, Melie. Let
them alone, let them alone; we shall see.’
“Well, we fastened Delila under the willows and had landed and were
fishing side by side, Melie and I, close to the two others. But here, monsieur,
I must enter into details.
“We had only been there about five minutes when our neighbor’s line
began to jerk twice, thrice; and then he pulled out a chub as thick as my thigh;
rather less, perhaps, but nearly as big! My heart beat, the perspiration stood
on my forehead and Melie said to me: ‘Well, you sot, did you see that?’
“Just then Monsieur Bru, the grocer of Poissy, who is fond of gudgeon
fishing, passed in a boat and called out to me: ‘So somebody has taken your
usual place, Monsieur Renard?’ And I replied: ‘Yes, Monsieur Bru, there are
some people in this world who do not know the rules of common politeness.’
“The little man in linen pretended not to hear, nor his fat lump of a wife,
either.”
Here the president interrupted him a second time: “Take care, you are
insulting the widow, Madame Flameche, who is present.”
Renard made his excuses: “I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon; my
anger carried me away. Well, not a quarter of an hour had passed when the
little man caught another chub, and another almost immediately, and another
five minutes later.
“Tears were in my eyes, and I knew that Madame Renard was boiling
with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: ‘Oh, how horrid! Don’t you see that
he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not
even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my hands are tingling, just to think of it.’
“But I said to myself: ‘Let us wait until twelve o’clock. Then this poacher
will go to lunch and I shall get my place again. As for me, Monsieur le
President, I lunch on that spot every Sunday. We bring our provisions in
Delila. But there! At noon the wretch produced a chicken in a newspaper,
and while he was eating, he actually caught another chub!
“Melie and I had a morsel also, just a bite, a mere nothing, for our heart
was not in it.
“Then I took up my newspaper to aid my digestion. Every Sunday I read
the Gil Blas in the shade by the side of the water. It is Columbine’s day, you
know; Columbine, who writes the articles in the Gil Blas. I generally put
Madame Renard into a rage by pretending to know this Columbine. It is not
true, for I do not know her and have never seen her, but that does not matter.
She writes very well, and then she says things that are pretty plain for a
woman. She suits me and there are not many of her sort.
“Well, I began to tease my wife, but she got angry immediately, and very
angry, so I held my tongue. At that moment our two witnesses who are
present here, Monsieur Ladureau and Monsieur Durdent, appeared on the
other side of the river. We knew each other by sight. The little man began to
fish again and he caught so many that I trembled with vexation and his wife
said: ‘It is an uncommonly good spot, and we will come here always,
Desire.’ As for me, a cold shiver ran down my back, and Madame Renard
kept repeating: ‘You are not a man; you have the blood of a chicken in your
veins’; and suddenly I said to her: ‘Look here, I would rather go away or I
shall be doing something foolish.’
“And she whispered to me, as if she had put a red-hot iron under my nose:
‘You are not a man. Now you are going to run away and surrender your
place! Go, then, Bazaine!’
“I felt hurt, but yet I did not move, while the other fellow pulled out a
bream: Oh, I never saw such a large one before, never! And then my wife
began to talk aloud, as if she were thinking, and you can see her tricks. She
said: ‘That is what one might call stolen fish, seeing that we set the bait
ourselves. At any rate, they ought to give us back the money we have spent on
bait.’
“Then the fat woman in the cotton dress said in her turn: ‘Do you mean to
call us thieves, madame?’ Explanations followed and compliments began to
fly. Oh, Lord! those creatures know some good ones. They shouted so loud
that our two witnesses, who were on the other bank, began to call out by way
of a joke: ‘Less noise over there; you will interfere with your husbands’
fishing.’
“The fact is that neither the little man nor I moved any more than if we had
been two tree stumps. We remained there, with our eyes fixed on the water,
as if we had heard nothing; but, by Jove! we heard all the same. ‘You are a
thief! You are nothing better than a tramp! You are a regular jade!’ and so on
and so on. A sailor could not have said more.
“Suddenly I heard a noise behind me and turned round. It was the other
one, the fat woman, who had attacked my wife with her parasol. Whack,
whack! Melie got two of them. But she was furious, and she hits hard when
she is in a rage. She caught the fat woman by the hair and then thump! thump!
slaps in the face rained down like ripe plums. I should have let them fight it
out: women together, men together. It does not do to mix the blows. But the
little man in the linen jacket jumped up like a devil and was going to rush at
my wife. Ah! no, no, not that, my friend! I caught the gentleman with the end
of my fist, and crash! crash! One on the nose, the other in the stomach. He
threw up his arms and legs and fell on his back into the river, just into the
hole.
“I should have fished him out most certainly, Monsieur le President, if I
had had time. But, to make matters worse, the fat woman had the upper hand
and was pounding Melie for all she was worth. I know I ought not to have
interfered while the man was in the water, but I never thought that he would
drown and said to myself: ‘Bah, it will cool him.’
“I therefore ran up to the women to separate them and all I received was
scratches and bites. Good Lord, what creatures! Well, it took me five
minutes, and perhaps ten, to separate those two viragos. When I turned round
there was nothing to be seen.
“The water was as smooth as a lake and the others yonder kept shouting:
‘Fish him out! fish him out!’ It was all very well to say that, but I cannot
swim and still less dive.
“At last the man from the dam came and two gentlemen with boathooks,
but over a quarter of an hour had passed. He was found at the bottom of the
hole, in eight feet of water, as I have said. There he was, the poor little man,
in his linen suit! Those are the facts such as I have sworn to. I am innocent,
on my honor.”
The witnesses having given testimony to the same effect, the accused was
acquitted.
 THE SPASM

OR

THE MANNERISM
The hotel guests slowly entered the dining-room and took their places. The
waiters did not hurry themselves, in order to give the late comers a chance
and thus avoid the trouble of bringing in the dishes a second time. The old
bathers, the habitues, whose season was almost over, glanced, gazed toward
the door whenever it opened, to see what new faces might appear.
This is the principal distraction of watering places. People look forward
to the dinner hour in order to inspect each day’s new arrivals, to find out who
they are, what they do, and what they think. We always have a vague desire to
meet pleasant people, to make agreeable acquaintances, perhaps to meet with
a love adventure. In this life of elbowings, unknown strangers assume an
extreme importance. Curiosity is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself,
and sociability is the order of the day.
We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see
people with different eyes, when we view them through the medium of
acquaintanceship at watering places. We discover in men suddenly, after an
hour’s chat, in the evening after dinner, under the trees in the park where the
healing spring bubbles up, a high intelligence and astonishing merits, and a
month afterward we have completely forgotten these new friends, who were
so fascinating when we first met them.
Permanent and serious ties are also formed here sooner than anywhere
else. People see each other every day; they become acquainted very quickly,
and their affection is tinged with the sweetness and unrestraint of long-
standing intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories
of those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first conversations in
which a soul was unveiled, of those first glances which interrogate and
respond to questions and secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet
uttered, the memory of that first cordial confidence, the memory of that
delightful sensation of opening our hearts to those who seem to open theirs to
us in return.
And the melancholy of watering places, the monotony of days that are all
alike, proves hourly an incentive to this heart expansion.
Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the appearance
of strange faces.
Only two appeared, but they were very remarkable, a man and a woman
— father and daughter. They immediately reminded me of some of Edgar
Poe’s characters; and yet there was about them a charm, the charm associated
with misfortune. I looked upon them as the victims of fate. The man was very
tall and thin, rather stooped, with perfectly white hair, too white for his
comparatively youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing and in his
person that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter, who was probably
twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was also very thin, very
pale, and she had the air of one who was worn out with utter lassitude. We
meet people like this from time to time, who seem too weak for the tasks and
the needs of daily life, too weak to move about, to walk, to do all that we do
every day. She was rather pretty; with a transparent, spiritual beauty. And she
ate with extreme slowness, as if she were almost incapable of moving her
arms.
It must have been she, assuredly, who had come to take the waters.
They sat facing me, on the opposite side of the table; and I at once noticed
that the father had a very singular, nervous twitching.
Every time he wanted to reach an object, his hand described a sort of
zigzag before it succeeded in reaching what it was in search of, and after a
little while this movement annoyed me so that I turned aside my head in order
not to see it.
I noticed, too, that the young girl, during meals, wore a glove on her left
hand.
After dinner I went for a stroll in the park of the bathing establishment.
This led toward the little Auvergnese station of Chatel-Guyon, hidden in a
gorge at the foot of the high mountain, from which flowed so many boiling
springs, arising from the deep bed of extinct volcanoes. Over yonder, above
our heads, the domes of extinct craters lifted their ragged peaks above the
rest in the long mountain chain. For Chatel-Guyon is situated at the entrance
to the land of mountain domes.
 Beyond it stretches out the region of peaks, and, farther on again the
region of precipitous summits.
The “Puy de Dome” is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is the
loftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of these mountain
heights.
It was a very warm evening, and I was walking up and down a shady path,
listening to the opening, strains of the Casino band, which was playing on an
elevation overlooking the park.
And I saw the father and the daughter advancing slowly in my direction. I
bowed as one bows to one’s hotel companions at a watering place; and the
man, coming to a sudden halt, said to me:
“Could you not, monsieur, tell us of a nice walk to take, short, pretty, and
not steep; and pardon my troubling you?”
I offered to show them the way toward the valley through which the little
river flowed, a deep valley forming a gorge between two tall, craggy,
wooded slopes.
They gladly accepted my offer.
And we talked, naturally, about the virtue of the waters.
“Oh,” he said, “my daughter has a strange malady, the seat of which is
unknown. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous attacks. At one time the
doctors think she has an attack of heart disease, at another time they imagine
it is some affection of the liver, and at another they declare it to be a disease
of the spine. To-day this protean malady, that assumes a thousand forms and a
thousand modes of attack, is attributed to the stomach, which is the great
caldron and regulator of the body. This is why we have come here. For my
part, I am rather inclined to think it is the nerves. In any case it is very sad.”
Immediately the remembrance of the violent spasmodic movement of his
hand came back to my mind, and I asked him:
“But is this not the result of heredity? Are not your own nerves somewhat
affected?”
He replied calmly:
“Mine? Oh, no-my nerves have always been very steady.”
Then, suddenly, after a pause, he went on:
“Ah! You were alluding to the jerking movement of my hand every time I
try to reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I had.
Just imagine, this daughter of mine was actually buried alive!”
I could only utter, “Ah!” so great were my astonishment and emotion.
 He continued:
“Here is the story. It is simple. Juliette had been subject for some time to
serious attacks of the heart. We believed that she had disease of that organ,
and were prepared for the worst.
“One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had
fallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life was
extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid her with my
own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the cemetery, where she
was deposited in the family vault. It is situated in the very heart of Lorraine.
“I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces,
rings, all presents which she had received from me, and wearing her first
ball dress.
“You may easily imagine my state of mind when I re-entered our home.
She was the only one I had, for my wife had been dead for many years. I
found my way to my own apartment in a half-distracted condition, utterly
exhausted, and sank into my easy-chair, without the capacity to think or the
strength to move. I was nothing better now than a suffering, vibrating
machine, a human being who had, as it were, been flayed alive; my soul was
like an open wound.
“My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in her
coffin, and aided me in preparing her for her last sleep, entered the room
noiselessly, and asked:
“‘Does monsieur want anything?’
“I merely shook my head in reply.
“‘Monsieur is wrong,’ he urged. ‘He will injure his health. Would
monsieur like me to put him to bed?’
“I answered: ‘No, let me alone!’
“And he left the room.
“I know not how many hours slipped away. Oh, what a night, what a night!
It was cold. My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the wind, the winter
wind, an icy wind, a winter hurricane, blew with a regular, sinister noise
against the windows.
“How many hours slipped away? There I was without sleeping,
powerless, crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body
limp, inanimate, and my mind torpid with despair. Suddenly the great
doorbell, the great bell of the vestibule, rang out.
 “I started so that my chair cracked under me. The solemn, ponderous
sound vibrated through the empty country house as through a vault. I turned
round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was just two in the morning.
Who could be coming at such an hour?
“And, abruptly, the bell again rang twice. The servants, without doubt,
were afraid to get up. I took a wax candle and descended the stairs. I was on
the point of asking: ‘Who is there?’
“Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly drew back the heavy
bolts. My heart was throbbing wildly. I was frightened. I opened the door
brusquely, and in the darkness I distinguished a white figure, standing erect,
something that resembled an apparition.
“I recoiled petrified with horror, faltering:
“‘Who-who-who are you?’
“A voice replied:
“‘It is I, father.’
“It was my daughter.
“I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backward before this
advancing spectre. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand,’ as if to
drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have noticed — that gesture
which has remained with me ever since.
“‘Do not be afraid, papa,’ said the apparition. ‘I was not dead. Somebody
tried to steal my rings and cut one of my fingers; the blood began to flow, and
that restored me to life.’
“And, in fact, I could see that her hand was covered with blood.
“I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and with a rattling in my throat.
“Then, when I had somewhat collected my thoughts, though I was still so
bewildered that I scarcely realized the awesome happiness that had befallen
me, I made her go up to my room and sit dawn in my easy-chair; then I rang
excitedly for Prosper to get him to rekindle the fire and to bring some wine,
and to summon assistance.
“The man entered, stared at my daughter, opened his mouth with a gasp of
alarm and stupefaction, and then fell back dead.
“It was he who had opened the vault, who had mutilated and then
abandoned my daughter; for he could not efface the traces of the theft. He had
not even taken the trouble to put back the coffin into its place, feeling sure,
besides, that he would not be suspected by me, as I trusted him absolutely.
“You see, monsieur, that we are very unfortunate people.”
 He was silent.
The night had fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournful vale,
and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by the side of
those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back from the tomb,
and this father with his uncanny spasm.
I found it impossible to make any comment on this dreadful story. I only
murmured:
“What a horrible thing!”
Then, after a minute’s silence, I added:
“Let us go indoors. I think it is growing cool.”
And we made our way back to the hotel.
 IN THE WOOD

As the mayor was about to sit down to breakfast, word was brought to him
that the rural policeman, with two prisoners, was awaiting him at the Hotel
de Ville. He went there at once and found old Hochedur standing guard
before a middle-class couple whom he was regarding with a severe
expression on his face.
The man, a fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly
dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining
cheeks, looked at the official who had arrested them, with defiant eyes.
“What is it? What is it, Hochedur?”
The rural policeman made his deposition: He had gone out that morning at
his usual time, in order to patrol his beat from the forest of Champioux as far
as the boundaries of Argenteuil. He had not noticed anything unusual in the
country except that it was a fine day, and that the wheat was doing well,
when the son of old Bredel, who was going over his vines, called out to him:
“Here, Daddy Hochedur, go and have a look at the outskirts of the wood. In
the first thicket you will find a pair of pigeons who must be a hundred and
thirty years old between them!”
He went in the direction indicated, entered the thicket, and there he heard
words which made him suspect a flagrant breach of morality. Advancing,
therefore, on his hands and knees as if to surprise a poacher, he had arrested
the couple whom he found there.
The mayor looked at the culprits in astonishment, for the man was
certainly sixty, and the woman fifty-five at least, and he began to question
them, beginning with the man, who replied in such a weak voice that he could
scarcely be heard.
“What is your name?”
“Nicholas Beaurain.”
“Your occupation?”
“Haberdasher, in the Rue des Martyrs, in Paris.”
“What were you doing in the wood?”
 The haberdasher remained silent, with his eyes on his fat paunch, and his
hands hanging at his sides, and the mayor continued:
“Do you deny what the officer of the municipal authorities states?”
“No, monsieur.”
“So you confess it?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“What have you to say in your defence?”
“Nothing, monsieur.”
“Where did you meet the partner in your misdemeanor?”
“She is my wife, monsieur.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Then — then — you do not live together-in Paris?”
“I beg your pardon, monsieur, but we are living together!”
“But in that case — you must be mad, altogether mad, my dear sir, to get
caught playing lovers in the country at ten o’clock in the morning.”
The haberdasher seemed ready to cry with shame, and he muttered: “It
was she who enticed me! I told her it was very stupid, but when a woman
once gets a thing into her head — you know — you cannot get it out.”
The mayor, who liked a joke, smiled and replied: “In your case, the
contrary ought to have happened. You would not be here, if she had had the
idea only in her head.”
Then Monsieur Beauain was seized with rage and turning to his wife, he
said: “Do you see to what you have brought us with your poetry? And now
we shall have to go before the courts at our age, for a breach of morals! And
we shall have to shut up the shop, sell our good will, and go to some other
neighborhood! That’s what it has come to.”
Madame Beaurain got up, and without looking at her husband, she
explained herself without embarrassment, without useless modesty, and
almost without hesitation.
“Of course, monsieur, I know that we have made ourselves ridiculous.
Will you allow me to plead my cause like an advocate, or rather like a poor
woman? And I hope that you will be kind enough to send us home, and to
spare us the disgrace of a prosecution.
“Years ago, when I was young, I made Monsieur Beaurain’s acquaintance
one Sunday in this neighborhood. He was employed in a draper’s shop, and I
was a saleswoman in a ready-made clothing establishment. I remember it as
if it were yesterday. I used to come and spend Sundays here occasionally
with a friend of mine, Rose Leveque, with whom I lived in the Rue Pigalle,
and Rose had a sweetheart, while I had none. He used to bring us here, and
one Saturday he told me laughing that he should bring a friend with him the
next day. I quite understood what he meant, but I replied that it would be no
good; for I was virtuous, monsieur.
“The next day we met Monsieur Beaurain at the railway station, and in
those days he was good-looking, but I had made up my mind not to encourage
him, and I did not. Well, we arrived at Bezons. It was a lovely day, the sort
of day that touches your heart. When it is fine even now, just as it used to be
formerly, I grow quite foolish, and when I am in the country I utterly lose my
head. The green grass, the swallows flying so swiftly, the smell of the grass,
the scarlet poppies, the daisies, all that makes me crazy. It is like champagne
when one is not accustomed to it!
“Well, it was lovely weather, warm and bright, and it seemed to penetrate
your body through your eyes when you looked and through your mouth when
you breathed. Rose and Simon hugged and kissed each other every minute,
and that gave me a queer feeling! Monsieur Beaurain and I walked behind
them, without speaking much, for when people do not know each other, they
do not find anything to talk about. He looked timid, and I liked to see his
embarrassment. At last we got to the little wood; it was as cool as in a bath
there, and we four sat down. Rose and her lover teased me because I looked
rather stern, but you will understand that I could not be otherwise. And then
they began to kiss and hug again, without putting any more restraint upon
themselves than if we had not been there; and then they whispered together,
and got up and went off among the trees, without saying a word. You may
fancy what I looked like, alone with this young fellow whom I saw for the
first time. I felt so confused at seeing them go that it gave me courage, and I
began to talk. I asked him what his business was, and he said he was a linen
draper’s assistant, as I told you just now. We talked for a few minutes, and
that made him bold, and he wanted to take liberties with me, but I told him
sharply to keep his place. Is not that true, Monsieur Beaurain?”
Monsieur Beaurain, who was looking at his feet in confusion, did not
reply, and she continued: “Then he saw that I was virtuous, and he began to
make love to me nicely, like an honorable man, and from that time he came
every Sunday, for he was very much in love with me. I was very fond of him
also, very fond of him! He was a good-looking fellow, formerly, and in short
he married me the next September, and we started in business in the Rue des
Martyrs.
“It was a hard struggle for some years, monsieur. Business did not
prosper, and we could not afford many country excursions, and, besides, we
had got out of the way of them. One has other things in one’s head, and thinks
more of the cash box than of pretty speeches, when one is in business. We
were growing old by degrees without perceiving it, like quiet people who do
not think much about love. One does not regret anything as long as one does
not notice what one has lost.
“And then, monsieur, business became better, and we were tranquil as to
the future! Then, you see, I do not exactly know what went on in my mind, no,
I really do not know, but I began to dream like a little boarding-school girl.
The sight of the little carts full of flowers which are drawn about the streets
made me cry; the smell of violets sought me out in my easy-chair, behind my
cash box, and made my heart beat! Then I would get up and go out on the
doorstep to look at the blue sky between the roofs. When one looks up at the
sky from the street, it looks like a river which is descending on Paris,
winding as it flows, and the swallows pass to and fro in it like fish. These
ideas are very stupid at my age! But how can one help it, monsieur, when one
has worked all one’s life? A moment comes in which one perceives that one
could have done something else, and that one regrets, oh! yes, one feels
intense regret! Just think, for twenty years I might have gone and had kisses in
the woods, like other women. I used to think how delightful it would be to lie
under the trees and be in love with some one! And I thought of it every day
and every night! I dreamed of the moonlight on the water, until I felt inclined
to drown myself.
“I did not venture to speak to Monsieur Beaurain about this at first. I knew
that he would make fun of me, and send me back to sell my needles and
cotton! And then, to speak the truth, Monsieur Beaurain never said much to
me, but when I looked in the glass, I also understood quite well that I no
longer appealed to any one!
“Well, I made up my mind, and I proposed to him an excursion into the
country, to the place where we had first become acquainted. He agreed
without mistrusting anything, and we arrived here this morning, about nine
o’clock.
“I felt quite young again when I got among the wheat, for a woman’s heart
never grows old! And really, I no longer saw my husband as he is at present,
but just as he was formerly! That I will swear to you, monsieur. As true as I
am standing here I was crazy. I began to kiss him, and he was more surprised
than if I had tried to murder him. He kept saying to me: ‘Why, you must be
mad! You are mad this morning! What is the matter with you?’ I did not listen
to him, I only listened to my own heart, and I made him come into the wood
with me. That is all. I have spoken the truth, Monsieur le Maire, the whole
truth.”
The mayor was a sensible man. He rose from his chair, smiled, and said:
“Go in peace, madame, and when you again visit our forests, be more
discreet.”
 MARTINE

It came to him one Sunday after mass. He was walking home from church
along the by-road that led to his house when he saw ahead of him Martine,
who was also going home.
Her father walked beside his daughter with the important gait of a rich
farmer. Discarding the smock, he wore a short coat of gray cloth and on his
head a round-topped hat with wide brim.
She, laced up in a corset which she wore only once a week, walked along
erect, with her squeezed-in waist, her broad shoulders and prominent hips,
swinging herself a little. She wore a hat trimmed with flowers, made by a
milliner at Yvetot, and displayed the back of her full, round, supple neck,
reddened by the sun and air, on which fluttered little stray locks of hair.
Benoist saw only her back; but he knew well the face he loved, without,
however, having ever noticed it more closely than he did now.
Suddenly he said: “Nom d’un nom, she is a fine girl, all the same, that
Martine.” He watched her as she walked, admiring her hastily, feeling a
desire taking possession of him. He did not long to see her face again, no. He
kept gazing at her figure, repeating to himself: “Nom d’un nom, she is a fine
girl.”
Martine turned to the right to enter “La Martiniere,” the farm of her father,
Jean Martin, and she cast a glance behind her as she turned round. She saw
Benoist, who looked to her very comical. She called out: “Good-morning,
Benoist.” He replied: “Good-morning, Martine; good-morning, mait Martin,”
and went on his way.
When he reached home the soup was on the table. He sat down opposite
his mother beside the farm hand and the hired man, while the maid servant
went to draw some cider.
He ate a few spoonfuls, then pushed away his plate. His mother said:
“Don’t you feel well?”
“No. I feel as if I had some pap in my stomach and that takes away my
appetite.”
 He watched the others eating, as he cut himself a piece of bread from time
to time and carried it lazily to his mouth, masticating it slowly. He thought of
Martine. “She is a fine girl, all the same.” And to think that he had not
noticed it before, and that it came to him, just like that, all at once, and with
such force that he could not eat.
He did not touch the stew. His mother said:
“Come, Benoist, try and eat a little; it is loin of mutton, it will do you
good. When one has no appetite, they should force themselves to eat.”
He swallowed a few morsels, then, pushing away his plate, said:
“No. I can’t go that, positively.”
When they rose from table he walked round the farm, telling the farm hand
he might go home and that he would drive up the animals as he passed by
them.
The country was deserted, as it was the day of rest. Here and there in a
field of clover cows were moving along heavily, with full bellies, chewing
their cud under a blazing sun. Unharnessed plows were standing at the end of
a furrow; and the upturned earth ready for the seed showed broad brown
patches of stubble of wheat and oats that had lately been harvested.
A rather dry autumn wind blew across the plain, promising a cool evening
after the sun had set. Benoist sat down on a ditch, placed his hat on his knees
as if he needed to cool off his head, and said aloud in the stillness of the
country: “If you want a fine girl, she is a fine girl.”
He thought of it again at night, in his bed, and in the morning when he
awoke.
He was not sad, he was not discontented, he could not have told what
ailed him. It was something that had hold of him, something fastened in his
mind, an idea that would not leave him and that produced a sort of tickling
sensation in his heart.
Sometimes a big fly is shut up in a room. You hear it flying about, buzzing,
and the noise haunts you, irritates you. Suddenly it stops; you forget it; but all
at once it begins again, obliging you to look up. You cannot catch it, nor drive
it away, nor kill it, nor make it keep still. As soon as it settles for a second, it
starts off buzzing again.
The recollection of Martine disturbed Benoist’s mind like an imprisoned
fly.
Then he longed to see her again and walked past the Martiniere several
times. He saw her, at last, hanging out some clothes on a line stretched
between two apple trees.
It was a warm day. She had on only a short skirt and her chemise, showing
the curves of her figure as she hung up the towels. He remained there,
concealed by the hedge, for more than an hour, even after she had left. He
returned home more obsessed with her image than ever.
For a month his mind was full of her, he trembled when her name was
mentioned in his presence. He could not eat, he had night sweats that kept
him from sleeping.
On Sunday, at mass, he never took his eyes off her. She noticed it and
smiled at him, flattered at his appreciation.
One evening, he suddenly met her in the road. She stopped short when she
saw him coming. Then he walked right up to her, choking with fear and
emotion, but determined to speak to her. He began falteringly:
“See here, Martine, this cannot go on like this any longer.”
She replied as if she wanted to tease him:
“What cannot go on any longer, Benoist?”
“My thinking of you as many hours as there are in the day,” he answered.
She put her hands on her hips.
“I do not oblige you to do so.”
“Yes, it is you,” he stammered; “I cannot sleep, nor rest, nor eat, nor
anything.”
“What do you need to cure you of all that?” she asked.
He stood there in dismay, his arms swinging, his eyes staring, his mouth
agape.
She hit him a punch in the stomach and ran off.
From that day they met each other along the roadside, in by-roads or else
at twilight on the edge of a field, when he was going home with his horses
and she was driving her cows home to the stable.
He felt himself carried, cast toward her by a strong impulse of his heart
and body. He would have liked to squeeze her, strangle her, eat her, make her
part of himself. And he trembled with impotence, impatience, rage, to think
she did not belong to him entirely, as if they were one being.
People gossiped about it in the countryside. They said they were engaged.
He had, besides, asked her if she would be his wife, and she had answered
“Yes.”
They, were waiting for an opportunity to talk to their parents about it.
 But, all at once, she stopped coming to meet him at the usual hour. He did
not even see her as he wandered round the farm. He could only catch a
glimpse of her at mass on Sunday. And one Sunday, after the sermon, the
priest actually published the banns of marriage between Victoire-Adelaide
Martin and Josephin-Isidore Vallin.
Benoist felt a sensation in his hands as if the blood had been drained off.
He had a buzzing in the ears; and could hear nothing; and presently he
perceived that his tears were falling on his prayer book.
For a month he stayed in his room. Then he went back to his work.
But he was not cured, and it was always in his mind. He avoided the
roads that led past her home, so that he might not even see the trees in the
yard, and this obliged him to make a great circuit morning and evening.
She was now married to Vallin, the richest farmer in the district. Benoist
and he did not speak now, though they had been comrades from childhood.
One evening, as Benoist was passing the town hall, he heard that she was
enceinte. Instead of experiencing a feeling of sorrow, he experienced, on the
contrary, a feeling of relief. It was over, now, all over. They were more
separated by that than by her marriage. He really preferred that it should be
so.
Months passed, and more months. He caught sight of her, occasionally,
going to the village with a heavier step than usual. She blushed as she saw
him, lowered her head and quickened her pace. And he turned out of his way
so as not to pass her and meet her glance.
He dreaded the thought that he might one morning meet her face to face,
and be obliged to speak to her. What could he say to her now, after all he had
said formerly, when he held her hands as he kissed her hair beside her
cheeks? He often thought of those meetings along the roadside. She had acted
horridly after all her promises.
By degrees his grief diminished, leaving only sadness behind. And one
day he took the old road that led past the farm where she now lived. He
looked at the roof from a distance. It was there, in there, that she lived with
another! The apple trees were in bloom, the cocks crowed on the dung hill.
The whole dwelling seemed empty, the farm hands had gone to the fields to
their spring toil. He stopped near the gate and looked into the yard. The dog
was asleep outside his kennel, three calves were walking slowly, one behind
the other, towards the pond. A big turkey was strutting before the door,
parading before the turkey hens like a singer at the opera.
 Benoist leaned against the gate post and was suddenly seized with a
desire to weep. But suddenly, he heard a cry, a loud cry for help coming from
the house. He was struck with dismay, his hands grasping the wooden bars of
the gate, and listened attentively. Another cry, a prolonged, heartrending cry,
reached his ears, his soul, his flesh. It was she who was crying like that! He
darted inside, crossed the grass patch, pushed open the door, and saw her
lying on the floor, her body drawn up, her face livid, her eyes haggard, in the
throes of childbirth.
He stood there, trembling and paler than she was, and stammered:
“Here I am, here I am, Martine!”
She replied in gasps:
“Oh, do not leave me, do not leave me, Benoist!”
He looked at her, not knowing what to say, what to do. She began to cry
out again:
“Oh, oh, it is killing me. Oh, Benoist!”
She writhed frightfully.
Benoist was suddenly seized with a frantic longing to help her, to quiet
her, to remove her pain. He leaned over, lifted her up and laid her on her bed;
and while she kept on moaning he began to take off her clothes, her jacket,
her skirt and her petticoat. She bit her fists to keep from crying out. Then he
did as he was accustomed to doing for cows, ewes, and mares: he assisted in
delivering her and found in his hands a large infant who was moaning.
He wiped it off and wrapped it up in a towel that was drying in front of
the fire, and laid it on a bundle of clothes ready for ironing that was on the
table. Then he went back to the mother.
He took her up and placed her on the floor again, then he changed the
bedclothes and put her back into bed. She faltered:
“Thank you, Benoist, you have a noble heart.” And then she wept a little
as if she felt regretful.
He did not love her any longer, not the least bit. It was all over. Why?
How? He could not have said. What had happened had cured him better than
ten years of absence.
She asked, exhausted and trembling:
“What is it?”
He replied calmly:
“It is a very fine girl.”
 Then they were silent again. At the end of a few moments, the mother, in a
weak voice, said:
“Show her to me, Benoist.”
He took up the little one and was showing it to her as if he were holding
the consecrated wafer, when the door opened, and Isidore Vallin appeared.
He did not understand at first, then all at once he guessed.
Benoist, in consternation, stammered out:
“I was passing, I was just passing by when f heard her crying out, and I
came — there is your child, Vallin!”
Then the husband, his eyes full of tears, stepped forward, took the little
mite of humanity that he held out to him, kissed it, unable to speak from
emotion for a few seconds; then placing the child on the bed, he held out both
hands to Benoist, saying:
“Your hand upon it, Benoist. From now on we understand each other. If
you are willing, we will be a pair of friends, a pair of friends!” And Benoist
replied: “Indeed I will, certainly, indeed I will.”
 ALL OVER

Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance at

the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room and
smiled.
He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall, slight,
elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of doubtful shade,
which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a “chic,” in short, that
indescribable something which establishes a greater difference between two
men than would millions of money. He murmured:
“Lormerin is still alive!”
And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited
him.
On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the
gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three
newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out all these
letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the
handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the envelopes.
It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did they
contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid
sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them, making two or
three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends; there,
persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind
always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What
hand had traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or
threats?
This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple,
nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at it uneasily,
with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: “From whom can it be? I
certainly know this writing, and yet I can’t identify it.”
He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two
fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without making up his mind to
open it.
Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying glass
which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt
unnerved. “Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I
must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a
long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it’s only
somebody asking for money.”
And he tore open the letter. Then he read:
MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is
now
twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old.
When I bade you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the
provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call “my
hospital.” Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now I
am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen.
I informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much
attention to so trifling an event.

You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if
you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come
and dine with her this evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance
your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, although happy,
reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no
longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
LISE DE VANCE.
Lormerin’s heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with
the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a poignant
emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise
de Vance, whom he called “Ashflower,” on account of the strange color of
her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a dainty, pretty, charming
creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that gouty, pimply baron, who
had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her in
seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved.
She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that
word in a delicious fashion.
A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and
melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way home from a
ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress,
he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The
fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor of her bodice,
and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When they
reached the lake, as the moon’s rays fell across the branches into the water,
she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
“I don’t know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see
poetic things I have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry.”
He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming
— the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every sensation
overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
“My little Lise, you are exquisite.”
What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over
all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a baron,
who had carried off his wife, and never let any one see her afterward.
Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One
woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No
matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he had loved her
alone! He assured himself now that this was so.
He rose, and said aloud: “Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
evening!”
And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from head
to foot. He reflected: “She must look very old, older than I look.” And he felt
gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of
astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret
those bygone days so far, far distant!
He turned his attention to the other letters. They were of no importance.
The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other days. What was she
like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years! But
would he recognize her?
He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the
hairdresser to give him a finishing touch With the curling iron, for he had
preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to
see her.
The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished
was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when he
was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.
He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both
hands toward him.
He seized them, kissed them one after the other several times; then, lifting
up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who,
while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
He could not abstain from murmuring:
“Is it you, Lise?”
She replied:
“Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, would you? I
have had so much sorrow — so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my life.
Look at me now — or, rather, don’t look at me! But how handsome you have
kept — and young! If I had by chance met you in the street I would have
exclaimed: ‘Jaquelet!’. Now, sit down and let us, first of all, have a chat.
And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You’ll see how she
resembles me — or, rather, how I resembled her — no, it is not quite that;
she is just like the ‘me’ of former days — you shall see! But I wanted to be
alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at
the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend.”
He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
say; he did not know this woman — it seemed to him that he had never seen
her before. Why had he come to this house? What could he talk about? Of the
long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no
longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no
longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come to
his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty
Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had
loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young
girl who used to call him “Jaquelet” so prettily?
They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
profoundly ill at ease.
 As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and spasmodically and
slowly, she rose and pressed the button of the bell.
“I am going to call Renee,” she said.
There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; then a young voice
exclaimed:
“Here I am, mamma!”
Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an apparition.
He stammered:
“Good-day, mademoiselle”
Then, turning toward the mother:
“Oh! it is you!”
In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who
had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty-
five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more childlike.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again,
murmuring in her ear:
“Good-morning, Lison!”
A man-servant announced:
“Dinner is ready, madame.”
And they proceeded toward the dining-room.
What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he
say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which
border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in his mind,
a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
“Which is the real one?”
The mother smiled again repeating over and over:
“Do you remember?” And it was in the bright eyes of the young girl that
he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth to
say to her: “Do you remember, Lison?” forgetting this white-haired lady who
was looking at him tenderly.
And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt sure, when he lost
his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman
of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in her glances,
in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And he made
prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again what had
escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not possess.
The baronne said:
 “You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend.”
He murmured:
“There are many other things that I have lost!”
But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to life
once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar
intonation, some expression of her mother’s, a certain style of speaking and
thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by
living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things penetrated
him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of
this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed his
blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one, the
old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as he had loved her in
bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval of twenty-
five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think
what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass,
the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself
before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man; and
suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days of little
Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been when he was
loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as
one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles,
discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
lamentable image, murmuring:
“All over, Lormerin!”
 THE PARROT

OR

THE DROWNED MAN

I

Everybody in Fecamp knew Mother Patin’s story. She had certainly been
unfortunate with her husband, for in his lifetime he used to beat her, just as
wheat is threshed in the barn.
He was master of a fishing bark and had married her, formerly, because
she was pretty, although poor.
Patin was a good sailor, but brutal. He used to frequent Father Auban’s
inn, where he would usually drink four or five glasses of brandy, on lucky
days eight or ten glasses and even more, according to his mood. The brandy
was served to the customers by Father Auban’s daughter, a pleasing brunette,
who attracted people to the house only by her pretty face, for nothing had
ever been gossiped about her.
Patin, when he entered the inn, would be satisfied to look at her and to
compliment her politely and respectfully. After he had had his first glass of
brandy he would already find her much nicer; at the second he would wink;
at the third he would say. “If you were only willing, Mam’zelle Desiree —
— “ without ever finishing his sentence; at the fourth he would try to hold her
back by her skirt in order to kiss her; and when he went as high as ten it was
Father Auban who brought him the remaining drinks.
The old innkeeper, who knew all the tricks of the trade, made Desiree
walk about between the tables in order to increase the consumption of drinks;
and Desiree, who was a worthy daughter of Father Auban, flitted around
among the benches and joked with them, her lips smiling and her eyes
sparkling.
Patin got so well accustomed to Desiree’s face that he thought of it even
while at sea, when throwing out his nets, in storms or in calms, on moonlit or
dark evenings. He thought of her while holding the tiller in the stern of his
boat, while his four companions were slumbering with their heads on their
arms. He always saw her, smiling, pouring out the yellow brandy with a
peculiar shoulder movement and then exclaiming as she turned away: “There,
now; are you satisfied?”
He saw her so much in his mind’s eye that he was overcome by an
irresistible desire to marry her, and, not being able to hold out any longer, he
asked for her hand.
He was rich, owned his own vessel, his nets and a little house at the foot
of the hill on the Retenue, whereas Father Auban had nothing. The marriage
was therefore eagerly agreed upon and the wedding took place as soon as
possible, as both parties were desirous for the affair to be concluded as early
as convenient.
Three days after the wedding Patin could no longer understand how he
had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he
had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had
undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had put in his brandy!
He would curse all day lung, break his pipe with his teeth and maul his
crew. After he had sworn by every known term at everything that came his
way he would rid himself of his remaining anger on the fish and lobsters,
which he pulled from the nets and threw into the baskets amid oaths and foul
language. When he returned home he would find his wife, Father Auban’s
daughter, within reach of his mouth and hand, and it was not long before he
treated her like the lowest creature in the world. As she listened calmly,
accustomed to paternal violence, he grew exasperated at her quiet, and one
evening he beat her. Then life at his home became unbearable.
For ten years the principal topic of conversation on the Retenue was about
the beatings that Patin gave his wife and his manner of cursing at her for the
least thing. He could, indeed, curse with a richness of vocabulary in a
roundness of tone unequalled by any other man in Fecamp. As soon as his
ship was sighted at the entrance of the harbor, returning from the fishing
expedition, every one awaited the first volley he would hurl from the bridge
as soon as he perceived his wife’s white cap.
Standing at the stern he would steer, his eye fixed on the bows and on the
sail, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of the narrow passage and the height
of the turbulent waves, he would search among the watching women and try
to recognize his wife, Father Auban’s daughter, the wretch!
 Then, as soon as he saw her, notwithstanding the noise of the wind and
waves, he would let loose upon her with such power and volubility that
every one would laugh, although they pitied her greatly. When he arrived at
the dock he would relieve his mind, while unloading the fish, in such an
expressive manner that he attracted around him all the loafers of the
neighborhood. The words left his mouth sometimes like shots from a cannon,
short and terrible, sometimes like peals of thunder, which roll and rumble for
five minutes, such a hurricane of oaths that he seemed to have in his lungs one
of the storms of the Eternal Father.
When he left his ship and found himself face to face with her, surrounded
by all the gossips of the neighborhood, he would bring up a new cargo of
insults and bring her back to their dwelling, she in front, he behind, she
weeping, he yelling at her.
At last, when alone with her behind closed doors, he would thrash her on
the slightest pretext. The least thing was sufficient to make him raise his
hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but he would throw into
her face the true motive for his anger. At each blow he would roar: “There,
you beggar! There, you wretch! There, you pauper! What a bright thing I did
when I rinsed my mouth with your rascal of a father’s apology for brandy.”
The poor woman lived in continual fear, in a ceaseless trembling of body
and soul, in everlasting expectation of outrageous thrashings.
This lasted ten years. She was so timorous that she would grow pale
whenever she spoke to any one, and she thought of nothing but the blows with
which she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow and drier
than a smoked fish.

II

One night, when her husband was at sea, she was suddenly awakened by the
wild roaring of the wind!
She sat up in her bed, trembling, but, as she hear nothing more, she lay
down again; almost immediately there was a roar in the chimney which shook
the entire house; it seemed to cross the heavens like a pack of furious animals
snorting and roaring.
Then she arose and rushed to the harbor. Other women were arriving from
all sides, carrying lanterns. The men also were gathering, and all were
watching the foaming crests of the breaking wave.
 The storm lasted fifteen hours. Eleven sailors never returned; Patin was
among them.
In the neighborhood of Dieppe the wreck of his bark, the Jeune-Amelie,
was found. The bodies of his sailors were found near Saint-Valery, but his
body was never recovered. As his vessel seemed to have been cut in two, his
wife expected and feared his return for a long time, for if there had been a
collision he alone might have been picked up and carried afar off.
Little by little she grew accustomed to the thought that she was rid of him,
although she would start every time that a neighbor, a beggar or a peddler
would enter suddenly.
One afternoon, about four years after the disappearance of her husband,
while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the house
of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was for
sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green feathers and a
blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased look. “Three
francs!” cried the auctioneer. “A bird that can talk like a lawyer, three
francs!”
A friend of the Patin woman nudged her and said:
“You ought to buy that, you who are rich. It would be good company for
you. That bird is worth more than thirty francs. Anyhow, you can always sell
it for twenty or twenty-five!”
Patin’s widow added fifty centimes, and the bird was given her in a little
cage, which she carried away. She took it home, and, as she was opening the
wire door in order to give it something to drink, he bit her finger and drew
blood.
“Oh, how naughty he is!” she said.
Nevertheless she gave it some hemp-seed and corn and watched it pruning
its feathers as it glanced warily at its new home and its new mistress. On the
following morning, just as day was breaking, the Patin woman distinctly
heard a loud, deep, roaring voice calling: “Are you going to get up, carrion?”
Her fear was so great that she hid her head under the sheets, for when
Patin was with her as soon as he would open his eyes he would shout those
well-known words into her ears.
Trembling, rolled into a ball, her back prepared for the thrashing which
she already expected, her face buried in the pillows, she murmured: “Good
Lord! he is here! Good Lord! he is here! Good Lord! he has come back!”
 Minutes passed; no noise disturbed the quiet room. Then, trembling, she
stuck her head out of the bed, sure that he was there, watching, ready to beat
her. Except for a ray of sun shining through the window, she saw nothing, and
she said to her self: “He must be hidden.”
She waited a long time and then, gaining courage, she said to herself: “I
must have dreamed it, seeing there is nobody here.”
A little reassured, she closed her eyes, when from quite near a furious
voice, the thunderous voice of the drowned man, could be heard crying:
“Say! when in the name of all that’s holy are you going to get up, you b ——
?”
She jumped out of bed, moved by obedience, by the passive obedience of
a woman accustomed to blows and who still remembers and always will
remember that voice! She said: “Here I am, Patin; what do you want?”
Put Patin did not answer. Then, at a complete loss, she looked around her,
then in the chimney and under the bed and finally sank into a chair, wild with
anxiety, convinced that Patin’s soul alone was there, near her, and that he had
returned in order to torture her.
Suddenly she remembered the loft, in order to reach which one had to take
a ladder. Surely he must have hidden there in order to surprise her. He must
have been held by savages on some distant shore, unable to escape until now,
and he had returned, worse that ever. There was no doubting the quality of
that voice. She raised her head and asked: “Are you up there, Patin?”
Patin did not answer. Then, with a terrible fear which made her heart
tremble, she climbed the ladder, opened the skylight, looked, saw nothing,
entered, looked about and found nothing. Sitting on some straw, she began to
cry, but while she was weeping, overcome by a poignant and supernatural
terror, she heard Patin talking in the room below.
He seemed less angry and he was saying: “Nasty weather! Fierce wind!
Nasty weather! I haven’t eaten, damn it!”
She cried through the ceiling: “Here I am, Patin; I am getting your meal
ready. Don’t get angry.”
She ran down again. There was no one in the room. She felt herself
growing weak, as if death were touching her, and she tried to run and get help
from the neighbors, when a voice near her cried out: “I haven’t had my
breakfast, by G — !”
And the parrot in his cage watched her with his round, knowing, wicked
eye. She, too, looked at him wildly, murmuring: “Ah! so it’s you!”
 He shook his head and continued: “Just you wait! I’ll teach you how to
loaf.”
What happened within her? She felt, she understood that it was he, the
dead man, who had come back, who had disguised himself in the feathers of
this bird in order to continue to torment her; that he would curse, as formerly,
all day long, and bite her, and swear at her, in order to attract the neighbors
and make them laugh. Then she rushed for the cage and seized the bird, which
scratched and tore her flesh with its claws and beak. But she held it with all
her strength between her hands. She threw it on the ground and rolled over it
with the frenzy of one possessed. She crushed it and finally made of it
nothing but a little green, flabby lump which no longer moved or spoke. Then
she wrapped it in a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her nightgown,
barefoot; she crossed the dock, against which the choppy waves of the sea
were beating, and she shook the cloth and let drop this little, dead thing,
which looked like so much grass. Then she returned, threw herself on her
knees before the empty cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled
and prayed for forgiveness, as if she had committed some heinous crime.
 THE PIECE OF STRING

It was market-day, and from all the country round Goderville the peasants
and their wives were coming toward the town. The men walked slowly,
throwing the whole body forward at every step of their long, crooked legs.
They were deformed from pushing the plough which makes the left-shoulder
higher, and bends their figures side-ways; from reaping the grain, when they
have to spread their legs so as to keep on their feet. Their starched blue
blouses, glossy as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs with a
little embroidered design and blown out around their bony bodies, looked
very much like balloons about to soar, whence issued two arms and two feet.
Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And
just behind the animal followed their wives beating it over the back with a
leaf-covered branch to hasten its pace, and carrying large baskets out of
which protruded the heads of chickens or ducks. These women walked more
quickly and energetically than the men, with their erect, dried-up figures,
adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their flat bosoms, and their
heads wrapped round with a white cloth, enclosing the hair and surmounted
by a cap.
Now a char-a-banc passed by, jogging along behind a nag and shaking up
strangely the two men on the seat, and the woman at the bottom of the cart
who held fast to its sides to lessen the hard jolting.
In the market-place at Goderville was a great crowd, a mingled multitude
of men and beasts. The horns of cattle, the high, long-napped hats of wealthy
peasants, the head-dresses of the women came to the surface of that sea. And
the sharp, shrill, barking voices made a continuous, wild din, while above it
occasionally rose a huge burst of laughter from the sturdy lungs of a merry
peasant or a prolonged bellow from a cow tied fast to the wall of a house.
It all smelled of the stable, of milk, of hay and of perspiration, giving off
that half-human, half-animal odor which is peculiar to country folks.
Maitre Hauchecorne, of Breaute, had just arrived at Goderville and was
making his way toward the square when he perceived on the ground a little
piece of string. Maitre Hauchecorne, economical as are all true Normans,
reflected that everything was worth picking up which could be of any use,
and he stooped down, but painfully, because he suffered from rheumatism. He
took the bit of thin string from the ground and was carefully preparing to roll
it up when he saw Maitre Malandain, the harness maker, on his doorstep
staring at him. They had once had a quarrel about a halter, and they had borne
each other malice ever since. Maitre Hauchecorne was overcome with a sort
of shame at being seen by his enemy picking up a bit of string in the road. He
quickly hid it beneath his blouse and then slipped it into his breeches, pocket,
then pretended to be still looking for something on the ground which he did
not discover and finally went off toward the market-place, his head bent
forward and his body almost doubled in two by rheumatic pains.
He was at once lost in the crowd, which kept moving about slowly and
noisily as it chaffered and bargained. The peasants examined the cows, went
off, came back, always in doubt for fear of being cheated, never quite daring
to decide, looking the seller square in the eye in the effort to discover the
tricks of the man and the defect in the beast.
The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, had taken out
the poultry, which lay upon the ground, their legs tied together, with terrified
eyes and scarlet combs.
They listened to propositions, maintaining their prices in a decided
manner with an impassive face or perhaps deciding to accept the smaller
price offered, suddenly calling out to the customer who was starting to go
away:
“All right, I’ll let you have them, Mait’ Anthime.”
Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the Angelus
struck midday those who lived at a distance poured into the inns.
At Jourdain’s the great room was filled with eaters, just as the vast court
was filled with vehicles of every sort — wagons, gigs, chars-a-bancs,
tilburies, innumerable vehicles which have no name, yellow with mud,
misshapen, pieced together, raising their shafts to heaven like two arms, or it
may be with their nose on the ground and their rear in the air.
Just opposite to where the diners were at table the huge fireplace, with its
bright flame, gave out a burning heat on the backs of those who sat at the
right. Three spits were turning, loaded with chickens, with pigeons and with
joints of mutton, and a delectable odor of roast meat and of gravy flowing
over crisp brown skin arose from the hearth, kindled merriment, caused
mouths to water.
 All the aristocracy of the plough were eating there at Mait’ Jourdain’s, the
innkeeper’s, a dealer in horses also and a sharp fellow who had made a great
deal of money in his day.
The dishes were passed round, were emptied, as were the jugs of yellow
cider. Every one told of his affairs, of his purchases and his sales. They
exchanged news about the crops. The weather was good for greens, but too
wet for grain.
Suddenly the drum began to beat in the courtyard before the house. Every
one, except some of the most indifferent, was on their feet at once and ran to
the door, to the windows, their mouths full and napkins in their hand.
When the public crier had finished his tattoo he called forth in a jerky
voice, pausing in the wrong places:
“Be it known to the inhabitants of Goderville and in general to all persons
present at the market that there has been lost this morning on the Beuzeville
road, between nine and ten o’clock, a black leather pocketbook containing
five hundred francs and business papers. You are requested to return it to the
mayor’s office at once or to Maitre Fortune Houlbreque, of Manneville.
There will be twenty francs reward.”
Then the man went away. They heard once more at a distance the dull
beating of the drum and the faint voice of the crier. Then they all began to talk
of this incident, reckoning up the chances which Maitre Houlbreque had of
finding or of not finding his pocketbook again.
The meal went on. They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of
gendarmes appeared on the threshold.
He asked:
“Is Maitre Hauchecorne, of Breaute, here?”
Maitre Hauchecorne, seated at the other end of the table answered:
“Here I am, here I am.”
And he followed the corporal.
The mayor was waiting for him, seated in an armchair. He was the notary
of the place, a tall, grave man of pompous speech.
“Maitre Hauchecorne,” said he, “this morning on the Beuzeville road, you
were seen to pick up the pocketbook lost by Maitre Houlbreque, of
Manneville.”
The countryman looked at the mayor in amazement frightened already at
this suspicion which rested on him, he knew not why.
“I — I picked up that pocketbook?”
 “Yes, YOU.”
“I swear I don’t even know anything about it.”
“You were seen.”
“I was seen — I? Who saw me?”
“M. Malandain, the harness-maker.”
Then the old man remembered, understood, and, reddening with anger,
said:
“Ah! he saw me, did he, the rascal? He saw me picking up this string here,
M’sieu le Maire.”
And fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out of it the little end
of string.
But the mayor incredulously shook his head:
“You will not make me believe, Maitre Hauchecorne, that M. Malandain,
who is a man whose word can be relied on, has mistaken this string for a
pocketbook.”
The peasant, furious, raised his hand and spat on the ground beside him as
if to attest his good faith, repeating:
“For all that, it is God’s truth, M’sieu le Maire. There! On my soul’s
salvation, I repeat it.”
The mayor continued:
“After you picked up the object in question, you even looked about for
some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not dropped out of it.”
The good man was choking with indignation and fear.
“How can they tell — how can they tell such lies as that to slander an
honest man! How can they?”
His protestations were in vain; he was not believed.
He was confronted with M. Malandain, who repeated and sustained his
testimony. They railed at one another for an hour. At his own request Maitre
Hauchecorne was searched. Nothing was found on him.
At last the mayor, much perplexed, sent him away, warning him that he
would inform the public prosecutor and ask for orders.
The news had spread. When he left the mayor’s office the old man was
surrounded, interrogated with a curiosity which was serious or mocking, as
the case might be, but into which no indignation entered. And he began to tell
the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
He passed on, buttonholed by every one, himself buttonholing his
acquaintances, beginning over and over again his tale and his protestations,
showing his pockets turned inside out to prove that he had nothing in them.
They said to him:
“You old rogue!”
He grew more and more angry, feverish, in despair at not being believed,
and kept on telling his story.
The night came. It was time to go home. He left with three of his
neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he had picked up the
string, and all the way he talked of his adventure.
That evening he made the round of the village of Breaute for the purpose
of telling every one. He met only unbelievers.
He brooded over it all night long.
The next day, about one in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm hand of
Maitre Breton, the market gardener at Ymauville, returned the pocketbook
and its contents to Maitre Holbreque, of Manneville.
This man said, indeed, that he had found it on the road, but not knowing
how to read, he had carried it home and given it to his master.
The news spread to the environs. Maitre Hauchecorne was informed. He
started off at once and began to relate his story with the denoument. He was
triumphant.
“What grieved me,” said he, “was not the thing itself, do you understand,
but it was being accused of lying. Nothing does you so much harm as being in
disgrace for lying.”
All day he talked of his adventure. He told it on the roads to the people
who passed, at the cabaret to the people who drank and next Sunday when
they came out of church. He even stopped strangers to tell them about it. He
was easy now, and yet something worried him without his knowing exactly
what it was. People had a joking manner while they listened. They did not
seem convinced. He seemed to feel their remarks behind his back.
On Tuesday of the following week he went to market at Goderville,
prompted solely by the need of telling his story.
Malandain, standing on his doorstep, began to laugh as he saw him pass.
Why?
He accosted a farmer of Criquetot, who did not let hire finish, and giving
him a punch in the pit of the stomach cried in his face: “Oh, you great rogue!”
Then he turned his heel upon him.
Maitre Hauchecorne remained speechless and grew more and more
uneasy. Why had they called him “great rogue”?
 When seated at table in Jourdain’s tavern he began again to explain the
whole affair.
A horse dealer of Montivilliers shouted at him:
“Get out, get out, you old scamp! I know all about your old string.”
Hauchecorne stammered:
“But since they found it again, the pocketbook!”
But the other continued:
“Hold your tongue, daddy; there’s one who finds it and there’s another
who returns it. And no one the wiser.”
The farmer was speechless. He understood at last. They accused him of
having had the pocketbook brought back by an accomplice, by a confederate.
He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
He could not finish his dinner, and went away amid a chorus of jeers.
He went home indignant, choking with rage, with confusion, the more cast
down since with his Norman craftiness he was, perhaps, capable of having
done what they accused him of and even of boasting of it as a good trick. He
was dimly conscious that it was impossible to prove his innocence, his
craftiness being so well known. He felt himself struck to the heart by the
injustice of the suspicion.
He began anew to tell his tale, lengthening his recital every day, each day
adding new proofs, more energetic declarations and more sacred oaths,
which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, for his mind
was entirely occupied with the story of the string. The more he denied it, the
more artful his arguments, the less he was believed.
“Those are liars proofs,” they said behind his back.
He felt this. It preyed upon him and he exhausted himself in useless
efforts.
He was visibly wasting away.
Jokers would make him tell the story of “the piece of string” to amuse
them, just as you make a soldier who has been on a campaign tell his story of
the battle. His mind kept growing weaker and about the end of December he
took to his bed.
He passed away early in January, and, in the ravings of death agony, he
protested his innocence, repeating:
“A little bit of string — a little bit of string. See, here it is, M’sieu le
Maire.”
 TOINE

He was known for thirty miles round was father Toine — fat Toine, Toine-
my-extra, Antoine Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy — the innkeeper of
Tournevent.
It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley
that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants’ hamlet consisting of ten
Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.
The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the
name of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine
overgrown with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind — the ocean
wind that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the
sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows of the fields
in time of storm.
But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine Macheble,
nicknamed Burnt-Brandy, who was called also Toine, or Toine-My-Extra-
Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current in his mouth:
“My Extra-Special is the best in France:”
His “Extra-Special” was, of course, his cognac.
For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his
Extra-Special and his “Burnt-Brandy,” for whenever he was asked: “What
shall I drink, Toine?” he invariably answered: “A burnt-brandy, my son-in-
law; that warms the inside and clears the head — there’s nothing better for
your body.”
He called everyone his son-in-law, though he had no daughter, either
married or to be married.
Well known indeed was Toine Burnt-Brandy, the stoutest man in all
Normandy. His little house seemed ridiculously small, far too small and too
low to hold him; and when people saw him standing at his door, as he did all
day long, they asked one another how he could possibly get through the door.
But he went in whenever a customer appeared, for it was only right that
Toine should be invited to take his thimbleful of whatever was drunk in his
wine shop.
 His inn bore the sign: “The Friends’ Meeting-Place” — and old Toine
was, indeed, the friend of all. His customers came from Fecamp and
Montvilliers, just for the fun of seeing him and hearing him talk; for fat Toine
would have made a tombstone laugh. He had a way of chaffing people
without offending them, or of winking to express what he didn’t say, of
slapping his thighs when he was merry in such a way as to make you hold
your sides, laughing. And then, merely to see him drink was a curiosity. He
drank everything that was offered him, his roguish eyes twinkling, both with
the enjoyment of drinking and at the thought of the money he was taking in.
His was a double pleasure: first, that of drinking; and second, that of piling
up the cash.
You should have heard him quarrelling with his wife! It was worth paying
for to see them together. They had wrangled all the thirty years they had been
married; but Toine was good-humored, while his better-half grew angry. She
was a tall peasant woman, who walked with long steps like a stork, and had
a head resembling that of an angry screech-owl. She spent her time rearing
chickens in a little poultry-yard behind the inn, and she was noted for her
success in fattening them for the table.
Whenever the gentry of Fecamp gave a dinner they always had at least one
of Madame Toine’s chickens to be in the fashion.
But she was born ill-tempered, and she went through life in a mood of
perpetual discontent. Annoyed at everyone, she seemed to be particularly
annoyed at her husband. She disliked his gaiety, his reputation, his rude
health, his embonpoint. She treated him as a good-for-nothing creature
because he earned his money without working, and as a glutton because he
ate and drank as much as ten ordinary men; and not a day went by without her
declaring spitefully:
“You’d be better in the stye along with the pigs! You’re so fat it makes me
sick to look at you!”
And she would shout in his face:
“Wait! Wait a bit! We’ll see! You’ll burst one of these fine days like a
sack of corn-you old bloat, you!”
Toine would laugh heartily, patting his corpulent person, and replying:
“Well, well, old hen, why don’t you fatten up your chickens like that? just
try!”
And, rolling his sleeves back from his enormous arm, he said:
“That would make a fine wing now, wouldn’t it?”
 And the customers, doubled up with laughter, would thump the table with
their fists and stamp their feet on the floor.
The old woman, mad with rage, would repeat:
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You’ll see what’ll happen. He’ll burst like a sack
of grain!”
And off she would go, amid the jeers and laughter of the drinkers.
Toine was, in fact, an astonishing sight, he was so fat, so heavy, so red.
He was one of those enormous beings with whom Death seems to be amusing
himself — playing perfidious tricks and pranks, investing with an irresistibly
comic air his slow work of destruction. Instead of manifesting his approach,
as with others, in white hairs, in emaciation, in wrinkles, in the gradual
collapse which makes the onlookers say: “Gad! how he has changed!” he
took a malicious pleasure in fattening Toine, in making him monstrous and
absurd, in tingeing his face with a deep crimson, in giving him the
appearance of superhuman health, and the changes he inflicts on all were in
the case of Toine laughable, comic, amusing, instead of being painful and
distressing to witness.
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” said his wife. “You’ll see.”
At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence.
The giant was put to bed in the little room behind the partition of the
drinking-room that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends, for his
head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly inert. It was
hoped at first that his immense legs would regain some degree of power; but
this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his days and nights in the bed,
which was only made up once a week, with the help of four neighbors who
lifted the innkeeper, each holding a limb, while his mattress was turned.
He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different kind —
more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike fear of his
wife, who grumbled from morning till night:
“Look at him there — the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature, the
old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!”
He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the
old woman’s back, and turning over on his other side — the only movement
of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a “tack to the north” or
a “tack to the south.”
His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the
bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend’s voice:
 “Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?”
And Celestin Maloisel answered:
“Yes, it’s me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?”
“Not exactly getting about,” answered Toine. “But I haven’t grown thin;
my carcass is still good.”
Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep him
company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink without him. It
pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking without him.
“That’s what hurts worst of all,” he would say: “that I cannot drink my
Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going without
drink is the very deuce.”
Then his wife’s screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she
would break in with the words:
“Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I’ve got to
feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!”
And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would
sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round
inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few hens
would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor.
Toine’s friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat every
afternoon beside the invalid’s bed. Helpless though he was, the jovial Toine
still provided them with amusement. He would have made the devil himself
laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin
Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-
tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as
a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine’s
society all the same.
They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed,
and played dominoes from two till six.
But Toine’s wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that her
fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed; and
whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on the
dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar, declaring
that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig without seeing him
amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had to work hard all day
long.
 Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their heads to the storm, but
Prosper Horslaville egged on the old woman, and was only amused at her
wrath.
One day, when she was more angry than usual, he said:
“Do you know what I’d do if I were you?”
She fixed her owl’s eyes on him, and waited for his next words.
Prosper went on:
“Your man is as hot as an oven, and he never leaves his bed — well, I’d
make him hatch some eggs.”
She was struck dumb at the suggestion, thinking that Prosper could not
possibly be in earnest. But he continued:
“I’d put five under one arm, and five under the other, the same day that I
set a hen. They’d all come out at the same time; then I’d take your husband’s
chickens to the hen to bring up with her own. You’d rear a fine lot that way.”
“Could it be done?” asked the astonished old woman.
“Could it be done?” echoed the man. “Why not? Since eggs can be
hatched in a warm box why shouldn’t they be hatched in a warm bed?”
She was struck by this reasoning, and went away soothed and reflective.
A week later she entered Toine’s room with her apron full of eggs, and
said:
“I’ve just put the yellow hen on ten eggs. Here are ten for you; try not to
break them.”
“What do you want?” asked the amazed Toine.
“I want you to hatch them, you lazy creature!” she answered.
He laughed at first; then, finding she was serious, he got angry, and
refused absolutely to have the eggs put under his great arms, that the warmth
of his body might hatch them.
But the old woman declared wrathfully:
“You’ll get no dinner as long as you won’t have them. You’ll see what’ll
happen.”
Tome was uneasy, but answered nothing.
When twelve o’clock struck, he called out:
“Hullo, mother, is the soup ready?”
“There’s no soup for you, lazy-bones,” cried the old woman from her
kitchen.
He thought she must be joking, and waited a while. Then he begged,
implored, swore, “tacked to the north” and “tacked to the south,” and beat on
the wall with his fists, but had to consent at last to five eggs being placed
against his left side; after which he had his soup.
When his friends arrived that afternoon they thought he must be ill, he
seemed so constrained and queer.
They started the daily game of dominoes. But Tome appeared to take no
pleasure in it, and reached forth his hand very slowly, and with great
precaution.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” asked Horslaville.
“I have a sort of stiffness in the shoulder,” answered Toine.
Suddenly they heard people come into the inn. The players were silent.
It was the mayor with the deputy. They ordered two glasses of Extra-
Special, and began to discuss local affairs. As they were talking in somewhat
low tones Toine wanted to put his ear to the wall, and, forgetting all about his
eggs, he made a sudden “tack to the north,” which had the effect of plunging
him into the midst of an omelette.
At the loud oath he swore his wife came hurrying into the room, and,
guessing what had happened, stripped the bedclothes from him with lightning
rapidity. She stood at first without moving or uttering a syllable, speechless
with indignation at sight of the yellow poultice sticking to her husband’s side.
Then, trembling with fury, she threw herself on the paralytic, showering
on him blows such as those with which she cleaned her linen on the seashore.
Tome’s three friends were choking with laughter, coughing, spluttering and
shouting, and the fat innkeeper himself warded his wife’s attacks with all the
prudence of which he was capable, that he might not also break the five eggs
at his other side.
Tome was conquered. He had to hatch eggs, he had to give up his games
of dominoes and renounce movement of any sort, for the old woman angrily
deprived him of food whenever he broke an egg.
He lay on his back, with eyes fixed on the ceiling, motionless, his arms
raised like wings, warming against his body the rudimentary chickens
enclosed in their white shells.
He spoke now only in hushed tones; as if he feared a noise as much as
motion, and he took a feverish interest in the yellow hen who was
accomplishing in the poultry-yard the same task as he.
“Has the yellow hen eaten her food all right?” he would ask his wife.
And the old woman went from her fowls to her husband and from her
husband to her fowls, devoured by anxiety as to the welfare of the little
chickens who were maturing in the bed and in the nest.
The country people who knew the story came, agog with curiosity, to ask
news of Toine. They entered his room on tiptoe, as one enters a sick-
chamber, and asked:
“Well! how goes it?”
“All right,” said Toine; “only it keeps me fearfully hot.”
One morning his wife entered in a state of great excitement, and declared:
“The yellow hen has seven chickens! Three of the eggs were addled.”
Toine’s heart beat painfully. How many would he have?
“Will it soon be over?” he asked, with the anguish of a woman who is
about to become a mother.
“It’s to be hoped so!” answered the old woman crossly, haunted by fear of
failure.
They waited. Friends of Toine who had got wind that his time was
drawing near arrived, and filled the little room.
Nothing else was talked about in the neighboring cottages. Inquirers asked
one another for news as they stood at their doors.
About three o’clock Toine fell asleep. He slumbered half his time
nowadays. He was suddenly awakened by an unaccustomed tickling under
his right arm. He put his left hand on the spot, and seized a little creature
covered with yellow down, which fluttered in his hand.
His emotion was so great that he cried out, and let go his hold of the
chicken, which ran over his chest. The bar was full of people at the time. The
customers rushed to Toine’s room, and made a circle round him as they
would round a travelling showman; while Madame Toine picked up the
chicken, which had taken refuge under her husband’s beard.
No one spoke, so great was the tension. It was a warm April day. Outside
the window the yellow hen could be heard calling to her newly-fledged
brood.
Toine, who was perspiring with emotion and anxiety, murmured:
“I have another now — under the left arm.”
His’ wife plunged her great bony hand into the bed, and pulled out a
second chicken with all the care of a midwife.
The neighbors wanted to see it. It was passed from one to another, and
examined as if it were a phenomenon.
For twenty minutes no more hatched out, then four emerged at the same
moment from their shells.
 There was a great commotion among the lookers-on. And Toine smiled
with satisfaction, beginning to take pride in this unusual sort of paternity.
There were not many like him! Truly, he was a remarkable specimen of
humanity!
“That makes six!” he declared. “Great heavens, what a christening we’ll
have!”
And a loud laugh rose from all present. Newcomers filled the bar. They
asked one another:
“How many are there?”
“Six.”
Toine’s wife took this new family to the hen, who clucked loudly, bristled
her feathers, and spread her wings wide to shelter her growing brood of little
ones.
“There’s one more!” cried Toine.
He was mistaken. There were three! It was an unalloyed triumph! The last
chicken broke through its shell at seven o’clock in the evening. All the eggs
were good! And Toine, beside himself with joy, his brood hatched out,
exultant, kissed the tiny creature on the back, almost suffocating it. He wanted
to keep it in his bed until morning, moved by a mother’s tenderness toward
the tiny being which he had brought to life, but the old woman carried it away
like the others, turning a deaf ear to her husband’s entreaties.
The delighted spectators went off to spread the news of the event, and
Horslaville, who was the last to go, asked:
“You’ll invite me when the first is cooked, won’t you, Toine?”
At this idea a smile overspread the fat man’s face, and he answered:
“Certainly I’ll invite you, my son-in-law.”
 MADAME HUSSON’S “ROSIER”
We had just left Gisors, where I was awakened to hearing the name of the
town called out by the guards, and I was dozing off again when a terrific
shock threw me forward on top of a large lady who sat opposite me.
One of the wheels of the engine had broken, and the engine itself lay
across the track. The tender and the baggage car were also derailed, and lay
beside this mutilated engine, which rattled, groaned, hissed, puffed,
sputtered, and resembled those horses that fall in the street with their flanks
heaving, their breast palpitating, their nostrils steaming and their whole body
trembling, but incapable of the slightest effort to rise and start off again.
There were no dead or wounded; only a few with bruises, for the train
was not going at full speed. And we looked with sorrow at the great crippled
iron creature that could not draw us along any more, and that blocked the
track, perhaps for some time, for no doubt they would have to send to Paris
for a special train to come to our aid.
It was then ten o’clock in the morning, and I at once decided to go back to
Gisors for breakfast.
As I was walking along I said to myself:
“Gisors, Gisors — why, I know someone there!
“Who is it? Gisors? Let me see, I have a friend in this town.” A name
suddenly came to my mind, “Albert Marambot.” He was an old school friend
whom I had not seen for at least twelve years, and who was practicing
medicine in Gisors. He had often written, inviting me to come and see him,
and I had always promised to do so, without keeping my word. But at last I
would take advantage of this opportunity.
I asked the first passer-by:
“Do you know where Dr. Marambot lives?”
He replied, without hesitation, and with the drawling accent of the
Normans:
“Rue Dauphine.”
I presently saw, on the door of the house he pointed out, a large brass
plate on which was engraved the name of my old chum. I rang the bell, but
the servant, a yellow-haired girl who moved slowly, said with a Stupid air:
“He isn’t here, he isn’t here.”
I heard a sound of forks and of glasses and I cried:
 “Hallo, Marambot!”
A door opened and a large man, with whiskers and a cross look on his
face, appeared, carrying a dinner napkin in his hand.
I certainly should not have recognized him. One would have said he was
forty-five at least, and, in a second, all the provincial life which makes one
grow heavy, dull and old came before me. In a single flash of thought,
quicker than the act of extending my hand to him, I could see his life, his
manner of existence, his line of thought and his theories of things in general. I
guessed at the prolonged meals that had rounded out his stomach, his after-
dinner naps from the torpor of a slow indigestion aided by cognac, and his
vague glances cast on the patient while he thought of the chicken that was
roasting before the fire. His conversations about cooking, about cider, brandy
and wine, the way of preparing certain dishes and of blending certain sauces
were revealed to me at sight of his puffy red cheeks, his heavy lips and his
lustreless eyes.
“You do not recognize me. I am Raoul Aubertin,” I said.
He opened his arms and gave me such a hug that I thought he would choke
me.
“You have not breakfasted, have you?”
“No.”
“How fortunate! I was just sitting down to table and I have an excellent
trout.”
Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him at breakfast. I said:
“Are you a bachelor?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And do you like it here?”
“Time does not hang heavy; I am busy. I have patients and friends. I eat
well, have good health, enjoy laughing and shooting. I get along.”
“Is not life very monotonous in this little town?”
“No, my dear boy, not when one knows how to fill in the time. A little
town, in fact, is like a large one. The incidents and amusements are less
varied, but one makes more of them; one has fewer acquaintances, but one
meets them more frequently. When you know all the windows in a street,
each one of them interests you and puzzles you more than a whole street in
Paris.
“A little town is very amusing, you know, very amusing, very amusing.
Why, take Gisors. I know it at the tips of my fingers, from its beginning up to
the present time. You have no idea what queer history it has.”
“Do you belong to Gisors?”
“I? No. I come from Gournay, its neighbor and rival. Gournay is to Gisors
what Lucullus was to Cicero. Here, everything is for glory; they say ‘the
proud people of Gisors.’ At Gournay, everything is for the stomach; they say
‘the chewers of Gournay.’ Gisors despises Gournay, but Gournay laughs at
Gisors. It is a very comical country, this.”
I perceived that I was eating something very delicious, hard-boiled eggs
wrapped in a covering of meat jelly flavored with herbs and put on ice for a
few moments. I said as I smacked my lips to compliment Marambot:
“That is good.”
He smiled.
“Two things are necessary, good jelly, which is hard to get, and good
eggs. Oh, how rare good eggs are, with the yolks slightly reddish, and with a
good flavor! I have two poultry yards, one for eggs and the other for
chickens. I feed my laying hens in a special manner. I have my own ideas on
the subject. In an egg, as in the meat of a chicken, in beef, or in mutton, in
milk, in everything, one perceives, and ought to taste, the juice, the
quintessence of all the food on which the animal has fed. How much better
food we could have if more attention were paid to this!”
I laughed as I said:
“You are a gourmand?”
“Parbleu. It is only imbeciles who are not. One is a gourmand as one is an
artist, as one is learned, as one is a poet. The sense of taste, my friend, is
very delicate, capable of perfection, and quite as worthy of respect as the eye
and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is deprived of an exquisite faculty,
the faculty of discerning the quality of food, just as one may lack the faculty
of discerning the beauties of a book or of a work of art; it means to be
deprived of an essential organ, of something that belongs to higher humanity;
it means to belong to one of those innumerable classes of the infirm, the
unfortunate, and the fools of which our race is composed; it means to have
the mouth of an animal, in a word, just like the mind of an animal. A man who
cannot distinguish one kind of lobster from another; a herring — that
admirable fish that has all the flavors, all the odors of the sea — from a
mackerel or a whiting; and a Cresane from a Duchess pear, may be compared
to a man who should mistake Balzac for Eugene Sue; a symphony of
Beethoven for a military march composed by the bandmaster of a regiment;
and the Apollo Belvidere for the statue of General de Blaumont.
“Who is General de Blaumont?”
“Oh, that’s true, you do not know. It is easy to tell that you do not belong
to Gisors. I told you just now, my dear boy, that they called the inhabitants of
this town ‘the proud people of Gisors,’ and never was an epithet better
deserved. But let us finish breakfast first, and then I will tell you about our
town and take you to see it.”
He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of
wine which he gazed at affectionately as he replaced the glass on the table.
It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his cheeks
flushed, his eyes eager, and his whiskers spreading round his mouth as it kept
working.
He made me eat until I was almost choking. Then, as I was about to return
to the railway station, he seized me by the arm and took me through the
streets. The town, of a pretty, provincial type, commanded by its citadel, the
most curious monument of military architecture of the seventh century to be
found in France, overlooks, in its turn, a long, green valley, where the large
Norman cows graze and ruminate in the pastures.
The doctor quoted:
“‘Gisors, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the department of Eure,
mentioned in Caesar’s Commentaries: Caesaris ostium, then Caesartium,
Caesortium, Gisortium, Gisors.’ I shall not take you to visit the old Roman
encampment, the remains of which are still in existence.”
I laughed and replied:
“My dear friend, it seems to me that you are affected with a special
malady that, as a doctor, you ought to study; it is called the spirit of
provincialism.”
He stopped abruptly.
“The spirit of provincialism, my friend, is nothing but natural patriotism,”
he said. “I love my house, my town and my province because I discover in
them the customs of my own village; but if I love my country, if I become
angry when a neighbor sets foot in it, it is because I feel that my home is in
danger, because the frontier that I do not know is the high road to my
province. For instance, I am a Norman, a true Norman; well, in spite of my
hatred of the German and my desire for revenge, I do not detest them, I do not
hate them by instinct as I hate the English, the real, hereditary natural enemy
of the Normans; for the English traversed this soil inhabited by my ancestors,
plundered and ravaged it twenty times, and my aversion to this perfidious
people was transmitted to me at birth by my father. See, here is the statue of
the general.”
“What general?”
“General Blaumont! We had to have a statue. We are not ‘the proud people
of Gisors’ for nothing! So we discovered General de Blaumont. Look in this
bookseller’s window.”
He drew me towards the bookstore, where about fifteen red, yellow and
blue volumes attracted the eye. As I read the titles, I began to laugh
idiotically. They read:
Gisors, its origin, its future, by M. X. . . ., member of several learned
societies; History of Gisors, by the Abbe A . . .; Gasors from the time of
Caesar to the present day, by M. B. . . ., Landowner; Gisors and its environs,
by Doctor C. D. . . .; The Glories of Gisors, by a Discoverer.
“My friend,” resumed Marambot, “not a year, not a single year, you
understand, passes without a fresh history of Gisors being published here; we
now have twenty-three.”
“And the glories of Gisors?” I asked.
“Oh, I will not mention them all, only the principal ones. We had first
General de Blaumont, then Baron Davillier, the celebrated ceramist who
explored Spain and the Balearic Isles, and brought to the notice of collectors
the wonderful Hispano-Arabic china. In literature we have a very clever
journalist, now dead, Charles Brainne, and among those who are living, the
very eminent editor of the Nouvelliste de Rouen, Charles Lapierre . . . and
many others, many others.”
We were traversing along street with a gentle incline, with a June sun
beating down on it and driving the residents into their houses.
Suddenly there appeared at the farther end of the street a drunken man who
was staggering along, with his head forward his arms and legs limp. He
would walk forward rapidly three, six, or ten steps and then stop. When these
energetic movements landed him in the middle of the road he stopped short
and swayed on his feet, hesitating between falling and a fresh start. Then he
would dart off in any direction, sometimes falling against the wall of a house,
against which he seemed to be fastened, as though he were trying to get in
through the wall. Then he would suddenly turn round and look ahead of him,
his mouth open and his eyes blinking in the sunlight, and getting away from
the wall by a movement of the hips, he started off once more.
A little yellow dog, a half-starved cur, followed him, barking; stopping
when he stopped, and starting off when he started.
“Hallo,” said Marambot, “there is Madame Husson’s ‘Rosier’.
“Madame Husson’s ‘Rosier’,” I exclaimed in astonishment. “What do you
mean?”
The doctor began to laugh.
“Oh, that is what we call drunkards round here. The name comes from an
old story which has now become a legend, although it is true in all respects.”
“Is it an amusing story?”
“Very amusing.”
“Well, then, tell it to me.”
“I will.”
There lived formerly in this town a very upright old lady who was a great
guardian of morals and was called Mme. Husson. You know, I am telling you
the real names and not imaginary ones. Mme. Husson took a special interest
in good works, in helping the poor and encouraging the deserving. She was a
little woman with a quick walk and wore a black wig. She was ceremonious,
polite, on very good terms with the Almighty in the person of Abby Malon,
and had a profound horror, an inborn horror of vice, and, in particular, of the
vice the Church calls lasciviousness. Any irregularity before marriage made
her furious, exasperated her till she was beside herself.
Now, this was the period when they presented a prize as a reward of
virtue to any girl in the environs of Paris who was found to be chaste. She
was called a Rosiere, and Mme. Husson got the idea that she would institute
a similar ceremony at Gisors. She spoke about it to Abbe Malon, who at
once made out a list of candidates.
However, Mme. Husson had a servant, an old woman called Francoise, as
upright as her mistress. As soon as the priest had left, madame called the
servant and said:
“Here, Francoise, here are the girls whose names M. le cure has
submitted to me for the prize of virtue; try and find out what reputation they
bear in the district.”
And Francoise set out. She collected all the scandal, all the stories, all the
tattle, all the suspicions. That she might omit nothing, she wrote it all down
together with her memoranda in her housekeeping book, and handed it each
morning to Mme. Husson, who, after adjusting her spectacles on her thin
nose, read as follows:
Bread...........................four sous
Milk............................two sous
Butter .........................eight sous
Malvina Levesque got into trouble last year with Mathurin Poilu.
Leg of mutton...................twenty-five sous
Salt............................one sou
Rosalie Vatinel was seen in the Riboudet woods with Cesaire Pienoir, by
Mme. Onesime, the ironer, on July the 20th about dusk.
Radishes........................one sou
Vinegar.........................two sous
Oxalic acid.....................two sous
Josephine Durdent, who is not believed to have committed a fault,
although she corresponds with young Oportun, who is in service in Rouen,
and who sent her a present of a cap by diligence.
Not one came out unscathed in this rigorous inquisition. Francoise
inquired of everyone, neighbors, drapers, the principal, the teaching sisters at
school, and gathered the slightest details.
As there is not a girl in the world about whom gossips have not found
something to say, there was not found in all the countryside one young girl
whose name was free from some scandal.
But Mme. Husson desired that the “Rosiere” of Gisors, like Caesar’s
wife, should be above suspicion, and she was horrified, saddened and in
despair at the record in her servant’s housekeeping account-book.
They then extended their circle of inquiries to the neighboring villages;
but with no satisfaction.
They consulted the mayor. His candidates failed. Those of Dr. Barbesol
were equally unlucky, in spite of the exactness of his scientific vouchers.
But one morning Francoise, on returning from one of her expeditions, said
to her mistress:
“You see, madame, that if you wish to give a prize to anyone, there is only
Isidore in all the country round.”
Mme. Husson remained thoughtful. She knew him well, this Isidore, the
son of Virginie the greengrocer. His proverbial virtue had been the delight of
Gisors for several years, and served as an entertaining theme of conversation
in the town, and of amusement to the young girls who loved to tease him. He
was past twenty-one, was tall, awkward, slow and timid; helped his mother
in the business, and spent his days picking over fruit and vegetables, seated
on a chair outside the door.
He had an abnormal dread of a petticoat and cast down his eyes whenever
a female customer looked at him smilingly, and this well-known timidity
made him the butt of all the wags in the country.
Bold words, coarse expressions, indecent allusions, brought the color to
his cheeks so quickly that Dr. Barbesol had nicknamed him “the thermometer
of modesty.” Was he as innocent as he looked? ill-natured people asked
themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and shameful mysteries
or else indignation at the relations ordained as the concomitant of love that so
strongly affected the son of Virginie the greengrocer? The urchins of the
neighborhood as they ran past the shop would fling disgusting remarks at him
just to see him cast down his eyes. The girls amused themselves by walking
up and down before him, cracking jokes that made him go into the store. The
boldest among them teased him to his face just to have a laugh, to amuse
themselves, made appointments with him and proposed all sorts of things.
So Madame Husson had become thoughtful.
Certainly, Isidore was an exceptional case of notorious, unassailable
virtue. No one, among the most sceptical, most incredulous, would have been
able, would have dared, to suspect Isidore of the slightest infraction of any
law of morality. He had never been seen in a cafe, never been seen at night
on the street. He went to bed at eight o’clock and rose at four. He was a
perfection, a pearl.
But Mme. Husson still hesitated. The idea of substituting a boy for a girl,
a “rosier” for a “rosiere,” troubled her, worried her a little, and she resolved
to consult Abbe Malon.
The abbe responded:
“What do you desire to reward, madame? It is virtue, is it not, and nothing
but virtue? What does it matter to you, therefore, if it is masculine or
feminine? Virtue is eternal; it has neither sex nor country; it is ‘Virtue.’”
Thus encouraged, Mme. Husson went to see the mayor.
He approved heartily.
“We will have a fine ceremony,” he said. “And another year if we can find
a girl as worthy as Isidore we will give the reward to her. It will even be a
good example that we shall set to Nanterre. Let us not be exclusive; let us
welcome all merit.”
 Isidore, who had been told about this, blushed deeply and seemed happy.
The ceremony was fixed for the 15th of August, the festival of the Virgin
Mary and of the Emperor Napoleon. The municipality had decided to make
an imposing ceremony and had built the platform on the couronneaux, a
delightful extension of the ramparts of the old citadel where I will take you
presently.
With the natural revulsion of public feeling, the virtue of Isidore, ridiculed
hitherto, had suddenly become respected and envied, as it would bring him in
five hundred francs besides a savings bank book, a mountain of
consideration, and glory enough and to spare. The girls now regretted their
frivolity, their ridicule, their bold manners; and Isidore, although still modest
and timid, had now a little contented air that bespoke his internal satisfaction.
The evening before the 15th of August the entire Rue Dauphine was
decorated with flags. Oh, I forgot to tell you why this street had been called
Rue Dauphine.
It seems that the wife or mother of the dauphin, I do not remember which
one, while visiting Gisors had been feted so much by the authorities that
during a triumphal procession through the town she stopped before one of the
houses in this street, halting the procession, and exclaimed:
“Oh, the pretty house! How I should like to go through it! To whom does it
belong?”
They told her the name of the owner, who was sent for and brought, proud
and embarrassed, before the princess. She alighted from her carriage, went
into the house, wishing to go over it from top to bottom, and even shut herself
in one of the rooms alone for a few seconds.
When she came out, the people, flattered at this honor paid to a citizen of
Gisors, shouted “Long live the dauphine!” But a rhymester wrote some
words to a refrain, and the street retained the title of her royal highness, for
“The princess, in a hurry,
Without bell, priest, or beadle,
But with some water only,
Had baptized it.”
But to come back to Isidore.
They had scattered flowers all along the road as they do for processions
at the Fete-Dieu, and the National Guard was present, acting on the orders of
their chief, Commandant Desbarres, an old soldier of the Grand Army, who
pointed with pride to the beard of a Cossack cut with a single sword stroke
from the chin of its owner by the commandant during the retreat in Russia,
and which hung beside the frame containing the cross of the Legion of Honor
presented to him by the emperor himself.
The regiment that he commanded was, besides, a picked regiment
celebrated all through the province, and the company of grenadiers of Gisors
was called on to attend all important ceremonies for a distance of fifteen to
twenty leagues. The story goes that Louis Philippe, while reviewing the
militia of Eure, stopped in astonishment before the company from Gisors,
exclaiming:
“Oh, who are those splendid grenadiers?”
“The grenadiers of Gisors,” replied the general.
“I might have known it,” murmured the king.
So Commandant Desbarres came at the head of his men, preceded by the
band, to get Isidore in his mother’s store.
After a little air had been played by the band beneath the windows, the
“Rosier” himself appeared — on the threshold. He was dressed in white
duck from head to foot and wore a straw hat with a little bunch of orange
blossoms as a cockade.
The question of his clothes had bothered Mme. Husson a good deal, and
she hesitated some time between the black coat of those who make their first
communion and an entire white suit. But Francoise, her counsellor, induced
her to decide on the white suit, pointing out that the Rosier would look like a
swan.
Behind him came his guardian, his godmother, Mme. Husson, in triumph.
She took his arm to go out of the store, and the mayor placed himself on the
other side of the Rosier. The drums beat. Commandant Desbarres gave the
order “Present arms!” The procession resumed its march towards the church
amid an immense crowd of people who has gathered from the neighboring
districts.
After a short mass and an affecting discourse by Abbe Malon, they
continued on their way to the couronneaux, where the banquet was served in
a tent.
Before taking their seats at table, the mayor gave an address. This is it,
word for word. I learned it by heart:
“Young man, a woman of means, beloved by the poor and respected by the
rich, Mme. Husson, whom the whole country is thanking here, through me,
had the idea, the happy and benevolent idea, of founding in this town a prize
for, virtue, which should serve as a valuable encouragement to the inhabitants
of this beautiful country.
“You, young man, are the first to be rewarded in this dynasty of goodness
and chastity. Your name will remain at the head of this list of the most
deserving, and your life, understand me, your whole life, must correspond to
this happy commencement. To-day, in presence of this noble woman, of these
soldier-citizens who have taken up their arms in your honor, in presence of
this populace, affected, assembled to applaud you, or, rather, to applaud
virtue, in your person, you make a solemn contract with the town, with all of
us, to continue until your death the excellent example of your youth.
“Do not forget, young man, that you are the first seed cast into this field of
hope; give us the fruits that we expect of you.”
The mayor advanced three steps, opened his arms and pressed Isidore to
his heart.
The “Rosier” was sobbing without knowing why, from a confused
emotion, from pride and a vague and happy feeling of tenderness.
Then the mayor placed in one hand a silk purse in which gold tingled —
five hundred francs in gold! — and in his other hand a savings bank book.
And he said in a solemn tone:
“Homage, glory and riches to virtue.”
Commandant Desbarres shouted “Bravo!” the grenadiers vociferated, and
the crowd applauded.
Mme. Husson wiped her eyes, in her turn. Then they all sat down at the
table where the banquet was served.
The repast was magnificent and seemed interminable. One course
followed another; yellow cider and red wine in fraternal contact blended in
the stomach of the guests. The rattle of plates, the sound of voices, and of
music softly played, made an incessant deep hum, and was dispersed abroad
in the clear sky where the swallows were flying. Mme. Husson occasionally
readjusted her black wig, which would slip over on one side, and chatted
with Abbe Malon. The mayor, who was excited, talked politics with
Commandant Desbarres, and Isidore ate, drank, as if he had never eaten or
drunk before. He helped himself repeatedly to all the dishes, becoming
aware for the first time of the pleasure of having one’s belly full of good
things which tickle the palate in the first place. He had let out a reef in his
belt and, without speaking, and although he was a little uneasy at a wine stain
on his white waistcoat, he ceased eating in order to take up his glass and
hold it to his mouth as long as possible, to enjoy the taste slowly.
It was time for the toasts. They were many and loudly applauded. Evening
was approaching and they had been at the table since noon. Fine, milky
vapors were already floating in the air in the valley, the light night-robe of
streams and meadows; the sun neared the horizon; the cows were lowing in
the distance amid the mists of the pasture. The feast was over. They returned
to Gisors. The procession, now disbanded, walked in detachments. Mme.
Husson had taken Isidore’s arm and was giving him a quantity of urgent,
excellent advice.
They stopped at the door of the fruit store, and the “Rosier” was left at his
mother’s house. She had not come home yet. Having been invited by her
family to celebrate her son’s triumph, she had taken luncheon with her sister
after having followed the procession as far as the banqueting tent.
So Isidore remained alone in the store, which was growing dark. He sat
down on a chair, excited by the wine and by pride, and looked about him.
Carrots, cabbages, and onions gave out their strong odor of vegetables in the
closed room, that coarse smell of the garden blended with the sweet,
penetrating odor of strawberries and the delicate, slight, evanescent
fragrance of a basket of peaches.
The “Rosier” took one of these and ate it, although he was as full as an
egg. Then, all at once, wild with joy, he began to dance about the store, and
something rattled in his waistcoat.
He was surprised, and put his hand in his pocket and brought out the purse
containing the five hundred francs, which he had forgotten in his agitation.
Five hundred francs! What a fortune! He poured the gold pieces out on the
counter and spread them out with his big hand with a slow, caressing touch
so as to see them all at the same time. There were twenty-five, twenty-five
round gold pieces, all gold! They glistened on the wood in the dim light and
he counted them over and over, one by one. Then he put them back in the
purse, which he replaced in his pocket.
Who will ever know or who can tell what a terrible conflict took place in
the soul of the “Rosier” between good and evil, the tumultuous attack of
Satan, his artifices, the temptations which he offered to this timid virgin
heart? What suggestions, what imaginations, what desires were not invented
by the evil one to excite and destroy this chosen one? He seized his hat,
Mme. Husson’s saint, his hat, which still bore the little bunch of orange
blossoms, and going out through the alley at the back of the house, he
disappeared in the darkness.
Virginie, the fruiterer, on learning that her son had returned, went home at
once, and found the house empty. She waited, without thinking anything about
it at first; but at the end of a quarter of an hour she made inquiries. The
neighbors had seen Isidore come home and had not seen him go out again.
They began to look for him, but could not find him. His mother, in alarm,
went to the mayor. The mayor knew nothing, except that he had left him at the
door of his home. Mme. Husson had just retired when they informed her that
her protege had disappeared. She immediately put on her wig, dressed
herself and went to Virginie’s house. Virginie, whose plebeian soul was
readily moved, was weeping copiously amid her cabbages, carrots and
onions.
They feared some accident had befallen him. What could it be?
Commandant Desbarres notified the police, who made a circuit of the town,
and on the high road to Pontoise they found the little bunch of orange
blossoms. It was placed on a table around which the authorities were
deliberating. The “Rosier” must have been the victim of some stratagem,
some trick, some jealousy; but in what way? What means had been employed
to kidnap this innocent creature, and with what object?
Weary of looking for him without any result, Virginie, alone, remained
watching and weeping.
The following evening, when the coach passed by on its return from Paris,
Gisors learned with astonishment that its “Rosier” had stopped the vehicle at
a distance of about two hundred metres from the town, had climbed up on it
and paid his fare, handing over a gold piece and receiving the change, and
that he had quietly alighted in the centre of the great city.
There was great excitement all through the countryside. Letters passed
between the mayor and the chief of police in Paris, but brought no result.
The days followed one another, a week passed.
Now, one morning, Dr. Barbesol, who had gone out early, perceived,
sitting on a doorstep, a man dressed in a grimy linen suit, who was sleeping
with his head leaning against the wall. He approached him and recognized
Isidore. He tried to rouse him, but did not succeed in doing so. The
ex-”Rosier” was in that profound, invincible sleep that is alarming, and the
doctor, in surprise, went to seek assistance to help him in carrying the young
man to Boncheval’s drugstore. When they lifted him up they found an empty
bottle under him, and when the doctor sniffed at it, he declared that it had
contained brandy. That gave a suggestion as to what treatment he would
require. They succeeded in rousing him.
Isidore was drunk, drunk and degraded by a week of guzzling, drunk and
so disgusting that a ragman would not have touched him. His beautiful white
duck suit was a gray rag, greasy, muddy, torn, and destroyed, and he smelt of
the gutter and of vice.
He was washed, sermonized, shut up, and did not leave the house for four
days. He seemed ashamed and repentant. They could not find on him either
his purse, containing the five hundred francs, or the bankbook, or even his
silver watch, a sacred heirloom left by his father, the fruiterer.
On the fifth day he ventured into the Rue Dauphine, Curious glances
followed him and he walked along with a furtive expression in his eyes and
his head bent down. As he got outside the town towards the valley they lost
sight of him; but two hours later he returned laughing and rolling against the
walls. He was drunk, absolutely drunk.
Nothing could cure him.
Driven from home by his mother, he became a wagon driver, and drove
the charcoal wagons for the Pougrisel firm, which is still in existence.
His reputation as a drunkard became so well known and spread so far that
even at Evreux they talked of Mme. Husson’s “Rosier,” and the sots of the
countryside have been given that nickname.
A good deed is never lost.
Dr. Marambot rubbed his hands as he finished his story. I asked:
“Did you know the ‘Rosier’?”
“Yes. I had the honor of closing his eyes.”
“What did he die of?”
“An attack of delirium tremens, of course.”
We had arrived at the old citadel, a pile of ruined walls dominated by the
enormous tower of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the one called the
Prisoner’s Tower.
Marambot told me the story of this prisoner, who, with the aid of a nail,
covered the walls of his dungeon with sculptures, tracing the reflections of
the sun as it glanced through the narrow slit of a loophole.
I also learned that Clothaire II had given the patrimony of Gisors to his
cousin, Saint Romain, bishop of Rouen; that Gisors ceased to be the capital
of the whole of Vexin after the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte; that the town is
the chief strategic centre of all that portion of France, and that in consequence
of this advantage she was taken and retaken over and over again. At the
command of William the Red, the eminent engineer, Robert de Bellesme,
constructed there a powerful fortress that was attacked later by Louis le
Gros, then by the Norman barons, was defended by Robert de Candos, was
finally ceded to Louis le Gros by Geoffry Plantagenet, was retaken by the
English in consequence of the treachery of the Knights-Templars, was
contested by Philippe-Augustus and Richard the Lionhearted, was set on fire
by Edward III of England, who could not take the castle, was again taken by
the English in 1419, restored later to Charles VIII by Richard de Marbury,
was taken by the Duke of Calabria occupied by the League, inhabited by
Henry IV, etc., etc.
And Marambot, eager and almost eloquent, continued:
“What beggars, those English! And what sots, my boy; they are all
‘Rosiers,’ those hypocrites!”
Then, after a silence, stretching out his arm towards the tiny river that
glistened in the meadows, he said:
“Did you know that Henry Monnier was one of the most untiring fishermen
on the banks of the Epte?”
“No, I did not know it.”
“And Bouffe, my boy, Bouffe was a painter on glass.”
“You are joking!”
“No, indeed. How is it you do not know these things?”
 THE ADOPTED SON

The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near a little
seashore resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive soil to
rear their little ones, and each family had four.
Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played and tumbled
about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and the
youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the births,
having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.
The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the
lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight names
danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and when
they wished to call one child, the men often called three names before getting
the right one.
The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the bathing beach,
Rolleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one boy;
the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three boys.
They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven
o’clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o’clock in the evening, the
housewives got their broods together to give them their food, as the
gooseherds collect their charges. The children were seated, according to age,
before the wooden table, varnished by fifty years of use; the mouths of the
youngest hardly reaching the level of the table. Before them was placed a
bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in which the potatoes had been
boiled, half a cabbage and three onions; and the whole line ate until their
hunger was appeased. The mother herself fed the smallest.
A small pot roast on Sunday was a feast for all; and the father on this day
sat longer over the meal, repeating: “I wish we could have this every day.”
One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton stopped suddenly in front
of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses, said to the
gentleman sitting at her side:
“Oh, look at all those children, Henri! How pretty they are, tumbling about
in the dust, like that!”
 The man did not answer, accustomed to these outbursts of admiration,
which were a pain and almost a reproach to him. The young woman
continued:
“I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of them — that one
there — the little tiny one!”
Springing down from the carriage, she ran toward the children, took one
of the two youngest — a Tuvache child — and lifting it up in her arms, she
kissed him passionately on his dirty cheeks, on his tousled hair daubed with
earth, and on his little hands, with which he fought vigorously, to get away
from the caresses which displeased him.
Then she got into the carriage again, and drove off at a lively trot. But she
returned the following week, and seating herself on the ground, took the
youngster in her arms, stuffed him with cakes; gave candies to all the others,
and played with them like a young girl, while the husband waited patiently in
the carriage.
She returned again; made the acquaintance of the parents, and reappeared
every day with her pockets full of dainties and pennies.
Her name was Madame Henri d’Hubieres.
One morning, on arriving, her husband alighted with her, and without
stopping to talk to the children, who now knew her well, she entered the
farmer’s cottage.
They were busy chopping wood for the fire. They rose to their feet in
surprise, brought forward chairs, and waited expectantly.
Then the woman, in a broken, trembling voice, began:
“My good people, I have come to see you, because I should like — I
should like to take — your little boy with me— “
The country people, too bewildered to think, did not answer.
She recovered her breath, and continued: “We are alone, my husband and
I. We would keep it. Are you willing?”
The peasant woman began to understand. She asked:
“You want to take Charlot from us? Oh, no, indeed!”
Then M. d’Hubieres intervened:
“My wife has not made her meaning clear. We wish to adopt him, but he
will come back to see you. If he turns out well, as there is every reason to
expect, he will be our heir. If we, perchance, should have children, he will
share equally with them; but if he should not reward our care, we should give
him, when he comes of age, a sum of twenty thousand francs, which shall be
deposited immediately in his name, with a lawyer. As we have thought also
of you, we should pay you, until your death, a pension of one hundred francs
a month. Do you understand me?”
The woman had arisen, furious.
“You want me to sell you Charlot? Oh, no, that’s not the sort of thing to
ask of a mother! Oh, no! That would be an abomination!”
The man, grave and deliberate, said nothing; but approved of what his
wife said by a continued nodding of his head.
Madame d’Hubieres, in dismay, began to weep; turning to her husband,
with a voice full of tears, the voice of a child used to having all its wishes
gratified, she stammered:
“They will not do it, Henri, they will not do it.”
Then he made a last attempt: “But, my friends, think of the child’s future,
of his happiness, of— “
The peasant woman, however, exasperated, cut him short:
“It’s all considered! It’s all understood! Get out of here, and don’t let me
see you again — the idea of wanting to take away a child like that!”
Madame d’Hubieres remembered that there were two children, quite
little, and she asked, through her tears, with the tenacity of a wilful and
spoiled woman:
“But is the other little one not yours?”
Father Tuvache answered: “No, it is our neighbors’. You can go to them if
you wish.” And he went back into his house, whence resounded the indignant
voice of his wife.
The Vallins were at table, slowly eating slices of bread which they
parsimoniously spread with a little rancid butter on a plate between the two.
M. d’Hubieres recommenced his proposals, but with more insinuations,
more oratorical precautions, more shrewdness.
The two country people shook their heads, in sign of refusal, but when
they learned that they were to have a hundred francs a month, they considered
the matter, consulting one another by glances, much disturbed. They kept
silent for a long time, tortured, hesitating. At last the woman asked: “What do
you say to it, man?” In a weighty tone he said: “I say that it’s not to be
despised.”
Madame d’Hubieres, trembling with anguish, spoke of the future of their
child, of his happiness, and of the money which he could give them later.
 The peasant asked: “This pension of twelve hundred francs, will it be
promised before a lawyer?”
M. d’Hubieres responded: “Why, certainly, beginning with to-morrow.”
The woman, who was thinking it over, continued:
“A hundred francs a month is not enough to pay for depriving us of the
child. That child would be working in a few years; we must have a hundred
and twenty francs.”
Tapping her foot with impatience, Madame d’Hubieres granted it at once,
and, as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs
extra, as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the young
woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-
for knick-knack from a shop.
The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure, silent, serious,
perhaps regretting their refusal.
Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the
lawyer every month to collect their hundred and twenty francs. They had
quarrelled with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly insulted
them, continually, repeating from door to door that one must be unnatural to
sell one’s child; that it was horrible, disgusting, bribery. Sometimes she
would take her Charlot in her arms, ostentatiously exclaiming, as if he
understood:
“I didn’t sell you, I didn’t! I didn’t sell you, my little one! I’m not rich, but
I don’t sell my children!”
The Vallins lived comfortably, thanks to the pension. That was the cause
of the unappeasable fury of the Tuvaches, who had remained miserably poor.
Their eldest went away to serve his time in the army; Charlot alone remained
to labor with his old father, to support the mother and two younger sisters.
He had reached twenty-one years when, one morning, a brilliant carriage
stopped before the two cottages. A young gentleman, with a gold watch-
chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, white-haired lady. The old lady
said to him: “It is there, my child, at the second house.” And he entered the
house of the Vallins as though at home.
The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at the
chimney-corner. Both raised their heads, and the young man said:
“Good-morning, papa; good-morning, mamma!”
They both stood up, frightened! In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped
her soap into the water, and stammered:
 “Is it you, my child? Is it you, my child?”
He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: “Good-morning,
mamma,” while the old man, all a-tremble, said, in his calm tone which he
never lost: “Here you are, back again, Jean,” as if he had just seen him a
month ago.
When they had got to know one another again, the parents wished to take
their boy out in the neighborhood, and show him. They took him to the mayor,
to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.
Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass. In the
evening, at supper, he said to the old people: “You must have been stupid to
let the Vallins’ boy be taken.”
The mother answered, obstinately: “I wouldn’t sell my child.”
The father remained silent. The son continued:
“It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that.”
Then Father Tuvache, in an angry tone, said:
“Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?” And the young man
said, brutally:
“Yes, I reproach you for having been such fools. Parents like you make the
misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave you.” The old
woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the spoonfuls of
soup, half of which she spilled: “One may kill one’s self to bring up
children!”
Then the boy said, roughly: “I’d rather not have been born than be what I
am. When I saw the other, my heart stood still. I said to myself: ‘See what I
should have been now!’” He got up: “See here, I feel that I would do better
not to stay here, because I would throw it up to you from morning till night,
and I would make your life miserable. I’ll never forgive you for that!”
The two old people were silent, downcast, in tears.
He continued: “No, the thought of that would be too much. I’d rather look
for a living somewhere else.”
He opened the door. A sound of voices came in at the door. The Vallins
were celebrating the return of their child.
 COWARD

In society he was called “Handsome Signoles.” His name was Vicomte

Gontran-Joseph de Signoles.
An orphan, and possessed of an ample fortune, he cut quite a dash, as it is
called. He had an attractive appearance and manner, could talk well, had a
certain inborn elegance, an air of pride and nobility, a good mustache, and a
tender eye, that always finds favor with women.
He was in great request at receptions, waltzed to perfection, and was
regarded by his own sex with that smiling hostility accorded to the popular
society man. He had been suspected of more than one love affair, calculated
to enhance the reputation of a bachelor. He lived a happy, peaceful life — a
life of physical and mental well-being. He had won considerable fame as a
swordsman, and still more as a marksman.
“When the time comes for me to fight a duel,” he said, “I shall choose
pistols. With such a weapon I am sure to kill my man.”
One evening, having accompanied two women friends of his with their
husbands to the theatre, he invited them to take some ice cream at Tortoni’s
after the performance. They had been seated a few minutes in the restaurant
when Signoles noticed that a man was staring persistently at one of the
ladies. She seemed annoyed, and lowered her eyes. At last she said to her
husband:
“There’s a man over there looking at me. I don’t know him; do you?”
The husband, who had noticed nothing, glanced across at the offender, and
said:
“No; not in the least.”
His wife continued, half smiling, half angry:
“It’s very tiresome! He quite spoils my ice cream.”
The husband shrugged his shoulders.
“Nonsense! Don’t take any notice of him. If we were to bother our heads
about all the ill-mannered people we should have no time for anything else.”
But the vicomte abruptly left his seat. He could not allow this insolent
fellow to spoil an ice for a guest of his. It was for him to take cognizance of
the offence, since it was through him that his friends had come to the
restaurant. He went across to the man and said:
“Sir, you are staring at those ladies in a manner I cannot permit. I must ask
you to desist from your rudeness.”
The other replied:
“Let me alone, will you!”
“Take care, sir,” said the vicomte between his teeth, “or you will force me
to extreme measures.”
The man replied with a single word — a foul word, which could be heard
from one end of the restaurant to the other, and which startled every one
there. All those whose backs were toward the two disputants turned round;
all the others raised their heads; three waiters spun round on their heels like
tops; the two lady cashiers jumped, as if shot, then turned their bodies
simultaneously, like two automata worked by the same spring.
There was dead silence. Then suddenly a sharp, crisp sound. The vicomte
had slapped his adversary’s face. Every one rose to interfere. Cards were
exchanged.
When the vicomte reached home he walked rapidly up and down his room
for some minutes. He was in a state of too great agitation to think
connectedly. One idea alone possessed him: a duel. But this idea aroused in
him as yet no emotion of any kind. He had done what he was bound to do; he
had proved himself to be what he ought to be. He would be talked about,
approved, congratulated. He repeated aloud, speaking as one does when
under the stress of great mental disturbance:
“What a brute of a man!” Then he sat down, and began to reflect. He
would have to find seconds as soon as morning came. Whom should he
choose? He bethought himself of the most influential and best-known men of
his acquaintance. His choice fell at last on the Marquis de la Tour-Noire and
Colonel Bourdin-a nobleman and a soldier. That would be just the thing.
Their names would carry weight in the newspapers. He was thirsty, and
drank three glasses of water, one after another; then he walked up and down
again. If he showed himself brave, determined, prepared to face a duel in
deadly earnest, his adversary would probably draw back and proffer
excuses. He picked up the card he had taken from his pocket and thrown on a
table. He read it again, as he had already read it, first at a glance in the
restaurant, and afterward on the way home in the light of each gas lamp:
“Georges Lamil, 51 Rue Moncey.” That was all.
 He examined closely this collection of letters, which seemed to him
mysterious, fraught with many meanings. Georges Lamil! Who was the man?
What was his profession? Why had he stared so at the woman? Was it not
monstrous that a stranger, an unknown, should thus all at once upset one’s
whole life, simply because it had pleased him to stare rudely at a woman?
And the vicomte once more repeated aloud:
“What a brute!”
Then he stood motionless, thinking, his eyes still fixed on the card. Anger
rose in his heart against this scrap of paper — a resentful anger, mingled with
a strange sense of uneasiness. It was a stupid business altogether! He took up
a penknife which lay open within reach, and deliberately stuck it into the
middle of the printed name, as if he were stabbing some one.
So he would have to fight! Should he choose swords or pistols? — for he
considered himself as the insulted party. With the sword he would risk less,
but with the pistol there was some chance of his adversary backing out. A
duel with swords is rarely fatal, since mutual prudence prevents the
combatants from fighting close enough to each other for a point to enter very
deep. With pistols he would seriously risk his life; but, on the other hand, he
might come out of the affair with flying colors, and without a duel, after all.
“I must be firm,” he said. “The fellow will be afraid.”
The sound of his own voice startled him, and he looked nervously round
the room. He felt unstrung. He drank another glass of water, and then began
undressing, preparatory to going to bed.
As soon as he was in bed he blew out the light and shut his eyes.
“I have all day to-morrow,” he reflected, “for setting my affairs in order. I
must sleep now, in order to be calm when the time comes.”
He was very warm in bed, but he could not succeed in losing
consciousness. He tossed and turned, remained for five minutes lying on his
back, then changed to his left side, then rolled over to his right. He was
thirsty again, and rose to drink. Then a qualm seized him:
“Can it be possible that I am afraid?”
Why did his heart beat so uncontrollably at every well-known sound in his
room? When the clock was about to strike, the prefatory grating of its spring
made him start, and for several seconds he panted for breath, so unnerved
was he.
He began to reason with himself on the possibility of such a thing: “Could
I by any chance be afraid?”
 No, indeed; he could not be afraid, since he was resolved to proceed to
the last extremity, since he was irrevocably determined to fight without
flinching. And yet he was so perturbed in mind and body that he asked
himself:
“Is it possible to be afraid in spite of one’s self?”
And this doubt, this fearful question, took possession of him. If an
irresistible power, stronger than his own will, were to quell his courage,
what would happen? He would certainly go to the place appointed; his will
would force him that far. But supposing, when there, he were to tremble or
faint? And he thought of his social standing, his reputation, his name.
And he suddenly determined to get up and look at himself in the glass. He
lighted his candle. When he saw his face reflected in the mirror he scarcely
recognized it. He seemed to see before him a man whom he did not know.
His eyes looked disproportionately large, and he was very pale.
He remained standing before the mirror. He put out his tongue, as if to
examine the state of his health, and all at once the thought flashed into his
mind:
“At this time the day after to-morrow I may be dead.”
And his heart throbbed painfully.
“At this time the day after to-morrow I may be dead. This person in front
of me, this ‘I’ whom I see in the glass, will perhaps be no more. What! Here I
am, I look at myself, I feel myself to be alive — and yet in twenty-four hours
I may be lying on that bed, with closed eyes, dead, cold, inanimate.”
He turned round, and could see himself distinctly lying on his back on the
couch he had just quitted. He had the hollow face and the limp hands of
death.
Then he became afraid of his bed, and to avoid seeing it went to his
smoking-room. He mechanically took a cigar, lighted it, and began walking
back and forth. He was cold; he took a step toward the bell, to wake his
valet, but stopped with hand raised toward the bell rope.
“He would see that I am afraid!”
And, instead of ringing, he made a fire himself. His hands quivered
nervously as they touched various objects. His head grew dizzy, his thoughts
confused, disjointed, painful; a numbness seized his spirit, as if he had been
drinking.
And all the time he kept on saying:
“What shall I do? What will become of me?”
 His whole body trembled spasmodically; he rose, and, going to the
window, drew back the curtains.
The day — a summer day-was breaking. The pink sky cast a glow on the
city, its roofs, and its walls. A flush of light enveloped the awakened world,
like a caress from the rising sun, and the glimmer of dawn kindled new hope
in the breast of the vicomte. What a fool he was to let himself succumb to
fear before anything was decided — before his seconds had interviewed
those of Georges Lamil, before he even knew whether he would have to fight
or not!
He bathed, dressed, and left the house with a firm step.
He repeated as he went:
“I must be firm — very firm. I must show that I am not afraid.”
His seconds, the marquis and the colonel, placed themselves at his
disposal, and, having shaken him warmly by the hand, began to discuss
details.
“You want a serious duel?” asked the colonel.
“Yes — quite serious,” replied the vicomte.
“You insist on pistols?” put in the marquis.
“Yes.”
“Do you leave all the other arrangements in our hands?”
With a dry, jerky voice the vicomte answered:
“Twenty paces — at a given signal — the arm to be raised, not lowered
— shots to be exchanged until one or other is seriously wounded.”
“Excellent conditions,” declared the colonel in a satisfied tone. “You are
a good shot; all the chances are in your favor.”
And they parted. The vicomte returned home to, wait for them. His
agitation, only temporarily allayed, now increased momentarily. He felt, in
arms, legs and chest, a sort of trembling — a continuous vibration; he could
not stay still, either sitting or standing. His mouth was parched, and he made
every now and then a clicking movement of the tongue, as if to detach it from
his palate.
He attempted, to take luncheon, but could not eat. Then it occurred to him
to seek courage in drink, and he sent for a decanter of rum, of which he
swallowed, one after another, six small glasses.
A burning warmth, followed by a deadening of the mental faculties,
ensued. He said to himself:
“I know how to manage. Now it will be all right!”
 But at the end of an hour he had emptied the decanter, and his agitation
was worse than ever. A mad longing possessed him to throw himself on the
ground, to bite, to scream. Night fell.
A ring at the bell so unnerved him that he had not the strength to rise to
receive his seconds.
He dared not even to speak to them, wish them good-day, utter a single
word, lest his changed voice should betray him.
“All is arranged as you wished,” said the colonel. “Your adversary
claimed at first the privilege of the offended part; but he yielded almost at
once, and accepted your conditions. His seconds are two military men.”
“Thank you,” said the vicomte.
The marquis added:
“Please excuse us if we do not stay now, for we have a good deal to see
to yet. We shall want a reliable doctor, since the duel is not to end until a
serious wound has been inflicted; and you know that bullets are not to be
trifled with. We must select a spot near some house to which the wounded
party can be carried if necessary. In fact, the arrangements will take us
another two or three hours at least.”
The vicomte articulated for the second time:
“Thank you.”
“You’re all right?” asked the colonel. “Quite calm?”
“Perfectly calm, thank you.”
The two men withdrew.
When he was once more alone he felt as though he should go mad. His
servant having lighted the lamps, he sat down at his table to write some
letters. When he had traced at the top of a sheet of paper the words: “This is
my last will and testament,” he started from his seat, feeling himself
incapable of connected thought, of decision in regard to anything.
So he was going to fight! He could no longer avoid it. What, then,
possessed him? He wished to fight, he was fully determined to fight, and yet,
in spite of all his mental effort, in spite of the exertion of all his will power,
he felt that he could not even preserve the strength necessary to carry him
through the ordeal. He tried to conjure up a picture of the duel, his own
attitude, and that of his enemy.
Every now and then his teeth chattered audibly. He thought he would read,
and took down Chateauvillard’s Rules of Dueling. Then he said:
 “Is the other man practiced in the use of the pistol? Is he well known?
How can I find out?”
He remembered Baron de Vaux’s book on marksmen, and searched it from
end to end. Georges Lamil was not mentioned. And yet, if he were not an
adept, would he have accepted without demur such a dangerous weapon and
such deadly conditions?
He opened a case of Gastinne Renettes which stood on a small table, and
took from it a pistol. Next he stood in the correct attitude for firing, and
raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot, and the weapon
shook in his grasp.
Then he said to himself:
“It is impossible. I cannot fight like this.”
He looked at the little black, death-spitting hole at the end of the pistol; he
thought of dishonor, of the whispers at the clubs, the smiles in his friends’
drawing-rooms, the contempt of women, the veiled sneers of the newspapers,
the insults that would be hurled at him by cowards.
He still looked at the weapon, and raising the hammer, saw the glitter of
the priming below it. The pistol had been left loaded by some chance, some
oversight. And the discovery rejoiced him, he knew not why.
If he did not maintain, in presence of his opponent, the steadfast bearing
which was so necessary to his honor, he would be ruined forever. He would
be branded, stigmatized as a coward, hounded out of society! And he felt, he
knew, that he could not maintain that calm, unmoved demeanor. And yet he
was brave, since the thought that followed was not even rounded to a finish
in his mind; but, opening his mouth wide, he suddenly plunged the barrel of
the pistol as far back as his throat, and pressed the trigger.
When the valet, alarmed at the report, rushed into the room he found his
master lying dead upon his back. A spurt of blood had splashed the white
paper on the table, and had made a great crimson stain beneath the words:
“This is my last will and testament.”
 OLD MONGILET

In the office old Mongilet was considered a type. He was a good old
employee, who had never been outside Paris but once in his life.
It was the end of July, and each of us, every Sunday, went to roll in the
grass, or soak in the water in the country near by. Asnieres, Argenteuil,
Chatou, Borgival, Maisons, Poissy, had their habitues and their ardent
admirers. We argued about the merits and advantages of all these places,
celebrated and delightful to all Parsian employees.
Daddy Mongilet declared:
“You are like a lot of sheep! It must be pretty, this country you talk of!”
“Well, how about you, Mongilet? Don’t you ever go on an excursion?”
“Yes, indeed. I go in an omnibus. When I have had a good luncheon,
without any hurry, at the wine shop down there, I look up my route with a
plan of Paris, and the time table of the lines and connections. And then I
climb up on the box, open my umbrella and off we go. Oh, I see lots of things,
more than you, I bet! I change my surroundings. It is as though I were taking a
journey across the world, the people are so different in one street and
another. I know my Paris better than anyone. And then, there is nothing more
amusing than the entresols. You would not believe what one sees in there at a
glance. One guesses at domestic scenes simply at sight of the face of a man
who is roaring; one is amused on passing by a barber’s shop, to see the
barber leave his customer whose face is covered with lather to look out in
the street. One exchanges heartfelt glances with the milliners just for fun, as
one has no time to alight. Ah, how many things one sees!
“It is the drama, the real, the true, the drama of nature, seen as the horses
trot by. Heavens! I would not give my excursions in the omnibus for all your
stupid excursions in the woods.”
“Come and try it, Mongilet, come to the country once just to see.”
“I was there once,” he replied, “twenty years ago, and you will never
catch me there again.”
“Tell us about it, Mongilet.”
“If you wish to hear it. This is how it was:
 “You knew Boivin, the old editorial clerk, whom we called Boileau?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“He was my office chum. The rascal had a house at Colombes and always
invited me to spend Sunday with him. He would say:
“‘Come along, Maculotte [he called me Maculotte for fun]. You will see
what a nice excursion we will take.’
“I let myself be entrapped like an animal, and set out, one morning by the
8 o’clock train. I arrived at a kind of town, a country town where there is
nothing to see, and I at length found my way to an old wooden door with an
iron bell, at the end of an alley between two walls.
“I rang, and waited a long time, and at last the door was opened. What
was it that opened it? I could not tell at the first glance. A woman or an ape?
The creature was old, ugly, covered with old clothes that looked dirty and
wicked. It had chicken’s feathers in its hair and looked as though it would
devour me.
“‘What do you want?’ she said.
“‘Mr. Boivin.’
“‘What do you want of him, of Mr. Boivin?’
“I felt ill at ease on being questioned by this fury. I stammered: ‘Why-he
expects me.’
“‘Ah, it is you who have come to luncheon?’
“‘Yes,’ I stammered, trembling.
“Then, turning toward the house, she cried in an angry tone:
“‘Boivin, here is your man!’
“It was my friend’s wife. Little Boivin appeared immediately on the
threshold of a sort of barrack of plaster covered with zinc, that looked like a
foot stove. He wore white duck trousers covered with stains and a dirty
Panama hat.
“After shaking my hands warmly, he took me into what he called his
garden. It was at the end of another alleyway enclosed by high walls and was
a little square the size of a pocket handkerchief, surrounded by houses that
were so high that the sun, could reach it only two or three hours in the day.
Pansies, pinks, wallflowers and a few rose bushes were languishing in this
well without air, and hot as an oven from the refraction of heat from the
roofs.
“‘I have no trees,’ said Boivin, ‘but the neighbors’ walls take their place.
I have as much shade as in a wood.’
 “Then he took hold of a button of my coat and said in a low tone:
“‘You can do me a service. You saw the wife. She is not agreeable, eh?
To-day, as I had invited you, she gave me clean clothes; but if I spot them all
is lost. I counted on you to water my plants.’
“I agreed. I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and began to work the
handle of a kind of pump that wheezed, puffed and rattled like a consumptive
as it emitted a thread of water like a Wallace drinking fountain. It took me ten
minutes to water it and I was in a bath of perspiration. Boivin directed me:
“‘Here — this plant — a little more; enough — now this one.’
“The watering pot leaked and my feet got more water than the flowers.
The bottoms of my trousers were soaking and covered with mud. And twenty
times running I kept it up, soaking my feet afresh each time, and perspiring
anew as I worked the handle of the pump. And when I was tired out and
wanted to stop, Boivin, in a tone of entreaty, said as he put his hand on my
arm:
“Just one more watering pot full — just one, and that will be all.’
“To thank me he gave me a rose, a big rose, but hardly had it touched my
button-hole than it fell to pieces, leaving only a hard little green knot as a
decoration. I was surprised, but said nothing.
“Mme. Boivin’s voice was heard in the distance:
“‘Are you ever coming? When you know that luncheon is ready!’
“We went toward the foot stove. If the garden was in the shade, the house,
on the other hand, was in the blazing sun, and the sweating room in the
Turkish bath is not as hot as was my friend’s dining room.
“Three plates at the side of which were some half-washed forks, were
placed on a table of yellow wood in the middle of which stood an
earthenware dish containing boiled beef and potatoes. We began to eat.
“A large water bottle full of water lightly colored with wine attracted my
attention. Boivin, embarrassed, said to his wife:
“‘See here, my dear, just on a special occasion, are you not going to give
us some plain wine?’
“She looked at him furiously.
“‘So that you may both get tipsy, is that it, and stay here gabbing all day?
A fig for your special occasion!’
“He said no more. After the stew she brought in another dish of potatoes
cooked with bacon. When this dish was finished, still in silence, she
announced:
 “‘That is all! Now get out!’
“Boivin looked at her in astonishment.
“‘But the pigeon — the pigeon you plucked this morning?’
“She put her hands on her hips:
“‘Perhaps you have not had enough? Because you bring people here is no
reason why we should devour all that there is in the house. What is there for
me to eat this evening?’
“We rose. Solvin whispered
“‘Wait for me a second, and we will skip.’
“He went into the kitchen where his wife had gone, and I overheard him
say:
“‘Give me twenty sous, my dear.’
“‘What do you want with twenty sons?’
“‘Why, one does not know what may happen. It is always better to have
some money.’
“She yelled so that I should hear:
“‘No, I will not give it to you! As the man has had luncheon here, the least
he can do is to pay your expenses for the day.’
“Boivin came back to fetch me. As I wished to be polite I bowed to the
mistress of the house, stammering:
“‘Madame — many thanks — kind welcome.’
“‘That’s all right,’ she replied. ‘But do not bring him back drunk, for you
will have to answer to me, you know!’
“We set out. We had to cross a perfectly bare plain under the burning sun.
I attempted to gather a flower along the road and gave a cry of pain. It had
hurt my hand frightfully. They call these plants nettles. And, everywhere,
there was a smell of manure, enough to turn your stomach.
“Boivin said, ‘Have a little patience and we will reach the river bank.’
“We reached the river. Here there was an odor of mud and dirty water,
and the sun blazed down on the water so that it burned my eyes. I begged
Boivin to go under cover somewhere. He took me into a kind of shanty filled
with men, a river boatmen’s tavern.
“He said:
“‘This does not look very grand, but it is very comfortable.’
“I was hungry. I ordered an omelet. But to and behold, at the second glass
of wine, that beggar, Boivin, lost his head, and I understand why his wife
gave him water diluted.
 “He got up, declaimed, wanted to show his strength, interfered in a
quarrel between two drunken men who were fighting, and, but for the
landlord, who came to the rescue, we should both have been killed.
“I dragged him away, holding him up until we reached the first bush where
I deposited him. I lay down beside him and, it seems, I fell asleep. We must
certainly have slept a long time, for it was dark when I awoke. Boivin was
snoring at my side. I shook him; he rose but he was still drunk, though a little
less so.
“We set out through the darkness across the plain. Boivin said he knew the
way. He made me turn to the left, then to the right, then to the left. We could
see neither sky nor earth, and found ourselves lost in the midst of a kind of
forest of wooden stakes, that came as high as our noses. It was a vineyard
and these were the supports. There was not a single light on the horizon. We
wandered about in this vineyard for about an hour or two, hesitating,
reaching out our arms without finding any limit, for we kept retracing our
steps.
“At length Boivin fell against a stake that tore his cheek and he remained
in a sitting posture on the ground, uttering with all his might long and
resounding hallos, while I screamed ‘Help! Help!’ as loud as I could,
lighting candle-matches to show the way to our rescuers, and also to keep up
my courage.
“At last a belated peasant heard us and put us on our right road. I took
Boivin to his home, but as I was leaving him on the threshold of his garden,
the door opened suddenly and his wife appeared, a candle in her hand. She
frightened me horribly.
“As soon as she saw her husband, whom she must have been waiting for
since dark, she screamed, as she darted toward me:
“‘Ah, scoundrel, I knew you would bring him back drunk!’
“My, how I made my escape, running all the way to the station, and as I
thought the fury was pursuing me I shut myself in an inner room as the train
was not due for half an hour.
“That is why I never married, and why I never go out of Paris.”
 MOONLIGHT

Madame Julie Roubere was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette
Letore, who had just returned from a trip to Switzerland.
The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame
Henriette had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados,
where some business required his attention, and had come to spend a few
days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet parlor Madame
Roubere was reading in the twilight in an absent-minded way, raising her,
eyes whenever she heard a sound.
At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared, wrapped in a
travelling cloak. And without any formal greeting, they clasped each other in
an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a moment to give each other
another hug. Then they talked about their health, about their respective
families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried, broken
sentences as they followed each other about, while Madame Henriette was
removing her hat and veil.
It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as it
was brought in, she scanned her sister’s face, and was on the point of
embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished at the
other’s appearance.
On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All the
rest of her hair was of a glossy, raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side
of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost
in the black mass surrounding them. She was, nevertheless, only twenty-four
years old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for
Switzerland.
Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity must
have befallen her sister. She asked:
“What is the matter with you, Henriette?”
Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
replied:
 “Why, nothing, I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?”
But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
searching glance at her, repeated:
“What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And if
you tell me a falsehood, I’ll soon find it out.”
They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if she
were about to faint, had two pearly tears in the corners of her drooping eyes.
Her sister continued:
“What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!”
Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:
“I have — I have a lover.”
And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
sobbed.
Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her breast
had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast forth this
secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a sympathetic heart.
Thereupon, holding each other’s hands tightly clasped, the two women
went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they sank, and
the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one’s neck, and drawing
her close to her heart, listened.
“Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand myself,
and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful, my child, about
yourself — be careful! If you only knew how weak we are, how quickly we
yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so little, a moment of tenderness,
one of those sudden fits of melancholy which come over you, one of those
longings to open, your arms, to love, to cherish something, which we all have
at certain moments.
“You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is
mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations of a
woman’s heart. He is always the same, always good, always smiling, always
kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished that he would clasp
me roughly in his arms, that he would embrace me with those slow, sweet
kisses which make two beings intermingle, which are like mute confidences!
How I have wished that he were foolish, even weak, so that he should have
need of me, of my caresses, of my tears!
“This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can we
help it?
 “And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it has
happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply because the
moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.
“During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with
his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic
ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise, when as the
four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the transparent
morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I clasped my hands with
delight, and said to him: ‘How beautiful it is, dear! Give me a kiss! Kiss me
now!’ He only answered, with a smile of chilling kindliness: ‘There is no
reason why we should kiss each other because you like the landscape.’
“And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever, in the
presence of beautiful scenes.
“In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from
expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and hermetically
sealed.
“One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen)
Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed immediately after
dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the lake.
“It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon showed
itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their snowy crests,
seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake glittered with tiny
shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of penetrating warmth which
enervates us till we are ready to faint, to be deeply affected without any
apparent cause. But how sensitive, how vibrating the heart is at such
moments! how quickly it beats, and how intense is its emotion!
“I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and
fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with an
insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my life. What!
would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a
moon-kissed bank like this? Was I never to feel on my lips those kisses so
deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem
to have been made by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent,
feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer’s night?
“And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring
behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round, he
recognized me, and, advancing, said:
“‘You are weeping, madame?’
“It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom
we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.
“I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to
think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.
“He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began
talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I had felt he
translated into words; everything that made me thrill he understood perfectly,
better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of
Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It
seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were
singing to me about things ineffably sweet.
“And it happened, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, in a sort of
hallucination.
“As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.
“He gave me his card!”
And, sinking into her sister’s arms, Madame Letore broke into groans —
almost into shrieks.
Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
gently:
“You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself.
And your real lover that night was the moonlight.”
 THE FIRST SNOWFALL

The long promenade of La Croisette winds in a curve along the edge of the
blue water. Yonder, to the right, Esterel juts out into the sea in the distance,
obstructing the view and shutting out the horizon with its pretty southern
outline of pointed summits, numerous and fantastic.
To the left, the isles of Sainte Marguerite and Saint Honorat, almost level
with the water, display their surface, covered with pine trees.
And all along the great gulf, all along the tall mountains that encircle
Cannes, the white villa residences seem to be sleeping in the sunlight. You
can see them from a distance, the white houses, scattered from the top to the
bottom of the mountains, dotting the dark greenery with specks like snow.
Those near the water have gates opening on the wide promenade which is
washed by the quiet waves. The air is soft and balmy. It is one of those warm
winter days when there is scarcely a breath of cool air. Above the walls of
the gardens may be seen orange trees and lemon trees full of golden fruit.
Ladies are walking slowly across the sand of the avenue, followed by
children rolling hoops, or chatting with gentlemen.
A young woman has just passed out through the door of her coquettish
little house facing La Croisette. She stops for a moment to gaze at the
promenaders, smiles, and with an exhausted air makes her way toward an
empty bench facing the sea. Fatigued after having gone twenty paces, she sits
down out of breath. Her pale face seems that of a dead woman. She coughs,
and raises to her lips her transparent fingers as if to stop those paroxysms
that exhaust her.
She gazes at the sky full of sunshine and swallows, at the zigzag summits
of the Esterel over yonder, and at the sea, the blue, calm, beautiful sea, close
beside her.
She smiles again, and murmurs:
“Oh! how happy I am!”
She knows, however, that she is going to die, that she will never see the
springtime, that in a year, along the same promenade, these same people who
pass before her now will come again to breathe the warm air of this
charming spot, with their children a little bigger, with their hearts all filled
with hopes, with tenderness, with happiness, while at the bottom of an oak
coffin, the poor flesh which is still left to her to-day will have decomposed,
leaving only her bones lying in the silk robe which she has selected for a
shroud.
She will be no more. Everything in life will go on as before for others.
For her, life will be over, over forever. She will be no more. She smiles, and
inhales as well as she can, with her diseased lungs, the perfumed air of the
gardens.
And she sinks into a reverie.
She recalls the past. She had been married, four years ago, to a Norman
gentleman. He was a strong young man, bearded, healthy-looking, with wide
shoulders, narrow mind, and joyous disposition.
They had been united through financial motives which she knew nothing
about. She would willingly have said No. She said Yes, with a movement of
the head, in order not to thwart her father and mother. She was a Parisian,
gay, and full of the joy of living.
Her husband brought her home to his Norman chateau. It was a huge stone
building surrounded by tall trees of great age. A high clump of pine trees shut
out the view in front. On the right, an opening in the trees presented a view of
the plain, which stretched out in an unbroken level as far as the distant,
farmsteads. A cross-road passed before the gate and led to the high road
three kilometres away.
Oh! she recalls everything, her arrival, her first day in her new abode, and
her isolated life afterward.
When she stepped out of the carriage, she glanced at the old building, and
laughingly exclaimed:
“It does not look cheerful!”
Her husband began to laugh in his turn, and replied:
“Pooh! we get used to it! You’ll see. I never feel bored in it, for my part.”
That day they passed their time in embracing each other, and she did not
find it too long. This lasted fully a month. The days passed one after the other
in insignificant yet absorbing occupations. She learned the value and the
importance of the little things of life. She knew that people can interest
themselves in the price of eggs, which cost a few centimes more or less
according to the seasons.
 It was summer. She went to the fields to see the men harvesting. The
brightness of the sunshine found an echo in her heart.
The autumn came. Her husband went out shooting. He started in the
morning with his two dogs Medor and Mirza. She remained alone, without
grieving, moreover, at Henry’s absence. She was very fond of him, but she
did not miss him. When he returned home, her affection was especially
bestowed on the dogs. She took care of them every evening with a mother’s
tenderness, caressed them incessantly, gave them a thousand charming little
names which she had no idea of applying to her husband.
He invariably told her all about his sport. He described the places where
he found partridges, expressed his astonishment at not having caught any
hares in Joseph Ledentu’s clever, or else appeared indignant at the conduct of
M. Lechapelier, of Havre, who always went along the edge of his property to
shoot the game that he, Henry de Parville, had started.
She replied: “Yes, indeed! it is not right,” thinking of something else all
the while.
The winter came, the Norman winter, cold and rainy. The endless floods
of rain came down tin the slates of the great gabled roof, rising like a knife
blade toward the sky. The roads seemed like rivers of mud, the country a
plain of mud, and no sound could be heard save that of water falling; no
movement could be seen save the whirling flight of crows that settled down
like a cloud on a field and then hurried off again.
About four o’clock, the army of dark, flying creatures came and perched
in the tall beeches at the left of the chateau, emitting deafening cries. During
nearly an hour, they flew from tree top to tree top, seemed to be fighting,
croaked, and made a black disturbance in the gray branches. She gazed at
them each evening with a weight at her heart, so deeply was she impressed
by the lugubrious melancholy of the darkness falling on the deserted country.
Then she rang for the lamp, and drew near the fire. She burned heaps of
wood without succeeding in warming the spacious apartments reeking with
humidity. She was cold all day long, everywhere, in the drawing-room, at
meals, in her own apartment. It seemed to her she was cold to the marrow of
her bones. Her husband only came in to dinner; he was always out shooting,
or else he was superintending sowing the seed, tilling the soil, and all the
work of the country.
He would come back jovial, and covered with mud, rubbing his hands as
he exclaimed:
 “What wretched weather!”
Or else:
“A fire looks comfortable!”
Or sometimes:
“Well, how are you to-day? Are you in good spirits?”
He was happy, in good health, without desires, thinking of nothing save
this simple, healthy, and quiet life.
About December, when the snow had come, she suffered so much from the
icy-cold air of the chateau which seemed to have become chilled in passing
through the centuries just as human beings become chilled with years, that she
asked her husband one evening:
“Look here, Henry! You ought to have a furnace put into the house; it
would dry the walls. I assure you that I cannot keep warm from morning till
night.”
At first he was stunned at this extravagant idea of introducing a furnace
into his manor-house. It would have seemed more natural to him to have his
dogs fed out of silver dishes. He gave a tremendous laugh from the bottom of
his chest as he exclaimed:
“A furnace here! A furnace here! Ha! ha! ha! what a good joke!”
She persisted:
“I assure you, dear, I feel frozen; you don’t feel it because you are always
moving about; but all the same, I feel frozen.”
He replied, still laughing:
“Pooh! you’ll get used to it, and besides it is excellent for the health. You
will only be all the better for it. We are not Parisians, damn it! to live in hot-
houses. And, besides, the spring is quite near.”
About the beginning of January, a great misfortune befell her. Her father
and mother died in a carriage accident. She came to Paris for the funeral.
And her sorrow took entire possession of her mind for about six months.
The mildness of the beautiful summer days finally roused her, and she
lived along in a state of sad languor until autumn.
When the cold weather returned, she was brought face to face, for the first
time, with the gloomy future. What was she to do? Nothing. What was going
to happen to her henceforth? Nothing. What expectation, what hope, could
revive her heart? None. A doctor who was consulted declared that she would
never have children.
 Sharper, more penetrating still than the year before, the cold made her
suffer continually.
She stretched out her shivering hands to the big flames. The glaring fire
burned her face; but icy whiffs seemed to glide down her back and to
penetrate between her skin and her underclothing. And she shivered from
head to foot. Innumerable draughts of air appeared to have taken up their
abode in the apartment, living, crafty currents of air as cruel as enemies. She
encountered them at every moment; they blew on her incessantly their
perfidious and frozen hatred, now on her face, now on her hands, and now on
her back.
Once more she spoke of a furnace; but her husband listened to her request
as if she were asking for the moon. The introduction of such an apparatus at
Parville appeared to him as impossible as the discovery of the Philosopher’s
Stone.
Having been at Rouen on business one day, he brought back to his wife a
dainty foot warmer made of copper, which he laughingly called a “portable
furnace”; and he considered that this would prevent her henceforth from ever
being cold.
Toward the end of December she understood that she could not always
live like this, and she said timidly one evening at dinner:
“Listen, dear! Are we, not going to spend a week or two in Paris before
spring:”
He was stupefied.
“In Paris? In Paris? But what are we to do there? Ah! no by Jove! We are
better off here. What odd ideas come into your head sometimes.”
She faltered:
“It might distract us a little.”
He did not understand.
“What is it you want to distract you? Theatres, evening parties, dinners in
town? You knew, however, when you came here, that you ought not to expect
any distractions of this kind!”
She saw a reproach in these words, and in the tone in which they were
uttered. She relapsed into silence. She was timid and gentle, without resisting
power and without strength of will.
In January the cold weather returned with violence. Then the snow
covered the earth.
 One evening, as she watched the great black cloud of crows dispersing
among the trees, she began to weep, in spite of herself.
Her husband came in. He asked in great surprise:
“What is the matter with you?”
He was happy, quite happy, never having dreamed of another life or other
pleasures. He had been born and had grown up in this melancholy district.
He felt contented in his own house, at ease in body and mind.
He did not understand that one might desire incidents, have a longing for
changing pleasures; he did not understand that it does not seem natural to
certain beings to remain in the same place during the four seasons; he seemed
not to know that spring, summer, autumn, and winter have, for multitudes of
persons, fresh amusements in new places.
She could say nothing in reply, and she quickly dried her eyes. At last she
murmured in a despairing tone:
“I am — I — I am a little sad — I am a little bored.”
But she was terrified at having even said so much, and added very
quickly:
“And, besides — I am — I am a little cold.”
This last plea made him angry.
“Ah! yes, still your idea of the furnace. But look here, deuce take it! you
have not had one cold since you came here.”
Night came on. She went up to her room, for she had insisted on having a
separate apartment. She went to bed. Even in bed she felt cold. She thought:
“It will be always like this, always, until I die.”
And she thought of her husband. How could he have said:
“You — have not had one cold since you came here”?
She would have to be ill, to cough before he could understand what she
suffered!
And she was filled with indignation, the angry indignation of a weak,
timid being.
She must cough. Then, perhaps, he would take pity on her. Well, she
would cough; he should hear her coughing; the doctor should be called in; he
should see, her husband, he should see.
She got out of bed, her legs and her feet bare, and a childish idea made
her smile:
“I want a furnace, and I must have it. I shall cough so much that he’ll have
to put one in the house.”
 And she sat down in a chair in her nightdress. She waited an hour, two
hours. She shivered, but she did not catch cold. Then she resolved on a bold
expedient.
She noiselessly left her room, descended the stairs, and opened the gate
into the garden.
The earth, covered with snows seemed dead. She abruptly thrust forward
her bare foot, and plunged it into the icy, fleecy snow. A sensation of cold,
painful as a wound, mounted to her heart. However, she stretched out the
other leg, and began to descend the steps slowly.
Then she advanced through the grass saying to herself:
“I’ll go as far as the pine trees.”
She walked with quick steps, out of breath, gasping every time she
plunged her foot into the snow.
She touched the first pine tree with her hand, as if to assure herself that
she had carried out her plan to the end; then she went back into the house. She
thought two or three times that she was going to fall, so numbed and weak did
she feel. Before going in, however, she sat down in that icy fleece, and even
took up several handfuls to rub on her chest.
Then she went in and got into bed. It seemed to her at the end of an hour
that she had a swarm of ants in her throat, and that other ants were running all
over her limbs. She slept, however.
Next day she was coughing and could not get up.
She had inflammation of the lungs. She became delirious, and in her
delirium she asked for a furnace. The doctor insisted on having one put in.
Henry yielded, but with visible annoyance.
She was incurable. Her lungs were seriously affected, and those about her
feared for her life.
“If she remains here, she will not last until the winter,” said the doctor.
She was sent south. She came to Cannes, made the acquaintance of the
sun, loved the sea, and breathed the perfume of orange blossoms.
Then, in the spring, she returned north.
But she now lived with the fear of being cured, with the fear of the long
winters of Normandy; and as soon as she was better she opened her window
by night and recalled the sweet shores of the Mediterranean.
And now she is going to die. She knows it and she is happy.
She unfolds a newspaper which she has not already opened, and reads this
heading:
 “The first snow in Paris.”
She shivers and then smiles. She looks across at the Esterel, which is
becoming rosy in the rays of the setting sun. She looks at the vast blue sky, so
blue, so very blue, and the vast blue sea, so very blue also, and she rises
from her seat.
And then she returned to the house with slow steps, only stopping to
cough, for she had remained out too long and she was cold, a little cold.
She finds a letter from her husband. She opens it, still smiling, and she
reads:
“MY DEAR LOVE: I hope you are well, and that you do not regret too
much our beautiful country. For some days last we have had a good
frost, which presages snow. For my part, I adore this weather, and
you my believe that I do not light your damned furnace.”
She ceases reading, quite happy at the thought that she had her furnace put
in. Her right hand, which holds the letter, falls slowly on her lap, while she
raises her left hand to her mouth, as if to calm the obstinate cough which is
racking her chest.
 A RECOLLECTION

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

spring! It was an age when all was pleasant, cheerful, charming, intoxicating.
How exquisite are the remembrances of those old springtimes!
Do you recall, old friends and brothers, those happy years when life was
nothing but a triumph and an occasion for mirth? Do you recall the days of
wanderings around Paris, our jolly poverty, our walks in the fresh, green
woods, our drinks in the wine-shops on the banks of the Seine and our
commonplace and delightful little flirtations?
I will tell you about one of these. It was twelve years ago and already
appears to me so old, so old that it seems now as if it belonged to the other
end of life, before middle age, this dreadful middle age from which I
suddenly perceived the end of the journey.
I was then twenty-five. I had just come to Paris. I was in a government
office, and Sundays were to me like unusual festivals, full of exuberant
happiness, although nothing remarkable occurred.
Now it is Sunday every day, but I regret the time when I had only one
Sunday in the week. How enjoyable it was! I had six francs to spend!
On this particular morning I awoke with that sense of freedom that all
clerks know so well — the sense of emancipation, of rest, of quiet and of
independence.
I opened my window. The weather was charming. A blue sky full of
sunlight and swallows spread above the town.
I dressed quickly and set out, intending to spend the day in the woods
breathing the air of the green trees, for I am originally a rustic, having been
brought up amid the grass and the trees.
Paris was astir and happy in the warmth and the light. The front of the
houses was bathed in sunlight, the janitress’ canaries were singing in their
cages and there was an air of gaiety in the streets, in the faces of the
inhabitants, lighting them up with a smile as if all beings and all things
experienced a secret satisfaction at the rising of the brilliant sun.
 I walked towards the Seine to take the Swallow, which would land me at
Saint-Cloud.
How I loved waiting for the boat on the wharf:
It seemed to me that I was about to set out for the ends of the world, for
new and wonderful lands. I saw the boat approaching yonder, yonder under
the second bridge, looking quite small with its plume of smoke, then growing
larger and ever larger, as it drew near, until it looked to me like a mail
steamer.
It came up to the wharf and I went on board. People were there already in
their Sunday clothes, startling toilettes, gaudy ribbons and bright scarlet
designs. I took up a position in the bows, standing up and looking at the
quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing behind us. And
suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour which blocked the
river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and behind the
double row of arches the Seine, suddenly spreading out as though it had
regained space and liberty, became all at once the peaceful river which
flows through the plains, alongside the wooded hills, amid the meadows,
along the edge of the forests.
After passing between two islands the Swallow went round a curved
verdant slope dotted with white houses. A voice called out: “Bas Meudon”
and a little further on, “Sevres,” and still further, “Saint-Cloud.”
I went on shore and walked hurriedly through the little town to the road
leading to the wood.
I had brought with me a map of the environs of Paris, so that I might not
lose my way amid the paths which cross in every direction these little forests
where Parisians take their outings.
As soon as I was unperceived I began to study my guide, which seemed to
be perfectly clear. I was to turn to the right, then to the left, then again to the
left and I should reach Versailles by evening in time for dinner.
I walked slowly beneath the young leaves, drinking in the air, fragrant
with the odor of young buds and sap. I sauntered along, forgetful of musty
papers, of the offices, of my chief, my colleagues, my documents, and
thinking of the good things that were sure to come to me, of all the veiled
unknown contained in the future. A thousand recollections of childhood came
over me, awakened by these country odors, and I walked along, permeated
with the fragrant, living enchantment, the emotional enchantment of the woods
warmed by the sun of June.
 At times I sat down to look at all sorts of little flowers growing on a bank,
with the names of which I was familiar. I recognized them all just as if they
were the ones I had seen long ago in the country. They were yellow, red,
violet, delicate, dainty, perched on long stems or close to the ground. Insects
of all colors and shapes, short, long, of peculiar form, frightful, and
microscopic monsters, climbed quietly up the stalks of grass which bent
beneath their weight.
Then I went to sleep for some hours in a hollow and started off again,
refreshed by my doze.
In front of me lay an enchanting pathway and through its somewhat scanty
foliage the sun poured down drops of light on the marguerites which grew
there. It stretched out interminably, quiet and deserted, save for an occasional
big wasp, who would stop buzzing now and then to sip from a flower, and
then continue his way.
All at once I perceived at the end of the path two persons, a man and a
woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk, I
was about to dive into the thicket, when I thought I heard someone calling me.
The woman was, in fact, shaking her parasol, and the man, in his shirt
sleeves, his coat over one arm, was waving the other as a signal of distress.
I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, their faces very red,
she with short, quick steps and he with long strides. They both looked
annoyed and fatigued.
The woman asked:
“Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us
lose our way, although he pretended he knew the country perfectly.”
I replied confidently:
“Madame, you are going towards Saint-Cloud and turning your back on
Versailles.”
With a look of annoyed pity for her husband, she exclaimed:
“What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we
want to dine!”
“I am going there also, madame.”
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders,
and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their
exasperation.
She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her upper
lip.
 As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly a
little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted and
distressed.
“But, my dear friend, it was you— “ he murmured.
She did not allow him to finish his sentence.
“It was I! Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without
getting any information, pretending that I knew how to find my way? Was it I
who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill, insisting that I
recognized the road? Was it I who undertook to take charge of Cachou— “
She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly
gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a long, wild cry that could not be
described in any language, but which sounded like ‘tuituit’.
The young woman did not appear to be surprised or moved and resumed:
“No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know
everything. Was it I who took the train to Dieppe last year instead of the train
to Havre — tell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M. Letourneur lived in
Rue des Martyres? Was it I who would not believe that Celeste was a thief?”
She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating the
most varied, the most unexpected and the most overwhelming accusations
drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life, reproaching her husband
for all his actions, all his ideas, all his habits, all his enterprises, all his
efforts, for his life from the time of their marriage up to the present time.
He strove to check her, to calm her and stammered:
“But, my dear, it is useless — before monsieur. We are making ourselves
ridiculous. This does not interest monsieur.”
And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to sound
its peaceful and mysterious depths, in order to flee thither, to escape and hide
from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh scream, a prolonged
and shrill “tuituit.” I took this to be a nervous affection.
The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone
with singular rapidity, said:
“If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so
as not to lose our way again, and be obliged, possibly, to sleep in the wood.”
I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things —
about herself, her life, her family, her business. They were glovers in the
Rue, Saint-Lazare.
 Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood
and screaming “tuituit” every few moments.
At last I inquired:
“Why do you scream like that?”
“I have lost my poor dog,” he replied in a tone of discouragement and
despair.
“How is that — you have lost your dog?”
“Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I
wanted to take him to have a run in the woods. He had never seen the grass
nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and bark and
he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly afraid of the
train. That may have driven him mad. I kept on calling him, but he has not
come back. He will die of hunger in there.”
Without turning towards her husband, the young woman said:
“If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people
are as stupid as you are they do not keep a dog.”
“But, my dear, it was you— “ he murmured timidly.
She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going to tear
them out, she began again to cast in his face innumerable reproaches.
It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk
was slowly rising and there was a poetry in the air, induced by the peculiar
and enchanting freshness of the atmosphere that one feels in the woods at
nightfall.
Suddenly the young man stopped, and feeling his body feverishly,
exclaimed:
“Oh, I think that I— “
She looked at him.
“Well, what?”
“I did not notice that I had my coat on my arm.”
“Well — ?”
“I have lost my pocketbook — my money was in it.”
She shook with anger and choked with indignation.
“That was all that was lacking. How stupid you are! how stupid you are!
Is it possible that I could have married such an idiot! Well, go and look for it,
and see that you find it. I am going on to Versailles with monsieur. I do not
want to sleep in the wood.”
“Yes, my dear,” he replied gently. “Where shall I find you?”
 A restaurant had been recommended to me. I gave him the address.
He turned back and, stooping down as he searched the ground with
anxious eyes, he moved away, screaming “tuituit” every few moments.
We could see him for some time until the growing darkness concealed all
but his outline, but we heard his mournful “tuituit,” shriller and shriller as the
night grew darker.
As for me, I stepped along quickly and happily in the soft twilight, with
this little unknown woman leaning on my arm. I tried to say pretty things to
her, but could think of nothing. I remained silent, disturbed, enchanted.
Our path was suddenly crossed by a high road. To the right I perceived a
town lying in a valley.
What was this place? A man was passing. I asked him. He replied:
“Bougival.”
I was dumfounded.
“What, Bougival? Are you sure?”
“Parbleu, I belong there!”
The little woman burst into an idiotic laugh.
I proposed that we should take a carriage and drive to Versailles. She
replied:
“No, indeed. This is very funny and I am very hungry. I am really quite
calm. My husband will find his way all right. It is a treat to me to be rid of
him for a few hours.”
We went into a restaurant beside the water and I ventured to ask for a
private compartment. We had some supper. She sang, drank champagne,
committed all sorts of follies.
That was my first serious flirtation.
 OUR LETTERS

Eight hours of railway travel induce sleep for some persons and insomnia for
others with me, any journey prevents my sleeping on the following night.
At about five o’clock I arrived at the estate of Abelle, which belongs to
my friends, the Murets d’Artus, to spend three weeks there. It is a pretty
house, built by one of their grandfathers in the style of the latter half of the
last century. Therefore it has that intimate character of dwellings that have
always been inhabited, furnished and enlivened by the same people. Nothing
changes; nothing alters the soul of the dwelling, from which the furniture has
never been taken out, the tapestries never unnailed, thus becoming worn out,
faded, discolored, on the same walls. None of the old furniture leaves the
place; only from time to time it is moved a little to make room for a new
piece, which enters there like a new-born infant in the midst of brothers and
sisters.
The house is on a hill in the center of a park which slopes down to the
river, where there is a little stone bridge. Beyond the water the fields stretch
out in the distance, and here one can see the cows wandering around,
pasturing on the moist grass; their eyes seem full of the dew, mist and
freshness of the pasture. I love this dwelling, just as one loves a thing which
one ardently desires to possess. I return here every autumn with infinite
delight; I leave with regret.
After I had dined with this friendly family, by whom I was received like a
relative, I asked my friend, Paul Muret: “Which room did you give me this
year?”
“Aunt Rose’s room.”
An hour later, followed by her three children, two little girls and a boy,
Madame Muret d’Artus installed me in Aunt Rose’s room, where I had not
yet slept.
When I was alone I examined the walls, the furniture, the general aspect of
the room, in order to attune my mind to it. I knew it but little, as I had entered
it only once or twice, and I looked indifferently at a pastel portrait of Aunt
Rose, who gave her name to the room.
 This old Aunt Rose, with her curls, looking at me from behind the glass,
made very little impression on my mind. She looked to me like a woman of
former days, with principles and precepts as strong on the maxims of
morality as on cooking recipes, one of these old aunts who are the bugbear of
gaiety and the stern and wrinkled angel of provincial families.
I never had heard her spoken of; I knew nothing of her life or of her death.
Did she belong to this century or to the preceding one? Had she left this earth
after a calm or a stormy existence? Had she given up to heaven the pure soul
of an old maid, the calm soul of a spouse, the tender one of a mother, or one
moved by love? What difference did it make? The name alone, “Aunt Rose,”
seemed ridiculous, common, ugly.
I picked up a candle and looked at her severe face, hanging far up in an
old gilt frame. Then, as I found it insignificant, disagreeable, even
unsympathetic, I began to examine the furniture. It dated from the period of
Louis XVI, the Revolution and the Directorate. Not a chair, not a curtain had
entered this room since then, and it gave out the subtle odor of memories,
which is the combined odor of wood, cloth, chairs, hangings, peculiar to
places wherein have lived hearts that have loved and suffered.
I retired but did not sleep. After I had tossed about for an hour or two, I
decided to get up and write some letters.
I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed
between the two windows, in hope of finding some ink and paper; but all I
found was a quill-pen, very much worn, and chewed at the end. I was about
to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my attention it
looked like the yellow head of a nail. I scratched it with my finger, and it
seemed to move. I seized it between two finger-nails, and pulled as hard as I
could. It came toward me gently. It was a long gold pin which had been
slipped into a hole in the wood and remained hidden there.
Why? I immediately thought that it must have served to work some spring
which hid a secret, and I looked. It took a long time. After about two hours of
investigation, I discovered another hole opposite the first one, but at the
bottom of a groove. Into this I stuck my pin: a little shelf sprang toward my
face, and I saw two packages of yellow letters, tied with a blue ribbon.
I read them. Here are two of them:
So you wish me to return to you your letters, my dearest friend.
Here they are, but it pains me to obey. Of what are you afraid?
That I might lose them? But they are under lock and key. Do you
fear that they might be stolen? I guard against that, for they are
my dearest treasure.

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

be feeling some regret! Not regret at having loved me, for I know
that you still do, but the regret of having expressed on white paper
this living love in hours when your heart did not confide in me, but
in the pen that you held in your hand. When we love, we have need
of confession, need of talking or writing, and we either talk or
write. Words fly away, those sweet words made of music, air and
tenderness, warm and light, which escape as soon as they are
uttered, which remain in the memory alone, but which one can neither
see, touch nor kiss, as one can with the words written by your hand.

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

sorrow!

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

expressions that are ineffaceable. In your sensitive and timid soul
you must have regretted having written to a man that you loved him.
You remembered sentences that called up recollections, and you said
to yourself: “I will make ashes of those words.”

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

MY FRIEND:

No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed. I do not
regret, and I never shall, that I told you of my affection.

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

soon as you have read them.

I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this
demand. It is not poetic, as you imagined, but practical. I am
afraid, not of you, but of some mischance. I am guilty. I do not
wish my fault to affect others than myself.
Understand me well. You and I may both die. You might fall off
your horse, since you ride every day; you might die from a sudden
attack, from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident,
in a thousand ways. For, if there is only one death, there are more
ways of its reaching us than there are days or us to live.

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

letters! Do you think that they love me? I doubt it. And then,
even if they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to
know a secret — such a secret! — and not to tell of it?

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

death, and then suspecting the discreetness of your relatives.

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

that one of us will precede the other under the ground. We must
therefore foresee all dangers, even that one.

As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my
little desk. I will show them to you there, sleeping side by side
in their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a
tomb.

You will say to me: “But if you should die first, my dear, your
husband will find these letters.”

Oh! I fear nothing. First of all, he does not know the secret of my
desk, and then he will not look for it. And even if he finds it
after my death, I fear nothing.

Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been
found after death? I have been thinking of this for a long time,
and that is the reason I decided to ask you for my letters.

Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear
or destroy the letters in which it is told her that she is loved.
That is our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream.
 These little papers which bear our name in caressing terms are
relics which we adore; they are chapels in which we are the saints.
Our love letters are our titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the
intimate vanity of our womanhood; they are the treasures of our
heart. No, a woman does not destroy these secret and delicious
archives of her life.

But, like everybody else, we die, and then — then these letters
are found! Who finds them? The husband. Then what does he do?
Nothing. He burns them.

Oh, I have thought a great deal about that! Just think that every
day women are dying who have been loved; every day the traces and
proofs of their fault fall into the hands of their husbands, and
that there is never a scandal, never a duel.

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

living woman; he fights with the man who has dishonored her, kills
him while she lives, because, well, why? I do not know exactly why.
But, if, after her death, he finds similar proofs, he burns them and
no one is the wiser, and he continues to shake hands with the friend
of the dead woman, and feels quite at ease that these letters should
not have fallen into strange hands, and that they are destroyed.

Oh, how many men I know among my friends who must have burned such
proofs, and who pretend to know nothing, and yet who would have
fought madly had they found them when she was still alive! But she
is dead. Honor has changed. The tomb is the boundary of conjugal
sinning.

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

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

I love you and kiss you.

I raised my eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her
severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all those women’s souls which we do not
know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really are,
whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their quiet
duplicity; and a verse of De Vigny returned to my memory:
“Always this comrade whose heart is uncertain.”
 FRIEND JOSEPH

They had been great friends all winter in Paris. As is always the case, they
had lost sight of each other after leaving school, and had met again when they
were old and gray-haired. One of them had married, but the other had
remained in single blessedness.
M. de Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in his little
chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a neighboring, squire,
he had lived a good and peaceful life in the indolence of a man who has
nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet disposition, and not over-intelligent he
used to spend his time quietly regretting the past, grieving over the customs
and institutions of the day and continually repeating to his wife, who would
lift her eyes, and sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic
assent: “Good gracious! What a government!”
Madame de Meroul resembled her husband intellectually as though she
had been his sister. She knew, by tradition, that one should above all respect
the Pope and the King!
And she loved and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without
knowing them, with a poetic fervor, with an hereditary devotion, with the
tenderness of a wellborn woman. She was good to, the marrow of her bones.
She had had no children, and never ceased mourning the fact.
On meeting his old friend, Joseph Mouradour, at a ball, M. de Meroul was
filled with a deep and simple joy, for in their youth they had been intimate
friends.
After the first exclamations of surprise at the changes which time had
wrought in their bodies and countenances, they told each other about their
lives since they had last met.
Joseph Mouradour, who was from the south of France, had become a
government official. His manner was frank; he spoke rapidly and without
restraint, giving his opinions without any tact. He was a Republican, one of
those good fellows who do not believe in standing on ceremony, and who
exercise an almost brutal freedom of speech.
 He came to his friend’s house and was immediately liked for his easy
cordiality, in spite of his radical ideas. Madame de Meroul would exclaim:
“What a shame! Such a charming man!”
Monsieur de Meroul would say to his friend in a serious and confidential
tone of voice; “You have no idea the harm that you are doing your country.”
He loved him all the same, for nothing is stronger than the ties of childhood
taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour bantered the wife and the
husband, calling them “my amiable snails,” and sometimes he would
solemnly declaim against people who were behind the times, against old
prejudices and traditions.
When he was once started on his democratic eloquence, the couple,
somewhat ill at ease, would keep silent from politeness and good-breeding;
then the husband would try to turn the conversation into some other channel in
order to avoid a clash. Joseph Mouradour was only seen in the intimacy of
the family.
Summer came. The Merouls had no greater pleasure than to receive their
friends at their country home at Tourbeville. It was a good, healthy pleasure,
the enjoyments of good people and of country proprietors. They would meet
their friends at the neighboring railroad station and would bring them back in
their carriage, always on the lookout for compliments on the country, on its
natural features, on the condition of the roads, on the cleanliness of the farm-
houses, on the size of the cattle grazing in the fields, on everything within
sight.
They would call attention to the remarkable speed with which their horse
trotted, surprising for an animal that did heavy work part of the year behind a
plow; and they would anxiously await the opinion of the newcomer on their
family domain, sensitive to the least word, and thankful for the slightest good
intention.
Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he accepted the invitation.
Husband and wife had come to the train, delighted to welcome him to
their home. As soon as he saw them, Joseph Mouradour jumped from the
train with a briskness which increased their satisfaction. He shook their
hands, congratulated them, overwhelmed them with compliments.
All the way home he was charming, remarking on the height of the trees,
the goodness of the crops and the speed of the horse.
When he stepped on the porch of the house, Monsieur de Meroul said,
with a certain friendly solemnity:
 “Consider yourself at home now.”
Joseph Mouradour answered:
“Thanks, my friend; I expected as much. Anyhow, I never stand on
ceremony with my friends. That’s how I understand hospitality.”
Then he went upstairs to dress as a farmer, he said, and he came back all
togged out in blue linen, with a little straw hat and yellow shoes, a regular
Parisian dressed for an outing. He also seemed to become more vulgar, more
jovial, more familiar; having put on with his country clothes a free and easy
manner which he judged suitable to the surroundings. His new manners
shocked Monsieur and Madame de Meroul a little, for they always remained
serious and dignified, even in the country, as though compelled by the two
letters preceding their name to keep up a certain formality even in the closest
intimacy.
After lunch they all went out to visit the farms, and the Parisian astounded
the respectful peasants by his tone of comradeship.
In the evening the priest came to dinner, an old, fat priest, accustomed to
dining there on Sundays, but who had been especially invited this day in
honor of the new guest.
Joseph, on seeing him, made a wry face. Then he observed him with
surprise, as though he were a creature of some peculiar race, which he had
never been able to observe at close quarters. During the meal he told some
rather free stories, allowable in the intimacy of the family, but which seemed
to the Merouls a little out of place in the presence of a minister of the Church.
He did not say, “Monsieur l’abbe,” but simply, “Monsieur.” He embarrassed
the priest greatly by philosophical discussions about diverse superstitions
current all over the world. He said: “Your God, monsieur, is of those who
should be respected, but also one of those who should be discussed. Mine is
called Reason; he has always been the enemy of yours.”
The Merouls, distressed, tried to turn the trend of the conversation. The
priest left very early.
Then the husband said, very quietly:
“Perhaps you went a little bit too far with the priest.”
But Joseph immediately exclaimed:
“Well, that’s pretty good! As if I would be on my guard with a shaveling!
And say, do me the pleasure of not imposing him on me any more at meals.
You can both make use of him as much as you wish, but don’t serve him up to
your friends, hang it!”
 “But, my friends, think of his holy— “
Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
“Yes, I know; they have to be treated like ‘rosieres.’ But let them respect
my convictions, and I will respect theirs!”
That was all for that day.
As soon as Madame de Meroul entered the parlor, the next morning, she
noticed in the middle of the table three newspapers which made her start the
Voltaire, the Republique-Francaise and the Justice. Immediately Joseph
Mouradour, still in blue, appeared on the threshold, attentively reading the
Intransigeant. He cried:
“There’s a great article in this by Rochefort. That fellow is a wonder!”
He read it aloud, emphasizing the parts which especially pleased him, so
carried away by enthusiasm that he did not notice his friend’s entrance.
Monsieur de Meroul was holding in his hand the Gaulois for himself, the
Clarion for his wife.
The fiery prose of the master writer who overthrew the empire, spouted
with violence, sung in the southern accent, rang throughout the peaceful
parsons seemed to spatter the walls and century-old furniture with a hail of
bold, ironical and destructive words.
The man and the woman, one standing, the other sitting, were listening
with astonishment, so shocked that they could not move.
In a burst of eloquence Mouradour finished the last paragraph, then
exclaimed triumphantly:
“Well! that’s pretty strong!”
Then, suddenly, he noticed the two sheets which his friend was carrying,
and he, in turn, stood speechless from surprise. Quickly walking toward him
he demanded angrily:
“What are you doing with those papers?”
Monsieur de Meroul answered hesitatingly:
“Why — those — those are my papers!”
“Your papers! What are you doing — making fun of me? You will do me
the pleasure of reading mine; they will limber up your ideas, and as for yours
— there! that’s what I do with them.”
And before his astonished host could stop him, he had seized the two
newspapers and thrown them out of the window. Then he solemnly handed
the Justice to Madame de Meroul, the Voltaire to her husband, while he sank
down into an arm-chair to finish reading the Intransigeant.
 The couple, through delicacy, made a pretense of reading a little, they then
handed him back the Republican sheets, which they handled gingerly, as
though they might be poisoned.
He laughed and declared:
“One week of this regime and I will have you converted to my ideas.”
In truth, at the end of a week he ruled the house. He had closed the door
against the priest, whom Madame de Meroul had to visit secretly; he had
forbidden the Gaulois and the Clarion to be brought into the house, so that a
servant had to go mysteriously to the post-office to get them, and as soon as
he entered they would be hidden under sofa cushions; he arranged everything
to suit himself — always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and all-
powerful tyrant.
Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy
couple saw the impossibility of having them there then, and, not knowing
what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that they would
be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business, and they begged
him to stay on alone. He did not appear disturbed, and answered:
“Very well, I don’t mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have
already said that there should be no formality between friends. You are
perfectly right-go ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend me in
the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more completely one
of the family. Go ahead, my friends, I will wait for you!”
Monsieur and Madame de Meroul left the following day.
He is still waiting for them.
 THE EFFEMINATES

How often we hear people say, “He is charming, that man, but he is a girl, a
regular girl.” They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of our land.
For we are all girl-like men in France — that is, fickle, fanciful,
innocently treacherous, without consistency in our convictions or our will,
violent and weak as women are.
But the most irritating of girl — men is assuredly the Parisian and the
boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and
who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those
charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine
temperament.
Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girl-men. They form the greater
number of the amiable opportunists whom one might call “The Charmers.”
These are they who control by soft words and deceitful promises, who know
how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say “My dear
friend” in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change his
mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to be
sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as
they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he affirmed the day
before.
The newspapers are full of these effeminate men. That is probably where
one finds the most, but it is also where they are most needed. The Journal des
Debats and the Gazette de France are exceptions.
Assuredly, every good journalist must be somewhat effeminate — that is,
at the command of the public, supple in following unconsciously the shades
of public opinion, wavering and varying, sceptical and credulous, wicked
and devout, a braggart and a true man, enthusiastic and ironical, and always
convinced while believing in nothing.
Foreigners, our anti-types, as Mme. Abel called them, the stubborn
English and the heavy Germans, regard us with a certain amazement mingled
with contempt, and will continue to so regard us till the end of time. They
consider us frivolous. It is not that, it is that we are girls. And that is why
people love us in spite of our faults, why they come back to us despite the
evil spoken of us; these are lovers’ quarrels! The effeminate man, as one
meets him in this world, is so charming that he captivates you after five
minutes’ chat. His smile seems made for you; one cannot believe that his
voice does not assume specially tender intonations on their account. When he
leaves you it seems as if one had known him for twenty years. One is quite
ready to lend him money if he asks for it. He has enchanted you, like a
woman.
If he commits any breach of manners towards you, you cannot bear any
malice, he is so pleasant when you next meet him. If he asks your pardon you
long to ask pardon of him. Does he tell lies? You cannot believe it. Does he
put you off indefinitely with promises that he does not keep? One lays as
much store by his promises as though he had moved heaven and earth to
render them a service.
When he admires anything he goes into such raptures that he convinces
you. He once adored Victor Hugo, whom he now treats as a back number. He
would have fought for Zola, whom he has abandoned for Barbey and
d’Aurevilly. And when he admires, he permits no limitation, he would slap
your face for a word. But when he becomes scornful, his contempt is
unbounded and allows of no protest.
In fact, he understands nothing.
Listen to two girls talking.
“Then you are angry with Julia?” “I slapped her face.” “What had she
done?” “She told Pauline that I had no money thirteen months out of twelve,
and Pauline told Gontran — you understand.” “You were living together in
the Rue Clanzel?” “We lived together four years in the Rue Breda; we
quarrelled about a pair of stockings that she said I had worn — it wasn’t true
— silk stockings that she had bought at Mother Martin’s. Then I gave her a
pounding and she left me at once. I met her six months ago and she asked me
to come and live with her, as she has rented a flat that is twice too large.”
One goes on one’s way and hears no more. But on the following Sunday as
one is on the way to Saint Germain two young women get into the same
railway carriage. One recognizes one of them at once; it is Julia’s enemy. The
other is Julia!
And there are endearments, caresses, plans. “Say, Julia — listen, Julia,”
etc.
 The girl-man has his friendships of this kind. For three months he cannot
bear to leave his old Jack, his dear Jack. There is no one but Jack in the
world. He is the only one who has any intelligence, any sense, any talent. He
alone amounts to anything in Paris. One meets them everywhere together, they
dine together, walk about in company, and every evening walk home with
each other back and forth without being able to part with one another.
Three months later, if Jack is mentioned:
“There is a drinker, a sorry fellow, a scoundrel for you. I know him well,
you may be sure. And he is not even honest, and ill-bred,” etc., etc.
Three months later, and they are living together.
But one morning one hears that they have fought a duel, then embraced
each other, amid tears, on the duelling ground.
Just now they are the dearest friends in the world, furious with each other
half the year, abusing and loving each other by turns, squeezing each other’s
hands till they almost crush the bones, and ready to run each other through the
body for a misunderstanding.
For the relations of these effeminate men are uncertain. Their temper is by
fits and starts, their delight unexpected, their affection turn-about-face, their
enthusiasm subject to eclipse. One day they love you, the next day they will
hardly look at you, for they have in fact a girl’s nature, a girl’s charm, a girl’s
temperament, and all their sentiments are like the affections of girls.
They treat their friends as women treat their pet dogs.
It is the dear little Toutou whom they hug, feed with sugar, allow to sleep
on the pillow, but whom they would be just as likely to throw out of a
window in a moment of impatience, whom they turn round like a sling,
holding it by the tail, squeeze in their arms till they almost strangle it, and
plunge, without any reason, in a pail of cold water.
Then, what a strange thing it is when one of these beings falls in love with
a real girl! He beats her, she scratches him, they execrate each other, cannot
bear the sight of each other and yet cannot part, linked together by no one
knows what mysterious psychic bonds. She deceives him, he knows it, sobs
and forgives her. He despises and adores her without seeing that she would
be justified in despising him. They are both atrociously unhappy and yet
cannot separate. They cast invectives, reproaches and abominable
accusations at each other from morning till night, and when they have reached
the climax and are vibrating with rage and hatred, they fall into each other’s
arms and kiss each other ardently.
 The girl-man is brave and a coward at the same time. He has, more than
another, the exalted sentiment of honor, but is lacking in the sense of simple
honesty, and, circumstances favoring him, would defalcate and commit
infamies which do not trouble his conscience, for he obeys without
questioning the oscillations of his ideas, which are always impulsive.
To him it seems permissible and almost right to cheat a haberdasher. He
considers it honorable not to pay his debts, unless they are gambling debts —
that is, somewhat shady. He dupes people whenever the laws of society
admit of his doing so. When he is short of money he borrows in all ways, not
always being scrupulous as to tricking the lenders, but he would, with
sincere indignation, run his sword through anyone who should suspect him of
only lacking in politeness.
 YVETTE

CHAPTER I.

The Initiation of Saval

As they were leaving the Cafe Riche, Jean de Servigny said to Leon Saval:
“If you don’t object, let us walk. The weather is too fine to take a cab.”
His friend answered: “I would like nothing better.”
Jean replied: “It is hardly eleven o’clock. We shall arrive much before
midnight, so let us go slowly.”
A restless crowd was moving along the boulevard, that throng peculiar to
summer nights, drinking, chatting, and flowing like a river, filled with a sense
of comfort and joy. Here and there a cafe threw a flood of light upon a knot of
patrons drinking at little tables on the sidewalk, which were covered with
bottles and glasses, hindering the passing of the hurrying multitude. On the
pavement the cabs with their red, blue, or green lights dashed by, showing for
a second, in the glimmer, the thin shadow of the horse, the raised profile of
the coachman, and the dark box of the carriage. The cabs of the Urbaine
Company made clear and rapid spots when their yellow panels were struck
by the light.
The two friends walked with slow steps, cigars in their mouths, in
evening dress and overcoats on their arms, with a flower in their buttonholes,
and their hats a trifle on one side, as men will carelessly wear them
sometimes, after they have dined well and the air is mild.
They had been linked together since their college days by a close,
devoted, and firm affection. Jean de Servigny, small, slender, a trifle bald,
rather frail, with elegance of mien, curled mustache, bright eyes, and fine
lips, was a man who seemed born and bred upon the boulevard. He was
tireless in spite of his languid air, strong in spite of his pallor, one of those
slight Parisians to whom gymnastic exercise, fencing, cold shower and hot
baths give a nervous, artificial strength. He was known by his marriage as
well as by his wit, his fortune, his connections, and by that sociability,
amiability, and fashionable gallantry peculiar to certain men.
A true Parisian, furthermore, light, sceptical, changeable, captivating,
energetic, and irresolute, capable of everything and of nothing; selfish by
principle and generous on occasion, he lived moderately upon his income,
and amused himself with hygiene. Indifferent and passionate, he gave himself
rein and drew back constantly, impelled by conflicting instincts, yielding to
all, and then obeying, in the end, his own shrewd man-about-town judgment,
whose weather-vane logic consisted in following the wind and drawing
profit from circumstances without taking the trouble to originate them.
His companion, Leon Saval, rich also, was one of those superb and
colossal figures who make women turn around in the streets to look at them.
He gave the idea of a statue turned into a man, a type of a race, like those
sculptured forms which are sent to the Salons. Too handsome, too tall, too
big, too strong, he sinned a little from the excess of everything, the excess of
his qualities. He had on hand countless affairs of passion.
As they reached the Vaudeville theater, he asked: “Have you warned that
lady that you are going to take me to her house to see her?”
Servigny began to laugh: “Forewarn the Marquise Obardi! Do you warn
an omnibus driver that you shall enter his stage at the corner of the
boulevard?”
Saval, a little perplexed, inquired: “What sort of person is this lady?”
His friend replied: “An upstart, a charming hussy, who came from no one
knows where, who made her appearance one day, nobody knows how, among
the adventuresses of Paris, knowing perfectly well how to take care of
herself. Besides, what difference does it make to us? They say that her real
name, her maiden name — for she still has every claim to the title of maiden
except that of innocence — is Octavia Bardin, from which she constructs the
name Obardi by prefixing the first letter of her first name and dropping the
last letter of the last name.”
“Moreover, she is a lovable woman, and you, from your physique, are
inevitably bound to become her lover. Hercules is not introduced into
Messalina’s home without making some disturbance. Nevertheless I make
bold to add that if there is free entrance to this house, just as there is in
bazaars, you are not exactly compelled to buy what is for sale. Love and
cards are on the programme, but nobody compels you to take up with either.
And the exit is as free as the entrance.”
 “She settled down in the Etoile district, a suspicious neighborhood, three
years ago, and opened her drawing-room to that froth of the continents which
comes to Paris to practice its various formidable and criminal talents.”
“I don’t remember just how I went to her house. I went as we all go,
because there is card playing, because the women are compliant, and the men
dishonest. I love that social mob of buccaneers with decorations of all sorts
of orders, all titled, and all entirely unknown at their embassies, except to the
spies. They are always dragging in the subject of honor, quoting the list of
their ancestors on the slightest provocation, and telling the story of their life
at every opportunity, braggarts, liars, sharpers, dangerous as their cards,
false as their names, brave because they have to be, like the assassins who
can not pluck their victims except by exposing their own lives. In a word, it
is the aristocracy of the bagnio.”
“I like them. They are interesting to fathom and to know, amusing to listen
to, often witty, never commonplace as the ordinary French guests. Their
women are always pretty, with a little flavor of foreign knavery, with the
mystery of their past existence, half of which, perhaps, spent in a House of
Correction. They generally have fine eyes and glorious hair, the true physique
of the profession, an intoxicating grace, a seductiveness which drives men to
folly, an unwholesome, irresistible charm! They conquer like the
highwaymen of old. They are rapacious creatures; true birds of prey. I like
them, too.”
“The Marquise Obardi is one of the type of these elegant good-for-
nothings. Ripe and pretty, with a feline charm, you can see that she is vicious
to the marrow. Everybody has a good time at her house, with cards, dancing,
and suppers; in fact there is everything which goes to make up the pleasures
of fashionable society life.”
“Have you ever been or are you now her lover?” Leon Saval asked.
“I have not been her lover, I am not now, and I never shall be. I only go to
the house to see her daughter.”
“Ah! She has a daughter, then?”
“A daughter! A marvel, my dear man. She is the principal attraction of the
den to-day. Tall, magnificent, just ripe, eighteen years old, as fair as her
mother is dark, always merry, always ready for an entertainment, always
laughing, and ready to dance like mad. Who will be the lucky man, to capture
her, or who has already done so? Nobody can tell that. She has ten of us in
her train, all hoping.”
 “Such a daughter in the hands of a woman like the Marquise is a fortune.
And they play the game together, the two charmers. No one knows just what
they are planning. Perhaps they are waiting for a better bargain than I should
prove. But I tell you that I shall close the bargain if I ever get a chance.”
“That girl Yvette absolutely baffles me, moreover. She is a mystery. If she
is not the most complete monster of astuteness and perversity that I have ever
seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can
be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and
triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless.
Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a
magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of
some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince
or dethroned king, tossed some evening into her mother’s arms, nobody can
make out what she is nor what she thinks. But you are going to see her.”
Saval began to laugh and said: “You are in love with her.”
“No. I am on the list, which is not precisely the same thing. I will
introduce you to my most serious rivals. But the chances are in my favor. I am
in the lead, and some little distinction is shown to me.”
“You are in love,” Saval repeated.
“No. She disquiets me, seduces and disturbs me, attracts and frightens me
away. I mistrust her as I would a trap, and I long for her as I long for a
sherbet when I am thirsty. I yield to her charm, and I only approach her with
the apprehension that I would feel concerning a man who was known to be a
skillful thief. To her presence I have an irrational impulse toward belief in
her possible purity and a very reasonable mistrust of her not less probable
trickery. I feel myself in contact with an abnormal being, beyond the pale of
natural laws, an exquisite or detestable creature — I don’t know which.”
For the third time Saval said: “I tell you that you are in love. You speak of
her with the magniloquence of a poet and the feeling of a troubadour. Come,
search your heart, and confess.”
Servigny walked a few steps without answering. Then he replied:
“That is possible, after all. In any case, she fills my mind almost
continually. Yes, perhaps I am in love. I dream about her too much. I think of
her when I am asleep and when I awake — that is surely a grave indication.
Her face follows me, accompanies me ceaselessly, ever before me, around
me, with me. Is this love, this physical infatuation? Her features are so
stamped upon my vision that I see her the moment I shut my eyes. My heart
beats quickly every time I look at her, I don’t deny it.”
“So I am in love with her, but in a queer fashion. I have the strongest
desire for her, and yet the idea of making her my wife would seem to me a
folly, a piece of stupidity, a monstrous thing: And I have a little fear of her, as
well, the fear which a bird feels over which a hawk is hovering.”
“And again I am jealous of her, jealous of all of which I am ignorant in her
incomprehensible heart. I am always wondering: ‘Is she a charming
youngster or a wretched jade?’ She says things that would make an army
shudder; but so does a parrot. She is at times so indiscreet and yet modest
that I am forced to believe in her spotless purity, and again so incredibly
artless that I must suspect that she has never been chaste. She allures me,
excites me, like a woman of a certain category, and at the same time acts like
an impeccable virgin. She seems to love me and yet makes fun of me; she
deports herself in public as if she were my mistress and treats me in private
as if I were her brother or footman.”
“There are times when I fancy that she has as many lovers as her mother.
And at other times I imagine that she suspects absolutely nothing of that sort
of life, you understand. Furthermore, she is a great novel reader. I am at
present, while awaiting something better, her book purveyor. She calls me
her ‘librarian.’ Every week the New Book Store sends her, on my orders,
everything new that has appeared, and I believe that she reads everything at
random. It must make a strange sort of mixture in her head.”
“That kind of literary hasty-pudding accounts perhaps for some of the
girl’s peculiar ways. When a young woman looks at existence through the
medium of fifteen thousand novels, she must see it in a strange light, and
construct queer ideas about matters and things in general. As for me, I am
waiting. It is certain at any rate that I never have had for any other woman the
devotion which I have had for her. And still it is quite certain that I shall
never marry her. So if she has had numbers, I shall swell the number. And if
she has not, I shall take the first ticket, just as I would do for a street car.”
“The case is very simple. Of course, she will never marry. Who in the
world would marry the Marquise Obardi’s daughter, the child of Octavia
Bardin? Nobody, for a thousand reasons. Where would they ever find a
husband for her? In society? Never. The mother’s house is a sort of liberty-
hall whose patronage is attracted by the daughter. Girls don’t get married
under those conditions.”
 “Would she find a husband among the trades-people? Still less would that
be possible. And besides the Marquise is not the woman to make a bad
bargain; she will give Yvette only to a man of high position, and that man she
will never discover.”
“Then perhaps she will look among the common people. Still less likely.
There is no solution of the problem, then. This young lady belongs neither to
society, nor to the tradesmen’s class, nor to the common people, and she can
never enter any of these ranks by marriage.”
“She belongs through her mother, her birth, her education, her inheritance,
her manners, and her customs, to the vortex of the most rapid life of Paris.
She can never escape it, save by becoming a nun, which is not at all probable
with her manners and tastes. She has only one possible career, a life of
pleasure. She will come to it sooner or later, if indeed she has not already
begun to tread its primrose path. She cannot escape her fate. From being a
young girl she will take the inevitable step, quite simply. And I would like to
be the pivot of this transformation.”
“I am waiting. There are many lovers. You will see among them a
Frenchman, Monsieur de Belvigne; a Russian, called Prince Kravalow, and
an Italian, Chevalier Valreali, who have all announced their candidacies and
who are consequently maneuvering to the best of their ability. In addition to
these there are several freebooters of less importance. The Marquise waits
and watches. But I think that she has views about me. She knows that I am
very rich, and she makes less of the others.”
“Her drawing-room is, moreover, the most astounding that I know of, in
such, exhibitions. You even meet very decent men there, like ourselves. As
for the women, she has culled the best there is from the basket of
pickpockets. Nobody knows where she found them. It is a set apart from
Bohemia, apart from everything. She has had one inspiration showing genius,
and that is the knack of selecting especially those adventuresses who have
children, generally girls. So that a fool might believe that in her house he was
among respectable women!” They had reached the avenue of the Champs-
Elysees. A gentle breeze softly stirred the leaves and touched the faces of
passers-by, like the breaths of a giant fan, waving somewhere in the sky.
Silent shadows wandered beneath the trees; others, on benches, made a dark
spot. And these shadows spoke very low, as if they were telling each other
important or shameful secrets.
 “You can’t imagine what a collection of fictitious titles are met in this
lair,” said Servigny, “By the way, I shall present you by the name of Count
Saval; plain Saval would not do at all.”
“Oh, no, indeed!” cried his friend; “I would not have anyone think me
capable of borrowing a title, even for an evening, even among those people.
Ah, no!”
Servigny began to laugh.
“How stupid you are! Why, in that set they call me the Duke de Servigny. I
don’t know how nor why. But at any rate the Duke de Servigny I am and shall
remain, without complaining or protesting. It does not worry me. I should
have no footing there whatever without a title.”
But Saval would not be convinced.
“Well, you are of rank, and so you may remain. But, as for me, no. I shall
be the only common person in the drawing-room. So much the worse, or, so
much the better. It will be my mark of distinction and superiority.”
Servigny was obstinate.
“I tell you that it is not possible. Why, it would almost seem monstrous.
You would have the effect of a ragman at a meeting of emperors. Let me do
as I like. I shall introduce you as the Vice-Roi du ‘Haut-Mississippi,’ and no
one will be at all astonished. When a man takes on greatness, he can’t take
too much.”
“Once more, no, I do not wish it.”
“Very well, have your way. But, in fact, I am very foolish to try to
convince you. I defy you to get in without some one giving you a title, just as
they give a bunch of violets to the ladies at the entrance to certain stores.”
They turned to the right in the Rue de Barrie, mounted one flight of stairs
in a fine modern house, and gave their overcoats and canes into the hands of
four servants in knee-breeches. A warm odor, as of a festival assembly,
filled the air, an odor of flowers, perfumes, and women; and a composed and
continuous murmur came from the adjoining rooms, which were filled with
people.
A kind of master of ceremonies, tall, erect, wide of girth, serious, his face
framed in white whiskers, approached the newcomers, asking with a short
and haughty bow: “Whom shall I announce?”
“Monsieur Saval,” Servigny replied.
Then with a loud voice, the man opening the door cried out to the crowd
of guests:
 “Monsieur the Duke de Servigny.”
“Monsieur the Baron Saval.”
The first drawing-room was filled with women. The first thing which
attracted attention was the display of bare shoulders, above a flood of
brilliant gowns.
The mistress of the house who stood talking with three friends, turned and
came forward with a majestic step, with grace in her mien and a smile on her
lips. Her forehead was narrow and very low, and was covered with a mass
of glossy black hair, encroaching a little upon the temples.
She was tall, a trifle too large, a little too stout, over ripe, but very pretty,
with a heavy, warm, potent beauty. Beneath that mass of hair, full of dreams
and smiles, rendering her mysteriously captivating, were enormous black
eyes. Her nose was a little narrow, her mouth large and infinitely seductive,
made to speak and to conquer.
Her greatest charm was in her voice. It came from that mouth as water
from a spring, so natural, so light, so well modulated, so clear, that there was
a physical pleasure in listening to it. It was a joy for the ear to hear the
flexible words flow with the grace of a babbling brook, and it was a joy for
the eyes to see those pretty lips, a trifle too red, open as the words rippled
forth.
She gave one hand to Servigny, who kissed it, and dropping her fan on its
little gold chain, she gave the other to Saval, saying to him: “You are
welcome, Baron, all the Duke’s friends are at home here.”
Then she fixed her brilliant eyes upon the Colossus who had just been
introduced to her. She had just the slightest down on her upper lip, a
suspicion of a mustache, which seemed darker when she spoke. There was a
pleasant odor about her, pervading, intoxicating, some perfume of America
or of the Indies. Other people came in, marquesses, counts or princes. She
said to Servigny, with the graciousness of a mother: “You will find my
daughter in the other parlor. Have a good time, gentlemen, the house is
yours.”
And she left them to go to those who had come later, throwing at Saval
that smiling and fleeting glance which women use to show that they are
pleased. Servigny grasped his friend’s arm.
“I will pilot you,” said he. “In this parlor where we now are, women, the
temples of the fleshly, fresh or otherwise. Bargains as good as new, even
better, for sale or on lease. At the right, gaming, the temple of money. You
understand all about that. At the lower end, dancing, the temple of innocence,
the sanctuary, the market for young girls. They are shown off there in every
light. Even legitimate marriages are tolerated. It is the future, the hope, of our
evenings. And the most curious part of this museum of moral diseases are
these young girls whose souls are out of joint, just like the limbs of the little
clowns born of mountebanks. Come and look at them.”
He bowed, right and left, courteously, a compliment on his lips, sweeping
each low-gowned woman whom he knew with the look of an expert.
The musicians, at the end of the second parlor, were playing a waltz; and
the two friends stopped at the door to look at them. A score of couples were
whirling-the men with a serious expression, and the women with a fixed
smile on their lips. They displayed a good deal of shoulder, like their
mothers; and the bodices of some were only held in place by a slender
ribbon, disclosing at times more than is generally shown.
Suddenly from the end of the room a tall girl darted forward, gliding
through the crowd, brushing against the dancers, and holding her long train in
her left hand. She ran with quick little steps as women do in crowds, and
called out: “Ah! How is Muscade? How do you do, Muscade?”
Her features wore an expression of the bloom of life, the illumination of
happiness. Her white flesh seemed to shine, the golden-white flesh which
goes with red hair. The mass of her tresses, twisted on her head, fiery,
flaming locks, nestled against her supple neck, which was still a little thin.
She seemed to move just as her mother was made to speak, so natural,
noble, and simple were her gestures. A person felt a moral joy and physical
pleasure in seeing her walk, stir about, bend her head, or lift her arm. “Ah!
Muscade, how do you do, Muscade?” she repeated.
Servigny shook her hand violently, as he would a man’s, and said:
“Mademoiselle Yvette, my friend, Baron Saval.”
“Good evening, Monsieur. Are you always as tall as that?”
Servigny replied in that bantering tone which he always used with her, in
order to conceal his mistrust and his uncertainty:
“No, Mam’zelle. He has put on his greatest dimensions to please your
mother, who loves a colossus.”
And the young girl remarked with a comic seriousness: “Very well But
when you come to see me you must diminish a little if you please. I prefer the
medium height. Now Muscade has just the proportions which I like.”
 And she gave her hand to the newcomer. Then she asked: “Do you dance,
Muscade? Come, let us waltz.” Without replying, with a quick movement,
passionately, Servigny clasped her waist and they disappeared with the fury
of a whirlwind.
They danced more rapidly than any of the others, whirled and whirled,
and turned madly, so close together that they seemed but one, and with the
form erect, the legs almost motionless, as if some invisible mechanism,
concealed beneath their feet, caused them to twirl. They appeared tireless.
The other dancers stopped from time to time. They still danced on, alone.
They seemed not to know where they were nor what they were doing, as if,
they had gone far away from the ball, in an ecstasy. The musicians continued
to play, with their looks fixed upon this mad couple; all the guests gazed at
them, and when finally they did stop dancing, everyone applauded them.
She was a little flushed, with strange eyes, ardent and timid, less daring
than a moment before, troubled eyes, blue, yet with a pupil so black that they
seemed hardly natural. Servigny appeared giddy. He leaned against a door to
regain his composure.
“You have no head, my poor Muscade, I am steadier than you,” said
Yvette to Servigny. He smiled nervously, and devoured her with a look. His
animal feelings revealed themselves in his eyes and in the curl of his lips.
She stood beside him looking down, and her bosom rose and fell in short
gasps as he looked at her.
Then she said softly: “Really, there are times when you are like a tiger
about to spring upon his prey. Come, give me your arm, and let us find your
friend.”
Silently he offered her his arm and they went down the long drawing-room
together.
Saval was not alone, for the Marquise Obardi had rejoined him. She
conversed with him on ordinary and fashionable subjects with a
seductiveness in her tones which intoxicated him. And, looking at her with
his mental eye, it seemed to him that her lips, uttered words far different from
those which they formed. When she saw Servigny her face immediately
lighted up, and turning toward him she said:
“You know, my dear Duke, that I have just leased a villa at Bougival for
two months, and I count upon your coming to see me there, and upon your
friend also. Listen. We take possession next Monday, and shall expect both of
you to dinner the following Saturday. We shall keep you over Sunday.”
 Perfectly serene and tranquil Yvette smiled, saying with a decision which
swept away hesitation on his part:
“Of course Muscade will come to dinner on Saturday. We have only to ask
him, for he and I intend to commit a lot of follies in the country.”
He thought he divined the birth of a promise in her smile, and in her voice
he heard what he thought was invitation.
Then the Marquise turned her big, black eyes upon Saval: “And you will,
of course, come, Baron?”
With a smile that forbade doubt, he bent toward her, saying, “I shall be
only too charmed, Madame.”
Then Yvette murmured with malice that was either naive or traitorous:
“We will set all the world by the ears down there, won’t we, Muscade, and
make my regiment of admirers fairly mad.” And with a look, she pointed out
a group of men who were looking at them from a little distance.
Said Servigny to her: “As many follies as YOU may please, Mam’zelle.”
In speaking to Yvette, Servigny never used the word “Mademoiselle,” by
reason of his close and long intimacy with her.
Then Saval asked: “Why does Mademoiselle always call my friend
Servigny ‘Muscade’?”
Yvette assumed a very frank air and said:
“I will tell you: It is because he always slips through my hands. Now I
think I have him, and then I find I have not.”
The Marquise, with her eyes upon Saval, arid evidently preoccupied, said
in a careless tone: “You children are very funny.”
But Yvette bridled up: “I do not intend to be funny; I am simply frank.
Muscade pleases me, and is always deserting me, and that is what annoys
me.”
Servigny bowed profoundly, saying: “I will never leave you any more,
Mam’zelle, neither day nor night.” She made a gesture of horror:
“My goodness! no — what do you mean? You are all right during the day,
but at night you might embarrass me.”
With an air of impertinence he asked: “And why?”
Yvette responded calmly and audaciously, “Because you would not look
well en deshabille.”
The Marquise, without appearing at all disturbed, said: “What
extraordinary subjects for conversation. One would think that you were not at
all ignorant of such things.”
 And Servigny jokingly added: “That is also my opinion, Marquise.”
Yvette turned her eyes upon him, and in a haughty, yet wounded, tone said:
“You are becoming very vulgar — just as you have been several times
lately.” And turning quickly she appealed to an individual standing by:
“Chevalier, come and defend me from insult.”
A thin, brown man, with an easy carriage, came forward.
“Who is the culprit?” said he, with a constrained smile.
Yvette pointed out Servigny with a nod of her head:
“There he is, but I like him better than I do you, because he is less of a
bore.”
The Chevalier Valreali bowed:
“I do what I can, Mademoiselle. I may have less ability, but not less
devotion.”
A gentleman came forward, tall and stout, with gray whiskers, saying in
loud tones: “Mademoiselle Yvette, I am your most devoted slave.”
Yvette cried: “Ah, Monsieur de Belvigne.” Then turning toward Saval,
she introduced him.
“My last adorer — big, fat, rich, and stupid. Those are the kind I like. A
veritable drum-major — but of the table d’hote. But see, you are still bigger
than he. How shall I nickname you? Good! I have it. I shall call you ‘M.
Colossus of Rhodes, Junior,’ from the Colossus who certainly was your
father. But you two ought to have very interesting things to say to each other
up there, above the heads of us all — so, by-bye.”
And she left them quickly, going to the orchestra to make the musicians
strike up a quadrille.
Madame Obardi seemed preoccupied. In a soft voice she said to
Servigny:
“You are always teasing her. You will warp her character and bring out
many bad traits.”
Servigny replies: “Why, haven’t you finished her education?”
She appeared not to understand, and continued talking in a friendly way.
But she noticed a solemn looking man, wearing a perfect constellation of
crosses and orders, standing near her, and she ran to him:
“Ah Prince, Prince, what good fortune!”
Servigny took Saval’s arm and drew him away:
“That is the latest serious suitor, Prince Kravalow. Isn’t she superb?”
 “To my mind they are both superb. The mother would suffice for me
perfectly,” answered Saval.
Servigny nodded and said: “At your disposal, my dear boy.”
The dancers elbowed them aside, as they were forming for a quadrille.
“Now let us go and see the sharpers,” said Servigny. And they entered the
gambling-room.
Around each table stood a group of men, looking on. There was very little
conversation. At times the clink of gold coins, tossed upon the green cloth or
hastily seized, added its sound to the murmur of the players, just as if the
money was putting in its word among the human voices.
All the men were decorated with various orders, and odd ribbons, and
they all wore the same severe expression, with different countenances. The
especially distinguishing feature was the beard.
The stiff American with his horseshoe, the haughty Englishman with his
fan-beard open on his breast, the Spaniard with his black fleece reaching to
the eyes, the Roman with that huge mustache which Italy copied from Victor
Emmanuel, the Austrian with his whiskers and shaved chin, a Russian
general whose lip seemed armed with two twisted lances, and a Frenchman
with a dainty mustache, displayed the fancies of all the barbers in the world.
“You won’t join the game?” asked Servigny.
“No, shall you?”
“Not now. If you are ready to go, we will come back some quieter day.
There are too many people here to-day, and we can’t do anything.”
“Well, let us go.”
And they disappeared behind a door-curtain into the hall. As soon as they
were in the street Servigny asked: “Well, what do you think of it?”
“It certainly is interesting, but I fancy the women’s side of it more than the
men’s.”
“Indeed! Those women are the best of the tribe for us. Don’t you find that
you breathe the odor of love among them, just as you scent the perfumes at a
hairdresser’s?”
“Really such houses are the place for one to go. And what experts, my
dear fellow! What artists! Have you ever eaten bakers’ cakes? They look
well, but they amount to nothing. The man who bakes them only knows how
to make bread. Well! the love of a woman in ordinary society always
reminds me of these bake-shop trifles, while the love you find at houses like
the Marquise Obardi’s, don’t you see, is the real sweetmeat. Oh! they know
how to make cakes, these charming pastry-cooks. Only you pay five sous, at
their shops, for what costs two sous elsewhere.”
“Who is the master of the house just now?” asked Saval.
Servigny shrugged his shoulders, signifying his ignorance.
“I don’t know, the latest one known was an English peer, but he left three
months ago. At present she must live off the common herd, or the gambling,
perhaps, and on the gamblers, for she has her caprices. But tell me, it is
understood that we dine with her on Saturday at Bougival, is it not? People
are more free in the country, and I shall succeed in finding out what ideas
Yvette has in her head!”
“I should like nothing better,” replied Saval. “I have nothing to do that
day.”
Passing down through the Champs-Elysees, under the steps they disturbed
a couple making love on one of the benches, and Servigny muttered: “What
foolishness and what a serious matter at the same time! How commonplace
and amusing love is, always the same and always different! And the beggar
who gives his sweetheart twenty sous gets as much return as I would for ten
thousand francs from some Obardi, no younger and no less stupid perhaps
than this nondescript. What nonsense!”
He said nothing for a few minutes; then he began again: “All the same, it
would be good to become Yvette’s first lover. Oh! for that I would give— “
He did not add what he would give, and Saval said good night to him as
they reached the corner of the Rue Royale.

CHAPTER II.

Bougival and Love

They had set the table on the veranda which overlooked the river. The
Printemps villa, leased by the Marquise Obardi, was halfway up this hill,
just at the corner of the Seine, which turned before the garden wall, flowing
toward Marly.
Opposite the residence, the island of Croissy formed a horizon of tall
trees, a mass of verdure, and they could see a long stretch of the big river as
far as the floating cafe of La Grenouillere hidden beneath the foliage.
 The evening fell, one of those calm evenings at the waterside, full of color
yet soft, one of those peaceful evenings which produces a sensation of
pleasure. No breath of air stirred the branches, no shiver of wind ruffled the
smooth clear surface of the Seine. It was not too warm, it was mild — good
weather to live in. The grateful coolness of the banks of the Seine rose
toward a serene sky.
The sun disappeared behind the trees to shine on other lands, and one
seemed to absorb the serenity of the already sleeping earth, to inhale, in the
peace of space, the life of the infinite.
As they left the drawing-room to seat themselves at the table everyone
was joyous. A softened gaiety filled their hearts, they felt that it would be so
delightful to dine there in the country, with that great river and that twilight
for a setting, breathing that pure and fragrant air.
The Marquise had taken Saval’s arm, and Yvette, Servigny’s. The four
were alone by themselves. The two women seemed entirely different persons
from what they were at Paris, especially Yvette. She talked but little, and
seemed languid and grave.
Saval, hardly recognizing her in this frame of mind, asked her: “What is
the matter, Mademoiselle? I find you changed since last week. You have
become quite a serious person.”
“It is the country that does that for me,” she replied. “I am not the same, I
feel queer; besides I am never two days alike. To-day I have the air of a mad
woman, and to-morrow shall be as grave as an elegy. I change with the
weather, I don’t know why. You see, I am capable of anything, according to
the moment. There are days when I would like to kill people, — not animals,
I would never kill animals, — but people, yes, and other days when I weep
at a mere thing. A lot of different ideas pass through my head. It depends, too,
a good deal on how I get up. Every morning, on waking, I can tell just what I
shall be in the evening. Perhaps it is our dreams that settle it for us, and it
depends on the book I have just read.”
She was clad in a white flannel suit which delicately enveloped her in the
floating softness of the material. Her bodice, with full folds, suggested,
without displaying and without restraining, her free chest, which was firm
and already ripe. And her superb neck emerged from a froth of soft lace,
bending with gentle movements, fairer than her gown, a pilaster of flesh,
bearing the heavy mass of her golden hair.
 Servigny looked at her for a long time: “You are adorable this evening,
Mam’zelle,” said he, “I wish I could always see you like this.”
“Don’t make a declaration, Muscade. I should take it seriously, and that
might cost you dear.”
The Marquise seemed happy, very happy. All in black, richly dressed in a
plain gown which showed her strong, full lines, a bit of red at the bodice, a
cincture of red carnations falling from her waist like a chain, and fastened at
the hips, and a red rose in her dark hair, she carried in all her person
something fervid, — in that simple costume, in those flowers which seemed
to bleed, in her look, in her slow speech, in her peculiar gestures.
Saval, too, appeared serious and absorbed. From time to time he stroked
his pointed beard, trimmed in the fashion of Henri III., and seemed to be
meditating on the most profound subjects.
Nobody spoke for several minutes. Then as they were serving the trout,
Servigny remarked:
“Silence is a good thing, at times. People are often nearer to each other
when they are keeping still than when they are talking. Isn’t that so,
Marquise?”
She turned a little toward him and answered:
“It is quite true. It is so sweet to think together about agreeable things.”
She raised her warm glance toward Saval, and they continued for some
seconds looking into each other’s eyes. A slight, almost inaudible movement
took place beneath the table.
Servigny resumed: “Mam’zelle Yvette, you will make me believe that you
are in love if you keep on being as good as that. Now, with whom could you
be in love? Let us think together, if you will; I put aside the army of vulgar
sighers. I’ll only take the principal ones. Is it Prince Kravalow?”
At this name Yvette awoke: “My poor Muscade, can you think of such a
thing? Why, the Prince has the air of a Russian in a wax-figure museum, who
has won medals in a hairdressing competition.”
“Good! We’ll drop the Prince. But you have noticed the Viscount Pierre
de Belvigne?”
This time she began to laugh, and asked: “Can you imagine me hanging to
the neck of ‘Raisine’?” She nicknamed him according to the day, Raisine,
Malvoisie, [Footnote: Preserved grapes and pears, malmsey, — a poor
wine.] Argenteuil, for she gave everybody nicknames. And she would
murmur to his face: “My dear little Pierre,” or “My divine Pedro, darling
Pierrot, give your bow-wow’s head to your dear little girl, who wants to kiss
it.”
“Scratch out number two. There still remains the Chevalier Valreali whom
the Marquise seems to favor,” continued Servigny.
Yvette regained all her gaiety: “‘Teardrop’? Why he weeps like a
Magdalene. He goes to all the first-class funerals. I imagine myself dead
every time he looks at me.”
“That settles the third. So the lightning will strike Baron Saval, here.”
“Monsieur the Colossus of Rhodes, Junior? No. He is too strong. It would
seem to me as if I were in love with the triumphal arch of L’Etoile.”
“Then Mam’zelle, it is beyond doubt that you are in love with me, for I am
the only one of your adorers of whom we have not yet spoken. I left myself
for the last through modesty and through discretion. It remains for me to thank
you.”
She replied with happy grace: “In love with you, Muscade? Ah! no. I like
you, but I don’t love you. Wait — I — I don’t want to discourage you. I don’t
love you — yet. You have a chance — perhaps. Persevere, Muscade, be
devoted, ardent, submissive, full of little attentions and considerations,
docile to my slightest caprices, ready for anything to please me, and we shall
see — later.”
“But, Mam’zelle, I would rather furnish all you demand afterward than
beforehand, if it be the same to you.”
She asked with an artless air: “After what, Muscade?”
“After you have shown me that you love me, by Jove!”
“Well, act as if I loved you, and believe it, if you wish.”
“But you— “
“Be quiet, Muscade; enough on the subject.”
The sun had sunk behind the island, but the whole sky still flamed like a
fire, and the peaceful water of the river seemed changed to blood. The
reflections from the horizon reddened houses, objects, and persons. The
scarlet rose in the Marquise’s hair had the appearance of a splash of purple
fallen from the clouds upon her head.
As Yvette looked on from her end, the Marquise rested, as if by
carelessness, her bare hand upon Saval’s hand; but the young girl made a
motion and the Marquise withdrew her hand with a quick gesture, pretending
to readjust something in the folds of her corsage.
Servigny, who was looking at them, said:
 “If you like, Mam’zelle, we will take a walk on the island after dinner.”
“Oh, yes! That will be delightful. We will go all alone, won’t we,
Muscade?”
“Yes, all alone, Mam’zelle!”
The vast silence of the horizon, the sleepy tranquillity of the evening
captured heart, body, and voice. There are peaceful, chosen hours when it
becomes almost impossible to talk.
The servants waited on them noiselessly. The firmamental conflagration
faded away, and the soft night spread its shadows over the earth.
“Are you going to stay long in this place?” asked Saval.
And the Marquise answered, dwelling on each word: “Yes, as long as I
am happy.”
As it was too dark to see, lamps were brought. They cast upon the table a
strange, pale gleam beneath the great obscurity of space; and very soon a
shower of gnats fell upon the tablecloth — the tiny gnats which immolate
themselves by passing over the glass chimneys, and, with wings and legs
scorched, powder the table linen, dishes, and cups with a kind of gray and
hopping dust.
They swallowed them in the wine, they ate them in the sauces, they saw
them moving on the bread, and had their faces and hands tickled by the
countless swarm of these tiny insects. They were continually compelled to
throw away the beverages, to cover the plates, and while eating to shield the
food with infinite precautions.
It amused Yvette. Servigny took care to shelter what she bore to her
mouth, to guard her glass, to hold his handkerchief stretched out over her
head like a roof. But the Marquise, disgusted, became nervous, and the end of
the dinner came quickly. Yvette, who had not forgotten Servigny’s
proposition, said to him:
“Now we’ll go to the island.”
Her mother cautioned her in a languid tone: “Don’t be late, above all
things. We will escort you to the ferry.”
And they started in couples, the young girl and her admirer walking in
front, on the road to the shore. They heard, behind them, the Marquise and
Saval speaking very rapidly in low tones. All was dark, with a thick, inky
darkness. But the sky swarmed with grains of fire, and seemed to sow them
in the river, for the black water was flecked with stars.
 The frogs were croaking monotonously upon the bank, and numerous
nightingales were uttering their low, sweet song in the calm and peaceful air.
Yvette suddenly said: “Gracious! They are not walking behind us any
more, where are they?” And she called out: “Mamma!” No voice replied.
The young girl resumed: “At any rate, they can’t be far away, for I heard them
just now.”
Servigny murmured: “They must have gone back. Your mother was cold,
perhaps.” And he drew her along.
Before them a light gleamed. It was the tavern of Martinet, restaurant-
keeper and fisherman. At their call a man came out of the house, and they got
into a large boat which was moored among the weeds of the shore.
The ferryman took his oars, and the unwieldy barge, as it advanced,
disturbed the sleeping stars upon the water and set them into a mad dance,
which gradually calmed down after they had passed. They touched the other
shore and disembarked beneath the great trees. A cool freshness of damp
earth permeated the air under the lofty and clustered branches, where there
seemed to be as many nightingales as there were leaves. A distant piano
began to play a popular waltz.
Servigny took Yvette’s arm and very gently slipped his hand around her
waist and gave her a slight hug.
“What are you thinking about?” he said.
“I? About nothing at all. I am very happy!”
“Then you don’t love me?”
“Oh, yes, Muscade, I love you, I love you a great deal; only leave me
alone. It is too beautiful here to listen to your nonsense.”
He drew her toward him, although she tried, by little pushes, to extricate
herself, and through her soft flannel gown he felt the warmth of her flesh. He
stammered:
“Yvette!”
“Well, what?”
“I do love you!”
“But you are not in earnest, Muscade.”
“Oh, yes I am. I have loved you for a long time.”
She continually kept trying to separate herself from him, trying to release
the arm crushed between their bodies. They walked with difficulty,
trammeled by this bond and by these movements, and went zigzagging along
like drunken folk.
 He knew not what to say to her, feeling that he could not talk to a young
girl as he would to a woman. He was perplexed, thinking what he ought to
do, wondering if she consented or did not understand, and curbing his spirit
to find just the right, tender, and decisive words. He kept saying every
second:
“Yvette! Speak! Yvette!”
Then, suddenly, risking all, he kissed her on the cheek. She gave a little
start aside, and said with a vexed air:
“Oh! you are absurd. Are you going to let me alone?”
The tone of her voice did not at all reveal her thoughts nor her wishes;
and, not seeing her too angry, he applied his lips to the beginning of her neck,
just beneath the golden hair, that charming spot which he had so often
coveted.
Then she made great efforts to free herself. But he held her strongly, and
placing his other hand on her shoulder, he compelled her to turn her head
toward him and gave her a fond, passionate kiss, squarely on the mouth.
She slipped from his arms by a quick undulation of the body, and, free
from his grasp, she disappeared into the darkness with a great swishing of
skirts, like the whir of a bird as it flies away.
He stood motionless a moment, surprised by her suppleness and her
disappearance, then hearing nothing, he called gently: “Yvette!”
She did not reply. He began to walk forward, peering through the
shadows, looking in the underbrush for the white spot her dress should make.
All was dark. He cried out more loudly:
“Mam’zelle Yvette! Mam’zelle Yvette!”
Nothing stirred. He stopped and listened. The whole island was still;
there was scarcely a rustle of leaves over his head. The frogs alone
continued their deep croakings on the shores. Then he wandered from thicket
to thicket, going where the banks were steep and bushy and returning to
places where they were flat and bare as a dead man’s arm. He proceeded
until he was opposite Bougival and reached the establishment of La
Grenouillere, groping the clumps of trees, calling out continually:
“Mam’zelle Yvette, where are you? Answer. It is ridiculous! Come,
answer! Don’t keep me hunting like this.”
A distant clock began to strike. He counted the hours: twelve. He had
been searching through the island for two hours. Then he thought that perhaps
she had gone home; and he went back very anxiously, this time by way of the
bridge. A servant dozing on a chair was waiting in the hall.
Servigny awakened him and asked: “Is it long since Mademoiselle Yvette
came home? I left her at the foot of the place because I had a call to make.”
And the valet replied: “Oh! yes, Monsieur, Mademoiselle came in before
ten o’clock.”
He proceeded to his room and went to bed. But he could not close his
eyes. That stolen kiss had stirred him to the soul. He kept wondering what
she thought and what she knew. How pretty and attractive she was!
His desires, somewhat wearied by the life he led, by all his procession of
sweethearts, by all his explorations in the kingdom of love, awoke before
this singular child, so fresh, irritating, and inexplicable. He heard one
o’clock strike, then two. He could not sleep at all. He was warm, he felt his
heart beat and his temples throb, and he rose to open the window. A breath of
fresh air came in, which he inhaled deeply. The thick darkness was silent,
black, motionless. But suddenly he perceived before him, in the shadows of
the garden, a shining point; it seemed a little red coal.
“Well, a cigar!” he said to himself. “It must be Saval,” and he called
softly: “Leon!”
“Is it you, Jean?”
“Yes. Wait. I’ll come down.” He dressed, went out, and rejoining his
friend who was smoking astride an iron chair, inquired: “What are you doing
here at this hour?”
“I am resting,” Saval replied. And he began to laugh. Servigny pressed his
hand: “My compliments, my dear fellow. And as for me, I — am making a
fool of myself.”
“You mean— “
“I mean that — Yvette and her mother do not resemble each other.”
“What has happened? Tell me.”
Servigny recounted his attempts and their failure. Then he resumed:
“Decidedly, that little girl worries me. Fancy my not being able to sleep!
What a queer thing a girl is! She appears to be as simple as anything, and yet
you know nothing about her. A woman who has lived and loved, who knows
life, can be quickly understood. But when it comes to a young virgin, on the
contrary, no one can guess anything about her. At heart I begin to think that
she is making sport of me.”
 Saval tilted his chair. He said, very slowly: “Take care, my dear fellow,
she will lead you to marriage. Remember those other illustrious examples. It
was just by this same process that Mademoiselle de Montijo, who was at
least of good family, became empress. Don’t play Napoleon.”
Servigny murmured: “As for that, fear nothing. I am neither a simpleton
nor an emperor. A man must be either one or the other to make such a move
as that. But tell me, are you sleepy?”
“Not a bit.”
“Will you take a walk along the river?”
“Gladly.”
They opened the iron gate and began to walk along the river bank toward
Marly. It was the quiet hour which precedes dawn, the hour of deep sleep, of
complete rest, of profound peacefulness. Even the gentle sounds of the night
were hushed. The nightingales sang no longer; the frogs had finished their
hubbub; some kind of an animal only, probably a bird, was making
somewhere a kind of sawing sound, feeble, monotonous, and regular as a
machine. Servigny, who had moments of poetry, and of philosophy too,
suddenly remarked: “Now this girl completely puzzles me. In arithmetic, one
and one make two. In love one and one ought to make one but they make two
just the same. Have you ever felt that? That need of absorbing a woman in
yourself or disappearing in her? I am not speaking of the animal embrace, but
of that moral and mental eagerness to be but one with a being, to open to her
all one’s heart and soul, and to fathom her thoughts to the depths.”
“And yet you can never lay bare all the fluctuations of her wishes, desires,
and opinions. You can never guess, even slightly, all the unknown currents,
all the mystery of a soul that seems so near, a soul hidden behind two eyes
that look at you, clear as water, transparent as if there were nothing beneath a
soul which talks to you by a beloved mouth, which seems your very own, so
greatly do you desire it; a soul which throws you by words its thoughts, one
by one, and which, nevertheless, remains further away from you than those
stars are from each other, and more impenetrable. Isn’t it queer, all that?”
“I don’t, ask so much,” Saval rejoined. “I don’t look behind the eyes. I
care little for the contents, but much for the vessel.” And Servigny replied:
“What a singular person Yvette is! How will she receive me this morning?”
As they reached the works at Marly they perceived that the sky was
brightening. The cocks began to crow in the poultry-yards. A bird twittered
in a park at the left, ceaselessly reiterating a tender little theme.
 “It is time to go back,” said Saval.
They returned, and as Servigny entered his room, he saw the horizon all
pink through his open windows.
Then he shut the blinds, drew the thick, heavy curtains, went back to bed
and fell asleep. He dreamed of Yvette all through his slumber. An odd noise
awoke him. He sat on the side of the bed and listened, but heard nothing
further. Then suddenly there was a crackling against the blinds, like falling
hail. He jumped from the bed, ran to the window, opened it, and saw Yvette
standing in the path and throwing handfuls of gravel at his face. She was clad
in pink, with a wide-brimmed straw hat ornamented with a mousquetaire
plume, and was laughing mischievously.
“Well! Muscade, are you asleep? What could you have been doing all
night to make you wake so late? Have you been seeking adventures, my poor
Muscade?”
He was dazzled by the bright daylight striking him full in the eyes, still
overwhelmed with fatigue, and surprised at the jesting tranquillity of the
young girl.
“I’ll be down in a second, Mam’zelle,” he answered. “Just time to splash
my face with water, and I will join you.”
“Hurry,” she cried, “it is ten o’clock, and besides I have a great plan to
unfold to you, a plot we are going to concoct. You know that we breakfast at
eleven.”
He found her seated on a bench, with a book in her lap, some novel or
other. She took his arm in a familiar and friendly way, with a frank and gay
manner, as if nothing had happened the night before, and drew him toward the
end of the garden.
“This is my plan,” she said. “We will disobey mamma, and you shall take
me presently to La Grenouillere restaurant. I want to see it. Mamma says that
decent women cannot go to the place. Now it is all the same to me whether
persons can go there or cannot. You’ll take me, won’t you, Muscade? And we
will have a great time — with the boatmen.”
She exhaled a delicious fragrance, although he could not exactly define
just what light and vague odor enveloped her. It was not one of those heavy
perfumes of her mother, but a discreet breath in which he fancied he could
detect a suspicion of iris powder, and perhaps a suggestion of vervain.
Whence emanated that indiscernible perfume? From her dress, her hair, or
her skin? He puzzled over this, and as he was speaking very close to her, he
received full in the face her fresh breath, which seemed to him just as
delicious to inhale.
Then he thought that this evasive perfume which he was trying to
recognize was perhaps only evoked by her charming eyes, and was merely a
sort of deceptive emanation of her young and alluring grace.
“That is agreed, isn’t it, Muscade? As it will be very warm after
breakfast, mamma will not go out. She always feels the heat very much. We
will leave her with your friend, and you shall take me. They will think that
we have gone into the forest. If you knew how much it will amuse me to see
La Grenouillere!”
They reached the iron gate opposite the Seine. A flood of sunshine fell
upon the slumberous, shining river. A slight heat-mist rose from it, a sort of
haze of evaporated water, which spread over the surface of the stream a faint
gleaming vapor.
From time to time, boats passed by, a quick yawl or a heavy passage boat,
and short or long whistles could be heard, those of the trains which every
Sunday poured the citizens of Paris into the suburbs, and those of the
steamboats signaling their approach to pass the locks at Marly.
But a tiny bell sounded. Breakfast was announced, and they went back into
the house. The repast was a silent one. A heavy July noon overwhelmed the
earth, and oppressed humanity. The heat seemed thick, and paralyzed both
mind and body. The sluggish words would not leave the lips, and all motion
seemed laborious, as if the air had become a resisting medium, difficult to
traverse. Only Yvette, although silent, seemed animated and nervous with
impatience. As soon as they had finished the last course she said:
“If we were to go for a walk in the forest, it would be deliciously cool
under the trees.”
The Marquise murmured with a listless air: “Are you mad? Does anyone
go out in such weather?”
And the young girl, delighted, rejoined: “Oh, well! We will leave the
Baron to keep you company. Muscade and I will climb the hill and sit on the
grass and read.”
And turning toward Servigny she asked: “That is understood?”
“At your service, Mam’zelle,” he replied.
Yvette ran to get her hat. The Marquise shrugged her shoulders with a
sigh. “She certainly is mad.” she said.
 Then with an indolence in her amorous and lazy gestures, she gave her
pretty white hand to the Baron, who kissed it softly. Yvette and Servigny
started. They went along the river, crossed the bridge and went on to the
island, and then seated themselves on the bank, beneath the willows, for it
was too soon to go to La Grenouillere.
The young girl at once drew a book from her pocket and smilingly said:
“Muscade, you are going to read to me.” And she handed him the volume.
He made a motion as if of fright. “I, Mam’zelle? I don’t know how to
read!”
She replied with gravity: “Come, no excuses, no objections; you are a fine
suitor, you! All for nothing, is that it? Is that your motto?”
He took the book, opened it, and was astonished. It was a treatise on
entomology. A history of ants by an English author. And as he remained inert,
believing that he was making sport of her, she said with impatience: “Well,
read!”
“Is it a wager, or just a simple fad?” he asked.
“No, my dear. I saw that book in a shop. They told me that it was the best
authority on ants and I thought that it would be interesting to learn about the
life of these little insects while you see them running over the grass; so read,
if you please.”
She stretched herself flat upon the grass, her elbows resting upon the
ground, her head between her hands, her eyes fixed upon the ground. He
began to read as follows:
“The anthropoid apes are undoubtedly the animals which approach
nearest to man by their anatomical structure, but if we consider the habits of
the ants, their organization into societies, their vast communities, the houses
and roads that they construct, their custom of domesticating animals, and
sometimes even of making slaves of them, we are compelled to admit that
they have the right to claim a place near to man in the scale of intelligence.”
He continued in a monotonous voice, stopping from time to time to ask:
“Isn’t that enough?”
She shook her head, and having caught an ant on the end of a severed
blade of grass, she amused herself by making it go from one end to the other
of the sprig, which she tipped up whenever the insect reached one of the
ends. She listened with mute and contented attention to all the wonderful
details of the life of these frail creatures: their subterranean homes; the
manner in which they seize, shut up, and feed plant-lice to drink the sweet
milk which they secrete, as we keep cows in our barns; their custom of
domesticating little blind insects which clean the anthills, and of going to war
to capture slaves who will take care of their victors with such tender
solicitude that the latter even lose the habit of feeding themselves.
And little by little, as if a maternal tenderness had sprung up in her heart
for the poor insect which was so tiny and so intelligent, Yvette made it climb
on her finger, looking at it with a moved expression, almost wanting to
embrace it.
And as Servigny read of the way in which they live in communities, and
play games of strength and skill among themselves, the young girl grew
enthusiastic and sought to kiss the insect which escaped her and began to
crawl over her face. Then she uttered a piercing cry, as if she had been
threatened by a terrible danger, and with frantic gestures tried to brush it off
her face. With a loud laugh Servigny caught it near her tresses and imprinted
on the spot where he had seized it a long kiss without Yvette withdrawing her
forehead.
Then she exclaimed as she rose: “That is better than a novel. Now let us
go to La Grenouillere.”
They reached that part of the island which is set out as a park and shaded
with great trees. Couples were strolling beneath the lofty foliage along the
Seine, where the boats were gliding by.
The boats were filled with young people, working-girls and their
sweethearts, the latter in their shirt-sleeves, with coats on their arms, tall hats
tipped back, and a jaded look. There were tradesmen with their families, the
women dressed in their best and the children flocking like little chicks about
their parents. A distant, continuous sound of voices, a heavy, scolding clamor
announced the proximity of the establishment so dear to the boatmen.
Suddenly they saw it. It was a huge boat, roofed over, moored to the bank.
On board were many men and women drinking at tables, or else standing up,
shouting, singing, bandying words, dancing, capering, to the sound of a piano
which was groaning — out of tune and rattling as an old kettle.
Two tall, russet-haired, half-tipsy girls, with red lips, were talking
coarsely. Others were dancing madly with young fellows half clad, dressed
like jockeys, in linen trousers and colored caps. The odors of a crowd and of
rice-powder were noticeable.
The drinkers around the tables were swallowing white, red, yellow, and
green liquids, and vociferating at the top of their lungs, feeling as it were, the
necessity of making a noise, a brutal need of having their ears and brains
filled with uproar. Now and then a swimmer, standing on the roof, dived into
the water, splashing the nearest guests, who yelled like savages.
On the stream passed the flotillas of light craft, long, slender wherries,
swiftly rowed by bare-armed oarsmen, whose muscles played beneath their
bronzed skin. The women in the boats, in blue or red flannel skirts, with
umbrellas, red or blue, opened over their heads and gleaming under the
burning sun, leaned back in their chairs at the stern of the boats, and seemed
almost to float upon the water, in motionless and slumberous pose.
The heavier boats proceeded slowly, crowded with people. A collegian,
wanting to show off, rowed like a windmill against all the other boats,
bringing the curses of their oarsmen down upon his head, and disappearing in
dismay after almost drowning two swimmers, followed by the shouts of the
crowd thronging in the great floating cafe.
Yvette, radiantly happy, taking Servigny’s arm, went into the midst of this
noisy mob. She seemed to enjoy the crowding, and stared at the girls with a
calm and gracious glance.
“Look at that one, Muscade,” she said. “What pretty hair she has! They
seem to be having such fun!”
As the pianist, a boatman dressed in red with a huge straw hat, began a
waltz, Yvette grasped her companion and they danced so long and madly that
everybody looked at them. The guests, standing on the tables, kept time with
their feet; others threw glasses, and the musician, seeming to go mad, struck
the ivory keys with great bangs; swaying his whole body and swinging his
head covered with that immense hat. Suddenly he stopped and, slipping to the
deck, lay flat, beneath his head-gear, as if dead with fatigue. A loud laugh
arose and everybody applauded.
Four friends rushed forward, as they do in cases of accident, and lifting up
their comrade, they carried him by his four limbs, after carefully placing his
great hat on his stomach. A joker following them intoned the “De Profundis,”
and a procession formed and threaded the paths of the island, guests and
strollers and everyone they met falling into line.
Yvette darted forward, delighted, laughing with her whole heart, chatting
with everybody, stirred by the movement and the noise. The young men gazed
at her, crowded against her, seeming to devour her with their glances; and
Servigny began to fear lest the adventure should terminate badly.
 The procession still kept on its way; hastening its step; for the four
bearers had taken a quick pace, followed by the yelling crowd. But suddenly,
they turned toward the shore, stopped short as they reached the bank, swung
their comrade for a moment, and then, all four acting together, flung him into
the river.
A great shout of joy rang out from all mouths, while the poor pianist,
bewildered, paddled, swore, coughed, and spluttered, and though sticking in
the mud managed to get to the shore. His hat which floated down the stream
was picked up by a boat. Yvette danced with joy, clapping and repeating:
“Oh! Muscade, what fun! what fun!”
Servigny looked on, having become serious, a little disturbed, a little
chilled to see her so much at her ease in this common place. A sort of instinct
revolted in him, that instinct of the proper, which a well-born man always
preserves even when he casts himself loose, that instinct which avoids too
common familiarities and too degrading contacts. Astonished, he muttered to
himself:
“Egad! Then YOU are at home here, are you?” And he wanted to speak
familiarly to her, as a man does to certain women the first time he meets
them. He no longer distinguished her from the russet-haired, hoarse-voiced
creatures who brushed against them. The language of the crowd was not at all
choice, but nobody seemed shocked or surprised. Yvette did not even appear
to notice it.
“Muscade, I want to go in bathing,” she said. “We’ll go into the river
together.”
“At your service,” said he.
They went to the bath-office to get bathing-suits. She was ready the first,
and stood on the bank waiting for him, smiling on everyone who looked at
her. Then side by side they went into the luke-warm water.
She swam with pleasure, with intoxication, caressed by the wave,
throbbing with a sensual delight, raising herself at each stroke as if she were
going to spring from the water. He followed her with difficulty, breathless,
and vexed to feel himself mediocre at the sport.
But she slackened her pace, and then, turning over suddenly, she floated,
with her arms folded and her eyes wide open to the blue sky. He observed,
thus stretched out on the surface of the river, the undulating lines of her form,
her firm neck and shoulders, her slightly submerged hips, and bare ankles,
gleaming in the water, and the tiny foot that emerged.
 He saw her thus exhibiting herself, as if she were doing it on purpose, to
lure him on, or again to make sport of him. And he began to long for her with
a passionate ardor and an exasperating impatience. Suddenly she turned,
looked at him, and burst into laughter.
“You have a fine head,” she said.
He was annoyed at this bantering, possessed with the anger of a baffled
lover. Then yielding brusquely to a half felt desire for retaliation, a desire to
avenge himself, to wound her, he said:
“Well, does this sort of life suit you?”
She asked with an artless air: “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come, don’t make game of me. You know well enough what I mean!”
“No, I don’t, on my word of honor.”
“Oh, let us stop this comedy! Will you or will you not?”
“I do not understand you.”
“You are not as stupid as all that; besides I told you last night.”
“Told me what? I have forgotten!”
“That I love you.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“What nonsense!”
“I swear it.”
“Then prove it.”
“That is all I ask.”
“What is?”
“To prove it.”
“Well, do so.”
“But you did not say so last night.”
“You did not ask anything.”
“What absurdity!”
“And besides it is not to me to whom you should make your proposition.”
“To whom, then?”
“Why, to mamma, of course.”
He burst into laughter. “To your mother. No, that is too much!”
She had suddenly become very grave, and looking him straight in the eyes,
said:
“Listen, Muscade, if you really love me enough to marry me, speak to
mamma first, and I will answer you afterward.”
 He thought she was still making sport of him, and angrily replied:
“Mam’zelle, you must be taking me for somebody else.”
She kept looking at him with her soft, clear eyes. She hesitated and then
said:
“I don’t understand you at all.”
Then he answered quickly with somewhat of ill nature in his voice:
“Come now, Yvette, let us cease this absurd comedy, which has already
lasted too long. You are playing the part of a simple little girl, and the role
does not fit you at all, believe me. You know perfectly well that there can be
no question of marriage between us, but merely of love. I have told you that I
love you. It is the truth. I repeat, I love you. Don’t pretend any longer not to
understand me, and don’t treat me as if I were a fool.”
They were face to face, treading water, merely moving their hands a little,
to steady themselves. She was still for a moment, as if she could not make out
the meaning of his words, then she suddenly blushed up to the roots of her
hair. Her whole face grew purple from her neck to her ears, which became
almost violet, and without answering a word she fled toward the shore,
swimming with all her strength with hasty strokes. He could not keep up with
her and panted with fatigue as he followed. He saw her leave the water, pick
up her cloak, and go to her dressing-room without looking back.
It took him a long time to dress, very much perplexed as to what he ought
to do, puzzled over what he should say to her, and wondering whether he
ought to excuse himself or persevere. When he was ready, she had gone away
all alone. He went back slowly, anxious and disturbed.
The Marquise was strolling, on Saval’s arm, in the circular path around
the lawn. As she observed Servigny, she said, with that careless air which
she had maintained since the night before.
“I told you not to go out in such hot weather. And now Yvette has come
back almost with a sun stroke. She has gone to lie down. She was as red as a
poppy, the poor child, and she has a frightful headache. You must have been
walking in the full sunlight, or you must have done something foolish. You are
as unreasonable as she.”
The young girl did not come down to dinner. When they wanted to send
her up something to eat she called through the door that she was not hungry,
for she had shut herself in, and she begged that they would leave her
undisturbed. The two young men left by the ten o’clock train, promising to
return the following Thursday, and the Marquise seated herself at the open
window to dream, hearing in the distance the orchestra of the boatmen’s ball,
with its sprightly music, in the deep and solemn silence of the night.
Swayed by love as a person is moved by a fondness for horses or boating,
she was subject to sudden tendernesses which crept over her like a disease.
These passions took possession of her suddenly, penetrated her entire being,
maddened her, enervated or overwhelmed her, in measure as they were of an
exalted, violent, dramatic, or sentimental character.
She was one of those women who are created to love and to be loved.
Starting from a very low station in life, she had risen in her adventurous
career, acting instinctively, with inborn cleverness, accepting money and
kisses, naturally, without distinguishing between them, employing her
extraordinary ability in an unthinking and simple fashion. From all her
experiences she had never known either a genuine tenderness or a great
repulsion.
She had had various friends, for she had to live, as in traveling a person
eats at many tables. But occasionally her heart took fire, and she really fell in
love, which state lasted for some weeks or months, according to conditions.
These were the delicious moments of her life, for she loved with all her soul.
She cast herself upon love as a person throws himself into the river to drown
himself, and let herself be carried away, ready to die, if need be, intoxicated,
maddened, infinitely happy. She imagined each time that she never had
experienced anything like such an attachment, and she would have been
greatly astonished if some one had told her of how many men she had
dreamed whole nights through, looking at the stars.
Saval had captivated her, body and soul. She dreamed of him, lulled by
his face and his memory, in the calm exaltation of consummated love, of
present and certain happiness.
A sound behind her made her turn around. Yvette had just entered, still in
her daytime dress, but pale, with eyes glittering, as sometimes is the case
after some great fatigue. She leaned on the sill of the open window, facing
her mother.
“I want to speak to you,” she said.
The Marquise looked at her in astonishment. She loved her like an
egotistical mother, proud of her beauty, as a person is proud of a fortune, too
pretty still herself to become jealous, too indifferent to plan the schemes with
which they charged her, too clever, nevertheless, not to have full
consciousness of her daughter’s value.
 “I am listening, my child,” she said; “what is it?”
Yvette gave her a piercing look, as if to read the depths of her soul and to
seize all the sensations which her words might awake.
“It is this. Something strange has just happened.”
“What can it be?”
“Monsieur de Servigny has told me that he loves me.”
The Marquise, disturbed, waited a moment, and, as Yvette said nothing
more, she asked:
“How did he tell you that? Explain yourself!”
Then the young girl, sitting at her mother’s feet, in a coaxing attitude
common with her, and clasping her hands, added:
“He asked me to marry him.”
Madame Obardi made a sudden gesture of stupefaction and cried:
“Servigny! Why! you are crazy!”
Yvette had not taken her eyes off her mother’s face, watching her thoughts
and her surprise. She asked with a serious voice:
“Why am I crazy? Why should not Monsieur de Servigny marry me?”
The Marquise, embarrassed, stammered:
“You are mistaken, it is not possible. You either did not hear or did not
understand. Monsieur de Servigny is too rich for you, and too much of a
Parisian to marry.” Yvette rose softly. She added: “But if he loves me as he
says he does, mamma?”
Her mother replied, with some impatience: “I thought you big enough and
wise enough not to have such ideas. Servigny is a man-about-town and an
egotist. He will never marry anyone but a woman of his set and his fortune. If
he asked you in marriage, it is only that he wants— “
The Marquise, incapable of expressing her meaning, was silent for a
moment, then continued: “Come now, leave me alone and go to bed.”
And the young girl, as if she had learned what she sought to find out,
answered in a docile voice: “Yes, mamma!”
She kissed her mother on the forehead and withdrew with a calm step. As
she reached the door, the Marquise called out: “And your sunstroke?” she
said.
“I did not have one at all. It was that which caused everything.”
The Marquise added: “We will not speak of it again. Only don’t stay
alone with him for some time from now, and be very sure that he will never
marry you, do you understand, and that he merely means to — compromise
you.”
She could not find better words to express her thought. Yvette went to her
room. Madame Obardi began to dream. Living for years in an opulent and
loving repose, she had carefully put aside all reflections which might annoy
or sadden her. Never had she been willing to ask herself the question. —
What would become of Yvette? It would be soon enough to think about the
difficulties when they arrived. She well knew, from her experience, that her
daughter could not marry a man who was rich and of good society, excepting
by a totally improbable chance, by one of those surprises of love which
place adventuresses on thrones.
She had not considered it, furthermore, being too much occupied with
herself to make any plans which did not directly concern herself.
Yvette would do as her mother, undoubtedly. She would lead a gay life.
Why not? But the Marquise had never dared ask when, or how. That would
all come about in time.
And now her daughter, all of a sudden, without warning, had asked one of
those questions which could not be answered, forcing her to take an attitude
in an affair, so delicate, so dangerous in every respect, and so disturbing to
the conscience which a woman is expected to show in matters concerning her
daughter.
Sometimes nodding but never asleep, she had too much natural astuteness
to be deceived a minute about Servigny’s intentions, for she knew men by
experience, and especially men of that set. So at the first words uttered by
Yvette, she had cried almost in spite of herself: “Servigny, marry you? You
are crazy!”
How had he come to employ that old method, he, that sharp man of the
world? What would he do now? And she, the young girl, how should she
warn her more clearly and even forbid her, for she might make great
mistakes. Would anyone have believed that this big girl had remained so
artless, so ill informed, so guileless? And the Marquise, greatly perplexed
and already wearied with her reflections, endeavored to make up her mind
what to do without finding a solution of the problem, for the situation seemed
to her very embarrassing. Worn out with this worry, she thought:
“I will watch them more clearly, I will act according to circumstances. If
necessary, I will speak to Servigny, who is sharp and will take a hint.”
 She did not think out what she should say to him, nor what he would
answer, nor what sort of an understanding could be established between
them, but happy at being relieved of this care without having had to make a
decision, she resumed her dreams of the handsome Saval, and turning toward
that misty light which hovers over Paris, she threw kisses with both hands
toward the great city, rapid kisses which she tossed into the darkness, one
after the other, without counting; and, very low, as if she were talking to
Saval still, she murmured:
“I love you, I love you!”

CHAPTER III.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Yvette, also, could not sleep. Like her mother, she leaned upon the sill of the
open window, and tears, her first bitter tears, filled her eyes. Up to this time
she had lived, had grown up, in the heedless and serene confidence of happy
youth. Why should she have dreamed, reflected, puzzled? Why should she not
have been a young girl, like all other young girls? Why should a doubt, a fear,
or painful suspicion have come to her?
She seemed posted on all topics because she had a way of talking on all
subjects, because she had taken the tone, demeanor, and words of the people
who lived around her. But she really knew no more than a little girl raised in
a convent; her audacities of speech came from her memory, from that
unconscious faculty of imitation and assimilation which women possess, and
not from a mind instructed and emboldened.
She spoke of love as the son of a painter or a musician would, at the age
of ten or twelve years, speak of painting or music. She knew or rather
suspected very well what sort of mystery this word concealed; — too many
jokes had been whispered before her, for her innocence not to be a trifle
enlightened, — but how could she have drawn the conclusion from all this,
that all families did not resemble hers?
They kissed her mother’s hand with the semblance of respect; all their
friends had titles; they all were rich or seemed to be so; they all spoke
familiarly of the princes of the royal line. Two sons of kings had even come
often, in the evening, to the Marquise’s house. How should she have known?
 And, then, she was naturally artless. She did not estimate or sum up
people as her mother, did. She lived tranquilly, too joyous in her life to
worry herself about what might appear suspicious to creatures more calm,
thoughtful, reserved, less cordial, and sunny.
But now, all at once, Servigny, by a few words, the brutality of which she
felt without understanding them, awakened in her a sudden disquietude,
unreasoning at first, but which grew into a tormenting apprehension. She had
fled home, had escaped like a wounded animal, wounded in fact most deeply
by those words which she ceaselessly repeated to get all their sense and
bearing: “You know very well that there can be no question of marriage
between us — but only of love.”
What did he mean? And why this insult? Was she then in ignorance of
something, some secret, some shame? She was the only one ignorant of it, no
doubt. But what could she do? She was frightened, startled, as a person is
when he discovers some hidden infamy, some treason of a beloved friend,
one of those heart-disasters which crush.
She dreamed, reflected, puzzled, wept, consumed by fears and suspicions.
Then her joyous young soul reassuring itself, she began to plan an adventure,
to imagine an abnormal and dramatic situation, founded on the recollections
of all the poetical romances she had read. She recalled all the moving
catastrophes, or sad and touching stories; she jumbled them together, and
concocted a story of her own with which she interpreted the half-understood
mystery which enveloped her life.
She was no longer cast down. She dreamed, she lifted veils, she imagined
unlikely complications, a thousand singular, terrible things, seductive,
nevertheless, by their very strangeness. Could she be, by chance, the natural
daughter of a prince? Had her poor mother, betrayed and deserted, made
Marquise by some king, perhaps King Victor Emmanuel, been obliged to take
flight before the anger of the family? Was she not rather a child abandoned by
its relations, who were noble and illustrious, the fruit of a clandestine love,
taken in by the Marquise, who had adopted and brought her up?
Still other suppositions passed through her mind. She accepted or rejected
them according to the dictates of her fancy. She was moved to pity over her
own case, happy at the bottom of her heart, and sad also, taking a sort of
satisfaction in becoming a sort of a heroine of a book who must: assume a
noble attitude, worthy of herself.
 She laid out the part she must play, according to events at which she
guessed. She vaguely outlined this role, like one of Scribe’s or of George
Sand’s. It should be endued with devotion, self-abnegation, greatness of soul,
tenderness; and fine words. Her pliant nature almost rejoiced in this new
attitude. She pondered almost till evening what she should do, wondering
how she should manage to wrest the truth from the Marquise.
And when night came, favorable to tragic situations, she had thought out a
simple and subtile trick to obtain what she wanted: it was, brusquely, to say
that Servigny had asked for her hand in marriage.
At this news, Madame Obardi, taken by surprise, would certainly let a
word escape her lips, a cry which would throw light into the mind of her
daughter. And Yvette had accomplished her plan.
She expected an explosion of astonishment, an expansion of love, a
confidence full of gestures and tears. But, instead of this, her mother, without
appearing stupefied or grieved, had only seemed bored; and from the
constrained, discontented, and worried tone in which she had replied, the
young girl, in whom there suddenly awaked all the astuteness, keenness, and
sharpness of a woman, understanding that she must not insist, that the mystery
was of another nature, that it would be painful to her to learn it, and that she
must puzzle it out all alone, had gone back to her room, her heart oppressed,
her soul in distress, possessed now with the apprehensions of a real
misfortune, without knowing exactly either whence or why this emotion came
to her. So she wept, leaning at the window.
She wept long, not dreaming of anything now, not seeking to discover
anything more, and little by little, weariness overcoming her, she closed her
eyes. She dozed for a few minutes, with that deep sleep of people who are
tired out and have not the energy to undress and go to bed, that heavy sleep,
broken by dreams, when the head nods upon the breast.
She did not go to bed until the first break of day, when the cold of the
morning, chilling her, compelled her to leave the window.
The next day and the day after, she maintained a reserved and melancholy
attitude. Her thoughts were busy; she was learning to spy out, to guess at
conclusions, to reason. A light, still vague, seemed to illumine men and
things around her in a new manner; she began to entertain suspicions against
all, against everything that she had believed, against her mother. She
imagined all sorts of things during these two days. She considered all the
possibilities, taking the most extreme resolutions with the suddenness of her
changeable and unrestrained nature. Wednesday she hit upon a plan, an entire
schedule of conduct and a system of spying. She rose Thursday morning with
the resolve to be very sharp and armed against everybody.
She determined even to take for her motto these two words: “Myself
alone,” and she pondered for more than an hour how she should arrange them
to produce a good effect engraved about her crest, on her writing paper.
Saval and Servigny arrived at ten o’clock. The young girl gave her hand
with reserve, without embarrassment, and in a tone, familiar though grave,
she said:
“Good morning, Muscade, are you well?” “Good morning, Mam’zelle,
fairly, thanks, and you?” He was watching her. “What comedy will she play
me,” he said to himself.
The Marquise having taken Saval’s arm, he took Yvette’s, and they began
to stroll about the lawn, appearing and disappearing every minute, behind the
clumps of trees.
Yvette walked with a thoughtful air, looking at the gravel of the pathway,
appearing hardly to hear what her companion said and scarcely answering
him.
Suddenly she asked: “Are you truly my friend, Muscade?”
“Why, of course, Mam’zelle.”
“But truly, truly, now?”
“Absolutely your friend, Mam’zelle, body and soul.”
“Even enough of a friend not to lie to me once, just once?”
“Even twice, if necessary.”
“Even enough to tell me the absolute, exact truth?”
“Yes, Mam’zelle.”
“Well, what do you think, way down in your heart, of the Prince of
Kravalow?”
“Ah, the devil!”
“You see that you are already preparing to lie.”
“Not at all, but I am seeking the words, the proper words. Great Heavens,
Prince Kravalow is a Russian, who speaks Russian, who was born in Russia,
who has perhaps had a passport to come to France, and about whom there is
nothing false but his name and title.”
She looked him in the eyes: “You mean that he is — ?”
“An adventurer, Mam’zelle.”
“Thank you, and Chevalier Valreali is no better?” “You have hit it.”
 “And Monsieur de Belvigne?”
“With him it is a different thing. He is of provincial society, honorable up
to a certain point, but only a little scorched from having lived too rapidly.”
“And you?”
“I am what they call a butterfly, a man of good family, who had
intelligence and who has squandered it in making phrases, who had good
health and who has injured it by dissipation, who had some worth perhaps
and who has scattered it by doing nothing. There is left to me a certain
knowledge of life, a complete absence of prejudice, a large contempt for
mankind, including women, a very deep sentiment of the uselessness of my
acts and a vast tolerance for the mob.”
“Nevertheless, at times, I can be frank, and I am even capable of affection,
as you could see, if you would. With these defects and qualities I place
myself at your orders, Mam’zelle, morally and physically, to do what you
please with me.”
She did not laugh; she listened, weighing his words and his intentions;
then she resumed:
“What do you think of the Countess de Lammy?”
He replied, vivaciously: “You will permit me not to give my opinion
about the women.”
“About none of them?”
“About none of them.” “Then you must have a bad opinion of them all.
Come, think; won’t you make a single exception?”
He sneered with that insolent air which he generally wore; and with that
brutal audacity which he used as a weapon, he said: “Present company is
always excepted.”
She blushed a little, but calmly asked: “Well, what do you think of me?”
“You want me to tell. Well, so be it. I think you are a young person of
good sense, and practicalness, or if you prefer, of good practical sense, who
knows very well how to arrange her pastime, to amuse people, to hide her
views, to lay her snares, and who, without hurrying, awaits events.”
“Is that all?” she asked.
“That’s all.”
Then she said with a serious earnestness: “I shall make you change that
opinion, Muscade.”
Then she joined her mother, who was proceeding with short steps, her
head down, with that manner assumed in talking very low, while walking, of
very intimate and very sweet things. As she advanced she drew shapes in the
sand, letters perhaps, with the point of her sunshade, and she spoke, without
looking at Saval, long, softly, leaning on his arm, pressed against him.
Yvette suddenly fixed her eyes upon her, and a suspicion, rather a feeling
than a doubt, passed through her mind as a shadow of a cloud driven by the
wind passes over the ground.
The bell rang for breakfast. It was silent and almost gloomy. There was a
storm in the air. Great solid clouds rested upon the horizon, mute and heavy,
but charged with a tempest. As soon as they had taken their coffee on the
terrace, the Marquise asked:
“Well, darling, are you going to take a walk today with your friend
Servigny? It is a good time to enjoy the coolness under the trees.”
Yvette gave her a quick glance.
“No, mamma, I am not going out to-day.”
The Marquise appeared annoyed, and insisted. “Oh, go and take a stroll,
my child, it is excellent for you.”
Then Yvette distinctly said: “No, mamma, I shall stay in the house to-day,
and you know very well why, because I told you the other evening.”
Madame Obardi gave it no further thought, preoccupied with the thought
of remaining alone with Saval. She blushed and was annoyed, disturbed on
her own account, not knowing how she could find a free hour or two. She
stammered:
“It is true. I was not thinking of it. I don’t know where my head is.”
And Yvette taking up some embroidery, which she called “the public
safety,” and at which she worked five or six times a year, on dull days,
seated herself on a low chair near her mother, while the two young men,
astride folding-chairs, smoked their cigars.
The hours passed in a languid conversation. The Marquise fidgety, cast
longing glances at Saval, seeking some pretext, some means, of getting rid of
her daughter. She finally realized that she would not succeed, and not
knowing what ruse to employ, she said to Servigny: “You know, my dear
Duke, that I am going to keep you both this evening. To-morrow we shall
breakfast at the Fournaise restaurant, at Chaton.”
He understood, smiled, and bowed: “I am at your orders, Marquise.”
The day wore on slowly and painfully under the threatenings of the storm.
The hour for dinner gradually approached. The heavy sky was filled with
slow and heavy clouds. There was not a breath of air stirring. The evening
meal was silent, too. An oppression, an embarrassment, a sort of vague fear,
seemed to make the two men and the two women mute.
When the covers were removed, they sat long upon the terrace; only
speaking at long intervals. Night fell, a sultry night. Suddenly the horizon was
torn by an immense flash of lightning, which illumined with a dazzling and
wan light the four faces shrouded in darkness. Then a far-off sound, heavy
and feeble, like the rumbling of a carriage upon a bridge, passed over the
earth; and it seemed that the heat of the atmosphere increased, that the air
suddenly became more oppressive, and the silence of the evening deeper.
Yvette rose. “I am going to bed,” she said, “the storm makes me ill.”
And she offered her brow to the Marquise, gave her hand to the two young
men, and withdrew.
As her room was just above the terrace, the leaves of a great chestnut-tree
growing before the door soon gleamed with a green hue, and Servigny kept
his eyes fixed on this pale light in the foliage, in which at times he thought he
saw a shadow pass. But suddenly the light went out. Madame Obardi gave a
great sigh.
“My daughter has gone to bed,” she said.
Servigny rose, saying: “I am going to do as much, Marquise, if you will
permit me.” He kissed the hand she held out to him and disappeared in turn.
She was left alone with Saval, in the night. In a moment she was clasped
in his arms. Then, although he tried to prevent her, she kneeled before him
murmuring: “I want to see you by the lightning flashes.”
But Yvette, her candle snuffed out, had returned to her balcony, barefoot,
gliding like a shadow, and she listened, consumed by an unhappy and
confused suspicion. She could not see, as she was above them, on the roof of
the terrace.
She heard nothing but a murmur of voices, and her heart beat so fast that
she could actually hear its throbbing. A window closed on the floor above
her. Servigny, then, must have just gone up to his room. Her mother was alone
with the other man.
A second flash of lightning, clearing the sky; lighted up for a second all
the landscape she knew so well, with a startling and sinister gleam, and she
saw the great river, with the color of melted lead, as a river appears in
dreams in fantastic scenes.
Just then a voice below her uttered the words: “I love you!” And she
heard nothing more. A strange shudder passed over her body, and her soul
shivered in frightful distress. A heavy, infinite silence, which seemed eternal,
hung over the world. She could no longer breathe, her breast oppressed by
something unknown and horrible. Another flash of lightning illumined space,
lighting up the horizon for an instant, then another almost immediately came,
followed by still others. And the voice, which she had already heard,
repeated more loudly: “Oh! how I love you! how I love you!” And Yvette
recognized the voice; it was her mother’s.
A large drop of warm rain fell upon her brow, and a slight and almost
imperceptible motion ran through the leaves, the quivering of the rain which
was now beginning. Then a noise came from afar, a confused sound, like that
of the wind in the branches: it was the deluge descending in sheets on earth
and river and trees. In a few minutes the water poured about her, covering
her, drenching her like a shower-bath. She did not move, thinking only of
what was happening on the terrace.
She heard them get up and go to their rooms. Doors were closed within
the house; and the young girl, yielding to an irresistible desire to learn what
was going on, a desire which maddened and tortured her, glided downstairs,
softly opened the outer door, and, crossing the lawn under the furious
downpour, ran and hid in a clump of trees, to look at the windows.
Only one window was lighted, her mother’s. And suddenly two shadows
appeared in the luminous square, two shadows, side by side. Then distracted,
without reflection, without knowing what she was doing, she screamed with
all her might, in a shrill voice: “Mamma!” as a person would cry out to warn
people in danger of death.
Her desperate cry was lost in the noise of the rain, but the couple
separated, disturbed. And one of the shadows disappeared, while the other
tried to discover something, peering through the darkness of the garden.
Fearing to be surprised, or to meet her mother at that moment, Yvette
rushed back to the house, ran upstairs, dripping wet, and shut herself in her
room, resolved to open her door to no one.
Without taking, off her streaming dress, which clung to her form, she fell
on her knees, with clasped hands, in her distress imploring some superhuman
protection, the mysterious aid of Heaven, the unknown support which a
person seeks in hours of tears and despair.
The great lightning flashes threw for an instant their livid reflections into
her room, and she saw herself in the mirror of her wardrobe, with her wet
and disheveled hair, looking so strange that she did not recognize herself. She
remained there so long that the storm abated without her perceiving it. The
rain ceased, a light filled the sky, still obscured with clouds, and a mild,
balmy, delicious freshness, a freshness of grass and wet leaves, came in
through the open window.
Yvette rose, took off her wet, cold garments, without thinking what she
was doing, and went to bed. She stared with fixed eyes at the dawning day.
Then she wept again, and then she began to think.
Her mother! A lover! What a shame! She had read so many books in
which women, even mothers, had overstepped the bounds of propriety, to
regain their honor at the pages of the climax, that she was not astonished
beyond measure at finding herself enveloped in a drama similar to all those
of her reading. The violence of her first grief, the cruel shock of surprise, had
already worn off a little, in the confused remembrance of analogous
situations. Her mind had rambled among such tragic adventures, painted by
the novel-writers, that the horrible discovery seemed, little by little, like the
natural continuation of some serial story, begun the evening before.
She said to herself: “I will save my mother.” And almost reassured by this
heroic resolution, she felt herself strengthened, ready at once for the devotion
and the struggle. She reflected on the means which must be employed. A
single one seemed good, which was quite in keeping with her romantic
nature. And she rehearsed the interview which she should have with the
Marquise, as an actor rehearses the scene which he is going to play.
The sun had risen. The servants were stirring about the house. The
chambermaid came with the chocolate. Yvette put the tray on the table and
said:
“You will say to my mother that I am not well, that I am going to stay in
bed until those gentlemen leave, that I could not sleep last night, and that I do
not want to be disturbed because I am going to try to rest.”
The servant, surprised, looked at the wet dress, which had fallen like a
rag on the carpet.
“So Mademoiselle has been out?” she said.
“Yes, I went out for a walk in the rain to refresh myself.”
The maid picked up the skirts, stockings, and wet shoes; then she went
away carrying on her arm, with fastidious precautions, these garments,
soaked as the clothes of a drowned person. And Yvette waited, well knowing
that her mother would come to her.
 The Marquise entered, having jumped from her bed at the first words of
the chambermaid, for a suspicion had possessed her, heart since that cry:
“Mamma!” heard in the dark.
“What is the matter?” she said.
Yvette looked at her and stammered: “I — I— “ Then overpowered by a
sudden and terrible emotion, she began to choke.
The Marquise, astonished, again asked: “What in the world is the matter
with you?”
Then, forgetting all her plans and prepared phrases, the young girl hid her
face in both hands and stammered:
“Oh! mamma! Oh! mamma!”
Madame Obardi stood by the bed, too much affected thoroughly to
understand, but guessing almost everything, with that subtile instinct whence
she derived her strength. As Yvette could not speak, choked with tears, her
mother, worn out finally and feeling some fearful explanation coming,
brusquely asked:
“Come, will you tell me what the matter is?”
Yvette could hardly utter the words: “Oh! last night — I saw — your
window.”
The Marquise, very pale; said: “Well? what of it?”
Her daughter repeated, still sobbing: “Oh! mamma! Oh! mamma!”
Madame Obardi, whose fear and embarrassment turned to anger, shrugged
her shoulders and turned to go. “I really believe that you are crazy. When this
ends, you will let me know.”
But the young girl, suddenly took her hands from her face, which was
streaming with tears.
“No, listen, I must speak to you, listen. You must promise me — we must
both go, away, very far off, into the country, and we must live like the country
people; and no one must know what has become of us. Say you will, mamma;
I beg you, I implore you; will you?”
The Marquise, confused, stood in the middle of the room. She had in her
veins the irascible blood of the common people. Then a sense of shame, a
mother’s modesty, mingled with a vague sentiment of fear and the
exasperation of a passionate woman whose love is threatened, and she
shuddered, ready to ask for pardon, or to yield to some violence.
“I don’t understand you,” she said.
Yvette replied:
 “I saw you, mamma, last night. You cannot — if you knew — we will both
go away. I will love you so much that you will forget— “
Madame Obardi said in a trembling voice: “Listen, my daughter, there are
some things which you do not yet understand. Well, don’t forget — don’t
forget-that I forbid you ever to speak to me about those things.”
But the young girl, brusquely taking the role of savior which she had
imposed upon herself, rejoined:
“No, mamma, I am no longer a child, and I have the right to know. I know
that we receive persons of bad repute, adventurers, and I know that, on that
account, people do not respect us. I know more. Well, it must not be, any
longer, do you hear? I do not wish it. We will go away: you will sell your
jewels; we will work, if need be, and we will live as honest women,
somewhere very far away. And if I can marry, so much the better.”
She answered: “You are crazy. You will do me the favor to rise and come
down to breakfast with all the rest.”
“No, mamma. There is some one whom I shall never see again, you
understand me. I want him to leave, or I shall leave. You shall choose
between him and me.”
She was sitting up in bed, and she raised her voice, speaking as they do on
the stage, playing, finally, the drama which she had dreamed, almost
forgetting her grief in the effort to fulfill her mission.
The Marquise, stupefied, again repeated: “You are crazy— “ not finding
anything else to say.
Yvette replied with a theatrical energy: “No, mamma, that man shall leave
the house, or I shall go myself, for I will not weaken.”
“And where will you go? What will you do?”
“I do not know, it matters little — I want you to be an honest woman.”
These words which recurred, aroused in the Marquise a perfect fury, and
she cried:
“Be silent. I do not permit you to talk to me like that. I am as good as
anybody else, do you understand? I lead a certain sort of life, it is true, and I
am proud of it; the ‘honest women’ are not as good as I am.”
Yvette, astonished, looked at her, and stammered: “Oh! mamma!”
But the Marquise, carried away with excitement, continued:
“Yes, I lead a certain life — what of it? Otherwise you would be a cook,
as I was once, and earn thirty sous a day. You would be washing dishes, and
your mistress would send you to market — do you understand — and she
would turn you out if you loitered, just as you loiter, now because I am —
because I lead this life. Listen. When a person is only a nursemaid, a poor
girl, with fifty francs saved up, she must know how to manage, if she does not
want to starve to death; and there are not two ways for us, there are not two
ways, do you understand, when we are servants. We cannot make our fortune
with official positions, nor with stockjobbing tricks. We have only one way
— only one way.”
She struck her breast as a penitent at the confessional, and flushed and
excited, coming toward the bed, she continued: “So much the worse. A pretty
girl must live or suffer — she has no choice!” Then returning to her former
idea: “Much they deny themselves, your ‘honest women.’ They are worse,
because nothing compels them. They have money to live on and amuse
themselves, and they choose vicious lives of their own accord. They are the
bad ones in reality.”
She was standing near the bed of the distracted Yvette, who wanted to cry
out “Help,” to escape. Yvette wept aloud, like children who are whipped.
The Marquise was silent and looked at her daughter, and, seeing her
overwhelmed with despair, felt, herself, the pangs of grief, remorse,
tenderness, and pity, and throwing herself upon the bed with open arms, she
also began to sob and stammered:
“My poor little girl, my poor little girl, if you knew, how you were hurting
me.” And they wept together, a long while.
Then the Marquise, in whom grief could not long endure, softly rose, and
gently said:
“Come, darling, it is unavoidable; what would you have? Nothing can be
changed now. We must take life as it comes to us.”
Yvette continued to weep. The blow had been too harsh and too
unexpected to permit her to reflect and to recover at once.
Her mother resumed: “Now, get up and come down to breakfast, so that no
one will notice anything.”
The young girl shook her head as if to say, “No,” without being able to
speak. Then she said, with a slow voice full of sobs:
“No, mamma, you know what I said, I won’t alter my determination. I
shall not leave my room till they have gone. I never want to see one of those
people again, never, never. If they come back, you will see no more of me.”
The Marquise had dried her eyes, and wearied with emotion, she
murmured:
 “Come, reflect, be reasonable.”
Then, after a moment’s silence:
“Yes, you had better rest this morning. I will come up to see you this
afternoon.” And having kissed her daughter on the forehead, she went to
dress herself, already calmed.
Yvette, as soon as her mother had disappeared, rose, and ran to bolt the
door, to be alone, all alone; then she began to think. The chambermaid
knocked about eleven o’clock, and asked through the door: “Madame the
Marquise wants to know if Mademoiselle wishes anything, and what she will
take for her breakfast.”
Yvette answered: “I am not hungry, I only ask not to be disturbed.”
And she remained in bed, just as if she had been ill. Toward three
o’clock, some one knocked again. She asked:
“Who is there?”
It was her mother’s voice which replied: “It is I, darling, I have come to
see how you are.”
She hesitated what she should do. She opened the door, and then went
back to bed. The Marquise approached, and, speaking in low tones, as
people do to a convalescent, said:
“Well, are you better? Won’t you eat an egg?”
“No, thanks, nothing at all.”
Madame Obardi sat down near the bed. They remained without saying
anything, then, finally, as her daughter stayed quiet, with her hands inert upon
the bedclothes, she asked:
“Don’t you intend to get up?”
Yvette answered: “Yes, pretty soon.”
Then in a grave and slow tone she said: “I have thought a great deal,
mamma, and this — this is my resolution. The past is the past, let us speak no
more of it. But the future shall be different or I know what is left for me to
do. Now, let us say no more about it.”
The Marquise, who thought the explanation finished, felt her impatience
gaining a little. It was too much. This big goose of a girl ought to have known
about things long ago. But she did not say anything in reply, only repeating:
“You are going to get up?”
“Yes, I am ready.”
Then her mother became maid for her, bringing her stockings, her corset,
and her skirts. Then she kissed her.
 “Will you take a walk before dinner?”
“Yes, mamma.”
And they took a stroll along the water, speaking only of commonplace
things.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM EMOTION TO PHILOSOPHY

The following day, early in the morning, Yvette went out alone to the place
where Servigny had read her the history of the ants. She said to herself:
“I am not going away from this spot without having formed a resolution.”
Before her, at her feet, the water flowed rapidly, filled with large bubbles
which passed in silent flight with deep whirlings. She already had summed
up the points of the situation and the means of extricating herself from it.
What should she do if her mother would not accept the conditions which she
had imposed, would not renounce her present way of living, her set of
visitors — everything and go and hide with her in a distant land?
She might go alone, take flight, but where, and how? What would she live
on? By working? At what? To whom should she apply to find work? And,
then, the dull and humble life of working-women, daughters of the people,
seemed a little disgraceful, unworthy of her. She thought of becoming a
governess, like young girls in novels, and of becoming loved by the son of
the house, and then marrying him. But to accomplish that she must have been
of good birth, so that, when the exasperated father should approach her with
having stolen his son’s love, she might say in a proud voice:
“My name is Yvette Obardi.”
She could not do this. And then, even that would have been a trite and
threadbare method.
The convent was not worth much more. Besides, she felt no vocation for a
religious life, having only an intermittent and fleeting piety. No one would
save her by marrying her, being what she was! No aid was acceptable from a
man, no possible issue, no definite resource.
And then she wished to do something energetic and really great and
strong, which should serve as an example: so she resolved upon death.
 She decided upon this step suddenly, but tranquilly, as if it were a journey,
without reflecting, without looking at death, without understanding that it is
the end without recommencement, the departure without return, the eternal
farewell to earth and to this life.
She immediately settled on this extreme measure, with the lightness of
young and excited souls, and she thought of the means which she would
employ. But they all seemed to her painful and hazardous, and, furthermore,
required a violence of action which repelled her.
She quickly abandoned the poniard and revolver, which might wound
only, blind her or disfigure her, and which demanded a practiced and steady
hand. She decided against the rope; it was so common, the poor man’s way of
suicide, ridiculous and ugly; and against water because she knew how to
swim So poison remained — but which kind? Almost all of them cause
suffering and incite vomitings. She did not want either of these things.
Then she thought of chloroform, having read in a newspaper how a young
woman had managed to asphyxiate herself by this process. And she felt at
once a sort of joy in her resolution, an inner pride, a sensation of bravery.
People should see what she was, and what she was worth.
She returned to Bougival and went to a druggist, from whom she asked a
little chloroform for a tooth which was aching. The man, who knew her, gave
her a tiny bottle of the narcotic.
Then she set out on foot for Croissy, where she procured a second phial of
poison. She obtained a third at Chaton, a fourth at Ruril, and got home late
for breakfast.
As she was very hungry after this long walk, she ate heartily with the
pleasurable appetite of people who have taken exercise.
Her mother, happy to see her so hungry, and now feeling tranquil herself,
said to her as they left the table:
“All our friends are coming to spend Sunday with us. I have invited the
Prince, the Chevalier, and Monsieur de Belvigne.”
Yvette turned a little pale, but did not reply. She went out almost
immediately, reached the railway station, and took a ticket for Paris. And
during all the afternoon, she went from druggist to druggist, buying from each
one a few drops of chloroform. She came back in the evening with her
pockets full of little bottles.
She began the same system on the following day, and by chance found a
chemist who gave her, at one stroke, a quarter of a liter. She did not go out on
Saturday; it was a lowering and sultry day; she passed it entirely on the
terrace, stretched on a long wicker-chair.
She thought of almost nothing, very resolute and very calm. She put on the
next morning, a blue costume which was very becoming to her, wishing to
look well. Then looking at herself in the glass, she suddenly said:
“To-morrow, I shall be dead.” And a peculiar shudder passed over her
body. “Dead! I shall speak no more, think no more, no one will see me more,
and I shall never see anything again.”
And she gazed attentively at her countenance, as if she had never observed
it, examining especially her eyes, discovering a thousand things in herself, a
secret character in her physiognomy which she had not known before,
astonished to see herself, as if she had opposite her a strange person, a new
friend.
She said to herself: “It is I, in the mirror, there. How queer it is to look at
oneself. But without the mirror we would never know ourselves. Everybody
else would know how we look, and we ourselves would know nothing.”
She placed the heavy braids of her thick hair over her breast, following
with her glance all her gestures, all her poses, and all her movements. “How
pretty I am!” she thought. “Tomorrow I shall be dead, there, upon my bed.”
She looked at her bed, and seemed to see herself stretched out, white as the
sheets.
Dead! In a week she would be nothing but dust, to dust returned! A
horrible anguish oppressed her heart. The bright sunlight fell in floods upon
the fields, and the soft morning air came in at the window.
She sat down thinking of it. Death! It was as if the world was going to
disappear from her; but no, since nothing would be changed in the world, not
even her bedroom. Yes, her room would remain just the same, with the same
bed, the same chairs, the same toilette articles, but she would be forever
gone, and no one would be sorry, except her mother, perhaps.
People would say: “How pretty she was! that little Yvette,” and nothing
more. And as she looked at her arm leaning on the arm of her chair, she
thought again, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And again a great shudder of
horror ran over her whole body, and she did not know how she could
disappear without the whole earth being blotted out, so much it seemed to her
that she was a part of everything, of the fields, of the air, of the sunshine, of
life itself.
 There were bursts of laughter in the garden, a great noise of voices and of
calls, the bustling gaiety of country house parties, and she recognized the
sonorous tones of M. de Belvigne, singing:
“I am underneath thy window, Oh, deign to show thy face.” She rose,
without reflecting, and looked out. They all applauded. They were all five
there, with two gentlemen whom she did not know.
She brusquely withdrew, annoyed by the thought that these men had come
to amuse themselves at her mother’s house, as at a public place.
The bell sounded for breakfast. “I will show them how to die,” she said.
She went downstairs with a firm step, with something of the resolution of
the Christian martyrs going into the circus, where the lions awaited them.
She pressed their hands, smiling in an affable but rather haughty manner.
Servigny asked her:
“Are you less cross to-day, Mam’zelle?”
She answered in a severe and peculiar tone: “Today, I am going to commit
follies. I am in my Paris mood, look out!”
Then turning toward Monsieur de Belvigne, she said:
“You shall be my escort, my little Malmsey. I will take you all after
breakfast to the fete at Marly.”
There was, in fact, a fete at Marly. They introduced the two newcomers to
her, the Comte de Tamine and the Marquis de Briquetot.
During the meal, she said nothing further, strengthening herself to be gay in
the afternoon, so that no one should guess anything, — so that they should be
all the more astonished, and should say: “Who would have thought it? She
seemed so happy, so contented! What does take place in those heads?”
She forced herself not to think of the evening, the chosen hour, when they
should all be upon the terrace. She drank as much wine as she could stand, to
nerve herself, and two little glasses of brandy, and she was flushed as she
left the table, a little bewildered, heated in body and mind. It seemed to her
that she was strengthened now, and resolved for everything.
“Let us start!” she cried. She took Monsieur de Belvigne’s arm and set the
pace for the others. “Come, you shall form my battalion, Servigny. I choose
you as sergeant; you will keep outside the ranks, on the right. You will make
the foreign guard march in front — the two exotics, the Prince, and the
Chevalier — and in the rear the two recruits who have enlisted to-day.
Come!”
 They started. And Servigny began to imitate the trumpet, while the two
newcomers made believe to beat the drum. Monsieur de Belvigne, a little
confused, said in a low tone:
“Mademoiselle Yvette, be reasonable, you will compromise yourself.”
She answered: “It is you whom I am compromising, Raisine. As for me, I
don’t care much about it. To-morrow it will not occur. So much the worse for
you: you ought not to go out with girls like me.”
They went through Bougival to the amazement of the passers-by. All
turned to look at them; the citizens came to their doors; the travelers on the
little railway which runs from Ruril to Marly jeered at them. The men on the
platforms cried:
“To the water with them!”
Yvette marched with a military step, holding Belvigne by the arm, as a
prisoner is led. She did not laugh; upon her features sat a pale seriousness, a
sort of sinister calm. Servigny interrupted his trumpet blasts only to shout
orders. The Prince and the Chevalier were greatly amused, finding all this
very funny and in good taste. The two recruits drummed away continually.
When they arrived at the fete, they made a sensation. Girls applauded;
young men jeered, and a stout gentleman with his wife on his arm said
enviously: “There are some people who are full of fun.”
Yvette saw the wooden horses and compelled Belvigne to mount at her
right, while her squad scrambled upon the whirling beasts behind. When the
time was up she refused to dismount, constraining her escort to take several
more rides on the back of these children’s animals, to the great delight of the
public, who shouted jokes at them. Monsieur de Belvigne was livid and
dizzy when he got off.
Then she began to wander among the booths. She forced all her men to get
weighed among a crowd of spectators. She made them buy ridiculous toys
which they had to carry in their hands. The Prince and the Chevalier began to
think the joke was being carried too far. Servigny and the drummers, alone,
did not seem to be discouraged.
They finally came to the end of the place. Then she gazed at her followers
in a peculiar manner, with a shy and mischievous glance, and a strange fancy
came to her mind. She drew them up on the bank of the river.
“Let the one who loves me the most jump into the water,” she said.
Nobody leaped. A mob gathered behind them. Women in white aprons
looked on in stupor. Two troopers, in red breeches, laughed loudly.
 She repeated: “Then there is not one of you capable of jumping into the
water at my desire?”
Servigny murmured: “Oh, yes, there is,” and leaped feet foremost into the
river. His plunge cast a splash over as far as Yvette’s feet. A murmur of
astonishment and gaiety arose in the crowd.
Then the young girl picked up from the ground a little piece of wood, and
throwing it into the stream: “Fetch it,” she cried.
The young man began to swim, and seizing the floating stick in his mouth,
like a dog, he brought it ashore, and then climbing the bank he kneeled on one
knee to present it.
Yvette took it. “You are handsome,” said she, and with a friendly stroke,
she caressed his hair.
A stout woman indignantly exclaimed: “Are such things possible!”
Another woman said: “Can people amuse themselves like that!”
A man remarked: “I would not take a plunge for that sort of a girl.”
She again took Belvigne’s arm, exclaiming in his face: “You are a goose,
my friend; you don’t know what you missed.”
They now returned. She cast vexed looks on the passers-by. “How stupid
all these people seem,” she said. Then raising her eyes to the countenance of
her companion, she added: “You, too, like all the rest.”
M. de Belvigne bowed. Turning around she saw that the Prince and the
Chevalier had disappeared. Servigny, dejected and dripping, ceased playing
on the trumpet, and walked with a gloomy air at the side of the two wearied
young men, who also had stopped the drum playing. She began to laugh dryly,
saying:
“You seem to have had enough; nevertheless, that is what you call having
a good time, isn’t it? You came for that; I have given you your money’s
worth.”
Then she walked on, saying nothing further; and suddenly Belvigne
perceived that she was weeping. Astounded, he inquired:
“What is the matter?”
She murmured: “Let me alone, it does not concern you.”
But he insisted, like a fool: “Oh, Mademoiselle, come, what is the matter,
has anyone annoyed you?”
She repeated impatiently: “Will you keep still?”
Then suddenly, no longer able to resist the despairing sorrow which
drowned her heart, she began to sob so violently, that she could no longer
walk. She covered her face with her hands, panting for breath, choked by the
violence of her despair.
Belvigne stood still at her side, quite bewildered, repeating: “I don’t
understand this at all.”
But Servigny brusquely came forward: “Let us go home, Mam’zelle, so
that people may not see you weeping in the street. Why do you perpetrate
follies like that when they only make you sad?”
And taking her arm he drew her forward. But as soon as they reached the
iron gate of the villa she began to run, crossed the garden, and went upstairs,
and shut herself in her room. She did not appear again until the dinner hour,
very pale and serious. Servigny had bought from a country storekeeper a
workingman’s costume, with velvet pantaloons, a flowered waistcoat and a
blouse, and he adopted the local dialect. Yvette was in a hurry for them to
finish, feeling her courage ebbing. As soon as the coffee was served she went
to her room again.
She heard the merry voices beneath her window. The Chevalier was
making equivocal jokes, foreign witticisms, vulgar and clumsy. She listened,
in despair. Servigny, just a bit tipsy, was imitating the common workingman,
calling the Marquise “the Missus.” And all of a sudden he said to Saval:
“Well, Boss?” That caused a general laugh.
Then Yvette decided. She first took a sheet of paper and wrote:

“Bougival, Sunday, nine o’clock in the evening.

“I die so that I may not become a kept woman.

“YVETTE.”

Then in a postscript:
“Adieu, my dear mother, pardon.”
She sealed the envelope, and addressed it to the Marquise Obardi.
Then she rolled her long chair near the window, drew a little table within
reach of her hand, and placed upon it the big bottle of chloroform beside a
handful of wadding.
A great rose-tree covered with flowers, climbing as high as her window,
exhaled in the night a soft and gentle perfume, in light breaths; and she stood
for a moment enjoying it. The moon, in its first quarter, was floating in the
dark sky, a little ragged at the left, and veiled at times by slight mists.
 Yvette thought: “I am going to die!” And her heart, swollen with sobs,
nearly bursting, almost suffocated her. She felt in her a need of asking mercy
from some one, of being saved, of being loved.
The voice of Servigny aroused her. He was telling an improper story,
which was constantly interrupted by bursts of laughter. The Marquise herself
laughed louder than the others.
“There is nobody like him for telling that sort of thing,” she said, laughing.
Yvette took the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a little of the liquid on the
cotton. A strong, sweet, strange odor arose; and as she brought the piece of
cotton to her lips, the fumes entered her throat and made her cough.
Then shutting her mouth, she began to inhale it. She took in long breaths of
this deadly vapor, closing her eyes, and forcing herself to stifle in her mind
all thoughts, so that she might not reflect, that she might know nothing more.
It seemed to her at first that her chest was growing larger, was expanding,
and that her soul, recently heavy and burdened with grief, was becoming
light, light, as if the weight which overwhelmed her was lifted, wafted away.
Something lively and agreeable penetrated even to the extremities of her
limbs, even to the tips of her toes and fingers and entered her flesh, a sort of
dreamy intoxication, of soft fever. She saw that the cotton was dry, and she
was astonished that she was not already dead. Her senses seemed more
acute, more subtle, more alert. She heard the lowest whisper on the terrace.
Prince Kravalow was telling how he had killed an Austrian general in a duel.
Then, further off, in the fields, she heard the noise of the night, the
occasional barkings of a dog, the short cry of the frogs, the almost
imperceptible rustling of the leaves.
She took the bottle again, and saturated once more the little piece of
wadding; then she began to breathe in the fumes again. For a few moments
she felt nothing; then that soft and soothing feeling of comfort which she had
experienced before enveloped her.
Twice she poured more chloroform upon the cotton, eager now for that
physical and mental sensation, that dreamy torpor, which bewildered her
soul.
It seemed to her that she had no more bones, flesh, legs, or arms. The drug
had gently taken all these away from her, without her perceiving it. The
chloroform had drawn away her body, leaving her only her mind, more
awakened, more active, larger, and more free than she had ever felt it.
 She recalled a thousand forgotten things, little details of her childhood,
trifles which had given her pleasure. Endowed suddenly with an awakened
agility, her mind leaped to the most diverse ideas, ran through a thousand
adventures, wandered in the past, and lost itself in the hoped-for events of the
future. And her lively and careless thoughts had a sensuous charm: she
experienced a divine pleasure in dreaming thus.
She still heard the voices, but she could no longer distinguish the words,
which to her seemed to have a different meaning. She was in a kind of
strange and changing fairyland.
She was on a great boat which floated through a beautiful country, all
covered with flowers. She saw people on the shore, and these people spoke
very loudly; then she was again on land, without asking how, and Servigny,
clad as a prince, came to seek her, to take her to a bull-fight.
The streets were filled with passers-by, who were talking, and she heard
conversations which did not astonish her, as if she had known the people, for
through her dreamy intoxication, she still heard her mother’s friends laughing
and talking on the terrace.
Then everything became vague. Then she awakened, deliciously
benumbed, and she could hardly remember what had happened.
So, she was not yet dead. But she felt so calm, in such a state of physical
comfort, that she was not in haste to finish with it — she wanted to make this
exquisite drowsiness last forever.
She breathed slowly and looked at the moon, opposite her, above the
trees. Something had changed in her spirit. She no longer thought as she had
done just now. The chloroform quieting her body and her soul had calmed her
grief and lulled her desire to die.
Why should she not live? Why should she not be loved? Why should she
not lead a happy life? Everything appeared possible to her now, and easy and
certain. Everything in life was sweet, everything was charming. But as she
wished to dream on still, she poured more of the dream-water on the cotton
and began to breathe it in again, stopping at times, so as not to absorb too
much of it and die.
She looked at the moon and saw in it a face, a woman’s face. She began to
scorn the country in the fanciful intoxication of the drug. That face swung in
the sky; then it sang, it sang with a well-known voice the alleluia of love.
It was the Marquise, who had come in and seated herself at the piano.
 Yvette had wings now. She was flying through a clear night, above the
wood and streams. She was flying with delight, opening and closing her
wings, borne by the wind as by a caress. She moved in the air, which kissed
her skin, and she went so fast, so fast, that she had no time to see anything
beneath her, and she found herself seated on the bank of a pond with a line in
her hand; she was fishing.
Something pulled on the cord, and when she drew it out of the water, it
bore a magnificent pearl necklace, which she had longed for some time ago.
She was not at all astonished at this deed, and she looked at Servigny, who
had come to her side — she knew not how. He was fishing also, and drew
out of the river a wooden horse.
Then she had anew the feeling of awaking, and she heard some one calling
down stairs. Her mother had said:
“Put out the candle.” Then Servigny’s voice rose, clear and jesting:
“Put out your candle, Mam’zelle Yvette.”
And all took up the chorus: “Mam’zelle Yvette, put out your candle.”
She again poured chloroform on the cotton, but, as she did not want to die,
she placed it far enough from her face to breathe the fresh air, while
nevertheless her room was filled with the asphyxiating odor of the narcotic,
for she knew that some one was coming, and taking a suitable posture, a pose
of the dead, she waited.
The Marquise said: “I am a little uneasy! That foolish child has gone to
sleep leaving the light on her table. I will send Clemence to put it out, and to
shut the balcony window, which is wide open.”
And soon the maid rapped on the door calling: “Mademoiselle,
Mademoiselle!” After a moment’s silence, she repeated: “Mademoiselle,
Madame the Marquise begs you to put out your candle and shut the window.”
Clemence waited a little, then knocked louder, and cried:
“Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!”
As Yvette did not reply, the servant went away and reported to the
Marquise:
“Mademoiselle must have gone to sleep, her door is bolted, and I could
not awaken her.”
Madame Obardi murmured:
“But she must not stay like that,”
Then, at the suggestion of Servigny, they all gathered under the window,
shouting in chorus:
 “Hip! hip! hurrah! Mam’zelle Yvette.”
Their clamor rose in the calm night, through the transparent air beneath the
moon, over the sleeping country; and they heard it die away in the distance
like the sound of a disappearing train.
As Yvette did not answer the Marquise said: “I only hope that nothing has
happened. I am beginning to be afraid.”
Then Servigny, plucking red roses from a big rosebush trained along the
wall and buds not yet opened, began to throw them into the room through the
window.
At the first rose that fell at her side, Yvette started and almost cried out.
Others fell upon her dress, others upon her hair, while others going over her
head fell upon the bed, covering it with a rain of flowers.
The Marquise, in a choking voice, cried: “Come, Yvette, answer.”
Then Servigny declared: “Truly this is not natural; I am going to climb up
by the balcony.”
But the Chevalier grew indignant.
“Now, let me do it,” he said. “It is a great favor I ask; it is too good a
means, and too good a time to obtain a rendezvous.”
All the rest, who thought the young girl was joking, cried: “We protest! He
shall not climb up.”
But the Marquise, disturbed, repeated: “And yet some one must go and
see.”
The Prince exclaimed with a dramatic gesture:
“She favors the Duke, we are betrayed.”
“Let us toss a coin to see who shall go up,” said the Chevalier. He took a
five-franc piece from his pocket, and began with the Prince.
“Tail,” said he. It was head.
The Prince tossed the coin in his turn saying to Saval: “Call, Monsieur.”
Saval called “Head.” It was tail.
The Prince then gave all the others a chance, and they all lost.
Servigny, who was standing opposite him, exclaimed in his insolent way:
“PARBLEU! he is cheating!”
The Russian put his hand on his heart and held out the gold piece to his
rival, saying: “Toss it yourself, my dear Duke.”
Servigny took it and spinning it up, said: “Head.” It was tail.
He bowed and pointing to the pillar of the balcony said: “Climb up,
Prince.” But the Prince looked about him with a disturbed air.
 “What are you looking for?” asked the Chevalier.
“Well, — I — would — like — a ladder.” A general laugh followed.
Saval, advancing, said: “We will help you.”
He lifted him in his arms, as strong as those of Hercules, telling him:
“Now climb to that balcony.”
The Prince immediately clung to it, and, Saval letting him go, he swung
there, suspended in the air, moving his legs in empty space.
Then Servigny, seeing his struggling legs which sought a resting place,
pulled them downward with all his strength; the hands lost their grip and the
Prince fell in a heap on Monsieur de Belvigne, who was coming to aid him.
“Whose turn next?” asked Servigny. No one claimed the privilege.
“Come, Belvigne, courage!”
“Thank you, my dear boy, I am thinking of my bones.”
“Come, Chevalier, you must be used to scaling walls.”
“I give my place to you, my dear Duke.”
“Ha, ha, that is just what I expected.”
Servigny, with a keen eye, turned to the pillar. Then with a leap, clinging
to the balcony, he drew himself up like a gymnast and climbed over the
balustrade.
All the spectators, gazing at him, applauded. But he immediately
reappeared, calling:
“Come, quick! Come, quick! Yvette is unconscious.” The Marquise
uttered a loud cry, and rushed for the stairs.
The young girl, her eyes closed, pretended to be dead. Her mother entered
distracted, and threw her self upon her.
“Tell me what is the matter with her, what is the matter with her?”
Servigny picked up the bottle of chloroform which had fallen upon the
floor.
“She has drugged herself,” said he.
He placed his ear to her heart; then he added:
“But she is not dead; we can resuscitate her. Have you any ammonia?”
The maid, bewildered, repeated: “Any what, Monsieur?”
“Any smelling-salts.”
“Yes, Monsieur.” “Bring them at once, and leave the door open to make a
draft of air.”
The Marquise, on her knees, was sobbing: “Yvette! Yvette, my daughter,
my daughter, listen, answer me, Yvette, my child. Oh, my God! my God! what
has she done?”
The men, frightened, moved about without speaking, bringing water,
towels, glasses, and vinegar. Some one said: “She ought to be undressed.”
And the Marquise, who had lost her head, tried to undress her daughter; but
did not know what she was doing. Her hands trembled and faltered, and she
groaned:
“I cannot, — I cannot— “
The maid had come back bringing a druggist’s bottle which Servigny
opened and from which he poured out half upon a handkerchief. Then he
applied it to Yvette’s nose, causing her to choke.
“Good, she breathes,” said he. “It will be nothing.”
And he bathed her temples, cheeks, and neck with the pungent liquid.
Then he made a sign to the maid to unlace the girl, and when she had
nothing more on than a skirt over her chemise, he raised her in his arms and
carried her to the bed, quivering, moved by the odor and contact of her flesh.
Then she was placed in bed. He arose very pale.
“She will come to herself,” he said, “it is nothing.” For he had heard her
breathe in a continuous and regular way. But seeing all the men with their
eyes fixed on Yvette in bed, he was seized with a jealous irritation, and
advanced toward them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “there are too many of us in
this room; be kind enough to leave us alone, — Monsieur Saval and me —
with the Marquise.”
He spoke in a tone which was dry and full of authority.
Madame Obardi had grasped her lover, and with her head uplifted toward
him she cried to him:
“Save her, oh, save her!”
But Servigny turning around saw a letter on the table. He seized it with a
rapid movement, and read the address. He understood and thought: “Perhaps
it would be better if the Marquise should not know of this,” and tearing open
the envelope, he devoured at a glance the two lines it contained:

“I die so that I may not become a kept woman.”

“Yvette.”

“Adieu, my dear mother, pardon.”

“The devil!” he thought, “this calls for reflection.” And he hid the letter in
his pocket.
 Then he approached the bed, and immediately the thought came to him that
the young girl had regained consciousness but that she dared not show it,
from shame, from humiliation, and from fear of questioning. The Marquise
had fallen on her knees now, and was weeping, her head on the foot of the
bed. Suddenly she exclaimed:
“A doctor, we must have a doctor!”
But Servigny, who had just said something in a low tone to Saval, replied
to her: “No, it is all over. Come, go out a minute, just a minute, and I promise
you that she will kiss you when you come back.” And the Baron, taking
Madame Obardi by the arm, led her from the room.
Then Servigny, sitting-by the bed, took Yvette’s hand and said:
“Mam’zelle, listen to me.”
She did not answer. She felt so well, so soft and warm in bed, that she
would have liked never to move, never to speak, and to live like that forever.
An infinite comfort had encompassed her, a comfort the like of which she had
never experienced.
The mild night air coming in by velvety breaths touched her temples in an
exquisite almost imperceptible way. It was a caress like a kiss of the wind,
like the soft and refreshing breath of a fan made of all the leaves of the trees
and of all the shadows of the night, of the mist of rivers, and of all the
flowers too, for the roses tossed up from below into her room and upon her
bed, and the roses climbing at her balcony, mingled their heavy perfume with
the healthful savor of the evening breeze.
She drank in this air which was so good, her eyes closed, her heart
reposing in the yet pervading intoxication of the drug, and she had no longer
at all the desire to die, but a strong, imperious wish to live, to be happy —
no matter how — to be loved, yes, to be loved.
Servigny repeated: “Mam’zelle Yvette, listen to me.”
And she decided to open her eyes.
He continued, as he saw her reviving: “Come! Come! what does this
nonsense mean?”
She murmured: “My poor Muscade, I was so unhappy.”
He squeezed her hand: “And that led you into a pretty scrape! Come, you
must promise me not to try it again.”
She did not reply, but nodded her head slightly with an almost
imperceptible smile. He drew from his pocket the letter which he had found
on the table:
 “Had I better show this to your mother?”
She shook her head, no. He knew not what more to say for the situation
seemed to him without an outlet. So he murmured:
“My dear child, everyone has hard things to bear. I understand your
sorrow and I promise you— “
She stammered: “You are good.”
They were silent. He looked at her. She had in her glance something of
tenderness, of weakness; and suddenly she raised both her arms, as if she
would draw him to her; he bent over her, feeling that she called him, and
their lips met.
For a long time they remained thus, their eyes closed.
But, knowing that he would lose his head, he drew away. She smiled at
him now, most tenderly; and, with both her hands clinging to his shoulders,
she held him.
“I am going to call your mother,” he said.
She murmured: “Just a second more. I am so happy.”
Then after a silence, she said in a tone so low that it could scarcely be
heard: “Will you love me very much? Tell me!”
He kneeled beside her bed, and kissing the hand she had given him, said:
“I adore you.” But some one was walking near the door. He arose with a
bound, and called in his ordinary voice, which seemed nevertheless a little
ironical: “You may come in. It is all right now.”
The Marquise threw herself on her daughter, with both arms open, and
clasped her frantically, covering her countenance with tears, while Servigny
with radiant soul and quivering body went out upon the balcony to breathe
the fresh air of the night, humming to himself the old couplet:

“A woman changeth oft her mind:

Yet fools still trust in womankind.”
 NIGHT. A NIGHTMARE

OR

A NIGHT IN PARIS (A NIGHTMARE)

I love the night with passion. I love it the way you love your country, or your
mistress, with an instinctive love, a deep love, an invincible love. I love it
with all my senses, with my eyes that see it, with my nostrils that breathe it,
with my ears that hear the silence of it, with my whole flesh, caressed by its
shadows. Larks sing in the sun, in the blue air, the warm air, the light air of
clear mornings. But the owl takes refuge in the night, a black blotch that
crosses the black space, and, with joy, intoxicated with the vast blackness, he
lets out his cry, vibrant and sinister.
The day tires me out and bores me. It is brutal and noisy. I get up with
difficulty, I get dressed with weariness, I go out with regret, and each step,
each movement, each gesture, each word, each thought exhausts me as though
I were lifting a crushing burden.
But when the sun goes down, a joy swirls about me, a joy overruns my
entire body. I wake up, I come to life. With each moment that darkness
advances, I feel completely different, younger, stronger, more alert, happier. I
watch it get thicker, the vast, gentle darkness that falls from the sky. It engulfs
the city like an unstoppable, impenetrable flood, it covers up, wears away
and destroys colors, shapes, and enfolds the homes, monuments and living
things with its imperceptible touch.
At that point, I have the urge to shout for joy like a screech owl, to run
across the rooftops like a cat. And an impetuous, invincible desire to love
lights up inside my veins.
I go, I walk, now in the darkened suburbs, now in the woods near Paris,
where I hear my brothers and sisters, the beasts and their predators, lurking
about.
Anything you love too violently always ends up killing you. But how can I
explain what happened to me? How can I even make you understand what I
might tell you? I do not know, I do not know anymore. I only know what it is.
Here goes:
Yesterday, then - was it yesterday? - yes, without a doubt, at least it
wasn’t any earlier, another day, another month, another year, - I do not know.
But it must be yesterday, since another day did not break, since the sun did
not reappear. But since what time has this night continued? Since what time?
... Who will tell me? Who can know it, ever?
And so, yesterday, I went out as I do every evening, after my dinner. It
was very beautiful outside, very gentle, very warm. Making my way down
toward the boulevards, above my head I watched that black river, loaded
with stars, cut into pieces in the sky by the rooftops along the street which
twisted this stream of heavenly lights and made it ebb and flow like a
genuine river.
Everything was distinct in the buoyant air, from the planets down to the
gaslights. So great was the fiery brilliance up above and in the town that the
shadows themselves took on a glow. Gleaming nights are more joyous than
long, sunny days.
On the boulevard the cafés were flickering. People laughed, passed by,
ordered drinks. I went inside the theater for a few moments. Which theater? I
do not know anymore. The light was so bright inside, it made me unhappy,
and I went back out with my spirits depressed by that shock of brutal lighting
bouncing off the gilt edges of the balcony, by the artificial glitter of the
enormous luster of crystal, by the wall of lights along the ramp, by the gloom
of this false, garish clarity. I made it to the Champs-Elysées, where the music
cafés seemed like roaring fireplaces amid the foliage. The chestnut trees
looked painted, smeared with yellow light, like phosphorescent trees. And
just like pale, shining moons, like lunar eggs fallen from the sky, like vibrant,
monster pearls with their sea-shell clarity, mysterious and regal, the electric
glass fixtures made the gas lines pale by comparison, the conduits of dirty
gas as well as the garlands of colored glass. I stopped under the Arch of
Triumph to look at the avenue, the long, admirable, starry avenue, going to
the heart of Paris between two lines of flame, and the stars! The stars up
there, the unknown stars, scattered only by chance around the deep void,
where they take on peculiar shapes, which fill us with so much reverie,
which provoke us to dream.
I entered the Bois de Boulogne and stayed there a long while, very long.
Then I was seized by a singular chill, an unforeseen and powerful emotion,
an epiphany of thoughts which bordered on madness.
I walked around a long time, a very long time. Then I came back.
What time was it when I passed back under the Arch of Triumph? I do not
know. The city had fallen asleep, and clouds, large, black clouds slowly
spread out over the sky.
For the first time I felt that something weird was going to happen,
something new. The weather seemed to be turning cold, the air to be
thickening; it seemed that the night, my well-beloved night, was starting to
weigh upon my heart. The avenue was deserted now. All alone, two
patrolmen were walking near the taxi station, and on the pavement barely
illuminated by the gas valves which seemed to be dying, a line of vegetable
trucks was headed for Halles. They went slowly, loaded with carrots, turnips
and cabbage. Their drivers were sleeping, unseen, and the horses all walked
at the same pace, following the vehicle ahead of them, noiseless, upon the
wooden pavement. Before each light along the sidewalk, the carrots flashed
in their redness, the turnips flashed in their whiteness, and the cabbages
flashed in their greenness. And they passed by, one after the other, those
vehicles, red with the red of fire, white with the white of silver and green
with the green of emeralds. I followed them, then I turned onto Royale Street
and came back to the boulevards. Nobody else, no more lighted cafés, only a
few stragglers in a hurry. I had never before seen Paris so dead, so deserted.
I pulled out my watch. It was two o’clock.
Some force was driving me, a need to walk. So I went up to the Bastille.
Up there I realized that I had never seen a night so dark, since I could not
even make out the Column of July, whose wizardry wrought in gold was lost
in the impenetrable darkness. A vault of cloud, as thick as the universe, had
drowned the stars, and appeared to be sinking to earth to demolish it.
I came back. There was not a soul around me. On the Plaza du Château-
d’eau, however, a drunk nearly ran into me, then he vanished. For a while I
heard his uneven and reverberating steps. I walked. At the heights of
Montmartre a carriage passed by, descending towards the Seine. I called out
to it. The coachman did not answer. A woman was begging near Drouot
Street: “Mister, please listen...” I quickened my pace to avoid her
outstretched hand. Then, nothing else. In front of the Vaudeville, a rag man
was rummaging around the gutter. His little lantern floated on ground level. I
asked him, “What time is it, my good man?”
He growled, “How should I know? I have no watch.”
 Then all of a sudden I noticed that the gaslights were out. I know that they
get turned off very early, before daybreak at this time of year, as an economic
measure, but the day was still far off, so far from appearing!
“Let’s go, to Halles,” I thought to myself, “there at least I will find some
sign of life.”
I started my trek, but I wasn’t even able to see which way I should turn. I
advanced slowly, as if in the woods, recognizing the streets by counting them.
In front of the Crédit Lyonnais, a dog growled. I turned onto Grammont
Street and I got lost. I wandered a bit, then I recognized the Stock Exchange
by the iron grills which surround it. All of Paris was asleep, in a deep,
frightening sleep. In the distance, however, a carriage rolled along, a lone
carriage, perhaps the very one which had passed in front of me just before. I
sought to join up with it, walking towards the noise of its wheels, across the
solitary streets, the black streets, black, black like death.
I got lost again. Where was I? How stupid to extinguish the gas this early!
Not one passerby, not one straggler, not one beggar, no caterwauling of cats
on the make. Nothing.
So where were the street patrols? I said to myself, “I am going to yell,
then they will come.” I yelled. No one responded. I called out more loudly.
My voice fled away, without an echo, weak, muted, crushed by the night, by
this impenetrable night.
I shouted, “Help! Help! Help!”
To my desperate call there was still no answer. What time was it now? I
pulled out my watch, but I didn’t have any matches. I heard the light tick-tock
of the little mechanism with an uncanny, bizarre joy. It seemed to be alive. I
was less alone. What a mystery! I set to walking again, like a blind man, and,
feeling the walls with my walking stick, I continually kept my eyes trained on
the sky, hoping that day would come at last. But the space above was black,
completely black, more deeply black than the city.
What time could it be now? I was walking, it seemed, since forever,
because my legs were buckling under me, my lungs were gasping, and I was
suffering horribly from hunger.
I decided to ring at the first garage door I came to. I pulled on the copper
ringer, and the bell rang inside the sonorous house; it rang strangely, as if its
lively noise were the only living thing in this house.
I waited, nobody answered. Nobody opened the door. I started to ring
again, I kept waiting, - nothing!
 I was scared! I ran to the next residence, and twenty times in a row I made
the bell ring inside the dark hallway where the concierge must have been
sleeping. But he did not wake up, - and I walked on further, pulling or
pressing with all my strength the rings or buttons, striking with my feet, my
stick and my hands the doors which were stubbornly closed to me.
And all of a sudden, I realized that I was arriving in Halles. Halles was
deserted, without a sound, without a movement, without a car, without a man,
without a bundle of vegetables or flowers. - It was empty, motionless,
abandoned, dead!
I was overcome by fear, - horrible. What was happening? Oh, my God!
What was happening?
I left. But the time? The time? Who will tell me the time? There was no
clock chiming in the bell towers or monuments. I thought, “I am going to open
up the glass on my watch and touch the needle with my fingers.” I pulled out
my watch... it was not ticking anymore, it had stopped. Nothing more, nothing
more, nothing more astir in the city, not a glimmer, not a rustle of sound in the
air. Nothing! Nothing more! Not even the distant roll of the carriage, - nothing
more!
I was at the docks, and a glacial chill rose from the river. Was the Seine
still flowing?
I wanted to know. I found the steps and I walked down... I did not hear the
current bubble beneath the arches of the bridge... More walking... then some
sand... some silt... then the water... I wet my arms... the water ran... it ran...
cold... cold... cold... nearly frozen... nearly solid... nearly dead.
And I was quite aware that I would never have the strength to get back
out... that I was going to die there... me also, from hunger - from exhaustion -
and from cold.
 THE HORLA

May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in
front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and shades
and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country; I am fond of living
here because I am attached to it by deep roots, the profound and delicate
roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and
died, to their traditions, their usages, their food, the local expressions, the
peculiar language of the peasants, the smell of the soil, the hamlets, and to the
atmosphere itself. I love the house in which I grew up. From my windows I
can see the Seine, which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of
the road, almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes to
Rouen and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.
On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, populous Rouen with its blue roofs
massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they, delicate or
broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of bells which sound
through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant Iron
clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger and now weaker, according
as the wind is strong or light.
What a delicious morning it was! About eleven o’clock, a long line of
boats drawn by a steam-tug, as big a fly, and which scarcely puffed while
emitting its thick smoke, passed my gate.
After two English schooners, whose red flags fluttered toward the sky,
there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white and
wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that the
sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.
May 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and I feel
ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.
Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness
into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might
almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Forces, whose
mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the best of spirits, with
an inclination to sing in my heart. Why? I go down by the side of the water,
and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home wretched, as If
some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which,
passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me a fit of low spirits?
Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the
surrounding objects which are so changeable, which have troubled my
thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that
surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we
touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it,
everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid,
surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and through
them on our ideas and on our being itself.
How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with
our miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either too
small or too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see neither the
inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears deceive us, for they
transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. Our senses are
fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by
that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of
nature a harmony. So with our sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a
dog, and so with our sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of
a wine!
Oh! If we only had other organs which could work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!
May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish,
horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which
makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing the
horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension of some
coming misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which is no
doubt, an attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates in the flesh
and in the blood.
May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can no
longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated, my
nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course of
shower baths and of bromide of potassium.
May 25. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening
comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as if
night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and then try
to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish the
letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room, oppressed by a feeling
of confused and irresistible fear, a fear of sleep and a fear of my bed.
About ten o’clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have entered I lock
and bolt the door. I am frightened — of what? Up till the present time I have
been frightened of nothing. I open my cupboards, and look under my bed; I
listen — I listen — to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of
discomfort, of impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a
nervous center, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and
delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most light-hearted of
men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest? Then, I go to
bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for
its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my
whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment
when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant
water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious sleep coming over me
as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is
going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate me.
I sleep — a long time — two or three hours perhaps — then a dream —
no — a nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep — I feel
it and I know it — and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me, is
looking at me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest,
is taking my neck between his hands and squeezing it — squeezing it with all
his might in order to strangle me.
I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in our
dreams; I try to cry out — but I cannot; I want to move — I cannot; I try, with
the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and throw off this
being which is crushing and suffocating me — I cannot!
And then suddenly I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I light a
candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs every
night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly till morning.
June 2. My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The
bromide does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever.
Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough already, I
go for a walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at first that the fresh
light and soft air, impregnated with the odor of herbs and leaves, would
instill new life into my veins and impart fresh energy to my heart. One day I
turned into a broad ride in the wood, and then I diverged toward La Bouille,
through a narrow path, between two rows of exceedingly tall trees, which
placed a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.
A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of agony,
and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood, frightened
stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude. Suddenly it seemed as
if I were being followed, that somebody was walking at my heels, close,
quite close to me, near enough to touch me.
I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me except
the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees, horribly empty; on
the other side also it extended until it was lost in the distance, and looked just
the same — terrible.
I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very
quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the trees
were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit down.
Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange idea!
What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started off to the right,
and got back into the avenue which had led me into the middle of the forest.
June 3. I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few weeks, for no
doubt a journey will set me up again.
July 2. I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most delightful trip
into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not seen
before.
What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of
the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at
the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily
large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could reach, between
two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the middle of this
immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill rose up,
somber and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just disappeared,
and under the still flaming sky stood out the outline of that fantastic rock
which bears on its summit a picturesque monument.
At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low, as it had been the night before,
and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After
several hours’ walking, I reached the enormous mass of rock which supports
the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the steep and
narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever
been erected to God on earth, large as a town, and full of low rooms which
seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries supported by
delicate columns.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit
of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral
staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange heads that bristle with
chimeras. with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, are
joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the
black sky by night.
When I had reached the summit. I said to the monk who accompanied me:
“Father, how happy you must be here!” And he replied: “It is very windy,
Monsieur”; and so we began to talk while watching the rising tide, which ran
over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.
And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the
place — legends, nothing but legends.
One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the
Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and
also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice.
Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the screaming of the sea
birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human
lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old
shepherd, whose cloak covered head they can never see, wandering on the
sand, between two tides, round the little town placed so far out of the world.
They declare he is guiding and walking before a he-goat with a man’s face
and a she-goat with a woman’s face, both with white hair, who talk
incessantly, quarreling in a strange language, and then suddenly cease talking
in order to bleat with all their might.
“Do you believe it?” I asked the monk. “I scarcely know,” he replied; and
I continued: “If there are other beings besides ourselves on this earth, how
comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or why have you not
seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?”
He replied: “Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look
here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It knocks down
men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains
of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it
whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet
it exists for all that.”
 I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher, or
perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue. What he
had said had often been in my own thoughts.
July 3. I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence here,
for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went back
home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him: “What is the
matter with you, Jean?”
“The matter is that I never get any rest, and my nights devour my days.
Since your departure, Monsieur, there has been a spell over me.”
However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of
having another attack, myself.
July 4. I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have returned.
Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from
between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck like a
leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up, so beaten,
crushed, and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues for a few
days, I shall certainly go away again.
July 5. Have I lost my reason? What has happened? What I saw last night
is so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!
As I do now every evening, I had locked my door; then, being thirsty, I
drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that the water-bottle
was full up to the cut-glass stopper.
Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which I
was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.
Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered, who wakes up
with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, is covered with blood, can
no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand anything at all
about it — there you have it.
Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lighted a candle and
went to the table on which my water-bottle was. I lifted it up and tilted it
over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was completely empty!
At first I could not understand it at all; then suddenly I was seized by such a
terrible feeling that I had to sit down, or rather fall into a chair! Then I sprang
up with a bound to look about me; then I sat down again, overcome by
astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it
with fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some
body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely
only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist — was living, without knowing
it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not
two beings in us — whether a strange, unknowable, and invisible being does
not, during our moments of mental and physical torpor, animate the inert
body, forcing it to a more willing obedience than it yields to ourselves.
Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in
horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep, through the
glass of a water-bottle! And I remained sitting until it was daylight, without
venturing to go to bed again.
July 6. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have
been drunk during the night; or rather I have drunk it!
But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad?
Who will save me?
July 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly I
must be mad! And yet!
On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread, and
strawberries on my table. Somebody drank — I drank — all the water and a
little of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the bread, nor the strawberries
were touched.
On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8 I left out the water and the milk and nothing was
touched.
Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to
wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then I
rubbed my lips, my beard, and my hands with pencil lead, and went to bed.
Deep slumber seized me, soon followed by a terrible awakening. I had not
moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the table. The muslin
round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string, trembling with fear. All
the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah! Great God! I must start
for Paris immediately.
July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be
the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist,
or I have been brought under the power of one of those influences —
hypnotic suggestion, for example — which are known to exist, but have
hitherto been inexplicable. In any case, my mental state bordered on
madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me to my
equilibrium.
Yesterday after doing some business and paying some visits, which
instilled fresh and invigorating mental air into me, I wound up my evening at
the Théâtre Français. A drama by Alexander Dumas the Younger was being
acted, and his brilliant and powerful play completed my cure. Certainly
solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can think and can
talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with
phantoms.
I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid the
jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and surmises
of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed, that an invisible
being lived beneath my roof. How weak our mind is; how quickly it is
terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small,
incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: “We do not
understand because we cannot find the cause,” we immediately imagine
terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
July 14. Fête of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the
crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still, it is very foolish to make
merry on a set date, by Government decree. People are like a flock of sheep,
now steadily patient, now in ferocious revolt. Say to it: “Amuse yourself,”
and it amuses itself. Say to it: “Go and fight with your neighbor,” and it goes
and fights. Say to it: “Vote for the Emperor,” and it votes for the Emperor;
then say to it: “Vote for the Republic,” and it votes for the Republic.
Those who direct it are stupid, too; but instead of obeying men they obey
principles, a course which can only be foolish, ineffective, and false, for the
very reason that principles are ideas which are considered as certain and
unchangeable, whereas in this world one is certain of nothing, since light is
an illusion and noise is deception.
July 16. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much.
I was dining at my cousin’s, Madame Sablé, whose husband is colonel of
the Seventy-sixth Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there,
one of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself a
great deal to nervous diseases and to the extraordinary manifestations which
just now experiments in hypnotism and suggestion are producing.
He related to us at some length the enormous results obtained by English
scientists and the doctors of the medical school at Nancy, and the facts which
he adduced appeared to me so strange, that I declared that I was altogether
incredulous.
“We are,” he declared, “on the point of discovering one of the most
important secrets of nature, I mean to say, one of its most important secrets on
this earth, for assuredly there are some up in the stars, yonder, of a different
kind of importance. Ever since man has thought, since he has been able to
express and write down his thoughts, he has felt himself close to a mystery
which is impenetrable to his coarse and imperfect senses, and he endeavors
to supplement the feeble penetration of his organs by the efforts of his
intellect. As long as that intellect remained in its elementary stage, this
intercourse with invisible spirits assumed forms which were commonplace
though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the
legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, of ghosts, I might even
say the conception of God, for our ideas of the Workman-Creator, from
whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the most
mediocre, the stupidest, and the most unacceptable inventions that ever
sprang from the frightened brain of any human creature. Nothing is truer than
what Voltaire says: `If God made man in His own image, man has certainly
paid Him back again.’
“But for rather more than a century, men seem to have had a presentiment
of something new. Mesmer and some others have put us on an unexpected
track, and within the last two or three years especially, we have arrived at
results really surprising.”
My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, and Dr. Parent said to
her: “Would you like me to try and send you to sleep, Madame?”
“Yes, certainly.”
She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, as if to
fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat discomposed; my heart beat
rapidly and I had a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that Madame Sablé’s
eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched, and her bosom heaved, and at
the end of ten minutes she was asleep.
“Go behind her,” the doctor said to me; so I took a seat behind her. He put
a visiting-card into her hands, and said to her: “This is a looking-glass; what
do you see in it?”
She replied: “I see my cousin.”
“What is he doing?”
“He is twisting his mustache.”
 “And now?”
“He is taking a photograph out of his pocket.”
“Whose photograph is it?”
“His own.”
That was true, for the photograph had been given me that same evening at
the hotel.
“What is his attitude in this portrait?”
“He is standing up with his hat in his hand.”
She saw these things in that card, in that piece of white pasteboard, as if
she had seen them in a looking-glass.
The young women were frightened, and exclaimed: “That is quite enough!
Quite, quite enough!”
But the doctor said to her authoritatively: “You will get up at eight o’clock
to-morrow morning; then you will go and call on your cousin at his hotel and
ask him to lend you the five thousand francs which your husband asks of you,
and which he will ask for when he sets out on his coming journey.”
Then he woke her up.
On returning to my hotel, I thought over this curious séance and I was
assailed by doubts, not as to my cousin’s absolute and undoubted good faith,
for I had known her as well as if she had been my own sister ever since she
was a child, but as to a possible trick on the doctor’s part. Had not he,
perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand, which he showed to the young
woman in her sleep at the same time as he did the card? Professional
conjurers do things which are just as singular.
However, I went to bed, and this morning, at about half past eight, I was
awakened by my footman, who said to me: “Madame Sablé has asked to see
you immediately, Monsieur.” I dressed hastily and went to her.
She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without
raising her veil said to me: “My dear cousin, I am going to ask a great favor
of you.”
“What is it, cousin?”
“I do not like to tell you, and yet I must. I am in absolute want of five
thousand francs.”
“What, you?”
“Yes, I, or rather my husband, who has asked me to procure them for him.”
I was so stupefied that I hesitated to answer. I asked myself whether she
had not really been making fun of me with Dr. Parent, if it were not merely a
very well-acted farce which had been got up beforehand. On looking at her
attentively, however, my doubts disappeared. She was trembling with grief,
so painful was this step to her, and I was sure that her throat was full of sobs.
I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: “What! Has not your
husband five thousand francs at his disposal? Come, think. Are you sure that
he commissioned you to ask me for them?”
She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were making a great effort to
search her memory, and then she replied: “Yes — yes, I am quite sure of it.”
“He has written to you?”
She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed the torture of her thoughts.
She did not know. She only knew that she was to borrow five thousand francs
of me for her husband. So she told a lie.
“Yes, he has written to me.”
“When, pray? You did not mention it to me yesterday.”
“I received his letter this morning.”
“Can you show it to me?”
“No; no — no — it contained private matters, things too personal to
ourselves. I burned it.”
“So your husband runs into debt?”
She hesitated again, and then murmured: “I do not know.”
Thereupon I said bluntly: “I have not five thousand francs at my disposal
at this moment, my dear cousin.”
She uttered a cry, as if she were in pair; and said: “Oh! oh! I beseech you,
I beseech you to get them for me.”
She got excited and clasped her hands as if she were praying to me! I
heard her voice change its tone; she wept and sobbed, harassed and
dominated by the irresistible order that she had received.
“Oh! oh! I beg you to — if you knew what I am suffering — I want them
to-day.”
I had pity on her: “You shall have them by and by, I swear to you.”
“Oh! thank you! thank you! How kind you are.”
I continued: “Do you remember what took place at your house last night?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that Dr. Parent sent you to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning to borrow
five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that suggestion.”
 She considered for a few moments, and then replied: “But as it is my
husband who wants them— “
For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and when
she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he listened to
me with a smile, and said: “Do you believe now?”
“Yes, I cannot help it.”
“Let us go to your cousin’s.”
She was already resting on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor
felt her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward her
eyes, which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of this
magnetic influence. When she was asleep, he said:
“Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You
must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you, and, if
he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him.”
Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocket-book and said: “Here is
what you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin.” But she was so
surprised, that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to recall the
circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought that I was making
fun of her, and in the end, very nearly lost her temper.
There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any lunch,
for this experiment has altogether upset me.
July 19. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed at
me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?
July 21. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a boatmen’s
ball. Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings. It would be
the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the Ile de la
Grenouillière. But on the top of Mont Saint-Michel or in India, we are
terribly under the influence of our surroundings. I shall return home next
week.
July 30. I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going on
well.
August 2. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in
watching the Seine flow past.
August 4. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses are
broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, she accuses
the needlewoman, and the latter accuses the other two. Who is the culprit? It
would take a clever person to tell.
 August 6. This time, I am not mad. I have seen — I have seen — I have
seen! — I can doubt no longer — I have seen it!
I was walking at two o’clock among my rose-trees, in the full sunlight —
in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall. As I
stopped to look at a Géant de Bataille, which had three splendid blooms, I
distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend close to me, as if an invisible
hand had bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it! Then the flower
raised itself, following the curve which a hand would have described in
carrying it toward a mouth, and remained suspended in the transparent air,
alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In
desperation I rushed at it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then
I was seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not wholesome for a
reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.
But was it a hallucination? I turned to look for the stalk, and I found it
immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between the two other roses
which remained on the branch. I returned home, then, with a much disturbed
mind; for I am certain now, certain as I am of the alternation of day and night,
that there exists close to me an invisible being who lives on milk and on
water, who can touch objects, take them and change their places; who is,
consequently, endowed with a material nature, although imperceptible to
sense, and who lives as I do, under my roof —
August 7. I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my decanter, but did
not disturb my sleep.
I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by
the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such
as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad
people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-
sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak
clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in
the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and
swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called
madness.
I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not
conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it with the
most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man laboring under
a hallucination. Some unknown disturbance must have been excited in my
brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of the present day try to
note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance must have caused a profound
gulf in my mind and in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar phenomena
occur in dreams, and lead us through the most unlikely phantasmagoria,
without causing us any surprise, because our verifying apparatus and our
sense of control have gone to sleep, while our imaginative faculty wakes and
works. Was it not possible that one of the imperceptible keys of the cerebral
finger-board had been paralyzed in me? Some men lose the recollection of
proper names, or of verbs, or of numbers, or merely of dates, in consequence
of an accident. The localization of all the avenues of thought has been
accomplished nowadays; what, then, would there be surprising in the fact that
my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain hallucinations should be
destroyed for the time being?
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun was
shining brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it filled me with
love for life, for the swallows, whose swift agility is always delightful in my
eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose rustling is a pleasure to my ears.
By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It
seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me,
were preventing me from going further and were calling me back. I felt that
painful wish to return which comes on you when you have left a beloved
invalid at home, and are seized by a presentiment that he is worse.
I, therefore, returned despite of myself, feeling certain that I should find
some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was nothing,
however, and I was surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had had another
fantastic vision.
August 8. I spent a terrible evening, yesterday. He does not show himself
any more, but I feel that He is near me, watching me, looking at me,
penetrating me, dominating me, and more terrible to me when He hides
himself thus than if He were to manifest his constant and invisible presence
by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.
August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.
August 10. Nothing; but what will happen to-morrow?
August 11. Still nothing. I cannot stop at home with this fear hanging over
me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.
August 12. Ten o’clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get
away, and have not been able. I contemplated a simple and easy act of
liberty, a carriage ride to Rouen — and I have not been able to do it. What is
the reason?
August 13. When one is attacked by certain maladies, the springs of our
physical being seem broken, our energies destroyed, our muscles relaxed,
our bones to be as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. I am
experiencing the same in my moral being, in a strange and distressing manner.
I have no longer any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor even any
power to set my own will in motion. I have no power left to will anything,
but some one does it for me and I obey.
August 14. I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!
Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no
longer master of myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified spectator of
the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does not wish to; and so I
remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair in which he keeps me sitting.
I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, so as to think that I am still
master of myself: I cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to
the floor in such a manner that no force of mine can move us.
Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the foot of my garden to pick some
strawberries and eat them — and I go there. I pick the strawberries and I eat
them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one, deliver me! save
me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what sufferings! what
torture! what horror!
August 15. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of me.
She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into her, like
another soul, a parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world coming to an end?
But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable being,
this rover of a supernatural race?
Invisible beings exist, then! how is it, then, that since the beginning of the
world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner as they do to
me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on in my house. Oh!
If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and flee, and never return, I
should be saved; but I cannot.
August 16. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner who
finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt that I was
free and that He was far away, and so I gave orders to put the horses in as
quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! how delightful to be able to
say to my coachman: “Go to Rouen!”
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss’s treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient and
modern world.
Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: “To the railway
station!” but instead of this I shouted — I did not speak; but I shouted — in
such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round: “Home!” and I fell
back on to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by mental agony. He had
found me out and regained possession of me.
August 17. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that I
ought to rejoice. I read until one o’clock in the morning! Herestauss, Doctor
of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and the manifestation of all
those invisible beings which hover around man, or of whom he dreams. He
describes their origin, their domains, their power; but none of them
resembles the one which haunts me. One might say that man, ever since he
has thought, has had a foreboding and a fear of a new being, stronger than
himself, his successor in this world, and that, feeling him near, and not being
able to foretell the nature of the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the
whole race of hidden beings, vague phantoms born of fear.
Having, therefore, read until one o’clock in the morning, I went and sat
down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts in
the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I should have
enjoyed such a night formerly!
There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark heavens.
Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what animals
are there yonder? Do those who are thinkers in those distant worlds know
more than we do? What can they do more than we? What do they see which
we do not? Will not one of them, some day or other, traversing space, appear
on our earth to conquer it, just as formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in
order to subjugate nations feebler than themselves?
We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small — we who live on
this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.
I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having slept for
about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving, awakened
by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At first I saw nothing,
and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of the book, which had
remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath of air
had come in at my window, and I was surprised and waited. In about four
minutes, I saw, I saw — yes I saw with my own eyes — another page lift
itself up and fall down on the others, as if a finger had turned it over. My
armchair was empty, appeared empty, but I knew that He was there, He, and
sitting in my place, and that He was reading. With a furious bound, the bound
of an enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! But before I could reach it, my
chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me. My table rocked, my
lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if some thief had been
surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it behind him.
So He had run away; He had been afraid; He, afraid of me!
So to-morrow, or later — some day or other, I should be able to hold him
in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs occasionally
bite and strangle their masters?
August 18. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will obey
Him, follow His impulses, fulfill all His wishes, show myself humble,
submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come.
August 19. I know, I know, I know all! I have just read the following in the
Revue du Monde Scientifique: “A curious piece of news comes to us from
Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which may be compared
to that contagious madness which attacked the people of Europe in the
Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of San-Paulo. The
frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses, deserting their villages,
abandoning their land, saying that they are pursued, possessed, governed like
human cattle by invisible, though tangible beings, by a species of vampire,
which feeds on their life while they are asleep, and which, besides, drinks
water and milk without appearing to touch any other nourishment.
“Professor Don Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical
savants, has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin
and the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to propose
such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most fitted to
restore the mad population to reason.”
Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the eighth of last May! I
thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was on board of
her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it saw me! It saw my
house, which was also white, and He sprang from the ship on to the land. Oh!
Good heavens!
Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He
whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights,
without seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations of the transient
masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes,
spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the coarse conceptions of
primitive fear, men more enlightened gave him a truer form. Mesmer divined
him, and ten years ago physicians accurately discovered the nature of his
power, even before He exercised it himself. They played with that weapon of
their new Lord, the sway of a mysterious will over the human soul, which
had become enslaved. They called it mesmerism, hypnotism, suggestion, I
know not what? I have seen them diverting themselves like rash children with
this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come, the — the — what
does He call himself — the — I fancy that he is shouting out his name to me
and I do not hear him — the — yes — He is shouting it out — I am listening
— I cannot — repeat — it — Horla — I have heard — the Horla — it is He
— the Horla — He has come! —
Ah I the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion
has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with an
arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what
man has made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave, and his food,
by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!
But, nevertheless, sometimes the animal rebels and kills the man who has
subjugated it. I should also like — I shall be able to — but I must know Him,
touch Him, see Him! Learned men say that eyes of animals, as they differ
from ours, do not distinguish as ours do. And my eye cannot distinguish this
newcomer who is oppressing me.
Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel:
“Can we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Listen; there is the
wind which is the strongest force in nature; it knocks men down, blows down
buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys
cliffs, and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it
roars, — have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists for all that,
however!”
And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do
not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass! If a glass
without quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should run into it, just
like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its head against the
windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a man and lead him
astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot perceive a new body which is
penetrated and pervaded by the light?
A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we
be the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us?
The reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and more
finished than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived; our
body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being strained
like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and like an animal
nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and flesh; it is a brute machine
which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded,
badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse
and yet a delicate mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might
become intelligent and great.
There are only a few — so few — stages of development in this world,
from the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that
period is accomplished which separates the successive products one from
the other?
Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements beside fire, air,
earth, and water? There are four, only four, nursing fathers of various beings!
What a pity! Why should not there be forty, four hundred, four thousand! How
poor everything is, how mean and wretched — grudgingly given, poorly
invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what
power! And the camel, what suppleness!
But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should
be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors,
and motion I cannot even express. But I see it — it flutters from star to star,
refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath of
its flight! And the people up there gaze at it as it passes in an ecstasy of
delight!
What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming my
soul; I shall kill him!
 August 20. I shall kill Him. I have seen Him! Yesterday I sat down at my
table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well that He
would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that I might
perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then — then I should have the
strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my knees, my chest, my
forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him, to bite him, to tear him to
pieces. And I watched for him with all my overexcited nerves.
I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece,
as if, by this light I should discover Him.
My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my right
was the fireplace; on my left the door, which was carefully closed, after I had
left it open for some time, in order to attract Him; behind me was a very high
wardrobe with a looking-glass in it, which served me to dress by every day,
and in which I was in the habit of inspecting myself from head to foot every
time I passed it.
So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive Him, for He also was
watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that He was reading over my
shoulder, that He was there, almost touching my ear.
I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell. Horror! It
was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in the glass! It was empty,
clear, profound, full of light! But my figure was not reflected in it — and I, I
was opposite to it! I saw the large, clear glass from top to bottom, and I
looked at it with unsteady eyes. I did not dare advance; I did not venture to
make a movement; feeling certain, nevertheless, that He was there, but that
He would escape me again, He whose imperceptible body had absorbed my
reflection.
How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through a
mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were, or through a veil
of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were flowing slowly from left
to right, and making my figure clearer every moment. It was like the end of an
eclipse. Whatever hid me did not appear to possess any clearly defined
outlines, but was a sort of opaque transparency, which gradually grew
clearer.
At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day
when I look at myself.
I had seen Him! And the horror of it remained with me, and makes me
shudder even now.
 August 21. How could I kill Him, since I could not get hold of Him?
Poison? But He would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our
poisons have any effect on His impalpable body? No — no — no doubt
about the matter. Then? — then?
August 22. I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen and ordered iron shutters of
him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on the ground
floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar door as well. I
have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about that!
September 10. Rouen, Hôtel Continental. It is done; it is done — but is He
dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.
Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and
door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold.
Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me.
I got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time, so that He
might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put on my slippers
carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going back to the door quickly
I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the key into my pocket.
Suddenly I noticed that He was moving restlessly round me, that in his
turn He was frightened and was ordering me to let Him out. I nearly yielded,
though I did not quite, but putting my back to the door, I half opened it, just
enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am very tall, my head
touched the lintel. I was sure that He had not been able to escape, and I shut
Him up quite alone, quite alone. What happiness! I had Him fast. Then I ran
downstairs into the drawing-room which was under my bedroom. I took the
two lamps and poured all the oil on to the carpet, the furniture, everywhere;
then I set fire to it and made my escape, after having carefully double locked
the door.
I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden, in a clump of laurel
bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent,
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of clouds which
one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my soul.
I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to
think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that He had extinguished
it, when one of the lower windows gave way under the violence of the
flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame mounted up the white
wall, and kissed it as high as the roof. The light fell on to the trees, the
branches, and the leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded them also! The birds
awoke; a dog began to howl, and it seemed to me as if the day were
breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into fragments, and I
saw that the whole of the lower part of my house was nothing but a terrible
furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heart-rending cry, a woman’s cry,
sounded through the night, and two garret windows were opened! I had
forgotten the servants! I saw the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving of
their arms!
Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village, shouting: “Help!
help! fire! fire!” Meeting some people who were already coming on to the
scene, I went back with them to see!
By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral
pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre where men
were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that new
Being, the new Master, the Horla!
Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of
flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened on to that
furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I reflected that He was there, in that
kiln, dead.
Dead? Perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If He were not dead? Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible
and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this body
belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities, and premature
destruction?
Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man the
Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any
accident, He came, He who was only to die at his own proper hour and
minute, because He had touched the limits of his existence!
No — no — there is no doubt about it — He is not dead. Then — then —
I suppose I must kill myself!
 OLD AMABLE

PART I

The humid gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The
odor of autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of dead
grass made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The peasants were
still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for the stroke of the
Angelus to call them back to the farmhouses, whose thatched roofs were
visible here and there through the branches of the leafless trees which
protected the apple-gardens against the wind.
At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated with
his legs apart was playing with a potato, which he now and then let fall on
his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips of colza in
the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all along the mounds
of earth which the plough had just turned up, they drove in sharp wooden
stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the plant, already a little withered,
which sank on one side; then they patted down the earth and went on with
their work.
A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden
shoes, stopped near the child, took it up and kissed it. Then one of the women
rose up and came across to him. She was a big, red haired girl, with large
hips, waist and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow hair in which
there was a blood-red tint.
She said in a resolute voice:
“Why, here you are, Cesaire — well?”
The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured:
“Well, nothing at all — always the same thing.”
“He won’t have it?”
“He won’t have it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you say I ought to do?”
 “Go see the cure.”
“I will.”
“Go at once!”
“I will.”
And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the time.
He kissed it once more and then put it down again on the woman’s clothes.
In the distance, between two farm-houses, could be seen a plough drawn
by a horse and driven by a man. They moved on very gently, the horse, the
plough and the laborer, in the dim evening twilight.
The woman went on:
“What did your father say?”
“He said he would not have it.”
“Why wouldn’t he have it?”
The young man pointed toward the child whom he had just put back on the
ground, then with a glance he drew her attention to the man drawing the
plough yonder there.
And he said emphatically:
“Because ’tis his — this child of yours.”
The girl shrugged her shoulders and in an angry tone said:
“Faith, every one knows it well — that it is Victor’s. And what about it
after all? I made a slip. Am I the only woman that did? My mother also made
a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married your dad!
Who is it that hasn’t made a slip in the country? I made a slip with Victor
because he took advantage of me while I was asleep in the barn, it’s true, and
afterward it happened between us when I wasn’t asleep. I certainly would
have married him if he weren’t a servant man. Am I a worse woman for
that?”
The man said simply:
“As for me, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. It’s only
my father that opposes me. All the same, I’ll see about settling the business.”
She answered:
“Go to the cure at once.”
“I’m going to him.”
And he set forth with his heavy peasant’s tread, while the girl, with her
hands on her hips, turned round to plant her colza.
In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf
old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to marry, in spite of his father, Celeste
Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on her parents’
farm, who had been turned out of doors for this act.
The hierarchy of caste, however, does not exist in the country, and if the
laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by taking a farm in his turn, the equal of his
former master.
So Cesaire Houlbieque went off, his whip under his arm, brooding over
his own thoughts and lifting up one after the other his heavy wooden shoes
daubed with clay. Certainly he desired to marry Celeste Levesque. He
wanted her with her child because she was the wife he wanted. He could not
say why, but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to look at her to be
convinced of it, to feel quite queer, quite stirred up, simply stupid with
happiness. He even found a pleasure in kissing the little boy, Victor’s little
boy, because he belonged to her.
And he gazed, without hate, at the distant outline of the man who was
driving his plough along the horizon.
But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the
obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent obstinacy.
Cesaire in vain shouted in his ear, in that ear which still heard a few
sounds:
“I’ll take good care of you, daddy. I tell you she’s a good girl and strong,
too, and also thrifty.”
The old man repeated:
“As long as I live I won’t see her your wife.”
And nothing could get the better of him, nothing could make him waver.
One hope only was left to Cesaire. Old Amable was afraid of the cure
through the apprehension of death which he felt drawing nigh; he had not
much fear of God, nor of the Devil, nor of Hell, nor of Purgatory, of which he
had no conception, but he dreaded the priest, who represented to him burial,
as one might fear the doctors through horror of diseases. For the last tight
days Celeste, who knew this weakness of the old man, had been urging
Cesaire to go and find the cure, but Cesaire always hesitated, because he had
not much liking for the black robe, which represented to him hands always
stretched out for collections or for blessed bread.
However, he had made up his mind, and he proceeded toward the
presbytery, thinking in what manner he would speak about his case.
The Abbe Raffin, a lively little priest, thin and never shaved, was
awaiting his dinner-hour while warming his feet at his kitchen fire.
 As soon as he saw the peasant entering he asked, merely turning his head:
“Well, Cesaire, what do you want?”
“I’d like to have a talk with you, M. le Cure.”
The man remained standing, intimidated, holding his cap in one hand and
his whip in the other.
“Well, talk.”
Cesaire looked at the housekeeper, an old woman who dragged her feet
while putting on the cover for her master’s dinner at the corner of the table in
front of the window.
He stammered:
“’Tis— ’tis a sort of confession.”
Thereupon the Abbe Raffin carefully surveyed his peasant. He saw his
confused countenance, his air of constraint, his wandering eyes, and he gave
orders to the housekeeper in these words:
“Marie, go away for five minutes to your room, while I talk to Cesaire.”
The servant cast on the man an angry glance and went away grumbling.
The clergyman went on:
“Come, now, tell your story.”
The young fellow still hesitated, looked down at his wooden shoes,
moved about his cap, then, all of a sudden, he made up his mind:
“Here it is: I want to marry Celeste Levesque.”
“Well, my boy, what’s there to prevent you?”
“The father won’t have it.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father.”
“What does your father say?”
“He says she has a child.”
“She’s not the first to whom that happened, since our Mother Eve.”
“A child by Victor Lecoq, Anthime Loisel’s servant man.”
“Ha! ha! So he won’t have it?”
“He won’t have it.”
“What! not at all?”
“No, no more than an ass that won’t budge an inch, saving your presence.”
“What do you say to him yourself in order to make him decide?”
“I say to him that she’s a good girl, and strong, too, and thrifty also.”
“And this does not make him agree to it. So you want me to speak to
him?”
 “Exactly. You speak to him.”
“And what am I to tell your father?”
“Why, what you tell people in your sermons to make them give you sous.”
In the peasant’s mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening the
purse strings, in emptying the pockets of men in order to fill the heavenly
coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of which the cures
were the clerks; sly, crafty clerks, sharp as any one must be who does
business for the good God at the expense of the country people.
He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services to the
poorest, to the sick and dying, that they assisted, consoled, counselled,
sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for white pieces, for
beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid for sacraments and masses,
advice and protection, pardon of sins and indulgences, purgatory and
paradise according to the yearly income and the generosity of the sinner.
The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man and who never lost his temper, burst
out laughing.
“Well, yes, I’ll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad, you’ll come
to church.”
Houlbreque extended his hand in order to give a solemn assurance:
“On the word of a poor man, if you do this for me, I promise that I will.”
“Come, that’s all right. When do you wish me to go and find your father?”
“Why, the sooner the better-to-night, if you can.”
“In half an hour, then, after supper.”
“In half an hour.”
“That’s understood. So long, my lad.”
“Good-by till we meet again, Monsieur le Cure; many thanks.”
“Not at all, my lad.”
And Cesaire Houlbreque returned home, his heart relieved of a great
weight.
He held on lease a little farm, quite small, for they were not rich, his
father and he. Alone with a female servant, a little girl of fifteen, who made
the soup, looked after the fowls, milked the cows and churned the butter, they
lived frugally, though Cesaire was a good cultivator. But they did not possess
either sufficient lands or sufficient cattle to earn more than the indispensable.
The old man no longer worked. Sad, like all deaf people, crippled with
pains, bent double, twisted, he went through the fields leaning on his stick,
watching the animals and the men with a hard, distrustful eye. Sometimes he
sat down on the side of the road and remained there without moving for
hours, vaguely pondering over the things that had engrossed his whole life,
the price of eggs, and corn, the sun and the rain which spoil the crops or
make them grow. And, worn out with rheumatism, his old limbs still drank in
the humidity of the soul, as they had drunk in for the past sixty years, the
moisture of the walls of his low house thatched with damp straw.
He came back at the close of the day, took his place at the end of the table
in the kitchen and when the earthen bowl containing the soup had been placed
before him he placed round it his crooked fingers, which seemed to have kept
the round form of the bowl and, winter and summer, he warmed his hands,
before commencing to eat, so as to lose nothing, not even a particle of the
heat that came from the fire, which costs a great deal, neither one drop of
soup into which fat and salt have to be put, nor one morsel of bread, which
comes from the wheat.
Then he climbed up a ladder into a loft, where he had his straw-bed,
while his son slept below stairs at the end of a kind of niche near the
chimneypiece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cellar, a black hole
which was formerly used to store the potatoes.
Cesaire and his father scarcely ever talked to each other. From time to
time only, when there was a question of selling a crop or buying a calf, the
young man would ask his father’s advice, and, making a speaking-trumpet of
his two hands, he would bawl out his views into his ear, and old Amable
either approved of them or opposed them in a slow, hollow voice that came
from the depths of his stomach.
So one evening Cesaire, approaching him as if about to discuss the
purchase of a horse or a heifer, communicated to him at the top of his voice
his intention to marry Celeste Levesque.
Then the father got angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly.
The virtue of a girl is of slight importance in the country. But his avarice, his
deep, fierce instinct for saving, revolted at the idea that his son should bring
up a child which he had not begotten himself. He had thought suddenly, in one
second, of the soup the little fellow would swallow before becoming useful
on the farm. He had calculated all the pounds of bread, all the pints of cider
that this brat would consume up to his fourteenth year, and a mad anger broke
loose from him against Cesaire, who had not bestowed a thought on all this.
He replied in an unusually strong voice:
“Have you lost your senses?”
 Thereupon Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about
Celeste’s good qualities, to prove that she would be worth a thousand times
what the child would cost. But the old man doubted these advantages, while
he could have no doubts as to the child’s existence; and he replied with
emphatic repetition, without giving any further explanation:
“I will not have it! I will not have it! As long as I live, this won’t be
done!” And at this point they had remained for the last three months without
one or the other giving in, resuming at least once a week the same discussion,
with the same arguments, the same words, the same gestures and the same
fruitlessness.
It was then that Celeste had advised Cesaire to go and ask for the cure’s
assistance.
On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table, for
he came late through his visit to the presbytery.
They dined in silence, face to face, ate a little bread and butter after the
soup and drank a glass of cider. Then they remained motionless in their
chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant girl having carried
off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the glasses and cut the crusts
of bread to be ready for next morning’s breakfast.
There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the
priest appeared. The old man raised toward him an anxious eye full of
suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his
ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder and shouted close
to his temple:
“I want to have a talk with you, Father Amable.”
Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open. He did
not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to crumble
slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to learn the
truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night. It was a
moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights when the air seems thick
with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through the farmyard, for it
was the season when the earliest applies were gathered, the “early ripe,” as
they are called in the cider country. As Cesaire passed along by the
cattlesheds the warm smell of living beasts asleep on manure was exhaled
through the narrow windows, and he heard the stamping of the horses, who
were standing at the end of the stable, and the sound of their jaws tearing and
munching the hay on the racks.
 He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste. In this simple nature,
whose ideas were scarcely more than images generated directly by objects,
thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up before the mind the
picture of a big red-haired girl standing in a hollow road and laughing, with
her hands on her hips.
It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her. He
had, however, known her from infancy, but never had he been so struck by
her as on that morning. They had stopped to talk for a few minutes and then
he went away, and as he walked along he kept repeating:
“Faith, she’s a fine girl, all the same. ’Tis a pity she made a slip with
Victor.”
Till evening he kept thinking of her and also on the following morning.
When he saw her again he felt something tickling the end of his throat, as
if a cock’s feather had been driven through his mouth into his chest, and since
then, every time he found himself near her, he was astonished at this nervous
tickling which always commenced again.
In three months he made up his mind to marry her, so much did she please
him. He could not have said whence came this power over him, but he
explained it in these words:
“I am possessed by her,” as if the desire for this girl within him were as
dominating as one of the powers of hell. He scarcely bothered himself about
her transgression. It was a pity, but, after all, it did her no harm, and he bore
no grudge against Victor Lecoq.
But if the cure should not succeed, what was he to do? He did not dare to
think of it, the anxiety was such a torture to him.
He reached the presbytery and seated himself near the little gateway to
wait for the priest’s return.
He was there perhaps half an hour when he heard steps on the road, and
although the night was very dark, he presently distinguished the still darker
shadow of the cassock.
He rose up, his legs giving way under him, not even venturing to speak,
not daring to ask a question.
The clergyman perceived him and said gaily:
“Well, my lad, it’s all right.”
Cesaire stammered:
“All right, ’tisn’t possible.”
“Yes, my lad, but not without trouble. What an old ass your father is!”
 The peasant repeated:
“’Tisn’t possible!”
“Why, yes. Come and look me up to-morrow at midday in order to settle
about the publication of the banns.”
The young man seized the cure’s hand. He pressed it, shook it, bruised it
as he stammered:
“True-true-true, Monsieur le Cure, on the word of an honest man, you’ll
see me to-morrow-at your sermon.”
PART II
The wedding took place in the middle of December. It was simple, the
bridal pair not being rich. Cesaire, attired in new clothes, was ready since
eight o’clock in the morning to go and fetch his betrothed and bring her to the
mayor’s office, but it was too early. He seated himself before the kitchen
table and waited for the members of the family and the friends who were to
accompany him.
For the last eight days it had been snowing, and the brown earth, the earth
already fertilized by the autumn sowing, had become a dead white, sleeping
under a great sheet of ice.
It was cold in the thatched houses adorned with white caps, and the round
apples in the trees of the enclosures seemed to be flowering, covered with
white as they had been in the pleasant month of their blossoming.
This day the big clouds to the north, the big great snow clouds, had
disappeared and the blue sky showed itself above the white earth on which
the rising sun cast silvery reflections.
Cesaire looked straight before him through the window, thinking of
nothing, quite happy.
The door opened, two women entered, peasant women in their Sunday
clothes, the aunt and the cousin of the bridegroom; then three men, his
cousins; then a woman who was a neighbor. They sat down on chairs and
remained, motionless and silent, the women on one side of the kitchen, the
men on the other, suddenly seized with timidity, with that embarrassed
sadness which takes possession of people assembled for a ceremony. One of
the cousins soon asked:
“Is it not the hour?”
Cesaire replied:
“I am much afraid it is.”
“Come on! Let us start,” said another.
 Those rose up. Then Cesaire, whom a feeling of uneasiness had taken
possession of, climbed up the ladder of the loft to see whether his father was
ready. The old man, always as a rule an early riser, had not yet made his
appearance. His son found him on his bed of straw, wrapped up in his
blanket, with his eyes open and a malicious gleam in them.
He bawled into his ear: “Come, daddy, get up. It’s time for the wedding.”
The deaf man murmured-in a doleful tone:
“I can’t get up. I have a sort of chill over me that freezes my back. I can’t
stir.”
The young man, dumbfounded, stared at him, guessing that this was a
dodge.
“Come, daddy; you must make an effort.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Look here! I’ll help you.”
And he stooped toward the old man, pulled off his blanket, caught him by
the arm and lifted him up. But old Amable began to whine, “Ooh! ooh! ooh!
What suffering! Ooh! I can’t. My back is stiffened up. The cold wind must
have rushed in through this cursed roof.”
“Well, you’ll get no dinner, as I’m having a spread at Polyte’s inn. This
will teach you what comes of acting mulishly.”
And he hurried down the ladder and started out, accompanied by his
relatives and guests.
The men had turned up the bottoms of their trousers so as not to get them
wet in the snow. The women held up their petticoats and showed their lean
ankles with gray woollen stockings and their bony shanks resembling
broomsticks. And they all moved forward with a swinging gait, one behind
the other, without uttering a word, moving cautiously, for fear of losing the
road which was-hidden beneath the flat, uniform, uninterrupted stretch of
snow.
As they approached the farmhouses they saw one or two persons waiting
to join them, and the procession went on without stopping and wound its way
forward, following the invisible outlines of the road, so that it resembled a
living chaplet of black beads undulating through the white countryside.
In front of the bride’s door a large group was stamping up and down the
open space awaiting the bridegroom. When he appeared they gave him a loud
greeting, and presently Celeste came forth from her room, clad in a blue
dress, her shoulders covered with a small red shawl and her head adorned
with orange flowers.
But every one asked Cesaire:
“Where’s your father?”
He replied with embarrassment:
“He couldn’t move on account of the pains.”
And the farmers tossed their heads with a sly, incredulous air.
They directed their steps toward the mayor’s office. Behind the pair about
to be wedded a peasant woman carried Victor’s child, as if it were going to
be baptized; and the risen, in pairs now, with arms linked, walked through the
snow with the movements of a sloop at sea.
After having been united by the mayor in the little municipal house the
pair were made one by the cure, in his turn, in the modest house of God. He
blessed their union by promising them fruitfulness, then he preached to them
on the matrimonial virtues, the simple and healthful virtues of the country,
work, concord and fidelity, while the child, who was cold, began to fret
behind the bride.
As soon as the couple reappeared on the threshold of the church shots
were discharged from the ditch of the cemetery. Only the barrels of the guns
could be seen whence came forth rapid jets of smoke; then a head could be
seen gazing at the procession. It was Victor Lecoq celebrating the marriage
of his old sweetheart, wishing her happiness and sending her his good wishes
with explosions of powder. He had employed some friends of his, five or six
laboring men, for these salvos of musketry. It was considered a nice
attention.
The repast was given in Polyte Cacheprune’s inn. Twenty covers were
laid in the great hall where people dined on market days, and the big leg of
mutton turning before the spit, the fowls browned under their own gravy, the
chitterlings sputtering over the bright, clear fire filled the house with a thick
odor of live coal sprinkled with fat — the powerful, heavy odor of rustic
fare.
They sat down to table at midday and the soup was poured at once into the
plates. All faces had already brightened up; mouths opened to utter loud
jokes and eyes were laughing with knowing winks. They were going to
amuse themselves and no mistake.
The door opened, and old Amable appeared. He seemed in a bad humor
and his face wore a scowl as he dragged himself forward on his sticks,
whining at every step to indicate his suffering. As soon as they saw him they
stopped talking, but suddenly his neighbor, Daddy Malivoire, a big joker,
who knew all the little tricks and ways of people, began to yell, just as
Cesaire used to do, by making a speaking-trumpet of his hands.
“Hallo, my cute old boy, you have a good nose on you to be able to smell
Polyte’s cookery from your own house!”
A roar of laughter burst forth from the throats of those present. Malivoire,
excited by his success, went on:
“There’s nothing for the rheumatics like a chitterling poultice! It keeps
your belly warm, along with a glass of three-six!”
The men uttered shouts, banged the table with their fists, laughed, bending
on one side and raising up their bodies again as if they were working a pump.
The women clucked like hens, while the servants wriggled, standing against
the walls. Old Amable was the only one that did not laugh, and, without
making any reply, waited till they made room for him.
They found a place for him in the middle of the table, facing his daughter-
in-law, and, as soon as he was seated, he began to eat. It was his son who
was paying, after all; it was right he should take his share. With each ladleful
of soup that went into his stomach, with each mouthful of bread or meat
crushed between his gums, with each glass of cider or wine that flowed
through his gullet he thought he was regaining something of his own property,
getting back a little of his money which all those gluttons were devouring,
saving in fact a portion of his own means. And he ate in silence with the
obstinacy of a miser who hides his coppers, with the same gloomy
persistence with which he formerly performed his daily labors.
But all of a sudden he noticed at the end of the table Celeste’s child on a
woman’s lap, and his eye remained fixed on the little boy. He went on eating,
with his glance riveted on the youngster, into whose mouth the woman who
minded him every now and then put a little morsel which he nibbled at. And
the old man suffered more from the few mouthfuls sucked by this little chap
than from all that the others swallowed.
The meal lasted till evening. Then every one went back home.
Cesaire raised up old Amable.
“Come, daddy, we must go home,” said he.
And he put the old man’s two sticks in his hands.
Celeste took her child in her arms, and they went on slowly through the
pale night whitened by the snow. The deaf old man, three-fourths tipsy, and
even more malicious under the influence of drink, refused to go forward.
Several times he even sat down with the object of making his daughter-in-
law catch cold, and he kept whining, without uttering a word, giving vent to a
sort of continuous groaning as if he were in pain.
When they reached home he at once climbed up to his loft, while Cesaire
made a bed for the child near the deep niche where he was going to lie down
with his wife. But as the newly wedded pair could not sleep immediately,
they heard the old man for a long time moving about on his bed of straw, and
he even talked aloud several times, whether it was that he was dreaming or
that he let his thoughts escape through his mouth, in spite of himself, not being
able to keep them back, under the obsession of a fixed idea.
When he came down his ladder next morning he saw his daughter-in-law
looking after the housekeeping.
She cried out to him:
“Come, daddy, hurry on! Here’s some good soup.”
And she placed at the end of the table the round black earthen bowl filled
with steaming liquid. He sat down without giving any answer, seized the hot
bowl, warmed his hands with it in his customary fashion, and, as it was very
cold, even pressed it against his breast to try to make a little of the living heat
of the boiling liquid enter into him, into his old body stiffened by so many
winters.
Then he took his sticks and went out into the fields, covered with ice, till
it was time for dinner, for he had seen Celeste’s youngster still asleep in a
big soap-box.
He did not take his place in the household. He lived in the thatched house,
as in bygone days, but he seemed not to belong to it any longer, to be no
longer interested in anything, to look upon those people, his son, the wife and
the child as strangers whom he did not know, to whom he never spoke.
The winter glided by. It was long and severe.
Then the early spring made the seeds sprout forth again, and the peasants
once more, like laborious ants, passed their days in the fields, toiling from
morning till night, under the wind and under the rain, along the furrows of
brown earth which brought forth the bread of men.
The year promised well for the newly married pair. The crops grew thick
and strong. There were no late frosts, and the apples bursting into bloom
scattered on the grass their rosy white snow which promised a hail of fruit
for the autumn.
 Cesaire toiled hard, rose early and left off work late, in order to save the
expense of a hired man.
His wife said to him sometimes:
“You’ll make yourself ill in the long run.”
He replied:
“Certainly not. I’m a good judge.”
Nevertheless one evening he came home so fatigued that he had to get to
bed without supper. He rose up next morning at the usual hour, but he could
not eat, in spite of his fast on the previous night, and he had to come back to
the house in the middle of the afternoon in order to go to bed again. In the
course of the night he began to cough; he turned round on his straw couch,
feverish, with his forehead burning, his tongue dry and his throat parched by
a burning thirst.
However, at daybreak he went toward his grounds, but next morning the
doctor had to be sent for and pronounced him very ill with inflammation of
the lungs.
And he no longer left the dark recess in which he slept. He could be heard
coughing, gasping and tossing about in this hole. In order to see him, to give
his medicine and to apply cupping-glasses they had to-bring a candle to the
entrance. Then one could see his narrow head with his long matted beard
underneath a thick lacework of spiders’ webs, which hung and floated when
stirred by the air. And the hands of the sick man seemed dead under the dingy
sheets.
Celeste watched him with restless activity, made him take physic, applied
blisters to him, went back and forth in the house, while old Amable remained
at the edge of his loft, watching at a distance the gloomy cavern where his
son lay dying. He did not come near him, through hatred of the wife, sulking
like an ill-tempered dog.
Six more days passed, then one morning, as Celeste, who now slept on the
ground on two loose bundles of straw, was going to see whether her man was
better, she no longer heard his rapid breathing from the interior of his recess.
Terror stricken, she asked:
“Well Cesaire, what sort of a night had you?”
He did not answer. She put out her hand to touch him, and the flesh on his
face felt cold as ice. She uttered a great cry, the long cry of a woman
overpowered with fright. He was dead.
 At this cry the deaf old man appeared at the top of his ladder, and when he
saw Celeste rushing to call for help, he quickly descended, placed his hand
on his son’s face, and suddenly realizing what had happened, went to shut the
door from the inside, to prevent the wife from re-entering and resuming
possession of the dwelling, since his son was no longer living.
Then he sat down on a chair by the dead man’s side.
Some of the neighbors arrived, called out and knocked. He did not hear
them. One of them broke the glass of the window and jumped into the room.
Others followed. The door was opened again and Celeste reappeared, all in
tears, with swollen face and bloodshot eyes. Then old Amable, vanquished,
without uttering a word, climbed back to his loft.
The funeral took place next morning. Then, after the ceremony, the father-
in-law and the daughter-in-law found themselves alone in the farmhouse with
the child.
It was the usual dinner hour. She lighted the fire, made some soup and
placed the plates on the table, while the old man sat on the chair waiting
without appearing to look at her. When the meal was ready she bawled in his
ear —
“Come, daddy, you must eat.” He rose up, took his seat at the end of the
table, emptied his soup bowl, masticated his bread and butter, drank his two
glasses of cider and then took himself off.
It was one of those warm days, one of those enjoyable days when life
ferments, pulsates, blooms all over the surface of the soil.
Old Amable pursued a little path across the fields. He looked at the young
wheat and the young oats, thinking that his son was now under the earth, his
poor boy! He walked along wearily, dragging his legs after him in a limping
fashion. And, as he was all alone in the plain, all alone under the blue sky, in
the midst of the growing crops, all alone with the larks which he saw
hovering above his head, without hearing their light song, he began to weep
as he proceeded on his way.
Then he sat down beside a pond and remained there till evening, gazing at
the little birds that came there to drink. Then, as the night was falling, he
returned to the house, supped without saying a word and climbed up to his
loft. And his life went on as in the past. Nothing was changed, except that his
son Cesaire slept in the cemetery.
What could he, an old man, do? He could work no longer; he was now
good for nothing except to swallow the soup prepared by his daughter-in-
law. And he ate it in silence, morning and evening, watching with an eye of
rage the little boy also taking soup, right opposite him, at the other side of the
table. Then he would go out, prowl about the fields after the fashion of a
vagabond, hiding behind the barns where he would sleep for an hour or two
as if he were afraid of being seen and then come back at the approach of
night.
But Celeste’s mind began to be occupied by graver anxieties. The farm
needed a man to look after it and cultivate it. Somebody should be there
always to go through the fields, not a mere hired laborer, but a regular
farmer, a master who understood the business and would take an interest in
the farm. A lone woman could not manage the farming, watch the price of
corn and direct the sale and purchase of cattle. Then ideas came into her
head, simple practical ideas, which she had turned over in her head at night.
She could not marry again before the end of the year, and it was necessary at
once to take care of pressing interests, immediate interests.
Only one man could help her out of her difficulties, Victor Lecoq, the
father of her child. He was strong and understood farming; with a little
money in his pocket he would make an excellent cultivator. She was aware of
his skill, having known him while he was working on her parents’ farm.
So one morning, seeing him passing along the road with a cart of manure,
she went out to meet him. When he perceived her, he drew up his horses and
she said to him as if she had met him the night before:
“Good-morrow, Victor — are you quite well, the same as ever?”
He replied:
“I’m quite well, the same as ever — and how are you?”
“Oh, I’d be all right, only that I’m alone in the house, which bothers me on
account of the farm.”
Then they remained chatting for a long time, leaning against the wheel of
the heavy cart. The man every now and then lifted up his cap to scratch his
forehead and began thinking, while she, with flushed cheeks, went on talking
warmly, told him about her views, her plans; her projects for the future. At
last he said in a low tone:
“Yes, it can be done.”
She opened her hand like a countryman clinching a bargain and asked:
“Is it agreed?”
He pressed her outstretched hand.
“’Tis agreed.”
 “It’s settled, then, for next Sunday?”
“It’s settled for next Sunday”
“Well, good-morning, Victor.”
“Good-morning, Madame Houlbreque.”
PART III
This particular Sunday was the day of the village festival, the annual
festival in honor of the patron saint, which in Normandy is called the
assembly.
For the last eight days quaint-looking vehicles in which live the families
of strolling fair exhibitors, lottery managers, keepers of shooting galleries
and other forms of amusement or exhibitors of curiosities whom the peasants
call “wonder-makers” could be seen coming along the roads drawn slowly
by gray or sorrel horses.
The dirty wagons with their floating curtains, accompanied by a
melancholy-looking dog, who trotted, with his head down, between the
wheels, drew up one after the other on the green in front of the town hall.
Then a tent was erected in front of each ambulant abode, and inside this tent
could be seen, through the holes in the canvas, glittering things which excited
the envy or the curiosity of the village youngsters.
As soon as the morning of the fete arrived all the booths were opened,
displaying their splendors of glass or porcelain, and the peasants on their
way to mass looked with genuine satisfaction at these modest shops which
they saw again, nevertheless, each succeeding year.
Early in the afternoon there was a crowd on the green. From every
neighboring village the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives and
children in the two-wheeled open chars-a-bancs, which rattled along,
swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends’ houses and the
farmyards were filled with strange-looking traps, gray, high, lean, crooked,
like long-clawed creatures from the depths of the sea. And each family, with
the youngsters in front and the grown-up ones behind, came to the assembly
with tranquil steps, smiling countenances and open hands, big hands, red and
bony, accustomed to work and apparently tired of their temporary rest.
A clown was blowing a trumpet. The barrel-organ accompanying the
carrousel sent through the air its shrill jerky notes. The lottery-wheel made a
whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the crack of the
rifle could be heard. And the slow-moving throng passed on quietly in front
of the booths resembling paste in a fluid condition, with the motions of a
flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animals who had escaped by
chance.
The girls, holding one another’s arms in groups of six or eight, were
singing; the youths followed them, making jokes, with their caps over their
ears and their blouses stiffened with starch, swollen out like blue balloons.
The whole countryside was there — masters, laboring men and women
servants.
Old Amable himself, wearing his old-fashioned green frock coat, had
wished to see the assembly, for he never failed to attend on such an occasion.
He looked at the lotteries, stopped in front of the shooting galleries to
criticize the shots and interested himself specially in a very simple game
which consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth of a
mannikin carved and painted on a board.
Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Daddy Malivoire, who
exclaimed:
“Ha, daddy! Come and have a glass of brandy.”
And they sat down at the table of an open-air restaurant.
They drank one glass of brandy, then two, then three, and old Amable once
more began wandering through the assembly. His thoughts became slightly
confused, he smiled without knowing why, he smiled in front of the lotteries,
in front of the wooden horses and especially in front of the killing game. He
remained there a long time, filled with delight, when he saw a holiday-maker
knocking down the gendarme or the cure, two authorities whom he
instinctively distrusted. Then he went back to the inn and drank a glass of
cider to cool himself. It was late, night came on. A neighbor came to warn
him:
“You’ll get back home late for the stew, daddy.”
Then he set out on his way to the farmhouse. A soft shadow, the warm
shadow of a spring night, was slowly descending on the earth.
When he reached the front door he thought he saw through the window
which was lighted up two persons in the house. He stopped, much surprised,
then he went in, and he saw Victor Lecoq seated at the table, with a plate
filled with potatoes before him, taking his supper in the very same place
where his son had sat.
And he turned round suddenly as if he wanted to go away. The night was
very dark now. Celeste started up and shouted at him:
 “Come quick, daddy! Here’s some good stew to finish off the assembly
with.”
He complied through inertia and sat down, watching in turn the man, the
woman and the child. Then he began to eat quietly as on ordinary days.
Victor Lecoq seemed quite at home, talked from time to time to Celeste,
took up the child in his lap and kissed him. And Celeste again served him
with food, poured out drink for him and appeared happy while speaking to
him. Old Amable’s eyes followed them attentively, though he could not hear
what they were saying.
When he had finished supper (and he had scarcely eaten anything, there
was such a weight at his heart) he rose up, and instead of ascending to his
loft as he did every night he opened the gate of the yard and went out into the
open air.
When he had gone, Celeste, a little uneasy, asked:
“What is he going to do?”
Victor replied in an indifferent tone:
“Don’t bother yourself. He’ll come back when he’s tired.”
Then she saw after the house, washed the plates and wiped the table,
while the man quietly took off his clothes. Then he slipped into the dark and
hollow bed in which she had slept with Cesaire.
The yard gate opened and old Amable again appeared. As soon as he
entered the house he looked round on every side with the air of an old dog on
the scent. He was in search of Victor Lecoq. As he did not see him, he took
the candle off the table and approached the dark niche in which his son had
died. In the interior of it he perceived the man lying under the bed clothes and
already asleep. Then the deaf man noiselessly turned round, put back the
candle and went out into the yard.
Celeste had finished her work. She put her son into his bed, arranged
everything and waited for her father-in-law’s return before lying down
herself.
She remained sitting on a chair, without moving her hands and with her
eyes fixed on vacancy.
As he did not come back, she murmured in a tone of impatience and
annoyance:
“This good-for-nothing old man will make us burn four sous’ worth of
candles.”
Victor answered from under the bed clothes:
 “It’s over an hour since he went out. We ought to see whether he fell
asleep on the bench outside the door.”
“I’ll go and see,” she said.
She rose up, took the light and went out, shading the light with her hand in
order to see through the darkness.
She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the bench, nothing on the
dung heap, where the old man used sometimes to sit in hot weather.
But, just as she was on the point of going in again, she chanced to raise
her eyes toward the big apple tree, which sheltered the entrance to the
farmyard, and suddenly she saw two feet — two feet at the height of her face
belonging to a man who was hanging.
She uttered terrible cries:
“Victor! Victor! Victor!”
He ran out in his shirt. She could not utter another word, and turning aside
her head so as not to see, she pointed toward the tree with her outstretched
arm.
Not understanding what she meant, he took the candle in order to find out,
and in the midst of the foliage lit up from below he saw old Amable hanging
high up with a stable-halter round his neck.
A ladder was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree.
Victor ran to fetch a bill-hook, climbed up the tree and cut the halter. But
the old man was already cold and his tongue protruded horribly with a
frightful grimace.
 THE CHRISTENING

“Well doctor, a little brandy?”

“With pleasure.”
The old ship’s surgeon, holding out his glass, watched it as it slowly
filled with the golden liquid. Then, holding it in front of his eyes, he let the
light from the lamp stream through it, smelled it, tasted a few drops and
smacked his lips with relish. Then he said:
“Ah! the charming poison! Or rather the seductive murderer, the delightful
destroyer of peoples!
“You people do not know it the way I do. You may have read that
admirable book entitled L’Assommoir, but you have not, as I have, seen
alcohol exterminate a whole tribe of savages, a little kingdom of negroes —
alcohol calmly unloaded by the barrel by red-bearded English seamen.
“Right near here, in a little village in Brittany near Pont-l’Abbe, I once
witnessed a strange and terrible tragedy caused by alcohol. I was spending
my vacation in a little country house left me by my father. You know this flat
coast where the wind whistles day and night, where one sees, standing or
prone, these giant rocks which in the olden times were regarded as
guardians, and which still retain something majestic and imposing about
them. I always expect to see them come to life and start to walk across the
country with the slow and ponderous tread of giants, or to unfold enormous
granite wings and fly toward the paradise of the Druids.
“Everywhere is the sea, always ready on the slightest provocation to rise
in its anger and shake its foamy mane at those bold enough to brave its wrath.
“And the men who travel on this terrible sea, which, with one motion of
its green back, can overturn and swallow up their frail barks — they go out
in the little boats, day and night, hardy, weary and drunk. They are often
drunk. They have a saying which says: ‘When the bottle is full you see the
reef, but when it is empty you see it no more.’
“Go into one of their huts; you will never find the father there. If you ask
the woman what has become of her husband, she will stretch her arms out
over the dark ocean which rumbles and roars along the coast. He remained,
there one night, when he had had too much to drink; so did her oldest son.
She has four more big, strong, fair-haired boys. Soon it will be their time.
“As I said, I was living in a little house near Pont-l’Abbe. I was there
alone with my servant, an old sailor, and with a native family which took
care of the grounds in my absence. It consisted of three persons, two sisters
and a man, who had married one of them, and who attended to the garden.
“A short time before Christmas my gardener’s wife presented him with a
boy. The husband asked me to stand as god-father. I could hardly deny the
request, and so he borrowed ten francs from me for the cost of the
christening, as he said.
“The second day of January was chosen as the date of the ceremony. For a
week the earth had been covered by an enormous white carpet of snow,
which made this flat, low country seem vast and limitless. The ocean
appeared to be black in contrast with this white plain; one could see it
rolling, raging and tossing its waves as though wishing to annihilate its pale
neighbor, which appeared to be dead, it was so calm, quiet and cold.
“At nine o’clock the father, Kerandec, came to my door with his sister-in-
law, the big Kermagan, and the nurse, who carried the infant wrapped up in a
blanket. We started for the church. The weather was so cold that it seemed to
dry up the skin and crack it open. I was thinking of the poor little creature
who was being carried on ahead of us, and I said to myself that this Breton
race must surely be of iron, if their children were able, as soon as they were
born, to stand such an outing.
“We came to the church, but the door was closed; the priest was late.
“Then the nurse sat down on one of the steps and began to undress the
child. At first I thought there must have been some slight accident, but I saw
that they were leaving the poor little fellow naked completely naked, in the
icy air. Furious at such imprudence, I protested:
“‘Why, you are crazy! You will kill the child!’
“The woman answered quietly: ‘Oh, no, sir; he must wait naked before the
Lord.’
“The father and the aunt looked on undisturbed. It was the custom. If it
were not adhered to misfortune was sure to attend the little one.
“I scolded, threatened and pleaded. I used force to try to cover the frail
creature. All was in vain. The nurse ran away from me through the snow, and
the body of the little one turned purple. I was about to leave these brutes
when I saw the priest coming across the country, followed. by the sexton and
a young boy. I ran towards him and gave vent to my indignation. He showed
no surprise nor did he quicken his pace in the least. He answered:
“‘What can you expect, sir? It’s the custom. They all do it, and it’s of no
use trying to stop them.’
“‘But at least hurry up!’ I cried.
“He answered: ‘But I can’t go any faster.’
“He entered the vestry, while we remained outside on the church steps. I
was suffering. But what about the poor little creature who was howling from
the effects of the biting cold.
“At last the door opened. He went into the church. But the poor child had
to remain naked throughout the ceremony. It was interminable. The priest
stammered over the Latin words and mispronounced them horribly. He
walked slowly and with a ponderous tread. His white surplice chilled my
heart. It seemed as though, in the name of a pitiless and barbarous god, he
had wrapped himself in another kind of snow in order to torture this little
piece of humanity that suffered so from the cold.
“Finally the christening was finished according to the rites and I saw the
nurse once more take the frozen, moaning child and wrap it up in the blanket.
“The priest said to me: ‘Do you wish to sign the register?’
“Turning to my gardener, I said: ‘Hurry up and get home quickly so that
you can warm that child.’ I gave him some advice so as to ward off, if not too
late, a bad attack of pneumonia. He promised to follow my instructions and
left with his sister-in-law and the nurse. I followed the priest into the vestry,
and when I had signed he demanded five francs for expenses.
“As I had already given the father ten francs, I refused to pay twice. The
priest threatened to destroy the paper and to annul the ceremony. I, in turn,
threatened him with the district attorney. The dispute was long, and I finally
paid five francs.
“As soon as I reached home I went down to Kerandec’s to find out
whether everything was all right. Neither father, nor sister-in-law, nor nurse
had yet returned. The mother, who had remained alone, was in bed, shivering
with cold and starving, for she had had nothing to eat since the day before.
“‘Where the deuce can they have gone?’ I asked. She answered without
surprise or anger, ‘They’re going to drink something to celebrate: It was the
custom. Then I thought, of my ten francs which were to pay the church and
would doubtless pay for the alcohol.
 “I sent some broth to the mother and ordered a good fire to be built in the
room. I was uneasy and furious and promised myself to drive out these
brutes, wondering with terror what was going to happen to the poor infant.
“It was already six, and they had not yet returned. I told my servant to wait
for them and I went to bed. I soon fell asleep and slept like a top. At
daybreak I was awakened by my servant, who was bringing me my hot water.
“As soon as my eyes were open I asked: ‘How about Kerandec?’
“The man hesitated and then stammered: ‘Oh! he came back, all right,
after midnight, and so drunk that he couldn’t walk, and so were Kermagan
and the nurse. I guess they must have slept in a ditch, for the little one died
and they never even noticed it.’
“I jumped up out of bed, crying:
“‘What! The child is dead?’
“‘Yes, sir. They brought it back to Mother Kerandec. When she saw it she
began to cry, and now they are making her drink to console her.’
“‘What’s that? They are making her drink!’
“‘Yes, sir. I only found it out this morning. As Kerandec had no more
brandy or money, he took some wood alcohol, which monsieur gave him for
the lamp, and all four of them are now drinking that. The mother is feeling
pretty sick now.’
“I had hastily put on some clothes, and seizing a stick, with the intention of
applying it to the backs of these human beasts, I hastened towards the
gardener’s house.
“The mother was raving drunk beside the blue body of her dead baby.
Kerandec, the nurse, and the Kermagan woman were snoring on the floor. I
had to take care of the mother, who died towards noon.”
The old doctor was silent. He took up the brandy-bottle and poured out
another glass. He held it up to the lamp, and the light streaming through it
imparted to the liquid the amber color of molten topaz. With one gulp he
swallowed the treacherous drink.
 THE FARMER’S WIFE

Said the Baron Rene du Treilles to me:

“Will you come and open the hunting season with me at my farm at
Marinville? I shall be delighted if you will, my dear boy. In the first place, I
am all alone. It is rather a difficult ground to get at, and the place I live in is
so primitive that I can invite only my most intimate friends.”
I accepted his invitation, and on Saturday we set off on the train going to
Normandy. We alighted at a station called Almivare, and Baron Rene,
pointing to a carryall drawn by a timid horse and driven by a big countryman
with white hair, said:
“Here is our equipage, my dear boy.”
The driver extended his hand to his landlord, and the baron pressed it
warmly, asking:
“Well, Maitre Lebrument, how are you?”
“Always the same, M’sieu le Baron.”
We jumped into this swinging hencoop perched on two enormous wheels,
and the young horse, after a violent swerve, started into a gallop, pitching us
into the air like balls. Every fall backward on the wooden bench gave me the
most dreadful pain.
The peasant kept repeating in his calm, monotonous voice:
“There, there! All right all right, Moutard, all right!”
But Moutard scarcely heard, and kept capering along like a goat.
Our two dogs behind us, in the empty part of the hencoop, were standing
up and sniffing the air of the plains, where they scented game.
The baron gazed with a sad eye into the distance at the vast Norman
landscape, undulating and melancholy, like an immense English park, where
the farmyards, surrounded by two or four rows of trees and full of dwarfed
apple trees which hid the houses, gave a vista as far as the eye could see of
forest trees, copses and shrubbery such as landscape gardeners look for in
laying out the boundaries of princely estates.
And Rene du Treilles suddenly exclaimed:
“I love this soil; I have my very roots in it.”
 He was a pure Norman, tall and strong, with a slight paunch, and of the
old race of adventurers who went to found kingdoms on the shores of every
ocean. He was about fifty years of age, ten years less perhaps than the farmer
who was driving us.
The latter was a lean peasant, all skin and bone, one of those men who
live a hundred years.
After two hours’ travelling over stony roads, across that green and
monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one of those orchard farmyards and
drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old maid-servant
stood waiting beside a young fellow, who took charge of the horse.
We entered the farmhouse. The smoky kitchen was high and spacious. The
copper utensils and the crockery shone in the reflection of the hearth. A cat
lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor of milk,
apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old farmhouses; the odor
of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor of spilled stale soup, of
former wash-days and of former inhabitants, the smell of animals and of
human beings combined, of things and of persons, the odor of time, and of
things that have passed away.
I went out to have a look at the farmyard. It was very large, full of apple
trees, dwarfed and crooked, and laden with fruit which fell on the grass
around them. In this farmyard the Norman smell of apples was as strong as
that of the bloom of orange trees on the shores of the south of France.
Four rows of beeches surrounded this inclosure. They were so tall that
they seemed to touch the clouds at this hour of nightfall, and their summits,
through which the night winds passed, swayed and sang a mournful,
interminable song.
I reentered the house.
The baron was warming his feet at the fire, and was listening to the
farmer’s talk about country matters. He talked about marriages, births and
deaths, then about the fall in the price of grain and the latest news about
cattle. The “Veularde” (as he called a cow that had been bought at the fair of
Veules) had calved in the middle of June. The cider had not been first-class
last year. Apricots were almost disappearing from the country.
Then we had dinner. It was a good rustic meal, simple and abundant, long
and tranquil. And while we were dining I noticed the special kind of friendly
familiarity which had struck me from the start between the baron and the
peasant.
 Outside, the beeches continued sighing in the night wind, and our two
dogs, shut up in a shed, were whining and howling in an uncanny fashion. The
fire was dying out in the big fireplace. The maid-servant had gone to bed.
Maitre Lebrument said in his turn:
“If you don’t mind, M’sieu le Baron, I’m going to bed. I am not used to
staying up late.”
The baron extended his hand toward him and said: “Go, my friend,” in so
cordial a tone that I said, as soon as the man had disappeared:
“He is devoted to you, this farmer?”
“Better than that, my dear fellow! It is a drama, an old drama, simple and
very sad, that attaches him to me. Here is the story:
“You know that my father was colonel in a cavalry regiment. His orderly
was this young fellow, now an old man, the son of a farmer. When my father
retired from the army he took this former soldier, then about forty; as his
servant. I was at that time about thirty. We were living in our old chateau of
Valrenne, near Caudebec-en-Caux.
“At this period my mother’s chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls
you could see, fair-haired, slender and sprightly in manner, a genuine
soubrette of the old type that no longer exists. To-day these creatures spring
up into hussies before their time. Paris, with the aid of the railways, attracts
them, calls them, takes hold of them, as soon as they are budding into
womanhood, these little sluts who in old times remained simple maid-
servants. Every man passing by, as recruiting sergeants did formerly, looking
for recruits, with conscripts, entices and ruins them — these foolish lassies
— and we have now only the scum of the female sex for servant maids, all
that is dull, nasty, common and ill-formed, too ugly, even for gallantry.
“Well, this girl was charming, and I often gave her a kiss in dark corners;
nothing more, I swear to you! She was virtuous, besides; and I had some
respect for my mother’s house, which is more than can be said of the
blackguards of the present day.
“Now, it happened that my man-servant, the ex-soldier, the old farmer you
have just seen, fell madly in love with this girl, perfectly daft. The first thing
we noticed was that he forgot everything, he paid no attention to anything.
“My father said incessantly:
“‘See here, Jean, what’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’
“He replied:
“‘No, no, M’sieu le Baron. There’s nothing the matter with me.’
 “He grew thin; he broke glasses and let plates fall when waiting on the
table. We thought he must have been attacked by some nervous affection, and
sent for the doctor, who thought he could detect symptoms of spinal disease.
Then my father, full of anxiety about his faithful man-servant, decided to
place him in a private hospital. When the poor fellow heard of my father’s
intentions he made a clean breast of it.
“‘M’sieu le Baron’
“‘Well, my boy?’
“‘You see, the thing I want is not physic.’
“‘Ha! what is it, then?’
“‘It’s marriage!’
“My father turned round and stared at him in astonishment.
“‘What’s that you say, eh?’
“‘It’s marriage.”
“‘Marriage! So, then, you jackass, you’re to love.’
“‘That’s how it is, M’sieu le Baron.’
“And my father began to laugh so immoderately that my mother called out
through the wall of the next room:
“‘What in the world is the matter with you, Gontran?’
“He replied:
“‘Come here, Catherine.’
“And when she came in he told her, with tears in his eyes from sheer
laughter, that his idiot of a servant-man was lovesick.
“But my mother, instead of laughing, was deeply affected.
“‘Who is it that you have fallen in love with, my poor fellow?’ she asked.
“He answered without hesitation:
“‘With Louise, Madame le Baronne.’
“My mother said with the utmost gravity: ‘We must try to arrange this
matter the best way we can.’
“So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in
reply that she knew all about Jean’s liking for her, that in fact Jean had
spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him. She
refused to say why.
“And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never
ceased to urge this girl to marry Jean. As she declared she was not in love
with any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her refusal. My
father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big present of money,
and started the pair of them on a farm — this very farm. I did not see them for
three years, and then I learned that Louise had died of consumption. But my
father and mother died, too, in their turn, and it was two years more before I
found myself face to face with Jean.
“At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my
head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had told me was
full of game.
“So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was shocked
to find my father’s old servant with perfectly white hair, though he was not
more than forty-five or forty-six years of age. I made him dine with me, at the
very table where we are now sitting. It was raining hard. We could hear the
rain battering at the roof, the walls, and the windows, flowing in a perfect
deluge into the farmyard; and my dog was howling in the shed where the
other dogs are howling to-night.
“All of a sudden, when the servant-maid had gone to bed, the man said in
a timid voice:
“‘M’sieu le Baron.’
“‘What is it, my dear Jean?’
“‘I have something to tell you.’
“‘Tell it, my dear Jean.’
“‘You remember Louise, my wife.’
“‘Certainly, I remember her.’
“‘Well, she left me a message for you.’
“‘What was it?’
“‘A — a — well, it was what you might call a confession.’
“‘Ha — and what was it about?’
“‘It was — it was — I’d rather, all the same, tell you nothing about it —
but I must — I must. Well, it’s this — it wasn’t consumption she died of at
all. It was grief — well, that’s the long and short of it. As soon as she came
to live here after we were married, she grew thin; she changed so that you
wouldn’t know her, M’sieu le Baron. She was just as I was before I married
her, but it was just the opposite, just the opposite.
“‘I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affected — he
said it was what he called a “hepatic” complaint — I don’t know these big
words, M’sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on heaps of
bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she’d take none of them; she
wouldn’t have them; she said: “It’s no use, my poor Jean; it wouldn’t do me
any good.” I saw well that she had some hidden trouble; and then I found her
one time crying, and I didn’t know what to do, no, I didn’t know what to do. I
bought her caps, and dresses, and hair oil, and earrings. Nothing did her any
good. And I saw that she was going to die. And so one night at the end of
November, one snowy night, after she had been in bed the whole day, she
told me to send for the cure. So I went for him. As soon as he came— ‘
“‘Jean,’ she said, ‘I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to you,
Jean. I have never been false to you, never! never, before or after you
married me. M’sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows my soul.
Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able to console
myself for leaving the chateau, because I was too fond of the young Baron
Monsieur Rene, too fond of him, mind you, Jean, there was no harm in it!
This is the thing that’s killing me. When I could see him no more I felt that I
should die. If I could only have seen him, I might have lived, only seen him,
nothing more. I wish you’d tell him some day, by and by, when I am no longer
here. You will tell him, swear you, will, Jean — swear it — in the presence
of M’sieu le Cure! It will console me to know that he will know it one day,
that this was the cause of my death! Swear it!’
“‘Well, I gave her my promise, M’sieu It Baron, and on the faith of an
honest man I have kept my word.’
“And then he ceased speaking, his eyes filling with tears.
“Good God! my dear boy, you can’t form any idea of the emotion that
filled me when I heard this poor devil, whose wife I had killed without
suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very kitchen.
“I exclaimed: ‘Ah! my poor Jean! my poor Jean!’
“He murmured: ‘Well, that’s all, M’sieu le Baron. I could not help it, one
way or the other — and now it’s all over!’
“I caught his hand across the table, and I began to weep.
“He asked, ‘Will you come and see her grave?’ I nodded assent, for I
couldn’t speak. He rose, lighted a lantern, and we walked through the
blinding rain by the light of the lantern.
“He opened a gate, and I saw some crosses of black wood.
“Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: ‘There it is,’ and he
flashed the lantern close to it so that I could read the inscription:
“‘TO LOUISE HORTENSE MARINET,
“‘Wife of Jean-Francois Lebrument, Farmer,
“‘SHE WAS A FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD REST HER SOUL.’
 “We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern
between us, and I saw the rain beating on the white marble slab. And I
thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart! poor
heart! Since then I come here every year. And I don’t know why, but I feel as
if I were guilty of some crime in the presence of this man who always looks
as if he forgave me.”
 THE DEVIL

The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside the
old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite clear as
she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going to die,
and she did not rebel at it, for her time was come, as she was ninety-two.
The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its hot
flames on the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped down by
four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came in also, driven
by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The grass-hoppers
chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with their shrill noise,
which was like that of the wooden toys which are sold to children at fair
time.
The doctor raised his voice and said: “Honore, you cannot leave your
mother in this state; she may die at any moment.” And the peasant, in great
distress, replied: “But I must get in my wheat, for it has been lying on the
ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it; what do you say about
it, mother?” And the dying old woman, still tormented by her Norman
avariciousness, replied yes with her eyes and her forehead, and thus urged
her son to get in his wheat, and to leave her to die alone.
But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: “You are no
better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do you
understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch Rapet’s
wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you understand
me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog, when you are ill
in your turn; do you hear?”
The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented
by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving,
hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: “How much does La Rapet charge
for attending sick people?” “How should I know?” the doctor cried. “That
depends upon how long she is needed. Settle it with her, by Heaven! But I
want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?”
 So the man decided. “I will go for her,” he replied; “don’t get angry,
doctor.” And the latter left, calling out as he went: “Be careful, be very
careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!” As soon as they were
alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned voice: “I will go
and fetch La Rapet, as the man will have it. Don’t worry till I get back.”
And he went out in his turn.
La Rapet, old was an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the dying
of the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sewn her customers into
that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up
her iron to smooth out the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year’s
apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double,
as if she had been broken in half across the loins by the constant motion of
passing the iron over the linen, one might have said that she had a kind of
abnormal and cynical love of a death struggle. She never spoke of anything
but of the people she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she
had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness details which
were always similar, just as a sportsman recounts his luck.
When Honore Bontemps entered her cottage, he found her preparing the
starch for the collars of the women villagers, and he said: “Good-evening; I
hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?”
She turned her head round to look at him, and said: “As usual, as usual,
and you?” “Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is not
well.” “Your mother?” “Yes, my mother!” “What is the matter with her?”
“She is going to turn up her toes, that’s what’s the matter with her!”
The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden
sympathy: “Is she as bad as all that?” “The doctor says she will not last till
morning.” “Then she certainly is very bad!” Honore hesitated, for he wanted
to make a few preparatory remarks before coming to his proposition; but as
he could hit upon nothing, he made up his mind suddenly.
“How much will you ask to stay with her till the end? You know that I am
not rich, and I can not even afford to keep a servant girl. It is just that which
has brought my poor mother to this state — too much worry and fatigue! She
did the work of ten, in spite of her ninety-two years. You don’t find any made
of that stuff nowadays!”
La Rapet answered gravely: “There are two prices: Forty sous by day and
three francs by night for the rich, and twenty sous by day and forty by night
for the others. You shall pay me the twenty and forty.” But the, peasant
reflected, for he knew his mother well. He knew how tenacious of life, how
vigorous and unyielding she was, and she might last another week, in spite of
the doctor’s opinion; and so he said resolutely: “No, I would rather you
would fix a price for the whole time until the end. I will take my chance, one
way or the other. The doctor says she will die very soon. If that happens, so
much the better for you, and so much the worse for her, but if she holds out
till to-morrow or longer, so much the better for her and so much the worse
for you!”
The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a
death as a speculation, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of the possible
gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. “I can say nothing
until I have seen your mother,” she replied.
“Then come with me and see her.”
She washed her hands, and went with him immediately.
They did not speak on the road; she walked with short, hasty steps, while
he strode on with his long legs, as if he were crossing a brook at every step.
The cows lying down in the fields, overcome by the heat, raised their
heads heavily and lowed feebly at the two passers-by, as if to ask them for
some green grass.
When they got near the house, Honore Bontemps murmured: “Suppose it is
all over?” And his unconscious wish that it might be so showed itself in the
sound of his voice.
But the old woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her
wretched bed, her hands covered with a purple cotton counterpane, horribly
thin, knotty hands, like the claws of strange animals, like crabs, half closed
by rheumatism, fatigue and the work of nearly a century which she had
accomplished.
La Rapet went up to the bed and looked at the dying woman, felt her
pulse, tapped her on the chest, listened to her breathing, and asked her
questions, so as to hear her speak; and then, having looked at her for some
time, she went out of the room, followed by Honore. Her decided opinion
was that the old woman would not last till night. He asked: “Well?” And the
sick-nurse replied: “Well, she may last two days, perhaps three. You will
have to give me six francs, everything included.”
“Six francs! six francs!” he shouted. “Are you out of your mind? I tell you
she cannot last more than five or six hours!” And they disputed angrily for
some time, but as the nurse said she must go home, as the time was going by,
and as his wheat would not come to the farmyard of its own accord, he
finally agreed to her terms.
“Very well, then, that is settled; six francs, including everything, until the
corpse is taken out.”
And he went away, with long strides, to his wheat which was lying on the
ground under the hot sun which ripens the grain, while the sick-nurse went in
again to the house.
She had brought some work with her, for she worked without ceasing by
the side of the dead and dying, sometimes for herself, sometimes for the
family which employed her as seamstress and paid her rather more in that
capacity. Suddenly, she asked: “Have you received the last sacraments,
Mother Bontemps?”
The old peasant woman shook her head, and La Rapet, who was very
devout, got up quickly:
“Good heavens, is it possible? I will go and fetch the cure”; and she
rushed off to the parsonage so quickly that the urchins in the street thought
some accident had happened, when they saw her running.
The priest came immediately in his surplice, preceded by a choir boy who
rang a bell to announce the passage of the Host through the parched and quiet
country. Some men who were working at a distance took off their large hats
and remained motionless until the white vestment had disappeared behind
some farm buildings; the women who were making up the sheaves stood up
to make the sign of the cross; the frightened black hens ran away along the
ditch until they reached a well-known hole, through which they suddenly
disappeared, while a foal which was tied in a meadow took fright at the sight
of the surplice and began to gallop round and round, kicking cut every now
and then. The acolyte, in his red cassock, walked quickly, and the priest, with
his head inclined toward one shoulder and his square biretta on his head,
followed him, muttering some prayers; while last of all came La Rapet, bent
almost double as if she wished to prostrate herself, as she walked with
folded hands as they do in church.
Honore saw them pass in the distance, and he asked: “Where is our priest
going?” His man, who was more intelligent, replied: “He is taking the
sacrament to your mother, of course!”
The peasant was not surprised, and said: “That may be,” and went on with
his work.
 Mother Bontemps confessed, received absolution and communion, and the
priest took his departure, leaving the two women alone in the suffocating
room, while La Rapet began to look at the dying woman, and to ask herself
whether it could last much longer.
The day was on the wane, and gusts of cooler air began to blow, causing a
view of Epinal, which was fastened to the wall by two pins, to flap up and
down; the scanty window curtains, which had formerly been white, but were
now yellow and covered with fly-specks, looked as if they were going to fly
off, as if they were struggling to get away, like the old woman’s soul.
Lying motionless, with her eyes open, she seemed to await with
indifference that death which was so near and which yet delayed its coming.
Her short breathing whistled in her constricted throat. It would stop
altogether soon, and there would be one woman less in the world; no one
would regret her.
At nightfall Honore returned, and when he went up to the bed and saw that
his mother was still alive, he asked: “How is she?” just as he had done
formerly when she had been ailing, and then he sent La Rapet away, saying to
her: “To-morrow morning at five o’clock, without fail.” And she replied:
“To-morrow, at five o’clock.”
She came at daybreak, and found Honore eating his soup, which he had
made himself before going to work, and the sick-nurse asked him: “Well, is
your mother dead?” “She is rather better, on the contrary,” he replied, with a
sly look out of the corner of his eyes. And he went out.
La Rapet, seized with anxiety, went up to the dying woman, who remained
in the same state, lethargic and impassive, with her eyes open and her hands
clutching the counterpane. The nurse perceived that this might go on thus for
two days, four days, eight days, and her avaricious mind was seized with
fear, while she was furious at the sly fellow who had tricked her, and at the
woman who would not die.
Nevertheless, she began to work, and waited, looking intently at the
wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps. When Honore returned to breakfast he
seemed quite satisfied and even in a bantering humor. He was decidedly
getting in his wheat under very favorable circumstances.
La Rapet was becoming exasperated; every minute now seemed to her so
much time and money stolen from her. She felt a mad inclination to take this
old woman, this, headstrong old fool, this obstinate old wretch, and to stop
that short, rapid breath, which was robbing her of her time and money, by
squeezing her throat a little. But then she reflected on the danger of doing so,
and other thoughts came into her head; so she went up to the bed and said:
“Have you ever seen the Devil?” Mother Bontemps murmured: “No.”
Then the sick-nurse began to talk and to tell her tales which were likely to
terrify the weak mind of the dying woman. Some minutes before one dies the
Devil appears, she said, to all who are in the death throes. He has a broom in
his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he utters loud cries. When anybody
sees him, all is over, and that person has only a few moments longer to live.
She then enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that year:
Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padaknau, Seraphine Grospied.
Mother Bontemps, who had at last become disturbed in mind, moved
about, wrung her hands, and tried to turn her head to look toward the end of
the room. Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed. She took a
sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself up in it; she put the iron
saucepan on her head, so that its three short bent feet rose up like horns, and
she took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her left, which she threw
up suddenly, so that it might fall to the ground noisily.
When it came down, it certainly made a terrible noise. Then, climbing
upon a chair, the nurse lifted up the curtain which hung at the bottom of the
bed, and showed herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries into the iron
saucepan which covered her face, while she menaced the old peasant
woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.
Terrified, with an insane expression on her face, the dying woman made a
superhuman effort to get up and escape; she even got her shoulders and chest
out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over, and La Rapet
calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into the corner by the
cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor,
and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, she
closed the dead woman’s large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some
holy water into it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to
the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers
for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a matter of business.
And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he
calculated immediately that she had made twenty sows out of him, for she
had only spent three days and one night there, which made five francs
altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.
 THE SNIPE

Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the champion sportsman of his
province. But a stroke of paralysis had kept him in his chair for the last five
or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons from the window of his
drawing-room or from the top of his high doorsteps.
He spent his time in reading.
He was a good-natured business man, who had much of the literary spirit
of a former century. He worshipped anecdotes, those little risque anecdotes,
and also true stories of events that happened in his neighborhood. As soon as
a friend came to see him he asked:
“Well, anything new?”
And he knew how to worm out information like an examining lawyer.
On sunny days he had his large reclining chair, similar to a bed, wheeled
to the hall door. A man servant behind him held his guns, loaded them and
handed them to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes, let fly a
pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals, so that the baron should be
unprepared and be always on the watch.
And from morning till night he fired at the birds, much annoyed if he were
taken by surprise and laughing till he cried when the animal fell straight to
the earth or, turned over in some comical and unexpected manner. He would
turn to the man who was loading the gun and say, almost choking with
laughter:
“Did that get him, Joseph? Did you see how he fell?” Joseph invariably
replied:
“Oh, monsieur le baron never misses them.”
In autumn, when the shooting season opened, he invited his friends as he
had done formerly, and loved to hear them firing in the distance. He counted
the shots and was pleased when they followed each other rapidly. And in the
evening he made each guest give a faithful account of his day. They remained
three hours at table telling about their sport.
They were strange and improbable adventures in which the romancing
spirit of the sportsmen delighted. Some of them were memorable stories and
were repeated regularly. The story of a rabbit that little Vicomte de Bourril
had missed in his vestibule convulsed them with laughter each year anew.
Every five minutes a fresh speaker would say:
“I heard ‘birr! birr!’ and a magnificent covey rose at ten paces from me. I
aimed. Pif! paf! and I saw a shower, a veritable shower of birds. There were
seven of them!”
And they all went into raptures, amazed, but reciprocally credulous.
But there was an old custom in the house called “The Story of the Snipe.”
Whenever this queen of birds was in season the same ceremony took
place at each dinner. As they worshipped this incomparable bird, each guest
ate one every evening, but the heads were all left in the dish.
Then the baron, acting the part of a bishop, had a plate brought to him
containing a little fat, and he carefully anointed the precious heads, holding
them by the tip of their slender, needle-like beak. A lighted candle was
placed beside him and everyone was silent in an anxiety of expectation.
Then he took one of the heads thus prepared, stuck a pin through it and
stuck the pin on a cork, keeping the whole contrivance steady by means of
little crossed sticks, and carefully placed this object on the neck of a bottle in
the manner of a tourniquet.
All the guests counted simultaneously in a loud tone —
“One-two-three.”
And the baron with a fillip of the finger made this toy whirl round.
The guest to whom the long beak pointed when the head stopped became
the possessor of all the heads, a feast fit for a king, which made his neighbors
look askance.
He took them one by one and toasted them over the candle. The grease
sputtered, the roasting flesh smoked and the lucky winner ate the head,
holding it by the beak and uttering exclamations of enjoyment.
And at each head the diners, raising their glasses, drank to his health.
When he had finished the last head he was obliged, at the baron’s orders,
to tell an anecdote to compensate the disappointed ones.
Here are some of the stories.
 THE WILL

I knew that tall young fellow, Rene de Bourneval. He was an agreeable man,
though rather melancholy and seemed prejudiced against everything, was
very skeptical, and he could with a word tear down social hypocrisy. He
would often say:
“There are no honorable men, or, at least, they are only relatively so when
compared with those lower than themselves.”
He had two brothers, whom he never saw, the Messieurs de Courcils. I
always supposed they were by another father, on account of the difference in
the name. I had frequently heard that the family had a strange history, but did
not know the details. As I took a great liking to Rene we soon became
intimate friends, and one evening, when I had been dining with him alone, I
asked him, by chance: “Are you a son of the first or second marriage?” He
grew rather pale, and then flushed, and did not speak for a few moments; he
was visibly embarrassed. Then he smiled in the melancholy, gentle manner,
which was peculiar to him, and said:
“My dear friend, if it will not weary you, I can give you some very strange
particulars about my life. I know that you are a sensible man, so I do not fear
that our friendship will suffer by my I revelations; and should it suffer, I
should not care about having you for my friend any longer.
“My mother, Madame de Courcils, was a poor little, timid woman, whom
her husband had married for the sake of her fortune, and her whole life was
one of martyrdom. Of a loving, timid, sensitive disposition, she was
constantly being ill-treated by the man who ought to have been my father, one
of those boors called country gentlemen. A month after their marriage he was
living a licentious life and carrying on liaisons with the wives and daughters
of his tenants. This did not prevent him from having three children by his
wife, that is, if you count me in. My mother said nothing, and lived in that
noisy house like a little mouse. Set aside, unnoticed, nervous, she looked at
people with her bright, uneasy, restless eyes, the eyes of some terrified
creature which can never shake off its fear. And yet she was pretty, very
pretty and fair, a pale blonde, as if her hair had lost its color through her
constant fear.
“Among the friends of Monsieur de Courcils who constantly came to her
chateau, there was an ex-cavalry officer, a widower, a man who was feared,
who was at the same time tender and violent, capable of the most determined
resolves, Monsieur de Bourneval, whose name I bear. He was a tall, thin
man, with a heavy black mustache. I am very like him. He was a man who
had read a great deal, and his ideas were not like those of most of his class.
His great-grandmother had been a friend of J. J. Rousseau’s, and one might
have said that he had inherited something of this ancestral connection. He
knew the Contrat Social, and the Nouvelle Heloise by heart, and all those
philosophical books which prepared in advance the overthrow of our old
usages, prejudices, superannuated laws and imbecile morality.
“It seems that he loved my mother, and she loved him, but their liaison
was carried on so secretly that no one guessed at its existence. The poor,
neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him in despair, and in her
intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking, theories of
free thought, audacious ideas of independent love; but being so timid she
never ventured to speak out, and it was all driven back, condensed, shut up in
her heart.
“My two brothers were very hard towards her, like their father, and never
gave her a caress, and, accustomed to seeing her count for nothing in the
house, they treated her rather like a servant. I was the only one of her sons
who really loved her and whom she loved.
“When she died I was seventeen, and I must add, in order that you may
understand what follows, that a lawsuit between my father and mother had
been decided in my mother’s favor, giving her the bulk of the property, and,
thanks to the tricks of the law, and the intelligent devotion of a lawyer to her
interests, the right to make her will in favor of whom she pleased.
“We were told that there was a will at the lawyer’s office and were
invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it were
yesterday. It was an imposing scene, dramatic, burlesque and surprising,
occasioned by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by the cry for
liberty, by the demands of that martyred one who had been crushed by our
oppression during her lifetime and who, from her closed tomb, uttered a
despairing appeal for independence.
 “The man who believed he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man, who
looked like a butcher, and my brothers, two great fellows of twenty and
twenty-two, were waiting quietly in their chairs. Monsieur de Bourneval,
who had been invited to be present, came in and stood behind me. He was
very pale and bit his mustache, which was turning gray. No doubt he was
prepared for what was going to happen. The lawyer double-locked the door
and began to read the will, after having opened, in our presence, the
envelope, sealed with red wax, of the contents of which he was ignorant.”
My friend stopped talking abruptly, and rising, took from his writing-table
an old paper, unfolded it, kissed it and then continued: “This is the will of my
beloved mother:
“‘I, the undersigned, Anne Catherine-Genevieve-Mathilde de
Croixluce, the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Gontran de Councils
sound in body and mind, here express my last wishes.

“I first of all ask God, and then my dear son Rene to pardon me for
the act I am about to commit. I believe that my child’s heart is
great enough to understand me, and to forgive me. I have suffered
my whole life long. I was married out of calculation, then
despised, misunderstood, oppressed and constantly deceived by my
husband.

“‘I forgive him, but I owe him nothing.

“‘My elder sons never loved me, never petted me, scarcely treated me
as a mother, but during my whole life I did my duty towards them,
and I owe them nothing more after my death. The ties of blood
cannot exist without daily and constant affection. An ungrateful
son is less than, a stranger; he is a culprit, for he has no right
to be indifferent towards his mother.

“‘I have always trembled before men, before their unjust laws, their
inhuman customs, their shameful prejudices. Before God, I have no
longer any fear. Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare
to speak my thoughts, and to avow and to sign the secret of my
heart.
 “‘I therefore leave that part of my fortune of which the law allows
me to dispose, in trust to my dear lover, Pierre-Germer-Simon de
Bourneval, to revert afterwards to our dear son Rene.

“‘(This bequest is specified more precisely in a deed drawn

up by a notary.)

“‘And I declare before the Supreme Judge who hears me, that I should
have cursed heaven and my own existence, if I had not found the
deep, devoted, tender, unshaken affection of my lover; if I had not
felt in his arms that the Creator made His creatures to love,
sustain and console each other, and to weep together in the hours of
sadness.

“‘Monsieur de Courcils is the father of my two eldest sons; Rene,

alone, owes his life to Monsieur de Bourneval. I pray the Master of
men and of their destinies, to place father and son above social
prejudices, to make them love each other until they die, and to love
me also in my coffin.

“‘These are my last thoughts, and my last wish.

“‘MATHILDE DE CROIXLUCE.’”
“Monsieur de Courcils had risen and he cried:
“‘It is the will of a madwoman.’
“Then Monsieur de Bourneval stepped forward and said in a loud,
penetrating voice: ‘I, Simon de Bourneval, solemnly declare that this writing
contains nothing but the strict truth, and I am ready to prove it by letters
which I possess.’
“On hearing that, Monsieur de Courcils went up to him, and I ‘thought that
they were going to attack each other. There they stood, both of them tall, one
stout and the other thin, both trembling. My mother’s husband stammered out:
‘You are a worthless wretch!’ And the other replied in a loud, dry voice:
‘We will meet elsewhere, monsieur. I should have already slapped your ugly
face and challenged you long since if I had not, before everything else,
thought of the peace of mind during her lifetime of that poor woman whom
you caused to suffer so greatly.’
 “Then, turning to me, he said: ‘You are my son; will you come with me? I
have no right to take you away, but I shall assume it, if you are willing to
come with me: I shook his hand without replying, and we went out together. I
was certainly three parts mad.
“Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed Monsieur de Courcils in a
duel. My brothers, to avoid a terrible scandal, held their tongues. I offered
them and they accepted half the fortune which my mother had left me. I took
my real father’s name, renouncing that which the law gave me, but which was
not really mine. Monsieur de Bourneval died three years later and I am still
inconsolable.”
He rose from his chair, walked up and down the room, and, standing in
front of me, said:
“Well, I say that my mother’s will was one of the most beautiful, the most
loyal, as well as one of the grandest acts that a woman could perform. Do
you not think so?”
I held out both hands to him, saying:
“I most certainly do, my friend.”
 WALTER SCHNAFFS’ ADVENTURE

Ever since he entered France with the invading army Walter Schnaffs had
considered himself the most unfortunate of men. He was large, had difficulty
in walking, was short of breath and suffered frightfully with his feet, which
were very flat and very fat. But he was a peaceful, benevolent man, not
warlike or sanguinary, the father of four children whom he adored, and
married to a little blonde whose little tendernesses, attentions and kisses he
recalled with despair every evening. He liked to rise late and retire early, to
eat good things in a leisurely manner and to drink beer in the saloon. He
reflected, besides, that all that is sweet in existence vanishes with life, and
he maintained in his heart a fearful hatred, instinctive as well as logical, for
cannon, rifles, revolvers and swords, but especially for bayonets, feeling that
he was unable to dodge this dangerous weapon rapidly enough to protect his
big paunch.
And when night fell and he lay on the ground, wrapped in his cape beside
his comrades who were snoring, he thought long and deeply about those he
had left behind and of the dangers in his path. “If he were killed what would
become of the little ones? Who would provide for them and bring them up?”
Just at present they were not rich, although he had borrowed when he left so
as to leave them some money. And Walter Schnaffs wept when he thought of
all this.
At the beginning of a battle his legs became so weak that he would have
fallen if he had not reflected that the entire army would pass over his body.
The whistling of the bullets gave him gooseflesh.
For months he had lived thus in terror and anguish.
His company was marching on Normandy, and one day he was sent to
reconnoitre with a small detachment, simply to explore a portion of the
territory and to return at once. All seemed quiet in the country; nothing
indicated an armed resistance.
But as the Prussians were quietly descending into a little valley traversed
by deep ravines a sharp fusillade made them halt suddenly, killing twenty of
their men, and a company of sharpshooters, suddenly emerging from a little
wood as large as your hand, darted forward with bayonets at the end of their
rifles.
Walter Schnaffs remained motionless at first, so surprised and bewildered
that he did not even think of making his escape. Then he was seized with a
wild desire to run away, but he remembered at once that he ran like a tortoise
compared with those thin Frenchmen, who came bounding along like a lot of
goats. Perceiving a large ditch full of brushwood covered with dead leaves
about six paces in front of him, he sprang into it with both feet together,
without stopping to think of its depth, just as one jumps from a bridge into the
river.
He fell like an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles
that tore his face and hands and landed heavily in a sitting posture on a bed of
stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he had made in
falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he crawled along
carefully on hands and knees at the bottom of this ditch beneath the covering
of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could and getting away from the
scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped and sat down, crouched like a
hare amid the tall dry grass.
He heard firing and cries and groans going on for some time. Then the
noise of fighting grew fainter and ceased. All was quiet and silent.
Suddenly something stirred, beside him. He was frightfully startled. It was
a little bird which had perched on a branch and was moving the dead leaves.
For almost an hour Walter Schnaffs’ heart beat loud and rapidly.
Night fell, filling the ravine with its shadows. The soldier began to think.
What was he to do? What was to become of him? Should he rejoin the army?
But how? By what road? And he began over again the horrible life of
anguish, of terror, of fatigue and suffering that he had led since the
commencement of the war. No! He no longer had the courage! He would not
have the energy necessary to endure long marches and to face the dangers to
which one was exposed at every moment.
But what should he do? He could not stay in this ravine in concealment
until the end of hostilities. No, indeed! If it were not for having to eat, this
prospect would not have daunted him greatly. But he had to eat, to eat every
day.
And here he was, alone, armed and in uniform, on the enemy’s territory,
far from those who would protect him. A shiver ran over him.
 All at once he thought: “If I were only a prisoner!” And his heart quivered
with a longing, an intense desire to be taken prisoner by the French. A
prisoner, he would be saved, fed, housed, sheltered from bullets and swords,
without any apprehension whatever, in a good, well-kept prison. A prisoner!
What a dream:
His resolution was formed at once.
“I will constitute myself a prisoner.”
He rose, determined to put this plan into execution without a moment’s
delay. But he stood motionless, suddenly a prey to disturbing reflections and
fresh terrors.
Where would he make himself a prisoner and how? In What direction?
And frightful pictures, pictures of death came into his mind.
He would run terrible danger in venturing alone through the country with
his pointed helmet.
Supposing he should meet some peasants. These peasants seeing a
Prussian who had lost his way, an unprotected Prussian, would kill him as if
he were a stray dog! They would murder him with their forks, their picks,
their scythes and their shovels. They would make a stew of him, a pie, with
the frenzy of exasperated, conquered enemies.
If he should meet the sharpshooters! These sharpshooters, madmen
without law or discipline, would shoot him just for amusement to pass an
hour; it would make them laugh to see his head. And he fancied he was
already leaning against a wall in-front of four rifles whose little black
apertures seemed to be gazing at him.
Supposing he should meet the French army itself. The vanguard would
take him for a scout, for some bold and sly trooper who had set off alone to
reconnoitre, and they would fire at him. And he could already hear, in
imagination, the irregular shots of soldiers lying in the brush, while he
himself, standing in the middle of the field, was sinking to the earth, riddled
like a sieve with bullets which he felt piercing his flesh.
He sat down again in despair. His situation seemed hopeless.
It was quite a dark, black and silent night. He no longer budged, trembling
at all the slight and unfamiliar sounds that occur at night. The sound of a
rabbit crouching at the edge of his burrow almost made him run. The cry of
an owl caused him positive anguish, giving him a nervous shock that pained
like a wound. He opened his big eyes as wide as possible to try and see
through the darkness, and he imagined every moment that he heard someone
walking close beside him.
After interminable hours in which he suffered the tortures of the damned,
he noticed through his leafy cover that the sky was becoming bright. He at
once felt an intense relief. His limbs stretched out, suddenly relaxed, his
heart quieted down, his eyes closed; he fell asleep.
When he awoke the sun appeared to be almost at the meridian. It must be
noon. No sound disturbed the gloomy silence. Walter Schnaffs noticed that he
was exceedingly hungry.
He yawned, his mouth watering at the thought of sausage, the good sausage
the soldiers have, and he felt a gnawing at his stomach.
He rose from the ground, walked a few steps, found that his legs were
weak and sat down to reflect. For two or three hours he again considered the
pros and cons, changing his mind every moment, baffled, unhappy, torn by the
most conflicting motives.
Finally he had an idea that seemed logical and practical. It was to watch
for a villager passing by alone, unarmed and with no dangerous tools of his
trade, and to run to him and give himself up, making him understand that he
was surrendering.
He took off his helmet, the point of which might betray him, and put his
head out of his hiding place with the utmost caution.
No solitary pedestrian could be perceived on the horizon. Yonder, to the
right, smoke rose from the chimney of a little village, smoke from kitchen
fires! And yonder, to the left, he saw at the end of an avenue of trees a large
turreted chateau. He waited till evening, suffering frightfully from hunger,
seeing nothing but flights of crows, hearing nothing but the silent
expostulation of his empty stomach.
And darkness once more fell on him.
He stretched himself out in his retreat and slept a feverish sleep, haunted
by nightmares, the sleep of a starving man.
Dawn again broke above his head and he began to make his observations.
But the landscape was deserted as on the previous day, and a new fear came
into Walter Schnaffs’ mind — the fear of death by hunger! He pictured
himself lying at full length on his back at the bottom of his hiding place, with
his two eyes closed, and animals, little creatures of all kinds, approached
and began to feed on his dead body, attacking it all over at once, gliding
beneath his clothing to bite his cold flesh, and a big crow pecked out his eyes
with its sharp beak.
He almost became crazy, thinking he was going to faint and would not be
able to walk. And he was just preparing to rush off to the village, determined
to dare anything, to brave everything, when he perceived three peasants
walking to the fields with their forks across their shoulders, and he dived
back into his hiding place.
But as soon as it grew dark he slowly emerged from the ditch and started
off, stooping and fearful, with beating heart, towards the distant chateau,
preferring to go there rather than to the village, which seemed to him as
formidable as a den of tigers.
The lower windows were brilliantly lighted. One of them was open and
from it escaped a strong odor of roast meat, an odor which suddenly
penetrated to the olfactories and to the stomach of Walter Schnaffs, tickling
his nerves, making him breathe quickly, attracting him irresistibly and
inspiring his heart with the boldness of desperation.
And abruptly, without reflection, he placed himself, helmet on head, in
front of the window.
Eight servants were at dinner around a large table. But suddenly one of the
maids sat there, her mouth agape, her eyes fixed and letting fall her glass.
They all followed the direction of her gaze.
They saw the enemy!
Good God! The Prussians were attacking the chateau!
There was a shriek, only one shriek made up of eight shrieks uttered in
eight different keys, a terrific screaming of terror, then a tumultuous rising
from their seats, a jostling, a scrimmage and a wild rush to the door at the
farther end. Chairs fell over, the men knocked the women down and walked
over them. In two seconds the room was empty, deserted, and the table,
covered with eatables, stood in front of Walter Schnaffs, lost in amazement
and still standing at the window.
After some moments of hesitation he climbed in at the window and
approached the table. His fierce hunger caused him to tremble as if he were
in a fever, but fear still held him back, numbed him. He listened. The entire
house seemed to shudder. Doors closed, quick steps ran along the floor
above. The uneasy Prussian listened eagerly to these confused sounds. Then
he heard dull sounds, as though bodies were falling to the ground at the foot
of the walls, human beings jumping from the first floor.
 Then all motion, all disturbance ceased, and the great chateau became as
silent as the grave.
Walter Schnaffs sat down before a clean plate and began to eat. He took
great mouthfuls, as if he feared he might be interrupted before he had
swallowed enough. He shovelled the food into his mouth, open like a trap,
with both hands, and chunks of food went into his stomach, swelling out his
throat as it passed down. Now and then he stopped, almost ready to burst like
a stopped-up pipe. Then he would take the cider jug and wash down his
esophagus as one washes out a clogged rain pipe.
He emptied all the plates, all the dishes and all the bottles. Then,
intoxicated with drink and food, besotted, red in the face, shaken by
hiccoughs, his mind clouded and his speech thick, he unbuttoned his uniform
in order to breathe or he could not have taken a step. His eyes closed, his
mind became torpid; he leaned his heavy forehead on his folded arms on the
table and gradually lost all consciousness of things and events.
The last quarter of the moon above the trees in the park shed a faint light
on the landscape. It was the chill hour that precedes the dawn.
Numerous silent shadows glided among the trees and occasionally a blade
of steel gleamed in the shadow as a ray of moonlight struck it.
The quiet chateau stood there in dark outline. Only two windows were
still lighted up on the ground floor.
Suddenly a voice thundered:
“Forward! nom d’un nom! To the breach, my lads!”
And in an instant the doors, shutters and window panes fell in beneath a
wave of men who rushed in, breaking, destroying everything, and took the
house by storm. In a moment fifty soldiers, armed to the teeth, bounded into
the kitchen, where Walter Schnaffs was peacefully sleeping, and placing to
his breast fifty loaded rifles, they overturned him, rolled him on the floor,
seized him and tied his head and feet together.
He gasped in amazement, too besotted to understand, perplexed, bruised
and wild with fear.
Suddenly a big soldier, covered with gold lace, put his foot on his
stomach, shouting:
“You are my prisoner. Surrender!”
The Prussian heard only the one word “prisoner” and he sighed, “Ya, ya,
ya.”
 He was raised from the floor, tied in a chair and examined with lively
curiosity by his victors, who were blowing like whales. Several of them sat
down, done up with excitement and fatigue.
He smiled, actually smiled, secure now that he was at last a prisoner.
Another officer came into the room and said:
“Colonel, the enemy has escaped; several seem to have been wounded.
We are in possession.”
The big officer, who was wiping his forehead, exclaimed: “Victory!”
And he wrote in a little business memorandum book which he took from
his pocket:
“After a desperate encounter the Prussians were obliged to beat a retreat,
carrying with them their dead and wounded, the number of whom is estimated
at fifty men. Several were taken prisoners.”
The young officer inquired:
“What steps shall I take, colonel?”
“We will retire in good order,” replied the colonel, “to avoid having to
return and make another attack with artillery and a larger force of men.”
And he gave the command to set out.
The column drew up in line in the darkness beneath the walls of the
chateau and filed out, a guard of six soldiers with revolvers in their hands
surrounding Walter Schnaffs, who was firmly bound.
Scouts were sent ahead to reconnoitre. They advanced cautiously, halting
from time to time.
At daybreak they arrived at the district of La Roche-Oysel, whose
national guard had accomplished this feat of arms.
The uneasy and excited inhabitants were expecting them. When they saw
the prisoner’s helmet tremendous shouts arose. The women raised their 10
arms in wonder, the old people wept. An old grandfather threw his crutch at
the Prussian and struck the nose of one of their own defenders.
The colonel roared:
“See that the prisoner is secure!”
At length they reached the town hall. The prison was opened and Walter
Schnaffs, freed from his bonds, cast into it. Two hundred armed men mounted
guard outside the building.
Then, in spite of the indigestion that had been troubling him for some time,
the Prussian, wild with joy, began to dance about, to dance frantically,
throwing out his arms and legs and uttering wild shouts until he fell down
exhausted beside the wall.
He was a prisoner-saved!
That was how the Chateau de Charnpignet was taken from the enemy after
only six hours of occupation.
Colonel Ratier, a cloth merchant, who had led the assault at the head of a
body of the national guard of La Roche-Oysel, was decorated with an order.
 AT SEA

The following paragraphs recently appeared in the papers:

“Boulogne-Sur-Mer, January 22. — Our correspondent writes:
“A fearful accident has thrown our sea-faring population, which has
suffered so much in the last two years, into the greatest consternation. The
fishing smack commanded by Captain Javel, on entering the harbor was
wrecked on the rocks of the harbor breakwater.
“In spite of the efforts of the life boat and the shooting of life lines from
the shore four sailors and the cabin boy were lost.
“The rough weather continues. Fresh disasters are anticipated.”
Who is this Captain Javel? Is he the brother of the one-armed man?
If the poor man tossed about in the waves and dead, perhaps, beneath his
wrecked boat, is the one I am thinking of, he took part, just eighteen years
ago, in another tragedy, terrible and simple as are all these fearful tragedies
of the sea.
Javel, senior, was then master of a trawling smack.
The trawling smack is the ideal fishing boat. So solidly built that it fears
no weather, with a round bottom, tossed about unceasingly on the waves like
a cork, always on top, always thrashed by the harsh salt winds of the English
Channel, it ploughs the sea unweariedly with bellying sail, dragging along at
its side a huge trawling net, which scours the depths of the ocean, and
detaches and gathers in all the animals asleep in the rocks, the flat fish glued
to the sand, the heavy crabs with their curved claws, and the lobsters with
their pointed mustaches.
When the breeze is fresh and the sea choppy, the boat starts in to trawl.
The net is fastened all along a big log of wood clamped with iron and is let
down by two ropes on pulleys at either end of the boat. And the boat, driven
by the wind and the tide, draws along this apparatus which ransacks and
plunders the depths of the sea.
Javel had on board his younger brother, four sailors and a cabin boy. He
had set sail from Boulogne on a beautiful day to go trawling.
 But presently a wind sprang up, and a hurricane obliged the smack to run
to shore. She gained the English coast, but the high sea broke against the
rocks and dashed on the beach, making it impossible to go into port, filling
all the harbor entrances with foam and noise and danger.
The smack started off again, riding on the waves, tossed, shaken, dripping,
buffeted by masses of water, but game in spite of everything; accustomed to
this boisterous weather, which sometimes kept it roving between the two
neighboring countries without its being able to make port in either.
At length the hurricane calmed down just as they were in the open, and
although the sea was still high the captain gave orders to cast the net.
So it was lifted overboard, and two men in the bows and two in the stern
began to unwind the ropes that held it. It suddenly touched bottom, but a big
wave made the boat heel, and Javel, junior, who was in the bows directing
the lowering of the net, staggered, and his arm was caught in the rope which
the shock had slipped from the pulley for an instant. He made a desperate
effort to raise the rope with the other hand, but the net was down and the taut
rope did not give.
The man cried out in agony. They all ran to his aid. His brother left the
rudder. They all seized the rope, trying to free the arm it was bruising. But in
vain. “We must cut it,” said a sailor, and he took from his pocket a big knife,
which, with two strokes, could save young Javel’s arm.
But if the rope were cut the trawling net would be lost, and this net was
worth money, a great deal of money, fifteen hundred francs. And it belonged
to Javel, senior, who was tenacious of his property.
“No, do not cut, wait, I will luff,” he cried, in great distress. And he ran to
the helm and turned the rudder. But the boat scarcely obeyed it, being
impeded by the net which kept it from going forward, and prevented also by
the force of the tide and the wind.
Javel, junior, had sunk on his knees, his teeth clenched, his eyes haggard.
He did not utter a word. His brother came back to him, in dread of the
sailor’s knife.
“Wait, wait,” he said. “We will let down the anchor.”
They cast anchor, and then began to turn the capstan to loosen the
moorings of the net. They loosened them at length and disengaged the
imprisoned arm, in its bloody woolen sleeve.
Young Javel seemed like an idiot. They took off his jersey and saw a
horrible sight, a mass of flesh from which the blood spurted as if from a
pump. Then the young man looked at his arm and murmured: “Foutu” (done
for).
Then, as the blood was making a pool on the deck of the boat, one of the
sailors cried: “He will bleed to death, we must bind the vein.”
So they took a cord, a thick, brown, tarry cord, and twisting it around the
arm above the wound, tightened it with all their might. The blood ceased to
spurt by slow degrees, and, presently, stopped altogether.
Young Javel rose, his arm hanging at his side. He took hold of it with the
other hand, raised it, turned it over, shook it. It was all mashed, the bones
broken, the muscles alone holding it together. He looked at it sadly,
reflectively. Then he sat down on a folded sail and his comrades advised him
to keep wetting the arm constantly to prevent it from mortifying.
They placed a pail of water beside him, and every few minutes he dipped
a glass into it and bathed the frightful wound, letting the clear water trickle
on to it.
“You would be better in the cabin,” said his brother. He went down, but
came up again in an hour, not caring to be alone. And, besides, he preferred
the fresh air. He sat down again on his sail and began to bathe his arm.
They made a good haul. The broad fish with their white bellies lay beside
him, quivering in the throes of death; he looked at them as he continued to
bathe his crushed flesh.
As they were about to return to Boulogne the wind sprang up anew, and
the little boat resumed its mad course, bounding and tumbling about, shaking
up the poor wounded man.
Night came on. The sea ran high until dawn. As the sun rose the English
coast was again visible, but, as the weather had abated a little, they turned
back towards the French coast, tacking as they went.
Towards evening Javel, junior, called his comrades and showed them
some black spots, all the horrible tokens of mortification in the portion of the
arm below the broken bones.
The sailors examined it, giving their opinion.
“That might be the ‘Black,’” thought one.
“He should put salt water on it,” said another.
They brought some salt water and poured it on the wound. The injured
man became livid, ground his teeth and writhed a little, but did not exclaim.
Then, as soon as the smarting had abated, he said to his brother:
“Give me your knife.”
 The brother handed it to him.
“Hold my arm up, quite straight, and pull it.”
They did as he asked them.
Then he began to cut off his arm. He cut gently, carefully, severing al the
tendons with this blade that was sharp as a razor. And, presently, there was
only a stump left. He gave a deep sigh and said:
“It had to be done. It was done for.”
He seemed relieved and breathed loud. He then began again to pour water
on the stump of arm that remained.
The sea was still rough and they could not make the shore.
When the day broke, Javel, junior, took the severed portion of his arm and
examined it for a long time. Gangrene had set in. His comrades also
examined it and handed it from one to the other, feeling it, turning it over, and
sniffing at it.
“You must throw that into the sea at once,” said his brother.
But Javel, junior, got angry.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! I don’t want to. It belongs to me, does it not, as it is my
arm?”
And he took and placed it between his feet.
“It will putrefy, just the same,” said the older brother. Then an idea came
to the injured man. In order to preserve the fish when the boat was long at
sea, they packed it in salt, in barrels. He asked:
“Why can I not put it in pickle?”
“Why, that’s a fact,” exclaimed the others.
Then they emptied one of the barrels, which was full from the haul of the
last few days; and right at the bottom of the barrel they laid the detached arm.
They covered it with salt, and then put back the fish one by one.
One of the sailors said by way of joke:
“I hope we do not sell it at auction.”
And everyone laughed, except the two Javels.
The wind was still boisterous. They tacked within sight of Boulogne until
the following morning at ten o’clock. Young Javel continued to bathe his
wound. From time to time he rose and walked from one end to the other of
the boat.
His brother, who was at the tiller, followed him with glances, and shook
his head.
At last they ran into harbor.
 The doctor examined the wound and pronounced it to be in good
condition. He dressed it properly and ordered the patient to rest. But Javel
would not go to bed until he got back his severed arm, and he returned at
once to the dock to look for the barrel which he had marked with a cross.
It was emptied before him and he seized the arm, which was well
preserved in the pickle, had shrunk and was freshened. He wrapped it up in a
towel he had brought for the purpose and took it home.
His wife and children looked for a long time at this fragment of their
father, feeling the fingers, and removing the grains of salt that were under the
nails. Then they sent for a carpenter to make a little coffin.
The next day the entire crew of the trawling smack followed the funeral of
the detached arm. The two brothers, side by side, led the procession; the
parish beadle carried the corpse under his arm.
Javel, junior, gave up the sea. He obtained a small position on the dock,
and when he subsequently talked about his accident, he would say
confidentially to his auditors:
“If my brother had been willing to cut away the net, I should still have my
arm, that is sure. But he was thinking only of his property.”
 MINUET

Great misfortunes do not affect me very much, said John Bridelle, an old
bachelor who passed for a sceptic. I have seen war at quite close quarters; I
walked across corpses without any feeling of pity. The great brutal facts of
nature, or of humanity, may call forth cries of horror or indignation, but do
not cause us that tightening of the heart, that shudder that goes down your
spine at sight of certain little heartrending episodes.
The greatest sorrow that anyone can experience is certainly the loss of a
child, to a mother; and the loss of his mother, to a man. It is intense, terrible,
it rends your heart and upsets your mind; but one is healed of these shocks,
just as large bleeding wounds become healed. Certain meetings, certain
things half perceived, or surmised, certain secret sorrows, certain tricks of
fate which awake in us a whole world of painful thoughts, which suddenly
unclose to us the mysterious door of moral suffering, complicated, incurable;
all the deeper because they appear benign, all the more bitter because they
are intangible, all the more tenacious because they appear almost factitious,
leave in our souls a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of
disenchantment, from which it takes a long time to free ourselves.
I have always present to my mind two or three things that others would
surely not have noticed, but which penetrated my being like fine, sharp
incurable stings.
You might not perhaps understand the emotion that I retained from these
hasty impressions. I will tell you one of them. She was very old, but as lively
as a young girl. It may be that my imagination alone is responsible for my
emotion.
I am fifty. I was young then and studying law. I was rather sad, somewhat
of a dreamer, full of a pessimistic philosophy and did not care much for noisy
cafes, boisterous companions, or stupid girls. I rose early and one of my
chief enjoyments was to walk alone about eight o’clock in the morning in the
nursery garden of the Luxembourg.
You people never knew that nursery garden. It was like a forgotten garden
of the last century, as pretty as the gentle smile of an old lady. Thick hedges
divided the narrow regular paths, — peaceful paths between two walls of
carefully trimmed foliage. The gardener’s great shears were pruning
unceasingly these leafy partitions, and here and there one came across beds
of flowers, lines of little trees looking like schoolboys out for a walk,
companies of magnificent rose bushes, or regiments of fruit trees.
An entire corner of this charming spot was in habited by bees. Their straw
hives skillfully arranged at distances on boards had their entrances — as
large as the opening of a thimble — turned towards the sun, and all along the
paths one encountered these humming and gilded flies, the true masters of this
peaceful spot, the real promenaders of these quiet paths.
I came there almost every morning. I sat down on a bench and read.
Sometimes I let my book fall on my knees, to dream, to listen to the life of
Paris around me, and to enjoy the infinite repose of these old-fashioned
hedges.
But I soon perceived that I was not the only one to frequent this spot as
soon as the gates were opened, and I occasionally met face to face, at a turn
in the path, a strange little old man.
He wore shoes with silver buckles, knee-breeches, a snuff-colored frock
coat, a lace jabot, and an outlandish gray hat with wide brim and long-haired
surface that might have come out of the ark.
He was thin, very thin, angular, grimacing and smiling. His bright eyes
were restless beneath his eyelids which blinked continuously. He always
carried in his hand a superb cane with a gold knob, which must have been for
him some glorious souvenir.
This good man astonished me at first, then caused me the intensest interest.
I watched him through the leafy walls, I followed him at a distance, stopping
at a turn in the hedge so as not to be seen.
And one morning when he thought he was quite alone, he began to make
the most remarkable motions. First he would give some little springs, then
make a bow; then, with his slim legs, he would give a lively spring in the air,
clapping his feet as he did so, and then turn round cleverly, skipping and
frisking about in a comical manner, smiling as if he had an audience, twisting
his poor little puppet-like body, bowing pathetic and ridiculous little
greetings into the empty air. He was dancing.
I stood petrified with amazement, asking myself which of us was crazy, he
or I.
 He stopped suddenly, advanced as actors do on the stage, then bowed and
retreated with gracious smiles, and kissing his hand as actors do, his
trembling hand, to the two rows of trimmed bushes.
Then he continued his walk with a solemn demeanor.
After that I never lost sight of him, and each morning he began anew his
outlandish exercises.
I was wildly anxious to speak to him. I decided to risk it, and one day,
after greeting him, I said:
“It is a beautiful day, monsieur.”
He bowed.
“Yes, sir, the weather is just as it used to be.”
A week later we were friends and I knew his history. He had been a
dancing master at the opera, in the time of Louis XV. His beautiful cane was a
present from the Comte de Clermont. And when we spoke about dancing he
never stopping talking.
One day he said to me:
“I married La Castris, monsieur. I will introduce you to her if you wish it,
but she does not get here till later. This garden, you see, is our delight and
our life. It is all that remains of former days. It seems as though we could not
exist if we did not have it. It is old and distingue, is it not? I seem to breathe
an air here that has not changed since I was young. My wife and I pass all our
afternoons here, but I come in the morning because I get up early.”
As soon as I had finished luncheon I returned to the Luxembourg, and
presently perceived my friend offering his arm ceremoniously to a very old
little lady dressed in black, to whom he introduced me. It was La Castris, the
great dancer, beloved by princes, beloved by the king, beloved by all that
century of gallantry that seems to have left behind it in the world an
atmosphere of love.
We sat down on a bench. It was the month of May. An odor of flowers
floated in the neat paths; a hot sun glided its rays between the branches and
covered us with patches of light. The black dress of La Castris seemed to be
saturated with sunlight.
The garden was empty. We heard the rattling of vehicles in the distance.
“Tell me,” I said to the old dancer, “what was the minuet?”
He gave a start.
“The minuet, monsieur, is the queen of dances, and the dance of queens,
do you understand? Since there is no longer any royalty, there is no longer
any minuet.”
And he began in a pompous manner a long dithyrambic eulogy which I
could not understand. I wanted to have the steps, the movements, the
positions, explained to me. He became confused, was amazed at his inability
to make me understand, became nervous and worried.
Then suddenly, turning to his old companion who had remained silent and
serious, he said:
“Elise, would you like — say — would you like, it would be very nice of
you, would you like to show this gentleman what it was?”
She turned eyes uneasily in all directions, then rose without saying a word
and took her position opposite him.
Then I witnessed an unheard-of thing.
They advanced and retreated with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging
each other, bowing, skipping about like two automaton dolls moved by some
old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a clever
workman according to the fashion of his time.
And I looked at them, my heart filled with extraordinary emotions, my
soul touched with an indescribable melancholy. I seemed to see before me a
pathetic and comical apparition, the out-of-date ghost of a former century.
They suddenly stopped. They had finished all the figures of the dance. For
some seconds they stood opposite each other, smiling in an astonishing
manner. Then they fell on each other’s necks sobbing.
I left for the provinces three days later. I never saw them again. When I
returned to Paris, two years later, the nursery had been destroyed. What
became of them, deprived of the dear garden of former days, with its mazes,
its odor of the past, and the graceful windings of its hedges?
Are they dead? Are they wandering among modern streets like hopeless
exiles? Are they dancing — grotesque spectres — a fantastic minuet in the
moonlight, amid the cypresses of a cemetery, along the pathways bordered by
graves?
Their memory haunts me, obsesses me, torments me, remains with me like
a wound. Why? I do not know.
No doubt you think that very absurd?
 THE SON

The two old friends were walking in the garden in bloom, where spring was
bringing everything to life.
One was a senator, the other a member of the French Academy, both
serious men, full of very logical but solemn arguments, men of note and
reputation.
They talked first of politics, exchanging opinions; not on ideas, but on
men, personalities in this regard taking the predominance over ability. Then
they recalled some memories. Then they walked along in silence, enervated
by the warmth of the air.
A large bed of wallflowers breathed out a delicate sweetness. A mass of
flowers of all species and color flung their fragrance to the breeze, while a
cytisus covered with yellow clusters scattered its fine pollen abroad, a
golden cloud, with an odor of honey that bore its balmy seed across space,
similar to the sachet-powders of perfumers.
The senator stopped, breathed in the cloud of floating pollen, looked at the
fertile shrub, yellow as the sun, whose seed was floating in the air, and said:
“When one considers that these imperceptible fragrant atoms will create
existences at a hundred leagues from here, will send a thrill through the
fibres and sap of female trees and produce beings with roots, growing from a
germ, just as we do, mortal like ourselves, and who will be replaced by
other beings of the same order, like ourselves again!”
And, standing in front of the brilliant cytisus, whose live pollen was
shaken off by each breath of air, the senator added:
“Ah, old fellow, if you had to keep count of all your children you would
be mightily embarrassed. Here is one who generates freely, and then lets
them go without a pang and troubles himself no more about them.”
“We do the same, my friend,” said the academician.
“Yes, I do not deny it; we let them go sometimes,” resumed the senator,
“but we are aware that we do, and that constitutes our superiority.”
“No, that is not what I mean,” said the other, shaking his head. “You see,
my friend, that there is scarcely a man who has not some children that he
does not know, children— ‘father unknown’ — whom he has generated
almost unconsciously, just as this tree reproduces.
“If we had to keep account of our amours, we should be just as
embarrassed as this cytisus which you apostrophized would be in counting up
his descendants, should we not?
“From eighteen to forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory
acquaintanceship, we may well say that we have been intimate with two or
three hundred women.
“Well, then, my friend, among this number can you be sure that you have
not had children by at least one of them, and that you have not in the streets,
or in the bagnio, some blackguard of a son who steals from and murders
decent people, i.e., ourselves; or else a daughter in some disreputable place,
or, if she has the good fortune to be deserted by her mother, as cook in some
family?
“Consider, also, that almost all those whom we call ‘prostitutes’ have one
or two children of whose paternal parentage they are ignorant, generated by
chance at the price of ten or twenty francs. In every business there is profit
and loss. These wildings constitute the ‘loss’ in their profession. Who
generated them? You — I — we all did, the men called ‘gentlemen’! They
are the consequences of our jovial little dinners, of our gay evenings, of those
hours when our comfortable physical being impels us to chance liaisons.
“Thieves, marauders, all these wretches, in fact, are our children. And
that is better for us than if we were their children, for those scoundrels
generate also!
“I have in my mind a very horrible story that I will relate to you. It has
caused me incessant remorse, and, further than that, a continual doubt, a
disquieting uncertainty, that, at times, torments me frightfully.
“When I was twenty-five I undertook a walking tour through Brittany with
one of my friends, now a member of the cabinet.
“After walking steadily for fifteen or twenty days and visiting the Cotes-
du-Nord and part of Finistere we reached Douarnenez. From there we went
without halting to the wild promontory of Raz by the bay of Les Trepaases,
and passed the night in a village whose name ends in ‘of.’ The next morning a
strange lassitude kept my friend in bed; I say bed from habit, for our couch
consisted simply of two bundles of straw.
“It would never do to be ill in this place. So I made him get up, and we
reached Andierne about four or five o’clock in the evening.
 “The following day he felt a little better, and we set out again. But on the
road he was seized with intolerable pain, and we could scarcely get as far as
Pont Labbe.
“Here, at least, there was an inn. My friend went to bed, and the doctor,
who had been sent for from Quimper, announced that he had a high fever,
without being able to determine its nature.
“Do you know Pont Labbe? No? Well, then, it is the most Breton of all
this Breton Brittany, which extends from the promontory of Raz to the
Morbihan, of this land which contains the essence of the Breton manners,
legends and customs. Even to-day this corner of the country has scarcely
changed. I say ‘even to-day,’ for I now go there every year, alas!
“An old chateau laves the walls of its towers in a great melancholy pond,
melancholy and frequented by flights of wild birds. It has an outlet in a river
on which boats can navigate as far as the town. In the narrow streets with
their old-time houses the men wear big hats, embroidered waistcoats and
four coats, one on top of the other; the inside one, as large as your hand,
barely covering the shoulder-blades, and the outside one coming to just
above the seat of the trousers.
“The girls, tall, handsome and fresh have their bosoms crushed in a cloth
bodice which makes an armor, compresses them, not allowing one even to
guess at their robust and tortured neck. They also wear a strange headdress.
On their temples two bands embroidered in colors frame their face, inclosing
the hair, which falls in a shower at the back of their heads, and is then turned
up and gathered on top of the head under a singular cap, often woven with
gold or silver thread.
“The servant at our inn was eighteen at most, with very blue eyes, a pale
blue with two tiny black pupils, short teeth close together, which she showed
continually when she laughed, and which seemed strong enough to grind
granite.
“She did not know a word of French, speaking only Breton, as did most of
her companions.
“As my friend did not improve much, and although he had no definite
malady, the doctor forbade him to continue his journey yet, ordering complete
rest. I spent my days with him, and the little maid would come in incessantly,
bringing either my dinner or some herb tea.
“I teased her a little, which seemed to amuse her, but we did not chat, of
course, as we could not understand each other.
 “But one night, after I had stayed quite late with my friend and was going
back to my room, I passed the girl, who was going to her room. It was just
opposite my open door, and, without reflection, and more for fun than
anything else, I abruptly seized her round the waist, and before she recovered
from her astonishment I had thrown her down and locked her in my room. She
looked at me, amazed, excited, terrified, not daring to cry out for fear of a
scandal and of being probably driven out, first by her employers and then,
perhaps, by her father.
“I did it as a joke at first. She defended herself bravely, and at the first
chance she ran to the door, drew back the bolt and fled.
“I scarcely saw her for several days. She would not let me come near her.
But when my friend was cured and we were to get out on our travels again I
saw her coming into my room about midnight the night before our departure,
just after I had retired.
“She threw herself into my arms and embraced me passionately, giving me
all the assurances of tenderness and despair that a woman can give when she
does not know a word of our language.
“A week later I had forgotten this adventure, so common and frequent
when one is travelling, the inn servants being generally destined to amuse
travellers in this way.
“I was thirty before I thought of it again, or returned to Pont Labbe.
“But in 1876 I revisited it by chance during a trip into Brittany, which I
made in order to look up some data for a book and to become permeated with
the atmosphere of the different places.
“Nothing seemed changed. The chateau still laved its gray wall in the
pond outside the little town; the inn was the same, though it had been
repaired, renovated and looked more modern. As I entered it I was received
by two young Breton girls of eighteen, fresh and pretty, bound up in their tight
cloth bodices, with their silver caps and wide embroidered bands on their
ears.
“It was about six o’clock in the evening. I sat down to dinner, and as the
host was assiduous in waiting on me himself, fate, no doubt, impelled me to
say:
“‘Did you know the former proprietors of this house? I spent about ten
days here thirty years ago. I am talking old times.’
“‘Those were my parents, monsieur,’ he replied.
 “Then I told him why we had stayed over at that time, how my comrade
had been delayed by illness. He did not let me finish.
“‘Oh, I recollect perfectly. I was about fifteen or sixteen. You slept in the
room at the end and your friend in the one I have taken for myself,
overlooking the street.’
“It was only then that the recollection of the little maid came vividly to my
mind. I asked: ‘Do you remember a pretty little servant who was then in your
father’s employ, and who had, if my memory does not deceive me, pretty
eyes and fresh-looking teeth?’
“‘Yes, monsieur; she died in childbirth some time after.’
“And, pointing to the courtyard where a thin, lame man was stirring up the
manure, he added:
“‘That is her son.’
“I began to laugh:
“‘He is not handsome and does not look much like his mother. No doubt
he looks like his father.’
“‘That is very possible,’ replied the innkeeper; ‘but we never knew
whose child it was. She died without telling any one, and no one here knew
of her having a beau. Every one was hugely astonished when they heard she
was enceinte, and no one would believe it.’
“A sort of unpleasant chill came over me, one of those painful surface
wounds that affect us like the shadow of an impending sorrow. And I looked
at the man in the yard. He had just drawn water for the horses and was
carrying two buckets, limping as he walked, with a painful effort of his
shorter leg. His clothes were ragged, he was hideously dirty, with long
yellow hair, so tangled that it looked like strands of rope falling down at
either side of his face.
“‘He is not worth much,’ continued the innkeeper; ‘we have kept him for
charity’s sake. Perhaps he would have turned out better if he had been
brought up like other folks. But what could one do, monsieur? No father, no
mother, no money! My parents took pity on him, but he was not their child,
you understand.’
“I said nothing.
“I slept in my old room, and all night long I thought of this frightful
stableman, saying to myself: ‘Supposing it is my own son? Could I have
caused that girl’s death and procreated this being? It was quite possible!’
 “I resolved to speak to this man and to find out the exact date of his birth.
A variation of two months would set my doubts at rest.
“I sent for him the next day. But he could not speak French. He looked as
if he could not understand anything, being absolutely ignorant of his age,
which I had inquired of him through one of the maids. He stood before me
like an idiot, twirling his hat in ‘his knotted, disgusting hands, laughing
stupidly, with something of his mother’s laugh in the corners of his mouth and
of his eyes.
“The landlord, appearing on the scene, went to look for the birth
certificate of this wretched being. He was born eight months and twenty-six
days after my stay at Pont Labbe, for I recollect perfectly that we reached
Lorient on the fifteenth of August. The certificate contained this description:
‘Father unknown.’ The mother called herself Jeanne Kerradec.
“Then my heart began to beat rapidly. I could not utter a word, for I felt as
if I were choking. I looked at this animal whose long yellow hair reminded
me of a straw heap, and the beggar, embarrassed by my gaze, stopped
laughing, turned his head aside, and wanted to get away.
“All day long I wandered beside the little river, giving way to painful
reflections. But what was the use of reflection? I could be sure of nothing.
For hours and hours I weighed all the pros and cons in favor of or against the
probability of my being the father, growing nervous over inexplicable
suppositions, only to return incessantly to the same horrible uncertainty, then
to the still more atrocious conviction that this man was my son.
“I could eat no dinner, and went to my room.
“I lay awake for a long time, and when I finally fell asleep I was haunted
by horrible visions. I saw this laborer laughing in my face and calling me
‘papa.’ Then he changed into a dog and bit the calves of my legs, and no
matter how fast I ran he still followed me, and instead of barking, talked and
reviled me. Then he appeared before my colleagues at the Academy, who had
assembled to decide whether I was really his father; and one of them cried
out: ‘There can be no doubt about it! See how he resembles him.’ And,
indeed, I could see that this monster looked like me. And I awoke with this
idea fixed in my mind and with an insane desire to see the man again and
assure myself whether or not we had similar features.
“I joined him as he was going to mass (it was Sunday) and I gave him five
francs as I gazed at him anxiously. He began to laugh in an idiotic manner,
took the money, and then, embarrassed afresh at my gaze, he ran off, after
stammering an almost inarticulate word that, no doubt, meant ‘thank you.’
“My day passed in the same distress of mind as on the previous night. I
sent for the landlord, and, with the greatest caution, skill and tact, I told him
that I was interested in this poor creature, so abandoned by every one and
deprived of everything, and I wished to do something for him.
“But the man replied: ‘Oh, do not think of it, monsieur; he is of no
account; you will only cause yourself annoyance. I employ him to clean out
the stable, and that is all he can do. I give him his board and let him sleep
with the horses. He needs nothing more. If you have an old pair of trousers,
you might give them to him, but they will be in rags in a week.’
“I did not insist, intending to think it over.
“The poor wretch came home that evening frightfully drunk, came near
setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended
up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring rain, thanks
to my donation.
“They begged me next day not to give him any more money. Brandy drove
him crazy, and as soon as he had two sous in his pocket he would spend it in
drink. The landlord added: ‘Giving him money is like trying to kill him.’ The
man had never, never in his life had more than a few centimes, thrown to him
by travellers, and he knew of no destination for this metal but the wine shop.
“I spent several hours in my room with an open book before me which I
pretended to read, but in reality looking at this animal, my son! my son! trying
to discover if he looked anything like me. After careful scrutiny I seemed to
recognize a similarity in the lines of the forehead and the root of the nose,
and I was soon convinced that there was a resemblance, concealed by the
difference in garb and the man’s hideous head of hair.
“I could not stay here any longer without arousing suspicion, and I went
away, my heart crushed, leaving with the innkeeper some money to soften the
existence of his servant.
“For six years now I have lived with this idea in my mind, this horrible
uncertainty, this abominable suspicion. And each year an irresistible force
takes me back to Pont Labbe. Every year I condemn myself to the torture of
seeing this animal raking the manure, imagining that he resembles me, and
endeavoring, always vainly, to render him some assistance. And each year I
return more uncertain, more tormented, more worried.
 “I tried to have him taught, but he is a hopeless idiot. I tried to make his
life less hard. He is an irreclaimable drunkard, and spends in drink all the
money one gives him, and knows enough to sell his new clothes in order to
get brandy.
“I tried to awaken his master’s sympathy, so that he should look after him,
offering to pay him for doing so. The innkeeper, finally surprised, said, very
wisely: ‘All that you do for him, monsieur, will only help to destroy him. He
must be kept like a prisoner. As soon as he has any spare time, or any
comfort, he becomes wicked. If you wish to do good, there is no lack of
abandoned children, but select one who will appreciate your attention.’
“What could I say?
“If I allowed the slightest suspicion of the doubts that tortured me to
escape, this idiot would assuredly become cunning, in order to blackmail me,
to compromise me and ruin me. He would call out ‘papa,’ as in my dream.
“And I said to myself that I had killed the mother and lost this atrophied
creature, this larva of the stable, born and raised amid the manure, this man
who, if brought up like others, would have been like others.
“And you cannot imagine what a strange, embarrassed and intolerable
feeling comes over me when he stands before me and I reflect that he came
from myself, that he belongs to me through the intimate bond that links father
and son, that, thanks to the terrible law of heredity, he is my own self in a
thousand ways, in his blood and his flesh, and that he has even the same
germs of disease, the same leaven of emotions.
“I have an incessant restless, distressing longing to see him, and the sight
of him causes me intense suffering, as I look down from my window and
watch him for hours removing and carting the horse manure, saying to myself:
‘That is my son.’
“And I sometimes feel an irresistible longing to embrace him. I have
never even touched his dirty hand.”
The academician was silent. His companion, a tactful man, murmured:
“Yes, indeed, we ought to take a closer interest in children who have no
father.”
A gust of wind passing through the tree shook its yellow clusters,
enveloping in a fragrant and delicate mist the two old men, who inhaled in
the fragrance with deep breaths.
The senator added: “It is good to be twenty-five and even to have children
like that.”
 THAT PIG OF A MORIN

“Here, my friend,” I said to Labarbe, “you have just repeated those five
words, that pig of a Morin. Why on earth do I never hear Morin’s name
mentioned without his being called a pig?”
Labarbe, who is a deputy, looked at me with his owl-like eyes and said:
“Do you mean to say that you do not know Morin’s story and you come from
La Rochelle?” I was obliged to declare that I did not know Morin’s story, so
Labarbe rubbed his hands and began his recital.
“You knew Morin, did you not, and you remember his large linen-draper’s
shop on the Quai de la Rochelle?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Well, then. You must know that in 1862 or ‘63 Morin went to spend a
fortnight in Paris for pleasure; or for his pleasures, but under the pretext of
renewing his stock, and you also know what a fortnight in Paris means to a
country shopkeeper; it fires his blood. The theatre every evening, women’s
dresses rustling up against you and continual excitement; one goes almost
mad with it. One sees nothing but dancers in tights, actresses in very low
dresses, round legs, fat shoulders, all nearly within reach of one’s hands,
without daring, or being able, to touch them, and one scarcely tastes food.
When one leaves the city one’s heart is still all in a flutter and one’s mind
still exhilarated by a sort of longing for kisses which tickles one’s lips.
“Morin was in that condition when he took his ticket for La Rochelle by
the eight-forty night express. As he was walking up and down the waiting-
room at the station he stopped suddenly in front of a young lady who was
kissing an old one. She had her veil up, and Morin murmured with delight:
‘By Jove what a pretty woman!’
“When she had said ‘good-by’ to the old lady she went into the waiting-
room, and Morin followed her; then she went on the platform and Morin still
followed her; then she got into an empty carriage, and he again followed her.
There were very few travellers on the express. The engine whistled and the
train started. They were alone. Morin devoured her with his eyes. She
appeared to be about nineteen or twenty and was fair, tall, with a bold look.
She wrapped a railway rug round her and stretched herself on the seat to
sleep.
“Morin asked himself: ‘I wonder who she is?’ And a thousand
conjectures, a thousand projects went through his head. He said to himself:
‘So many adventures are told as happening on railway journeys that this may
be one that is going to present itself to me. Who knows? A piece of good luck
like that happens very suddenly, and perhaps I need only be a little
venturesome. Was it not Danton who said: “Audacity, more audacity and
always audacity”? If it was not Danton it was Mirabeau, but that does not
matter. But then I have no audacity, and that is the difficulty. Oh! If one only
knew, if one could only read people’s minds! I will bet that every day one
passes by magnificent opportunities without knowing it, though a gesture
would be enough to let me know her mind.’
“Then he imagined to himself combinations which conducted him to
triumph. He pictured some chivalrous deed or merely some slight service
which he rendered her, a lively, gallant conversation which ended in a
declaration.
“But he could find no opening, had no pretext, and he waited for some
fortunate circumstance, with his heart beating and his mind topsy-turvy. The
night passed and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was meditating his
own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared in the sky,
a long, clear ray which shone on the face of the sleeping girl and woke her.
She sat up, looked at the country, then at Morin and smiled. She smiled like a
happy woman, with an engaging and bright look, and Morin trembled.
Certainly that smile was intended for him; it was discreet invitation, the
signal which he was waiting for. That smile meant to say: ‘How stupid, what
a ninny, what a dolt, what a donkey you are, to have sat there on your seat
like a post all night!
“‘Just look at me, am I not charming? And you have sat like that for the
whole night, when you have been alone with a pretty woman, you great
simpleton!’
“She was still smiling as she looked at him; she even began to laugh; and
he lost his head trying to find something suitable to say, no matter what. But
he could think of nothing, nothing, and then, seized with a coward’s courage,
he said to himself:
“‘So much the worse, I will risk everything,’ and suddenly, without the
slightest warning, he went toward her, his arms extended, his lips protruding,
and, seizing her in his arms, he kissed her.
“She sprang up immediately with a bound, crying out: ‘Help! help!’ and
screaming with terror; and then she opened the carriage door and waved her
arm out, mad with terror and trying to jump out, while Morin, who was
almost distracted and feeling sure that she would throw herself out, held her
by the skirt and stammered: ‘Oh, madame! oh, madame!’
“The train slackened speed and then stopped. Two guards rushed up at the
young woman’s frantic signals. She threw herself into their arms,
stammering: ‘That man wanted — wanted — to — to— ‘ And then she
fainted.
“They were at Mauze station, and the gendarme on duty arrested Morin.
When the victim of his indiscreet admiration had regained her consciousness,
she made her charge against him, and the police drew it up. The poor linen
draper did not reach home till night, with a prosecution hanging over him for
an outrage to morals in a public place.” II
“At that time I was editor of the Fanal des Charentes, and I used to meet
Morin every day at the Cafe du Commerce, and the day after his adventure.
he came to see me, as he did not know what to do. I did not hide my opinion
from him, but said to him: ‘You are no better than a pig. No decent man
behaves like that.’
“He cried. His wife had given him a beating, and he foresaw his trade
ruined, his name dragged through the mire and dishonored, his friends
scandalized and taking no notice of him. In the end he excited my pity, and I
sent for my colleague, Rivet, a jocular but very sensible little man, to give us
his advice.
“He advised me to see the public prosecutor, who was a friend of mine,
and so I sent Morin home and went to call on the magistrate. He told me that
the woman who had been insulted was a young lady, Mademoiselle Henriette
Bonnel, who had just received her certificate as governess in Paris and spent
her holidays with her uncle and aunt, who were very respectable
tradespeople in Mauze. What made Morin’s case all the more serious was
that the uncle had lodged a complaint, but the public official had consented to
let the matter drop if this complaint were withdrawn, so we must try and get
him to do this.
“I went back to Morin’s and found him in bed, ill with excitement and
distress. His wife, a tall raw-boned woman with a beard, was abusing him
continually, and she showed me into the room, shouting at me: ‘So you have
come to see that pig of a Morin. Well, there he is, the darling!’ And she
planted herself in front of the bed, with her hands on her hips. I told him how
matters stood, and he begged me to go and see the girl’s uncle and aunt. It
was a delicate mission, but I undertook it, and the poor devil never ceased
repeating: ‘I assure you I did not even kiss her; no, not even that. I will take
my oath to it!’
“I replied: ‘It is all the same; you are nothing but a pig.’ And I took a
thousand francs which he gave me to employ as I thought best, but as I did not
care to venture to her uncle’s house alone, I begged Rivet to go with me,
which he agreed to do on condition that we went immediately, for he had
some urgent business at La Rochelle that afternoon. So two hours later we
rang at the door of a pretty country house. An attractive girl came and opened
the door to us assuredly the young lady in question, and I said to Rivet in a
low voice: ‘Confound it! I begin to understand Morin!’
“The uncle, Monsieur Tonnelet, subscribed to the Fanal, and was a fervent
political coreligionist of ours. He received us with open arms and
congratulated us and wished us joy; he was delighted at having the two
editors in his house, and Rivet whispered to me: ‘I think we shall be able to
arrange the matter of that pig of a Morin for him.’
“The niece had left the room and I introduced the delicate subject. I
waved the spectre of scandal before his eyes; I accentuated the inevitable
depreciation which the young lady would suffer if such an affair became
known, for nobody would believe in a simple kiss, and the good man seemed
undecided, but he could not make up his mind about anything without his
wife, who would not be in until late that evening. But suddenly he uttered an
exclamation of triumph: ‘Look here, I have an excellent idea; I will keep you
here to dine and sleep, and when my wife comes home I hope we shall be
able to arrange matters:
“Rivet resisted at first, but the wish to extricate that pig of a Morin
decided him, and we accepted the invitation, and the uncle got up radiant,
called his niece and proposed that we should take a stroll in his grounds,
saying: ‘We will leave serious matters until the morning.’ Rivet and he began
to talk politics, while I soon found myself lagging a little behind with ‘the
girl who was really charming — charming — and with the greatest
precaution I began to speak to her about her adventure and try to make her my
ally. She did not, however, appear the least confused, and listened to me like
a person who was enjoying the whole thing very much.
 “I said to her: ‘Just think, mademoiselle, how unpleasant it will be for
you. You will have to appear in court, to encounter malicious looks, to speak
before everybody and to recount that unfortunate occurrence in the railway
carriage in public. Do you not think, between ourselves, that it would have
been much better for you to have put that dirty scoundrel back in his place
without calling for assistance, and merely to change your carriage?’ She
began to laugh and replied: ‘What you say is quite true, but what could I do?
I was frightened, and when one is frightened one does not stop to reason with
one’s self. As soon as I realized the situation I was very sorry, that I had
called out, but then it was too late. You must also remember that the idiot
threw himself upon me like a madman, without saying a word and looking
like a lunatic. I did not even know what he wanted of me.’
“She looked me full in the face without being nervous or intimidated and I
said to myself: ‘She is a queer sort of girl, that: I can quite see how that pig
Morin came to make a mistake,’ and I went on jokingly: ‘Come,
mademoiselle, confess that he was excusable, for, after all, a man cannot find
himself opposite such a pretty girl as you are without feeling a natural desire
to kiss her.’
“She laughed more than ever and showed her teeth and said: ‘Between the
desire and the act, monsieur, there is room for respect.’ It was an odd
expression to use, although it was not very clear, and I asked abruptly: ‘Well,
now, suppose I were to kiss you, what would you do?’ She stopped to look at
me from head to foot and then said calmly: ‘Oh, you? That is quite another
matter.’
“I knew perfectly well, by Jove, that it was not the same thing at all, as
everybody in the neighborhood called me ‘Handsome Labarbe’ — I was
thirty years old in those days — but I asked her: ‘And why, pray?’ She
shrugged her shoulders and replied: ‘Well! because you are not so stupid as
he is.’ And then she added, looking at me slyly: ‘Nor so ugly, either: And
before she could make a movement to avoid me I had implanted a hearty kiss
on her cheek. She sprang aside, but it was too late, and then she said: ‘Well,
you are not very bashful, either! But don’t do that sort of thing again.’
“I put on a humble look and said in a low voice: ‘Oh, mademoiselle! as
for me, if I long for one thing more than another it is to be summoned before a
magistrate for the same reason as Morin.’
“‘Why?’ she asked. And, looking steadily at her, I replied: ‘Because you
are one of the most beautiful creatures living; because it would be an honor
and a glory for me to have wished to offer you violence, and because people
would have said, after seeing you: “Well, Labarbe has richly deserved what
he has got, but he is a lucky fellow, all the same.”’
“She began to laugh heartily again and said: ‘How funny you are!’ And
she had not finished the word ‘funny’ before I had her in my arms and was
kissing her ardently wherever I could find a place, on her forehead, on her
eyes, on her lips occasionally, on her cheeks, all over her head, some part of
which she was obliged to leave exposed, in spite of herself, to defend the
others; but at last she managed to release herself, blushing and angry. ‘You
are very unmannerly, monsieur,’ she said, ‘and I am sorry I listened to you.’
“I took her hand in some confusion and stammered out: ‘I beg your
pardon. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. I have offended you; I have acted
like a brute! Do not be angry with me for what I have done. If you knew— ‘ I
vainly sought for some excuse, and in a few moments she said: ‘There is
nothing for me to know, monsieur.’ But I had found something to say, and I
cried: ‘Mademoiselle, I love you!’
“She was really surprised and raised her eyes to look at me, and I went
on: ‘Yes, mademoiselle, and pray listen to me. I do not know Morin, and I do
not care anything about him. It does not matter to me the least if he is
committed for trial and locked up meanwhile. I saw you here last year, and I
was so taken with you that the thought of you has never left me since, and it
does not matter to me whether you believe me or not. I thought you adorable,
and the remembrance of you took such a hold on me that I longed to see you
again, and so I made use of that fool Morin as a pretext, and here I am.
Circumstances have made me exceed the due limits of respect, and I can only
beg you to pardon me.’
“She looked at me to see if I was in earnest and was ready to smile again.
Then she murmured: ‘You humbug!’ But I raised my hand and said in a
sincere voice (and I really believe that I was sincere): ‘I swear to you that I
am speaking the truth,’ and she replied quite simply: ‘Don’t talk nonsense!’
“We were alone, quite alone, as Rivet and her uncle had disappeared
down a sidewalk, and I made her a real declaration of love, while I squeezed
and kissed her hands, and she listened to it as to something new and
agreeable, without exactly knowing how much of it she was to believe, while
in the end I felt agitated, and at last really myself believed what I said. I was
pale, anxious and trembling, and I gently put my arm round her waist and
spoke to her softly, whispering into the little curls over her ears. She seemed
in a trance, so absorbed in thought was she.
“Then her hand touched mine, and she pressed it, and I gently squeezed
her waist with a trembling, and gradually firmer, grasp. She did not move
now, and I touched her cheek with my lips, and suddenly without seeking
them my lips met hers. It was a long, long kiss, and it would have lasted
longer still if I had not heard a hm! hm! just behind me, at which she made
her escape through the bushes, and turning round I saw Rivet coming toward
me, and, standing in the middle of the path, he said without even smiling: ‘So
that is the way you settle the affair of that pig of a Morin.’ And I replied
conceitedly: ‘One does what one can, my dear fellow. But what about the
uncle? How have you got on with him? I will answer for the niece.’ ‘I have
not been so fortunate with him,’ he replied.
“Whereupon I took his arm and we went indoors.” III
“Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand
continually met hers under the tablecloth, my foot touched hers and our
glances met.
“After dinner we took a walk by moonlight, and I whispered all the tender
things I could think of to her. I held her close to me, kissed her every moment,
while her uncle and Rivet were arguing as they walked in front of us. They
went in, and soon a messenger brought a telegram from her aunt, saying that
she would not return until the next morning at seven o’clock by the first train.
“‘Very well, Henriette,’ her uncle said, ‘go and show the gentlemen their
rooms.’ She showed Rivet his first, and he whispered to me: ‘There was no
danger of her taking us into yours first.’ Then she took me to my room, and as
soon as she was alone with me I took her in my arms again and tried to
arouse her emotion, but when she saw the danger she escaped out of the
room, and I retired very much put out and excited and feeling rather foolish,
for I knew that I should not sleep much, and I was wondering how I could
have committed such a mistake, when there was a gentle knock at my door,
and on my asking who was there a low voice replied: ‘I’
“I dressed myself quickly and opened the door, and she came in. ‘I forgot
to ask you what you take in the morning,’ she said; ‘chocolate, tea or coffee?’
I put my arms round her impetuously and said, devouring her with kisses: ‘I
will take — I will take— ‘
“But she freed herself from my arms, blew out my candle and disappeared
and left me alone in the dark, furious, trying to find some matches, and not
able to do so. At last I got some and I went into the passage, feeling half mad,
with my candlestick in my hand.
“What was I about to do? I did not stop to reason, I only wanted to find
her, and I would. I went a few steps without reflecting, but then I suddenly
thought: ‘Suppose I should walk into the uncle’s room what should I say?’
And I stood still, with my head a void and my heart beating. But in a few
moments I thought of an answer: ‘Of course, I shall say that I was looking for
Rivet’s room to speak to him about an important matter,’ and I began to
inspect all the doors, trying to find hers, and at last I took hold of a handle at
a venture, turned it and went in. There was Henriette, sitting on her bed and
looking at me in tears. So I gently turned the key, and going up to her on tiptoe
I said: ‘I forgot to ask you for something to read, mademoiselle.’
“I was stealthily returning to my room when a rough hand seized me and a
voice — it was Rivet’s — whispered in my ear: ‘So you have not yet quite
settled that affair of Morin’s?’
“At seven o’clock the next morning Henriette herself brought me a cup of
chocolate. I never have drunk anything like it, soft, velvety, perfumed,
delicious. I could hardly take away my lips from the cup, and she had hardly
left the room when Rivet came in. He seemed nervous and irritable, like a
man who had not slept, and he said to me crossly:
“‘If you go on like this you will end by spoiling the affair of that pig of a
Morin!’
“At eight o’clock the aunt arrived. Our discussion was very short, for they
withdrew their complaint, and I left five hundred francs for the poor of the
town. They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged an excursion to
go and see some ruins. Henriette made signs to me to stay, behind her
parents’ back, and I accepted, but Rivet was determined to go, and though I
took him aside and begged and prayed him to do this for me, he appeared
quite exasperated and kept saying to me: ‘I have had enough of that pig of a
Morin’s affair, do you hear?’
“Of course I was obliged to leave also, and it was one of the hardest
moments of my life. I could have gone on arranging that business as long as I
lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking hands with
her in silence, I said to Rivet: ‘You are a mere brute!’ And he replied: ‘My
dear fellow, you were beginning to annoy me confoundedly.’
“On getting to the Fanal office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as soon
as they saw us they all exclaimed: ‘Well, have you settled the affair of that
pig of a Morin?’ All La Rochelle was excited about it, and Rivet, who had
got over his ill-humor on the journey, had great difficulty in keeping himself
from laughing as he said: ‘Yes, we have managed it, thanks to Labarbe: And
we went to Morin’s.
“He was sitting in an easy-chair with mustard plasters on his legs and
cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing with
the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had caught
it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him, and as soon as
he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I
said to him immediately: ‘It is all settled, you dirty scamp, but don’t do such
a thing again.’
“He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had
belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet and even kissed
Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering back
into his chair; but he never got over the blow; his mind had been too much
upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called nothing but ‘that pig
of a Morin,’ and that epithet went through him like a sword-thrust every time
he heard it. When a street boy called after him ‘Pig!’ he turned his head
instinctively. His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes and used
to ask him, whenever they were eating ham, ‘Is it a bit of yourself?’ He died
two years later.
“As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in
1875, I called on the new notary at Fousserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to solicit
his vote, and a tall, handsome and evidently wealthy lady received me. ‘You
do not know me again?’ she said. And I stammered out: ‘Why — no —
madame.’ ‘Henriette Bonnel.’ ‘Ah!’ And I felt myself turning pale, while she
seemed perfectly at her ease and looked at me with a smile.
“As soon as she had left me alone with her husband he took both my
hands, and, squeezing them as if he meant to crush them, he said: ‘I have been
intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for my wife has very
often talked to me about you. I know — yes, I know under what painful
circumstances you made her acquaintance, and I know also how perfectly you
behaved, how full of delicacy, tact and devotion you showed yourself in the
affair— ‘ He hesitated and then said in a lower tone, as if he had been saying
something low and coarse, ‘in the affair of that pig of a Morin.’”
 SAINT ANTHONY

OR

SAINT-ANTOINE
They called him Saint Anthony, because his name was Anthony, and also,
perhaps, because he was a good fellow, jovial, a lover of practical jokes, a
tremendous eater and a heavy drinker and a gay fellow, although he was sixty
years old.
He was a big peasant of the district of Caux, with a red face, large chest
and stomach, and perched on two legs that seemed too slight for the bulk of
his body.
He was a widower and lived alone with his two men servants and a maid
on his farm, which he conducted with shrewd economy. He was careful of his
own interests, understood business and the raising of cattle, and farming. His
two sons and his three daughters, who had married well, were living in the
neighborhood and came to dine with their father once a month. His vigor of
body was famous in all the countryside. “He is as strong as Saint Anthony,”
had become a kind of proverb.
At the time of the Prussian invasion Saint Anthony, at the wine shop,
promised to eat an army, for he was a braggart, like a true Norman, a bit of a,
coward and a blusterer. He banged his fist on the wooden table, making the
cups and the brandy glasses dance, and cried with the assumed wrath of a
good fellow, with a flushed face and a sly look in his eye: “I shall have to eat
some of them, nom de Dieu!” He reckoned that the Prussians would not come
as far as Tanneville, but when he heard they were at Rautot he never went out
of the house, and constantly watched the road from the little window of his
kitchen, expecting at any moment to see the bayonets go by.
One morning as he was eating his luncheon with the servants the door
opened and the mayor of the commune, Maitre Chicot, appeared, followed by
a soldier wearing a black copper-pointed helmet. Saint Anthony bounded to
his feet and his servants all looked at him, expecting to see him slash the
Prussian. But he merely shook hands with the mayor, who said:
“Here is one for you, Saint Anthony. They came last night. Don’t do
anything foolish, above all things, for they talked of shooting and burning
everything if there is the slightest unpleasantness, I have given you warning.
Give him something to eat; he looks like a good fellow. Good-day. I am going
to call on the rest. There are enough for all.” And he went out.
Father Anthony, who had turned pale, looked at the Prussian. He was a
big, young fellow with plump, white skin, blue eyes, fair hair, unshaven to his
cheek bones, who looked stupid, timid and good. The shrewd Norman read
him at once, and, reassured, he made him a sign to sit down. Then he said:
“Will you take some soup?”
The stranger did not understand. Anthony then became bolder, and pushing
a plateful of soup right under his nose, he said: “Here, swallow that, big
pig!”
The soldier answered “Ya,” and began to eat greedily, while the farmer,
triumphant, feeling he had regained his reputation, winked his eye at the
servants, who were making strange grimaces, what with their terror and their
desire to laugh.
When the Prussian had devoured his soup, Saint Anthony gave him another
plateful, which disappeared in like manner; but he flinched at the third which
the farmer tried to insist on his eating, saying: “Come, put that into your
stomach; ‘twill fatten you or it is your own fault, eh, pig!”
The soldier, understanding only that they wanted to make him eat all his
soup, laughed in a contented manner, making a sign to show that he could not
hold any more.
Then Saint Anthony, become quite familiar, tapped him on the stomach,
saying: “My, there is plenty in my pig’s belly!” But suddenly he began to
writhe with laughter, unable to speak. An idea had struck him which made
him choke with mirth. “That’s it, that’s it, Saint Anthony and his pig. There’s
my pig!” And the three servants burst out laughing in their turn.
The old fellow was so pleased that he had the brandy brought in, good
stuff, ‘fil en dix’, and treated every one. They clinked glasses with the
Prussian, who clacked his tongue by way of flattery to show that he enjoyed
it. And Saint Anthony exclaimed in his face: “Eh, is not that superfine? You
don’t get anything like that in your home, pig!”
 From that time Father Anthony never went out without his Prussian. He
had got what he wanted. This was his vengeance, the vengeance of an old
rogue. And the whole countryside, which was in terror, laughed to split its
sides at Saint Anthony’s joke. Truly, there was no one like him when it came
to humor. No one but he would have thought of a thing like that. He was a
born joker!
He went to see his neighbors every day, arm in arm with his German,
whom he introduced in a jovial manner, tapping him on the shoulder: “See,
here is my pig; look and see if he is not growing fat, the animal!”
And the peasants would beam with smiles. “He is so comical, that
reckless fellow, Antoine!”
“I will sell him to you, Cesaire, for three pistoles” (thirty francs).
“I will take him, Antoine, and I invite you to eat some black pudding.”
“What I want is his feet.”
“Feel his belly; you will see that it is all fat.”
And they all winked at each other, but dared not laugh too loud, for fear
the Prussian might finally suspect they were laughing at him. Anthony, alone
growing bolder every day, pinched his thighs, exclaiming, “Nothing but fat”;
tapped him on the back, shouting, “That is all bacon”; lifted him up in his
arms as an old Colossus that could have lifted an anvil, declaring, “He
weighs six hundred and no waste.”
He had got into the habit of making people offer his “pig” something to eat
wherever they went together. This was the chief pleasure, the great diversion
every day. “Give him whatever you please, he will swallow everything.”
And they offered the man bread and butter, potatoes, cold meat, chitterlings,
which caused the remark, “Some of your own, and choice ones.”
The soldier, stupid and gentle, ate from politeness, charmed at these
attentions, making himself ill rather than refuse, and he was actually growing
fat and his uniform becoming tight for him. This delighted Saint Anthony, who
said: “You know, my pig, that we shall have to have another cage made for
you.”
They had, however, become the best friends in the world, and when the
old fellow went to attend to his business in the neighborhood the Prussian
accompanied him for the simple pleasure of being with him.
The weather was severe; it was freezing hard. The terrible winter of 1870
seemed to bring all the scourges on France at one time.
 Father Antoine, who made provision beforehand, and took advantage of
every opportunity, foreseeing that manure would be scarce for the spring
farming, bought from a neighbor who happened to be in need of money all
that he had, and it was agreed that he should go every evening with his cart to
get a load.
So every day at twilight he set out for the farm of Haules, half a league
distant, always accompanied by his “pig.” And each time it was a festival,
feeding the animal. All the neighbors ran over there as they would go to high
mass on Sunday.
But the soldier began to suspect something, be mistrustful, and when they
laughed too loud he would roll his eyes uneasily, and sometimes they lighted
up with anger.
One evening when he had eaten his fill he refused to swallow another
morsel, and attempted to rise to leave the table. But Saint Anthony stopped
him by a turn of the wrist and, placing his two powerful hands on his
shoulders, he sat him down again so roughly that the chair smashed under
him.
A wild burst of laughter broke forth, and Anthony, beaming, picked up his
pig, acted as though he were dressing his wounds, and exclaimed: “Since you
will not eat, you shall drink, nom de Dieu!” And they went to the wine shop
to get some brandy.
The soldier rolled his eyes, which had a wicked expression, but he drank,
nevertheless; he drank as long as they wanted him, and Saint Anthony held
his head to the great delight of his companions.
The Norman, red as a tomato, his eyes ablaze, filled up the glasses and
clinked, saying: “Here’s to you!”. And the Prussian, without speaking a
word, poured down one after another glassfuls of cognac.
It was a contest, a battle, a revenge! Who would drink the most, nom d’un
nom! They could neither of them stand any more when the liter was emptied.
But neither was conquered. They were tied, that was all. They would have to
begin again the next day.
They went out staggering and started for home, walking beside the dung
cart which was drawn along slowly by two horses.
Snow began to fall and the moonless night was sadly lighted by this dead
whiteness on the plain. The men began to feel the cold, and this aggravated
their intoxication. Saint Anthony, annoyed at not being the victor, amused
himself by shoving his companion so as to make him fall over into the ditch.
The other would dodge backwards, and each time he did he uttered some
German expression in an angry tone, which made the peasant roar with
laughter. Finally the Prussian lost his temper, and just as Anthony was rolling
towards him he responded with such a terrific blow with his fist that the
Colossus staggered.
Then, excited by the brandy, the old man seized the pugilist round the
waist, shook him for a few moments as he would have done with a little
child, and pitched him at random to the other side of the road. Then, satisfied
with this piece of work, he crossed his arms and began to laugh afresh.
But the soldier picked himself up in a hurry, his head bare, his helmet
having rolled off, and drawing his sword he rushed over to Father Anthony.
When he saw him coming the peasant seized his whip by the top of the
handle, his big holly wood whip, straight, strong and supple as the sinew of
an ox.
The Prussian approached, his head down, making a lunge with his sword,
sure of killing his adversary. But the old fellow, squarely hitting the blade,
the point of which would have pierced his stomach, turned it aside, and with
the butt end of the whip struck the soldier a sharp blow on the temple and he
fell to the ground.
Then he, gazed aghast, stupefied with amazement, at the body, twitching
convulsively at first and then lying prone and motionless. He bent over it,
turned it on its back, and gazed at it for some time. The man’s eyes were
closed, and blood trickled from a wound at the side of his forehead. Although
it was dark, Father Anthony could distinguish the bloodstain on the white
snow.
He remained there, at his wit’s end, while his cart continued slowly on its
way.
What was he to do? He would be shot! They would burn his farm, ruin his
district! What should he do? What should he do? How could he hide the
body, conceal the fact of his death, deceive the Prussians? He heard voices in
the distance, amid the utter stillness of the snow. All at once he roused
himself, and picking up the helmet he placed it on his victim’s head. Then,
seizing him round the body, he lifted him up in his arms, and thus running
with him, he overtook his team, and threw the body on top of the manure.
Once in his own house he would think up some plan.
He walked slowly, racking his brain, but without result. He saw, he felt,
that he was lost. He entered his courtyard. A light was shining in one of the
attic windows; his maid was not asleep. He hastily backed his wagon to the
edge of the manure hollow. He thought that by overturning the manure the
body lying on top of it would fall into the ditch and be buried beneath it, and
he dumped the cart.
As he had foreseen, the man was buried beneath the manure. Anthony
evened it down with his fork, which he stuck in the ground beside it. He
called his stableman, told him to put up the horses, and went to his room.
He went to bed, still thinking of what he had best do, but no ideas came to
him. His apprehension increased in the quiet of his room. They would shoot
him! He was bathed in perspiration from fear, his teeth chattered, he rose
shivering, not being able to stay in bed.
He went downstairs to the kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the
sideboard and carried it upstairs. He drank two large glasses, one after
another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting his
mental anguish. He had done a pretty stroke of work, nom de Dieu, idiot!
He paced up and down, trying to think of some stratagem, some
explanations, some cunning trick, and from time to time he rinsed his mouth
with a swallow of “fil en dix” to give him courage.
But no ideas came to him, not one.
Towards midnight his watch dog, a kind of cross wolf called “Devorant,”
began to howl frantically. Father Anthony shuddered to the marrow of his
bones, and each time the beast began his long and lugubrious wail the old
man’s skin turned to goose flesh.
He had sunk into a chair, his legs weak, stupefied, done up, waiting
anxiously for “Devorant” to set up another howl, and starting convulsively
from nervousness caused by terror.
The clock downstairs struck five. The dog was still howling. The peasant
was almost insane. He rose to go and let the dog loose, so that he should not
hear him. He went downstairs, opened the hall door, and stepped out into the
darkness. The snow was still falling. The earth was all white, the farm
buildings standing out like black patches. He approached the kennel. The dog
was dragging at his chain. He unfastened it. “Devorant” gave a bound, then
stopped short, his hair bristling, his legs rigid, his muzzle in the air, his nose
pointed towards the manure heap.
Saint Anthony, trembling from head to foot, faltered:
“What’s the matter with you, you dirty hound?” and he walked a few steps
forward, gazing at the indistinct outlines, the sombre shadow of the
courtyard.
Then he saw a form, the form of a man sitting on the manure heap!
He gazed at it, paralyzed by fear, and breathing hard. But all at once he
saw, close by, the handle of the manure fork which was sticking in the
ground. He snatched it up and in one of those transports of fear that will make
the greatest coward brave he rushed forward to see what it was.
It was he, his Prussian, come to life, covered with filth from his bed of
manure which had kept him warm. He had sat down mechanically, and
remained there in the snow which sprinkled down, all covered with dirt and
blood as he was, and still stupid from drinking, dazed by the blow and
exhausted from his wound.
He perceived Anthony, and too sodden to understand anything, he made an
attempt to rise. But the moment the old man recognized him, he foamed with
rage like a wild animal.
“Ah, pig! pig!” he sputtered. “You are not dead! You are going to
denounce me now — wait — wait!”
And rushing on the German with all the strength of leis arms he flung the
raised fork like a lance and buried the four prongs full length in his breast.
The soldier fell over on his back, uttering a long death moan, while the
old peasant, drawing the fork out of his breast, plunged it over and over
again into his abdomen, his stomach, his throat, like a madman, piercing the
body from head to foot, as it still quivered, and the blood gushed out in
streams.
Finally he stopped, exhausted by his arduous work, swallowing great
mouthfuls of air, calmed down at the completion of the murder.
As the cocks were beginning to crow in the poultry yard and it was near
daybreak, he set to work to bury the man.
He dug a hole in the manure till he reached the earth, dug down further,
working wildly, in a frenzy of strength with frantic motions of his arms and
body.
When the pit was deep enough he rolled the corpse into it with the fork,
covered it with earth, which he stamped down for some time, and then put
back the manure, and he smiled as he saw the thick snow finishing his work
and covering up its traces with a white sheet.
He then stuck the fork in the manure and went into the house. His bottle,
still half full of brandy stood on the table. He emptied it at a draught, threw
himself on his bed and slept heavily.
 He woke up sober, his mind calm and clear, capable of judgment and
thought.
At the end of an hour he was going about the country making inquiries
everywhere for his soldier. He went to see the Prussian officer to find out
why they had taken away his man.
As everyone knew what good friends they were, no one suspected him. He
even directed the research, declaring that the Prussian went to see the girls
every evening.
An old retired gendarme who had an inn in the next village, and a pretty
daughter, was arrested and shot.
 LASTING LOVE

It was the end of the dinner that opened the shooting season. The Marquis de
Bertrans with his guests sat around a brightly lighted table, covered with fruit
and flowers. The conversation drifted to love. Immediately there arose an
animated discussion, the same eternal discussion as to whether it were
possible to love more than once. Examples were given of persons who had
loved once; these were offset by those who had loved violently many times.
The men agreed that passion, like sickness, may attack the same person
several times, unless it strikes to kill. This conclusion seemed quite
incontestable. The women, however, who based their opinion on poetry
rather than on practical observation, maintained that love, the great passion,
may come only once to mortals. It resembles lightning, they said, this love. A
heart once touched by it becomes forever such a waste, so ruined, so
consumed, that no other strong sentiment can take root there, not even a
dream. The marquis, who had indulged in many love affairs, disputed this
belief.
“I tell you it is possible to love several times with all one’s heart and
soul. You quote examples of persons who have killed themselves for love, to
prove the impossibility of a second passion. I wager that if they had not
foolishly committed suicide, and so destroyed the possibility of a second
experience, they would have found a new love, and still another, and so on
till death. It is with love as with drink. He who has once indulged is forever
a slave. It is a thing of temperament.”
They chose the old doctor as umpire. He thought it was as the marquis had
said, a thing of temperament.
“As for me,” he said, “I once knew of a love which lasted fifty-five years
without one day’s respite, and which ended only with death.” The wife of the
marquis clasped her hands.
“That is beautiful! Ah, what a dream to be loved in such a way! What
bliss to live for fifty-five years enveloped in an intense, unwavering
affection! How this happy being must have blessed his life to be so adored!”
The doctor smiled.
 “You are not mistaken, madame, on this point the loved one was a man.
You even know him; it is Monsieur Chouquet, the chemist. As to the woman,
you also know her, the old chair-mender, who came every year to the
chateau.” The enthusiasm of the women fell. Some expressed their contempt
with “Pouah!” for the loves of common people did not interest them. The
doctor continued: “Three months ago I was called to the deathbed of the old
chair-mender. The priest had preceded me. She wished to make us the
executors of her will. In order that we might understand her conduct, she told
us the story of her life. It is most singular and touching: Her father and mother
were both chair-menders. She had never lived in a house. As a little child
she wandered about with them, dirty, unkempt, hungry. They visited many
towns, leaving their horse, wagon and dog just outside the limits, where the
child played in the grass alone until her parents had repaired all the broken
chairs in the place. They seldom spoke, except to cry, ‘Chairs! Chairs! Chair-
mender!’
“When the little one strayed too far away, she would be called back by the
harsh, angry voice of her father. She never heard a word of affection. When
she grew older, she fetched and carried the broken chairs. Then it was she
made friends with the children in the street, but their parents always called
them away and scolded them for speaking to the barefooted child. Often the
boys threw stones at her. Once a kind woman gave her a few pennies. She
saved them most carefully.
“One day — she was then eleven years old — as she was walking through
a country town she met, behind the cemetery, little Chouquet, weeping
bitterly, because one of his playmates had stolen two precious liards (mills).
The tears of the small bourgeois, one of those much-envied mortals, who, she
imagined, never knew trouble, completely upset her. She approached him
and, as soon as she learned the cause of his grief, she put into his hands all
her savings. He took them without hesitation and dried his eyes. Wild with
joy, she kissed him. He was busy counting his money, and did not object.
Seeing that she was not repulsed, she threw her arms round him and gave him
a hug — then she ran away.
“What was going on in her poor little head? Was it because she had
sacrificed all her fortune that she became madly fond of this youngster, or
was it because she had given him the first tender kiss? The mystery is alike
for children and for those of riper years. For months she dreamed of that
corner near the cemetery and of the little chap. She stole a sou here and, there
from her parents on the chair money or groceries she was sent to buy. When
she returned to the spot near the cemetery she had two francs in her pocket,
but he was not there. Passing his father’s drug store, she caught sight of him
behind the counter. He was sitting between a large red globe and a blue one.
She only loved him the more, quite carried away at the sight of the brilliant-
colored globes. She cherished the recollection of it forever in her heart. The
following year she met him near the school playing marbles. She rushed up to
him, threw her arms round him, and kissed him so passionately that he
screamed, in fear. To quiet him, she gave him all her money. Three francs and
twenty centimes! A real gold mine, at which he gazed with staring eyes.
“After this he allowed her to kiss him as much as she wished. During the
next four years she put into his hands all her savings, which he pocketed
conscientiously in exchange for kisses. At one time it was thirty sons, at
another two francs. Again, she only had twelve sous. She wept with grief and
shame, explaining brokenly that it had been a poor year. The next time she
brought five francs, in one whole piece, which made her laugh with joy. She
no longer thought of any one but the boy, and he watched for her with
impatience; sometimes he would run to meet her. This made her heart thump
with joy. Suddenly he disappeared. He had gone to boarding school. She
found this out by careful investigation. Then she used great diplomacy to
persuade her parents to change their route and pass by this way again during
vacation. After a year of scheming she succeeded. She had not seen him for
two years, and scarcely recognized him, he was so changed, had grown
taller, better looking and was imposing in his uniform, with its brass buttons.
He pretended not to see her, and passed by without a glance. She wept for
two days and from that time loved and suffered unceasingly.
“Every year he came home and she passed him, not daring to lift her eyes.
He never condescended to turn his head toward her. She loved him madly,
hopelessly. She said to me:
“‘He is the only man whom I have ever seen. I don’t even know if another
exists.’ Her parents died. She continued their work.
“One day, on entering the village, where her heart always remained, she
saw Chouquet coming out of his pharmacy with a young lady leaning on his
arm. She was his wife. That night the chair-mender threw herself into the
river. A drunkard passing the spot pulled her out and took her to the drug
store. Young Chouquet came down in his dressing gown to revive her.
Without seeming to know who she was he undressed her and rubbed her; then
he said to her, in a harsh voice:
“‘You are mad! People must not do stupid things like that.’ His voice
brought her to life again. He had spoken to her! She was happy for a long
time. He refused remuneration for his trouble, although she insisted.
“All her life passed in this way. She worked, thinking always of him. She
began to buy medicines at his pharmacy; this gave her a chance to talk to him
and to see him closely. In this way, she was still able to give him money.
“As I said before, she died this spring. When she had closed her pathetic
story she entreated me to take her earnings to the man she loved. She had
worked only that she might leave him something to remind him of her after
her death. I gave the priest fifty francs for her funeral expenses. The next
morning I went to see the Chouquets. They were finishing breakfast, sitting
opposite each other, fat and red, important and self-satisfied. They welcomed
me and offered me some coffee, which I accepted. Then I began my story in a
trembling voice, sure that they would be softened, even to tears. As soon as
Chouquet understood that he had been loved by ‘that vagabond! that chair-
mender! that wanderer!’ he swore with indignation as though his reputation
had been sullied, the respect of decent people lost, his personal honor,
something precious and dearer to him than life, gone. His exasperated wife
kept repeating: ‘That beggar! That beggar!’
“Seeming unable to find words suitable to the enormity, he stood up and
began striding about. He muttered: ‘Can you understand anything so horrible,
doctor? Oh, if I had only known it while she was alive, I should have had her
thrown into prison. I promise you she would not have escaped.’
“I was dumfounded; I hardly knew what to think or say, but I had to finish
my mission. ‘She commissioned me,’ I said, ‘to give you her savings, which
amount to three thousand five hundred francs. As what I have just told you
seems to be very disagreeable, perhaps you would prefer to give this money
to the poor.’
“They looked at me, that man and woman,’ speechless with amazement. I
took the few thousand francs from out of my pocket. Wretched-looking money
from every country. Pennies and gold pieces all mixed together. Then I asked:
“‘What is your decision?’
“Madame Chouquet spoke first. ‘Well, since it is the dying woman’s wish,
it seems to me impossible to refuse it.’
 “Her husband said, in a shamefaced manner: ‘We could buy something for
our children with it.’
“I answered dryly: ‘As you wish.’
“He replied: ‘Well, give it to us anyhow, since she commissioned you to
do so; we will find a way to put it to some good purpose.’
“I gave them the money, bowed and left.
“The next day Chouquet came to me and said brusquely:
“‘That woman left her wagon here — what have you done with it?’
“‘Nothing; take it if you wish.’
“‘It’s just what I wanted,’ he added, and walked off. I called him back and
said:
“‘She also left her old horse and two dogs. Don’t you need them?’
“He stared at me surprised: ‘Well, no! Really, what would I do with
them?’
“‘Dispose of them as you like.’
“He laughed and held out his hand to me. I shook it. What could I do? The
doctor and the druggist in a country village must not be at enmity. I have kept
the dogs. The priest took the old horse. The wagon is useful to Chouquet, and
with the money he has bought railroad stock. That is the only deep, sincere
love that I have ever known in all my life.”
The doctor looked up. The marquise, whose eyes were full of tears,
sighed and said:
“There is no denying the fact, only women know how to love.”
 PIERROT

Mme. Lefevre was a country dame, a widow, one of these half peasants, with
ribbons and bonnets with trimming on them, one of those persons who
clipped her words and put on great airs in public, concealing the soul of a
pretentious animal beneath a comical and bedizened exterior, just as the
country-folks hide their coarse red hands in ecru silk gloves.
She had a servant, a good simple peasant, called Rose.
The two women lived in a little house with green shutters by the side of
the high road in Normandy, in the centre of the country of Caux. As they had a
narrow strip of garden in front of the house, they grew some vegetables.
One night someone stole twelve onions. As soon as Rose became aware
of the theft, she ran to tell madame, who came downstairs in her woolen
petticoat. It was a shame and a disgrace! They had robbed her, Mme.
Lefevre! As there were thieves in the country, they might come back.
And the two frightened women examined the foot tracks, talking, and
supposing all sorts of things.
“See, they went that way! They stepped on the wall, they jumped into the
garden!”
And they became apprehensive for the future. How could they sleep in
peace now!
The news of the theft spread. The neighbor came, making examinations
and discussing the matter in their turn, while the two women explained to
each newcomer what they had observed and their opinion.
A farmer who lived near said to them:
“You ought to have a dog.”
That is true, they ought to have a dog, if it were only to give the alarm. Not
a big dog. Heavens! what would they do with a big dog? He would eat their
heads off. But a little dog (in Normandy they say “quin”), a little puppy who
would bark.
As soon as everyone had left, Mme. Lefevre discussed this idea of a dog
for some time. On reflection she made a thousand objections, terrified at the
idea of a bowl full of soup, for she belonged to that race of parsimonious
country women who always carry centimes in their pocket to give alms in
public to beggars on the road and to put in the Sunday collection plate.
Rose, who loved animals, gave her opinion and defended it shrewdly. So
it was decided that they should have a dog, a very small dog.
They began to look for one, but could find nothing but big dogs, who
would devour enough soup to make one shudder. The grocer of Rolleville
had one, a tiny one, but he demanded two francs to cover the cost of sending
it. Mme. Lefevre declared that she would feed a “quin,” but would not buy
one.
The baker, who knew all that occurred, brought in his wagon one morning
a strange little yellow animal, almost without paws, with the body of a
crocodile, the head of a fox, and a curly tail — a true cockade, as big as all
the rest of him. Mme. Lefevre thought this common cur that cost nothing was
very handsome. Rose hugged it and asked what its name was.
“Pierrot,” replied the baker.
The dog was installed in an old soap box and they gave it some water
which it drank. They then offered it a piece of bread. He ate it. Mme.
Lefevre, uneasy, had an idea.
“When he is thoroughly accustomed to the house we can let him run. He
can find something to eat, roaming about the country.”
They let him run, in fact, which did not prevent him from being famished.
Also he never barked except to beg for food, and then he barked furiously.
Anyone might come into the garden, and Pierrot would run up and fawn on
each one in turn and not utter a bark.
Mme. Lefevre, however, had become accustomed to the animal. She even
went so far as to like it and to give it from time to time pieces of bread
soaked in the gravy on her plate.
But she had not once thought of the dog tax, and when they came to collect
eight francs — eight francs, madame — for this puppy who never even
barked, she almost fainted from the shock.
It was immediately decided that they must get rid of Pierrot. No one
wanted him. Every one declined to take him for ten leagues around. Then they
resolved, not knowing what else to do, to make him “piquer du mas.”
“Piquer du mas” means to eat chalk. When one wants to get rid of a dog
they make him “Piquer du mas.”
In the midst of an immense plain one sees a kind of hut, or rather a very
small roof standing above the ground. This is the entrance to the clay pit. A
big perpendicular hole is sunk for twenty metres underground and ends in a
series of long subterranean tunnels.
Once a year they go down into the quarry at the time they fertilize the
ground. The rest of the year it serves as a cemetery for condemned dogs, and
as one passed by this hole plaintive howls, furious or despairing barks and
lamentable appeals reach one’s ear.
Sportsmen’s dogs and sheep dogs flee in terror from this mournful place,
and when one leans over it one perceives a disgusting odor of putrefaction.
Frightful dramas are enacted in the darkness.
When an animal has suffered down there for ten or twelve days, nourished
on the foul remains of his predecessors, another animal, larger and more
vigorous, is thrown into the hole. There they are, alone, starving, with
glittering eyes. They watch each other, follow each other, hesitate in doubt.
But hunger impels them; they attack each other, fight desperately for some
time, and the stronger eats the weaker, devours him alive.
When it was decided to make Pierrot “piquer du mas” they looked round
for an executioner. The laborer who mended the road demanded six sous to
take the dog there. That seemed wildly exorbitant to Mme. Lefevre. The
neighbor’s hired boy wanted five sous; that was still too much. So Rose
having observed that they had better carry it there themselves, as in that way
it would not be brutally treated on the way and made to suspect its fate, they
resolved to go together at twilight.
They offered the dog that evening a good dish of soup with a piece of
butter in it. He swallowed every morsel of it, and as he wagged his tail with
delight Rose put him in her apron.
They walked quickly, like thieves, across the plain. They soon perceived
the chalk pit and walked up to it. Mme. Lefevre leaned over to hear if any
animal was moaning. No, there were none there; Pierrot would be alone.
Then Rose, who was crying, kissed the dog and threw him into the chalk pit,
and they both leaned over, listening.
First they heard a dull sound, then the sharp, bitter, distracting cry of an
animal in pain, then a succession of little mournful cries, then despairing
appeals, the cries of a dog who is entreating, his head raised toward the
opening of the pit.
He yelped, oh, how he yelped!
They were filled with remorse, with terror, with a wild inexplicable fear,
and ran away from the spot. As Rose went faster Mme. Lefevre cried: “Wait
for me, Rose, wait for me!”
At night they were haunted by frightful nightmares.
Mme. Lefevre dreamed she was sitting down at table to eat her soup, but
when she uncovered the tureen Pierrot was in it. He jumped out and bit her
nose.
She awoke and thought she heard him yelping still. She listened, but she
was mistaken.
She fell asleep again and found herself on a high road, an endless road,
which she followed. Suddenly in the middle of the road she perceived a
basket, a large farmer’s basket, lying there, and this basket frightened her.
She ended by opening it, and Pierrot, concealed in it, seized her hand and
would not let go. She ran away in terror with the dog hanging to the end of
her arm, which he held between his teeth.
At daybreak she arose, almost beside herself, and ran to the chalk pit.
He was yelping, yelping still; he had yelped all night. She began to sob
and called him by all sorts of endearing names. He answered her with all the
tender inflections of his dog’s voice.
Then she wanted to see him again, promising herself that she would give
him a good home till he died.
She ran to the chalk digger, whose business it was to excavate for chalk,
and told him the situation. The man listened, but said nothing. When she had
finished he said:
“You want your dog? That will cost four francs.” She gave a jump. All her
grief was at an end at once.
“Four francs!” she said. “You would die of it! Four francs!”
“Do you suppose I am going to bring my ropes, my windlass, and set it up,
and go down there with my boy and let myself be bitten, perhaps, by your
cursed dog for the pleasure of giving it back to you? You should not have
thrown it down there.”
She walked away, indignant. Four francs!
As soon as she entered the house she called Rose and told her of the
quarryman’s charges. Rose, always resigned, repeated:
“Four francs! That is a good deal of money, madame.” Then she added: “If
we could throw him something to eat, the poor dog, so he will not die of
hunger.”
Mme. Lefevre approved of this and was quite delighted. So they set out
again with a big piece of bread and butter.
 They cut it in mouthfuls, which they threw down one after the other,
speaking by turns to Pierrot. As soon as the dog finished one piece he yelped
for the next.
They returned that evening and the next day and every day. But they made
only one trip.
One morning as they were just letting fall the first mouthful they suddenly
heard a tremendous barking in the pit. There were two dogs there. Another
had been thrown in, a large dog.
“Pierrot!” cried Rose. And Pierrot yelped and yelped. Then they began to
throw down some food. But each time they noticed distinctly a terrible
struggle going on, then plaintive cries from Pierrot, who had been bitten by
his companion, who ate up everything as he was the stronger.
It was in vain that they specified, saying:
“That is for you, Pierrot.” Pierrot evidently got nothing.
The two women, dumfounded, looked at each other and Mme. Lefevre
said in a sour tone:
“I could not feed all the dogs they throw in there! We must give it up.”
And, suffocating at the thought of all the dogs living at her expense, she
went away, even carrying back what remained of the bread, which she ate as
she walked along.
Rose followed her, wiping her eyes on the corner of her blue apron.
 A NORMANDY JOKE

It was a wedding procession that was coming along the road between the tall
trees that bounded the farms and cast their shadow on the road. At the head
were the bride and groom, then the family, then the invited guests, and last of
all the poor of the neighborhood. The village urchins who hovered about the
narrow road like flies ran in and out of the ranks or climbed up the trees to
see it better.
The bridegroom was a good-looking young fellow, Jean Patu, the richest
farmer in the neighborhood, but he was above all things, an ardent sportsman
who seemed to take leave of his senses in order to satisfy that passion, and
who spent large sums on his dogs, his keepers, his ferrets and his guns. The
bride, Rosalie Roussel, had been courted by all the likely young fellows in
the district, for they all thought her handsome and they knew that she would
have a good dowry. But she had chosen Patu; partly, perhaps, because she
liked him better than she did the others, but still more, like a careful
Normandy girl, because he had more crown pieces.
As they entered the white gateway of the husband’s farm, forty shots
resounded without their seeing those who fired, as they were hidden in the
ditches. The noise seemed to please the men, who were slouching along
heavily in their best clothes, and Patu left his wife, and running up to a farm
servant whom he perceived behind a tree, took his gun and fired a shot
himself, as frisky as a young colt. Then they went on, beneath the apple trees
which were heavy with fruit, through the high grass and through the midst of
the calves, who looked at them with their great eyes, got up slowly and
remained standing, with their muzzles turned toward the wedding party.
The men became serious when they came within measurable distance of
the wedding dinner. Some of them, the rich ones, had on tall, shining silk
hats, which seemed altogether out of place there; others had old head-
coverings with a long nap, which might have been taken for moleskin, while
the humblest among them wore caps. All the women had on shawls, which
they wore loosely on their back, holding the tips ceremoniously under their
arms. They were red, parti-colored, flaming shawls, and their brightness
seemed to astonish the black fowls on the dung-heap, the ducks on the side of
the pond and the pigeons on the thatched roofs.
The extensive farm buildings seemed to be waiting there at the end of that
archway of apple trees, and a sort of vapor came out of open door and
windows and an almost overpowering odor of eatables was exhaled from the
vast building, from all its openings and from its very walls. The string of
guests extended through the yard; but when the foremost of them reached the
house, they broke the chain and dispersed, while those behind were still
coming in at the open gate. The ditches were now lined with urchins and
curious poor people, and the firing did not cease, but came from every side at
once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has the same intoxicating
effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere. The women were shaking
their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their cap-
strings and pulling their shawls over their arms, and then they went into the
house to lay them aside altogether for the time. The table was laid in the great
kitchen that would hold a hundred persons; they sat down to dinner at two
o’clock; and at eight o’clock they were still eating, and the men, in their
shirt-sleeves, with their waistcoats unbuttoned and with red faces, were
swallowing down the food and drink as if they had been whirlpools. The
cider sparkled merrily, clear and golden in the large glasses, by the side of
the dark, blood-colored wine, and between every dish they made a “hole,”
the Normandy hole, with a glass of brandy which inflamed the body and put
foolish notions into the head. Low jokes were exchanged across the table
until the whole arsenal of peasant wit was exhausted. For the last hundred
years the same broad stories had served for similar occasions, and, although
every one knew them, they still hit the mark and made both rows of guests
roar with laughter.
At one end of the table four young fellows, who were neighbors, were
preparing some practical jokes for the newly married couple, and they
seemed to have got hold of a good one by the way they whispered and
laughed, and suddenly one of them, profiting by a moment of silence,
exclaimed: “The poachers will have a good time to-night, with this moon! I
say, Jean, you will not be looking at the moon, will you?” The bridegroom
turned to him quickly and replied: “Only let them come, that’s all!” But the
other young fellow began to laugh, and said: “I do not think you will pay
much attention to them!”
 The whole table was convulsed with laughter, so that the glasses shook,
but the bridegroom became furious at the thought that anybody would profit
by his wedding to come and poach on his land, and repeated: “I only say-just
let them come!”
Then there was a flood of talk with a double meaning which made the
bride blush somewhat, although she was trembling with expectation; and
when they had emptied the kegs of brandy they all went to bed. The young
couple went into their own room, which was on the ground floor, as most
rooms in farmhouses are. As it was very warm, they opened the window and
closed the shutters. A small lamp in bad taste, a present from the bride’s
father, was burning on the chest of drawers, and the bed stood ready to
receive the young people.
The young woman had already taken off her wreath and her dress, and she
was in her petticoat, unlacing her boots, while Jean was finishing his cigar
and looking at her out of the corners of his eyes. Suddenly, with a brusque
movement, like a man who is about to set to work, he took off his coat. She
had already taken off her boots, and was now pulling off her stockings, and
then she said to him: “Go and hide yourself behind the curtains while I get
into bed.”
He seemed as if he were about to refuse; but at last he did as she asked
him, and in a moment she unfastened her petticoat, which slipped down, fell
at her feet and lay on the ground. She left it there, stepped over it in her loose
chemise and slipped into the bed, whose springs creaked beneath her weight.
He immediately went up to the bed, and, stooping over his wife, he sought
her lips, which she hid beneath the pillow, when a shot was heard in the
distance, in the direction of the forest of Rapees, as he thought.
He raised himself anxiously, with his heart beating, and running to the
window, he opened the shutters. The full moon flooded the yard with yellow
light, and the reflection of the apple trees made black shadows at their feet,
while in the distance the fields gleamed, covered with the ripe corn. But as
he was leaning out, listening to every sound in the still night, two bare arms
were put round his neck, and his wife whispered, trying to pull him back:
“Do leave them alone; it has nothing to do with you. Come to bed.”
He turned round, put his arms round her, and drew her toward him, but
just as he was laying her on the ‘bed, which yielded beneath her weight, they
heard another report, considerably nearer this time, and Jean, giving way to
his tumultuous rage, swore aloud: “Damn it! They will think I do not go out
and see what it is because of you! Wait, wait a few minutes!” He put on his
shoes again, took down his gun, which was always hanging within reach
against the wall, and, as his wife threw herself on her knees in her terror,
imploring him not to go, he hastily freed himself, ran to the window and
jumped into the yard.
She waited one hour, two hours, until daybreak, but her husband did not
return. Then she lost her head, aroused the house, related how angry Jean
was, and said that he had gone after the poachers, and immediately all the
male farm-servants, even the boys, went in search of their master. They found
him two leagues from the farm, tied hand and foot, half dead with rage, his
gun broken, his trousers turned inside out, and with three dead hares hanging
round his neck, and a placard on his chest with these words: “Who goes on
the chase loses his place.”
In later years, when he used to tell this story of his wedding night, he
usually added: “Ah! as far as a joke went it was a good joke. They caught me
in a snare, as if I had been a rabbit, the dirty brutes, and they shoved my head
into a bag. But if I can only catch them some day they had better look out for
themselves!”
That is how they amuse themselves in Normandy on a wedding day.
 AM I INSANE?

OR

IS HE MAD?
“AM I insane or jealous? I know not which, but I suffer horribly. I committed
a crime it is true, but is not insane jealousy, betrayed love, and the terrible
pain I endure, enough to make anyone commit a crime, without actually being
a criminal?
I have loved this woman to madness — and yet, is it true? Did I love her?
No, no! She owned me body and soul, I was her plaything, she ruled me by
her smile, her look, the divine form of her body. It was all those things that I
loved, but the woman contained in that body, I despise her; hate her. I always
have hated her, for she is but an impure, perfidious creature, in whom there
was no soul; even less than that, she is but a mass of soft flesh in which
dwells infamy!
The first few months of our union were deliciously strange. Her eyes were
three different colors. No, I am not insane, I swear they were. They were
gray at noon, shaded green at twilight, and blue at sun rise. In moments of
love they were blue; the pupils dilated and nervous. Her lips trembled and
often the tip of her pink tongue could be seen, as that of a reptile ready to
hiss. When she raised her heavy lids and I saw that ardent look, I shuddered,
not only for the unceasing desire to possess her, but for the desire to kill this
beast.
When she walked across the room each step resounded in my heart. When
she disrobed and emerged infamous but radiant from the white mass of linen
and lace, a sudden weakness seized me, my limbs gave way beneath me, and
my chest heaved; I was faint, coward that I was!
Each morning when she awakened I waited for that first look, my heart
filled with rage, hatred, and disdain for this beast whose slave I was; but
when she fixed those limpid blue eyes on me, that languishing look showing
traces of lassitude, it was like a burning, unquenchable fire within me,
inciting me to passion.
When she opened her eyes that day I saw a dull, indifferent look; a look
devoid of desire, and I knew then she was tired of me. I saw it, knew it, felt
right away that it was all over, and each hour and minute proved to me that I
was right. When I beckoned her with my arms and lips she shrank from me.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “You are horrid!”
Then I became suspicious, insanely jealous; but I am not insane, no
indeed! I watched her slyly; not that she had betrayed me, but she was so
cold that I knew another would soon take my place.
At times she would say:
“Men disgust me!” Alas! it was too true.
Then I became jealous of her indifference, of her thoughts, which I knew
to be impure, and when she awakened sometimes with that same look of
lassitude I suffocated with anger, and an irresistible desire to choke her and
make her confess the shameful secrets of her heart took hold of me.
Am I insane? No.
One night I saw that she was happy. I felt, in fact I was convinced, that a
new passion ruled her. As of old, her eyes shone, she was feverish and her
whole self fluttered with love.
I feigned ignorance, but I watched her closely. I discovered nothing
however. I waited a week, a month, almost a year. She was radiantly, ideally
happy; as if soothed by some ephemeral caress.
At last I guessed. No, I am not insane, I swear I am not. How can I explain
this inconceivable, horrible thing? How can I make myself understood? This
is how I guessed.
She came in one night from a long ride on horseback and sank exhausted
in a seat facing me. An unnatural flush tinted her cheeks and her eyes, —
those eyes that I knew so well, — had such a look in them. I was not
mistaken, I had seen her look like that; she loved! But whom? What? I almost
lost my head, and so as not to look at her I turned to the window. A valet was
leading her horse to the stable and she stood and watched him disappear;
then she fell asleep almost immediately. I thought and thought all night. My
mind wandered through mysteries too deep to conceive. Who can fathom the
perversity and strange caprices of a sensual woman?
Every morning she rode madly through hills and dales and each time she
came back languid; exhausted. At last I understood. It was of the horse I was
jealous — of the wind which caressed her face, of the drooping leaves and
of the dewdrops, of the saddle which carried her! It was all those things
which made her so happy and brought her back to me satiated; exhausted! I
resolved to be revenged. I became very attentive. Every time she came back
from her ride I helped her down and the horse made a vicious rush at me. She
would pat him on the neck, kiss his quivering nostrils, without even wiping
her lips. I watched my chance.
One morning I got up before dawn and went to the path in the woods she
loved so well. I carried a rope with me, and my pistols were hidden in my
breast as if I were going to fight a duel. I drew the rope across the path, tying
it to a tree on each side, and hid myself in the grass. Presently I heard her
horse’s hoofs, then I saw her coming at a furious pace; her cheeks flushed, an
insane look in her eyes. She seemed enraptured; transported into another
sphere.
As the animal approached the rope he struck it with his fore feet and fell.
Before she had struck the ground I caught her in my arms and helped her to
her feet. I then approached the horse, put my pistol close to his ear, and shot
him — as I would a man.
She turned on me and dealt me two terrific blows across the face with her
riding-whip which felled me, and as she rushed at me again, I shot her!
Tell me, Am I insane?
 FATHER MATTHEW

We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The
light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse
slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.
One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us
lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured like ivory
trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb, whose thousands of
smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky, opposite the thousand sacred
steeples of the old city.
On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human
monuments, on the other the engine of the power-house, its rival, and almost
as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt.
Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by
white banks, covered with a forest on the right and on the left immense
meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance.
Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide river.
Three enormous steam boats were starting out, one behind the other, for
Havre, and a chain of boats, a bark, two schooners and a brig, were going
upstream to Rouen, drawn by a little tug that emitted a cloud of black smoke.
My companion, a native of the country, did not glance at this wonderful
landscape, but he smiled continually; he seemed to be amused at his thoughts.
Suddenly he cried:
“Ah, you will soon see something comical — Father Matthew’s chapel.
That is a sweet morsel, my boy.”
I looked at him in surprise. He continued:
“I will give you a whiff of Normandy that will stay by you. Father
Matthew is the handsomest Norman in the province and his chapel is one of
the wonders of the world, nothing more nor less. But I will first give you a
few words of explanation.
“Father Matthew, who is also called Father ‘La Boisson,’ is an old
sergeant-major who has come back to his native land. He combines in
admirable proportions, making a perfect whole, the humbug of the old soldier
and the sly roguery of the Norman. On his return to Normandy, thanks to
influence and incredible cleverness, he was made doorkeeper of a votive
chapel, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and frequented chiefly by young
women who have gone astray . . . . He composed and had painted a special
prayer to his ‘Good Virgin.’ This prayer is a masterpiece of unintentional
irony, of Norman wit, in which jest is blended with fear of the saint and with
the superstitious fear of the secret influence of something. He has not much
faith in his protectress, but he believes in her a little through prudence, and
he is considerate of her through policy.
“This is how this wonderful prayer begins:
“‘Our good Madame Virgin Mary, natural protectress of girl mothers in
this land and all over the world, protect your servant who erred in a moment
of forgetfulness . . .’
“It ends thus:
“‘Do not forget me, especially when you are with your holy spouse, and
intercede with God the Father that he may grant me a good husband, like your
own.’
“This prayer, which was suppressed by the clergy of the district, is sold
by him privately, and is said to be very efficacious for those who recite it
with unction.
“In fact he talks of the good Virgin as the valet de chambre of a redoubted
prince might talk of his master who confided in him all his little private
secrets. He knows a number of amusing anecdotes at his expense which he
tells confidentially among friends as they sit over their glasses.
“But you will see for yourself.
“As the fees coming from the Virgin did not appear sufficient to him, he
added to the main figure a little business in saints. He has them all, or nearly
all. There was not room enough in the chapel, so he stored them in the wood-
shed and brings them forth as soon as the faithful ask for them. He carved
these little wooden statues himself — they are comical in the extreme — and
painted them all bright green one year when they were painting his house.
You know that saints cure diseases, but each saint has his specialty, and you
must not confound them or make any blunders. They are as jealous of each
other as mountebanks.
“In order that they may make no mistake, the old women come and consult
Matthew.
“‘For diseases of the ear which saint is the best?’
 “‘Why, Saint Osyme is good and Saint Pamphilius is not bad.’ But that is
not all.
“As Matthew has some time to spare, he drinks; but he drinks like a
professional, with conviction, so much so that he is intoxicated regularly
every evening. He is drunk, but he is aware of it. He is so well aware of it
that he notices each day his exact degree of intoxication. That is his chief
occupation; the chapel is a secondary matter.
“And he has invented — listen and catch on — he has invented the
‘Saoulometre.’
“There is no such instrument, but Matthew’s observations are as precise
as those of a mathematician. You may hear him repeating incessantly: ‘Since
Monday I have had more than forty-five,’ or else ‘I was between fifty-two
and fifty-eight,’ or else ‘I had at least sixty-six to seventy,’ or ‘Hullo, cheat, I
thought I was in the fifties and here I find I had had seventy-five!’
“He never makes a mistake.
“He declares that he never reached his limit, but as he acknowledges that
his observations cease to be exact when he has passed ninety, one cannot
depend absolutely on the truth of that statement.
“When Matthew acknowledges that he has passed ninety, you may rest
assured that he is blind drunk.
“On these occasions his wife, Melie, another marvel, flies into a fury. She
waits for him at the door of the house, and as he enters she roars at him:
“‘So there you are, slut, hog, giggling sot!’
“Then Matthew, who is not laughing any longer, plants himself opposite
her and says in a severe tone:
“‘Be still, Melie; this is no time to talk; wait till to-morrow.’
“If she keeps on shouting at him, he goes up to her and says in a shaky
voice:
“‘Don’t bawl any more. I have had about ninety; I am not counting any
more. Look out, I am going to hit you!’
“Then Melie beats a retreat.
“If, on the following day, she reverts to the subject, he laughs in her face
and says:
“‘Come, come! We have said enough. It is past. As long as I have not
reached my limit there is no harm done. But if I go, past that I will allow you
to correct me, my word on it!’”
 We had reached the top of the hill. The road entered the delightful forest
of Roumare.
Autumn, marvellous autumn, blended its gold and purple with the
remaining traces of verdure. We passed through Duclair. Then, instead of
going on to Jumieges, my friend turned to the left and, taking a crosscut,
drove in among the trees.
And presently from the top of a high hill we saw again the magnificent
valley of the Seine and the winding river beneath us.
At our right a very small slate-covered building, with a bell tower as
large as a sunshade, adjoined a pretty house with green Venetian blinds, and
all covered with honeysuckle and roses.
“Here are some friends!” cried a big voice, and Matthew appeared on the
threshold. He was a man about sixty, thin and with a goatee and long, white
mustache.
My friend shook him by the hand and introduced me, and Matthew took us
into a clean kitchen, which served also as a dining-room. He said:
“I have no elegant apartment, monsieur. I do not like to get too far away
from the food. The saucepans, you see, keep me company.” Then, turning to
my friend:
“Why did you come on Thursday? You know quite well that this is the day
I consult my Guardian Saint. I cannot go out this afternoon.”
And running to the door, he uttered a terrific roar: “Melie!” which must
have startled the sailors in the ships along the stream in the valley below.
Melie did not reply.
Then Matthew winked his eye knowingly.
“She is not pleased with me, you see, because yesterday I was in the
nineties.”
My friend began to laugh. “In the nineties, Matthew! How did you manage
it?”
“I will tell you,” said Matthew. “Last year I found only twenty rasieres
(an old dry measure) of apricots. There are no more, but those are the only
things to make cider of. So I made some, and yesterday I tapped the barrel.
Talk of nectar! That was nectar. You shall tell me what you think of it. Polyte
was here, and we sat down and drank a glass and another without being
satisfied (one could go on drinking it until to-morrow), and at last, with glass
after glass, I felt a chill at my stomach. I said to Polyte: ‘Supposing we drink
a glass of cognac to warm ourselves?’ He agreed. But this cognac, it sets you
on fire, so that we had to go back to the cider. But by going from chills to
heat and heat to chills, I saw that I was in the nineties. Polyte was not far
from his limit.”
The door opened and Melie appeared. At once, before bidding us good-
day, she cried:
“Great hog, you have both of you reached your limit!”
“Don’t say that, Melie; don’t say that,” said Matthew, getting angry. “I
have never reached my limit.”
They gave us a delicious luncheon outside beneath two lime trees, beside
the little chapel and overlooking the vast landscape. And Matthew told us,
with a mixture of humor and unexpected credulity, incredible stories of
miracles.
We had drunk a good deal of delicious cider, sparkling and sweet, fresh
and intoxicating, which he preferred to all other drinks, and were smoking
our pipes astride our chairs when two women appeared.
They were old, dried up and bent. After greeting us they asked for Saint
Blanc. Matthew winked at us as he replied:
“I will get him for you.” And he disappeared in his wood shed. He
remained there fully five minutes. Then he came back with an expression of
consternation. He raised his hands.
“I don’t know where he is. I cannot find him. I am quite sure that I had
him.” Then making a speaking trumpet of his hands, he roared once more:
“Meli-e-a!”
“What’s the matter?” replied his wife from the end of the garden.
“Where’s Saint Blanc? I cannot find him in the wood shed.”
Then Melie explained it this way:
“Was not that the one you took last week to stop up a hole in the rabbit
hutch?”
Matthew gave a start.
“By thunder, that may be!” Then turning to the women, he said:
“Follow me.”
They followed him. We did the same, almost choking with suppressed
laughter.
Saint Blanc was indeed stuck into the earth like an ordinary stake,
covered with mud and dirt, and forming a corner for the rabbit hutch.
As soon as they perceived him, the two women fell on their knees,
crossed themselves and began to murmur an “Oremus.” But Matthew darted
toward them.
“Wait,” he said, “you are in the mud; I will get you a bundle of straw.”
He went to fetch the straw and made them a priedieu. Then, looking at his
muddy saint and doubtless afraid of bringing discredit on his business, he
added:
“I will clean him off a little for you.”
He took a pail of water and a brush and began to scrub the wooden image
vigorously, while the two old women kept on praying.
When he had finished he said:
“Now he is all right.” And he took us back to the house to drink another
glass.
As he was carrying the glass to his lips he stopped and said in a rather
confused manner:
“All the same, when I put Saint Blanc out with the rabbits I thought he
would not make any more money. For two years no one had asked for him.
But the saints, you see, they are never out of date.”
 THE UMBRELLA

Mme. Oreille was a very economical woman; she knew the value of a
centime, and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with regard to
the multiplication of money, so that her cook found the greatest difficulty in
making what the servants call their market-penny, and her husband was
hardly allowed any pocket money at all. They were, however, very
comfortably off, and had no children; but it really pained Mme. Oreille to see
any money spent; it was like tearing at her heartstrings when she had to take
any of those nice crown-pieces out of her pocket; and whenever she had to
spend anything, no matter how necessary it might be, she slept badly the next
night.
Oreille was continually saying to his wife:
“You really might be more liberal, as we have no children, and never
spend our income.”
“You don’t know what may happen,” she used to reply. “It is better to
have too much than too little.”
She was a little woman of about forty, very active, rather hasty, wrinkled,
very neat and tidy, and with a very short temper.
Her husband frequently complained of all the privations she made him
endure; some of them were particularly painful to him, as they touched his
vanity.
He was one of the head clerks in the War Office, and only stayed on there
in obedience to his wife’s wish, to increase their income which they did not
nearly spend.
For two years he had always come to the office with the same old patched
umbrella, to the great amusement of his fellow clerks. At last he got tired of
their jokes, and insisted upon his wife buying him a new one. She bought one
for eight francs and a half, one of those cheap articles which large houses
sell as an advertisement. When the men in the office saw the article, which
was being sold in Paris by the thousand, they began their jokes again, and
Oreille had a dreadful time of it. They even made a song about it, which he
heard from morning till night all over the immense building.
 Oreille was very angry, and peremptorily told his wife to get him a new
one, a good silk one, for twenty francs, and to bring him the bill, so that he
might see that it was all right.
She bought him one for eighteen francs, and said, getting red with anger as
she gave it to her husband:
“This will last you for five years at least.”
Oreille felt quite triumphant, and received a small ovation at the office
with his new acquisition.
When he went home in the evening his wife said to him, looking at the
umbrella uneasily:
“You should not leave it fastened up with the elastic; it will very likely cut
the silk. You must take care of it, for I shall not buy you a new one in a
hurry.”
She took it, unfastened it, and remained dumfounded with astonishment
and rage; in the middle of the silk there was a hole as big as a six-penny-
piece; it had been made with the end of a cigar.
“What is that?” she screamed.
Her husband replied quietly, without looking at it:
“What is it? What do you mean?”
She was choking with rage, and could hardly get out a word.
“You — you — have — burned — your umbrella! Why — you must be —
mad! Do you wish to ruin us outright?”
He turned round, and felt that he was growing pale.
“What are you talking about?”
“I say that you have burned your umbrella. Just look here.”
And rushing at him, as if she were going to beat him, she violently thrust
the little circular burned hole under his nose.
He was so utterly struck dumb at the sight of it that he could only stammer
out:
“What-what is it? How should I know? I have done nothing, I will swear.
I don’t know what is the matter with the umbrella.”
“You have been playing tricks with it at the office; you have been playing
the fool and opening it, to show it off!” she screamed.
“I only opened it once, to let them see what a nice one it was, that is all, I
swear.”
But she shook with rage, and got up one of those conjugal scenes which
make a peaceable man dread the domestic hearth more than a battlefield
where bullets are raining.
She mended it with a piece of silk cut out of the old umbrella, which was
of a different color, and the next day Oreille went off very humbly with the
mended article in his hand. He put it into a cupboard, and thought no more of
it than of some unpleasant recollection.
But he had scarcely got home that evening when his wife took the
umbrella from him, opened it, and nearly had a fit when she saw what had
befallen it, for the disaster was irreparable. It was covered with small holes,
which evidently proceeded from burns, just as if some one had emptied the
ashes from a lighted pipe on to it. It was done for utterly, irreparably.
She looked at it without a word, in too great a passion to be able to say
anything. He, also, when he saw the damage, remained almost dumfounded,
in a state of frightened consternation.
They looked at each other, then he looked at the floor; and the next moment
she threw the useless article at his head, screaming out in a transport of the
most violent rage, for she had recovered her voice by that time:
“Oh! you brute! you brute! You did it on purpose, but I will pay you out
for it. You shall not have another.”
And then the scene began again, and after the storm had raged for an hour,
he at last was able to explain himself. He declared that he could not
understand it at all, and that it could only proceed from malice or from
vengeance.
A ring at the bell saved him; it was a friend whom they were expecting to
dinner.
Mme. Oreille submitted the case to him. As for buying a new umbrella,
that was out of the question; her husband should not have another. The friend
very sensibly said that in that case his clothes would be spoiled, and they
were certainly worth more than the umbrella. But the little woman, who was
still in a rage, replied:
“Very well, then, when it rains he may have the kitchen umbrella, for I
will not give him a new silk one.”
Oreille utterly rebelled at such an idea.
“All right,” he said; “then I shall resign my post. I am not going to the
office with the kitchen umbrella.”
The friend interposed.
“Have this one re-covered; it will not cost much.”
But Mme. Oreille, being in the temper that she was, said:
 “It will cost at least eight francs to re-cover it. Eight and eighteen are
twenty-six. Just fancy, twenty-six francs for an umbrella! It is utter madness!”
The friend, who was only a poor man of the middle classes, had an
inspiration:
“Make your fire assurance pay for it. The companies pay for all articles
that are burned, as long as the damage has been done in your own house.”
On hearing this advice the little woman calmed down immediately, and
then, after a moment’s reflection, she said to her husband:
“To-morrow, before going to your office, you will go to the Maternelle
Assurance Company, show them the state your umbrella is in, and make them
pay for the damage.”
M. Oreille fairly jumped, he was so startled at the proposal.
“I would not do it for my life! It is eighteen francs lost, that is all. It will
not ruin us.”
The next morning he took a walking-stick when he went out, and, luckily,
it was a fine day.
Left at home alone, Mme. Oreille could not get over the loss of her
eighteen francs by any means. She had put the umbrella on the dining-room
table, and she looked at it without being able to come to any determination.
Every moment she thought of the assurance company, but she did not dare
to encounter the quizzical looks of the gentlemen who might receive her, for
she was very timid before people, and blushed at a mere nothing, and was
embarrassed when she had to speak to strangers.
But the regret at the loss of the eighteen francs pained her as if she had
been wounded. She tried not to think of it any more, and yet every moment the
recollection of the loss struck her painfully. What was she to do, however?
Time went on, and she could not decide; but suddenly, like all cowards, on
making a resolve, she became determined.
“I will go, and we will see what will happen.”
But first of all she was obliged to prepare the umbrella so that the disaster
might be complete, and the reason of it quite evident. She took a match from
the mantelpiece, and between the ribs she burned a hole as big as the palm of
her hand; then she delicately rolled it up, fastened it with the elastic band, put
on her bonnet and shawl, and went quickly toward the Rue de Rivoli, where
the assurance office was.
But the nearer she got, the slower she walked. What was she going to say,
and what reply would she get?
 She looked at the numbers of the houses; there were still twenty-eight.
That was all right, so she had time to consider, and she walked slower and
slower. Suddenly she saw a door on which was a large brass plate with “La
Maternelle Fire Assurance Office” engraved on it. Already! She waited a
moment, for she felt nervous and almost ashamed; then she walked past, came
back, walked past again, and came back again.
At last she said to herself:
“I must go in, however, so I may as well do it sooner as later.”
She could not help noticing, however, how her heart beat as she entered.
She went into an enormous room with grated doors all round it, and above
them little openings at which a man’s head appeared, and as a gentleman
carrying a number of papers passed her, she stopped him and said timidly: “I
beg your pardon, monsieur, but can you tell me where I must apply for
payment for anything that has been accidentally burned?”
He replied in a sonorous voice:
“The first door on the left; that is the department you want.”
This frightened her still more, and she felt inclined to run away, to put in
no claim, to sacrifice her eighteen francs. But the idea of that sum revived her
courage, and she went upstairs, out of breath, stopping at almost every other
step.
She knocked at a door which she saw on the first landing, and a clear
voice said, in answer:
“Come in!”
She obeyed mechanically, and found herself in a large room where three
solemn gentlemen, all with a decoration in their buttonholes, were standing
talking.
One of them asked her: “What do you want, madame?”
She could hardly get out her words, but stammered: “I have come — I
have come on account of an accident, something— “.
He very politely pointed out a seat to her,
“If you will kindly sit down I will attend to you in a moment.”
And, returning to the other two, he went on with the conversation.
“The company, gentlemen, does not consider that it is under any obligation
to you for more than four hundred thousand francs, and we can pay no
attention to your claim to the further sum of a hundred thousand, which you
wish to make us pay. Besides that, the surveyor’s valuation— “
One of the others interrupted him:
 “That is quite enough, monsieur; the law courts will decide between us,
and we have nothing further to do than to take our leave.” And they went out
after mutual ceremonious bows.
Oh! if she could only have gone away with them, how gladly she would
have done it; she would have run away and given up everything. But it was
too late, for the gentleman came back, and said, bowing:
“What can I do for you, madame?”
She could scarcely speak, but at last she managed to say:
“I have come-for this.”
The manager looked at the object which she held out to him in mute
astonishment.
With trembling fingers she tried to undo the elastic, and succeeding, after
several attempts, she hastily opened the damaged remains of the umbrella.
“It looks to me to be in a very bad state of health,” he said
compassionately.
“It cost me twenty francs,” she said, with some hesitation.
He seemed astonished. “Really! As much as that?”
“Yes, it was a capital article, and I wanted you to see the condition it is
in.”
“Yes, yes, I see; very well. But I really do not understand what it can have
to do with me.”
She began to feel uncomfortable; perhaps this company did not pay for
such small articles, and she said:
“But — it is burned.”
He could not deny it.
“I see that very well,” he replied.
She remained open-mouthed, not knowing what to say next; then, suddenly
recollecting that she had left out the main thing, she said hastily:
“I am Mme. Oreille; we are assured in La Maternelle, and I have come to
claim the value of this damage.”
“I only want you to have it re-covered,” she added quickly, fearing a
positive refusal.
The manager was rather embarrassed, and said: “But, really, madame, we
do not sell umbrellas; we cannot undertake such kinds of repairs.”
The little woman felt her courage reviving; she was not going to give up
without a struggle; she was not even afraid any more, and said:
 “I only want you to pay me the cost of repairing it; I can quite well get it
done myself.”
The gentleman seemed rather confused.
“Really, madame, it is such a very small matter! We are never asked to
give compensation for such trivial losses. You must allow that we cannot
make good pocket-handkerchiefs, gloves, brooms, slippers, all the small
articles which are every day exposed to the chances of being burned.”
She got red in the face, and felt inclined to fly into a rage.
“But, monsieur, last December one of our chimneys caught fire, and
caused at least five hundred francs’ damage; M. Oreille made no claim on the
company, and so it is only just that it should pay for my umbrella now.”
The manager, guessing that she was telling a lie, said, with a smile:
“You must acknowledge, madame, that it is very surprising that M. Oreille
should have asked no compensation for damages amounting to five hundred
francs, and should now claim five or six francs for mending an umbrella.”
She was not the least put out, and replied:
“I beg your pardon, monsieur, the five hundred francs affected M.
Oreille’s pocket, whereas this damage, amounting to eighteen francs,
concerns Mme. Oreille’s pocket only, which is a totally different matter.”
As he saw that he had no chance of getting rid of her, and that he would
only be wasting his time, he said resignedly:
“Will you kindly tell me how the damage was done?”
She felt that she had won the victory, and said:
“This is how it happened, monsieur: In our hall there is a bronze stick and
umbrella stand, and the other day, when I came in, I put my umbrella into it. I
must tell you that just above there is a shelf for the candlesticks and matches.
I put out my hand, took three or four matches, and struck one, but it missed
fire, so I struck another, which ignited, but went out immediately, and a third
did the same.”
The manager interrupted her to make a joke.
“I suppose they were government matches, then?”
She did not understand him, and went on:
“Very likely. At any rate, the fourth caught fire, and I lit my candle, and
went into my room to go to bed; but in a quarter of an hour I fancied that I
smelt something burning, and I have always been terribly afraid of fire. If
ever we have an accident it will not be my fault, I assure you. I am terribly
nervous since our chimney was on fire, as I told you; so I got up, and hunted
about everywhere, sniffing like a dog after game, and at last I noticed that my
umbrella was burning. Most likely a match had fallen between the folds and
burned it. You can see how it has damaged it.”
The manager had taken his cue, and asked her: “What do you estimate the
damage at?”
She did not know what to say, as she was not certain what value to put on
it, but at last she replied:
“Perhaps you had better get it done yourself. I will leave it to you.”
He, however, naturally refused.
“No, madame, I cannot do that. Tell me the amount of your claim, that is
all I want to know.”
“Well, I think that — Look here, monsieur, I do not want to make any
money out of you, so I will tell you what we will do. I will take my umbrella
to the maker, who will re-cover it in good, durable silk, and I will bring the
bill to you. Will that suit you, monsieur?”
“Perfectly, madame; we will settle it so. Here is a note for the cashier,
who will repay you whatever it costs you.”
He gave Mme. Oreille a slip of paper, who took it, got up and went out,
thanking him, for she was in a hurry to escape lest he should change his mind.
She went briskly through the streets, looking out for a really good
umbrella maker, and when she found a shop which appeared to be a first-
class one, she went in, and said, confidently:
“I want this umbrella re-covered in silk, good silk. Use the very best and
strongest you have; I don’t mind what it costs.”
 BELHOMME’S BEAST

The coach for Havre was ready to leave Criquetot, and all the passengers
were waiting for their names to be called out, in the courtyard of the
Commercial Hotel kept by Monsieur Malandain, Jr.
It was a yellow wagon, mounted on wheels which had once been yellow,
but were now almost gray through the accumulation of mud. The front wheels
were very small, the back ones, high and fragile, carried the large body of the
vehicle, which was swollen like the belly of an animal. Three white horses,
with enormous heads and great round knees, were the first things one noticed.
They were harnessed ready to draw this coach, which had something of the
appearance of a monster in its massive structure. The horses seemed already
asleep in front of the strange vehicle.
The driver, Cesaire Horlaville, a little man with a big paunch, supple
nevertheless, through his constant habit of climbing over the wheels to the top
of the wagon, his face all aglow from exposure to the brisk air of the plains,
to rain and storms, and also from the use of brandy, his eyes twitching from
the effect of constant contact with wind and hail, appeared in the doorway of
the hotel, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Large round baskets, full
of frightened poultry, were standing in front of the peasant women. Cesaire
Horlaville took them one after the other and packed them on the top of his
coach; then more gently, he loaded on those containing eggs; finally he tossed
up from below several little bags of grain, small packages wrapped in
handkerchiefs, pieces of cloth, or paper. Then he opened the back door, and
drawing a list from his pocket he called:
“Monsieur le cure de Gorgeville.”
The priest advanced. He was a large, powerful, robust man with a red
face and a genial expression. He hitched up his cassock to lift his foot, just as
the women hold up their skirts, and climbed into the coach.
“The schoolmaster of Rollebose-les-Grinets.”
The man hastened forward, tall, timid, wearing a long frock coat which
fell to his knees, and he in turn disappeared through the open door.
“Maitre Poiret, two seats.”
 Poiret approached, a tall, round-shouldered man, bent by the plow,
emaciated through abstinence, bony, with a skin dried by a sparing use of
water. His wife followed him, small and thin, like a tired animal, carrying a
large green umbrella in her hands.
“Maitre Rabot, two seats.”
Rabot hesitated, being of an undecided nature. He asked:
“You mean me?”
The driver was going to answer with a jest, when Rabot dived head first
towards the door, pushed forward by a vigorous shove from his wife, a tall,
square woman with a large, round stomach like a barrel, and hands as large
as hams.
Rabot slipped into the wagon like a rat entering a hole.
“Maitre Caniveau.”
A large peasant, heavier than an ox, made the springs bend, and was in
turn engulfed in the interior of the yellow chest.
“Maitre Belhomme.”
Belhomme, tall and thin, came forward, his neck bent, his head hanging, a
handkerchief held to his ear as if he were suffering from a terrible toothache.
All these people wore the blue blouse over quaint and antique coats of a
black or greenish cloth, Sunday clothes which they would only uncover in the
streets of Havre. Their heads were covered by silk caps at high as towers,
the emblem of supreme elegance in the small villages of Normandy.
Cesaire Horlaville closed the door, climbed up on his box and snapped
his whip.
The three horses awoke and, tossing their heads, shook their bells.
The driver then yelling “Get up!” as loud as he could, whipped up his
horses. They shook themselves, and, with an effort, started off at a slow,
halting gait. And behind them came the coach, rattling its shaky windows and
iron springs, making a terrible clatter of hardware and glass, while the
passengers were tossed hither and thither like so many rubber balls.
At first all kept silent out of respect for the priest, that they might not
shock him. Being of a loquacious and genial disposition, he started the
conversation.
“Well, Maitre Caniveau,” said he, “how are you getting along?”
The enormous farmer who, on account of his size, girth and stomach, felt a
bond of sympathy for the representative of the Church, answered with a
smile:
 “Pretty well, Monsieur le cure, pretty well. And how are you?”
“Oh! I’m always well and healthy.”
“And you, Maitre Poiret?” asked the abbe.
“Oh! I’d be all right only the colzas ain’t a-goin’ to give much this year,
and times are so hard that they are the only things worth while raisin’.”
“Well, what can you expect? Times are hard.”
“Hub! I should say they were hard,” sounded the rather virile voice of
Rabot’s big consort.
As she was from a neighboring village, the priest only knew her by name.
“Is that you, Blondel?” he said.
“Yes, I’m the one that married Rabot.”
Rabot, slender, timid, and self-satisfied, bowed smilingly, bending his
head forward as though to say: “Yes, I’m the Rabot whom Blondel married.”
Suddenly Maitre Belhomme, still holding his handkerchief to his ear,
began groaning in a pitiful fashion. He was going “Oh-oh-oh!” and stamping
his foot in order to show his terrible suffering.
“You must have an awful toothache,” said the priest.
The peasant stopped moaning for a minute and answered:
“No, Monsieur le cure, it is not the teeth. It’s my ear-away down at the
bottom of my ear.”
“Well, what have you got in your ear? A lump of wax?”
“I don’t know whether it’s wax; but I know that it is a bug, a big bug, that
crawled in while I was asleep in the haystack.”
“A bug! Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? As sure as I am of heaven, Monsieur le cure! I can feel it
gnawing at the bottom of my ear! It’s eating my head for sure! It’s eating my
head! Oh-oh-oh!” And he began to stamp his foot again.
Great interest had been aroused among the spectators. Each one gave his
bit of advice. Poiret claimed that it was a spider, the teacher, thought it might
be a caterpillar. He had already seen such a thing once, at Campemuret, in
Orne, where he had been for six years. In this case the caterpillar had gone
through the head and out at the nose. But the man remained deaf in that ear
ever after, the drum having been pierced.
“It’s more likely to be a worm,” said the priest.
Maitre Belhomme, his head resting against the door, for he had been the
last one to enter, was still moaning.
 “Oh — oh — oh! I think it must be an ant, a big ant — there it is biting
again. Oh, Monsieur le cure, how it hurts! how it hurts!”
“Have you seen the doctor?” asked Caniveau.
“I should say not!”
“Why?”
The fear of the doctor seemed to cure Belhomme. He straightened up
without, however, dropping his handkerchief.
“What! You have money for them, for those loafers? He would have come
once, twice, three times, four times, five times! That means two five-franc
pieces, two five-franc pieces, for sure. And what would he have done, the
loafer, tell me, what would he have done? Can you tell me?”
Caniveau was laughing.
“No, I don’t know. Where are you going?”
“I am going to Havre, to see Chambrelan.”
“Who is Chambrelan?”
“The healer, of course.”
“What healer?”
“The healer who cured my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, the healer who cured my father years ago.”
“What was the matter with your father?”
“A draught caught him in the back, so that he couldn’t move hand or foot.”
“Well, what did your friend Chambrelan do to him?”
“He kneaded his back with both hands as though he were making bread!
And he was all right in a couple of hours!”
Belhomme thought that Chambrelan must also have used some charm, but
he did not dare say so before the priest. Caniveau replied, laughing:
“Are you sure it isn’t a rabbit that you have in your ear? He might have
taken that hole for his home. Wait, I’ll make him run away.”
Whereupon Caniveau, making a megaphone of his hands, began to mimic
the barking of hounds. He snapped, howled, growled, barked. And
everybody in the carriage began to roar, even the schoolmaster, who, as a
rule, never ever smiled.
However, as Belhomme seemed angry at their making fun of him, the
priest changed the conversation and turning to Rabot’s big wife, said:
“You have a large family, haven’t you?”
 “Oh, yes, Monsieur le cure — and it’s a pretty hard matter to bring them
up!”
Rabot agreed, nodding his head as though to say: “Oh, yes, it’s a hard
thing to bring up!”
“How many children?”
She replied authoritatively in a strong, clear voice:
“Sixteen children, Monsieur le cure, fifteen of them by my husband!”
And Rabot smiled broadly, nodding his head. He was responsible for
fifteen, he alone, Rabot! His wife said so! Therefore there could be no doubt
about it. And he was proud!
And whose was the sixteenth? She didn’t tell. It was doubtless the first.
Perhaps everybody knew, for no one was surprised. Even Caniveau kept
mum.
But Belhomme began to moan again:
“Oh-oh-oh! It’s scratching about in the bottom of my ear! Oh, dear, oh,
dear!”
The coach just then stopped at the Cafe Polyto. The priest said:
“If someone were to pour a little water into your ear, it might perhaps
drive it out. Do you want to try?”
“Sure! I am willing.”
And everybody got out in order to witness the operation. The priest asked
for a bowl, a napkin and a glass of water, then he told the teacher to hold the
patient’s head over on one side, and, as soon as the liquid should have
entered the ear, to turn his head over suddenly on the other side.
But Caniveau, who was already peering into Belhomme’s ear to see if he
couldn’t discover the beast, shouted:
“Gosh! What a mess! You’ll have to clear that out, old man. Your rabbit
could never get through that; his feet would stick.”
The priest in turn examined the passage and saw that it was too narrow
and too congested for him to attempt to expel the animal. It was the teacher
who cleared out this passage by means of a match and a bit of cloth. Then, in
the midst of the general excitement, the priest poured into the passage half a
glass of water, which trickled over the face through the hair and down the
neck of the patient. Then the schoolmaster quickly twisted the head round
over the bowl, as though he were trying to unscrew it. A couple of drops
dripped into the white bowl. All the passengers rushed forward. No insect
had come out.
 However, Belhomme exclaimed: “I don’t feel anything any more.” The
priest triumphantly exclaimed: “Certainly it has been drowned.” Everybody
was happy and got back into the coach.
But hardly had they started when Belhomme began to cry out again. The
bug had aroused itself and had become furious. He even declared that it had
now entered his head and was eating his brain. He was howling with such
contortions that Poirat’s wife, thinking him possessed by the devil, began to
cry and to cross herself. Then, the pain abating a little, the sick man began to
tell how it was running round in his ear. With his finger he imitated the
movements of the body, seeming to see it, to follow it with his eyes: “There
is goes up again! Oh — oh — oh — what torture!”
Caniveau was getting impatient. “It’s the water that is making the bug
angry. It is probably more accustomed to wine.”
Everybody laughed, and he continued: “When we get to the Cafe
Bourbeux, give it some brandy, and it won’t bother you any more, I wager.”
But Belhomme could contain himself no longer; he began howling as
though his soul were being torn from his body. The priest was obliged to
hold his head for him. They asked Cesaire Horlaville to stop at the nearest
house. It was a farmhouse at the side of the road. Belhomme was carried into
it and laid on the kitchen table in order to repeat the operation. Caniveau
advised mixing brandy and water in order to benumb and perhaps kill the
insect. But the priest preferred vinegar.
They poured the liquid in drop by drop this time, that it might penetrate
down to the bottom, and they left it several minutes in the organ that the beast
had chosen for its home.
A bowl had once more been brought; Belhomme was turned over bodily
by the priest and Caniveau, while the schoolmaster was tapping on the
healthy ear in order to empty the other.
Cesaire Horlaville himself, whip in hand, had come in to observe the
proceedings.
Suddenly, at the bottom of the bowl appeared a little brown spot, no
bigger than a tiny seed. However, it was moving. It was a flea! First there
were cries of astonishment and then shouts of laughter. A flea! Well, that was
a good joke, a mighty good one! Caniveau was slapping his thigh, Cesaire
Horlaville snapped his whip, the priest laughed like a braying donkey, the
teacher cackled as though he were sneezing, and the two women were giving
little screams of joy, like the clucking of hens.
 Belhomme had seated himself on the table and had taken the bowl
between his knees; he was observing, with serious attention and a vengeful
anger in his eye, the conquered insect which was twisting round in the water.
He grunted, “You rotten little beast!” and he spat on it.
The driver, wild with joy, kept repeating: “A flea, a flea, ah! there you
are, damned little flea, damned little flea, damned little flea!” Then having
calmed down a little, he cried: “Well, back to the coach! We’ve lost enough
time.”
 DISCOVERY

The steamer was crowded with people and the crossing promised to be
good. I was going from Havre to Trouville.
The ropes were thrown off, the whistle blew for the last time, the whole
boat started to tremble, and the great wheels began to revolve, slowly at first,
and then with ever-increasing rapidity.
We were gliding along the pier, black with people. Those on board were
waving their handkerchiefs, as though they were leaving for America, and
their friends on shore were answering in the same manner.
The big July sun was shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses,
the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were
out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her
nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early
morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, her muddy
water, which never mingles with that of the ocean, making large yellow
streaks clearly outlined against the immense sheet of the pure green sea.
As soon as I am on a boat I feel the need of walking to and fro, like a
sailor on watch. Why? I do not know. Therefore I began to thread my way
along the deck through the crowd of travellers. Suddenly I heard my name
called. I turned around. I beheld one of my old friends, Henri Sidoine, whom
I had not seen for ten years.
We shook hands and continued our walk together, talking of one thing or
another. Suddenly Sidoine, who had been observing the crowd of passengers,
cried out angrily:
“It’s disgusting, the boat is full of English people!”
It was indeed full of them. The men were standing about, looking over the
ocean with an all-important air, as though to say: “We are the English, the
lords of the sea! Here we are!”
The young girls, formless, with shoes which reminded one of the naval
constructions of their fatherland, wrapped in multi-colored shawls, were
smiling vacantly at the magnificent scenery. Their small heads, planted at the
top of their long bodies, wore English hats of the strangest build.
 And the old maids, thinner yet, opening their characteristic jaws to the
wind, seemed to threaten one with their long, yellow teeth. On passing them,
one could notice the smell of rubber and of tooth wash.
Sidoine repeated, with growing anger:
“Disgusting! Can we never stop their coming to France?”
I asked, smiling:
“What have you got against them? As far as I am concerned, they don’t
worry me.”
He snapped out:
“Of course they don’t worry you! But I married one of them.”
I stopped and laughed at him.
“Go ahead and tell me about it. Does she make you very unhappy?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“No, not exactly.”
“Then she — is not true to you?”
“Unfortunately, she is. That would be cause for a divorce, and I could get
rid of her.”
“Then I’m afraid I don’t understand!”
“You don’t understand? I’m not surprised. Well, she simply learned how
to speak French — that’s all! Listen.
“I didn’t have the least desire of getting married when I went to spend the
summer at Etretat two years ago. There is nothing more dangerous than
watering-places. You have no idea how it suits young girls. Paris is the place
for women and the country for young girls.
“Donkey rides, surf-bathing, breakfast on the grass, all these things are
traps set for the marriageable man. And, really, there is nothing prettier than a
child about eighteen, running through a field or picking flowers along the
road.
“I made the acquaintance of an English family who were stopping at the
same hotel where I was. The father looked like those men you see over there,
and the mother was like all other Englishwomen.
“They had two sons, the kind of boys who play rough games with balls,
bats or rackets from morning till night; then came two daughters, the elder a
dry, shrivelled-up Englishwoman, the younger a dream of beauty, a heavenly
blonde. When those chits make up their minds to be pretty, they are divine.
This one had blue eyes, the kind of blue which seems to contain all the
poetry, all the dreams, all the hopes and happiness of the world!
 “What an infinity of dreams is caused by two such eyes! How well they
answer the dim, eternal question of our heart!
“It must not be forgotten either that we Frenchmen adore foreign women.
As soon as we meet a Russian, an Italian, a Swede, a Spaniard, or an
Englishwoman with a pretty face, we immediately fall in love with her. We
enthuse over everything which comes from outside — clothes, hats, gloves,
guns and — women. But what a blunder!
“I believe that that which pleases us in foreign women is their accent. As
soon as a woman speaks our language badly we think she is charming, if she
uses the wrong word she is exquisite and if she jabbers in an entirely
unintelligible jargon, she becomes irresistible.
“My little English girl, Kate, spoke a language to be marvelled at. At the
beginning I could understand nothing, she invented so many new words; then
I fell absolutely in love with this queer, amusing dialect. All maimed,
strange, ridiculous terms became delightful in her mouth. Every evening, on
the terrace of the Casino, we had long conversations which resembled
spoken enigmas.
“I married her! I loved her wildly, as one can only love in a dream. For
true lovers only love a dream which has taken the form of a woman.
“Well, my dear fellow, the most foolish thing I ever did was to give my
wife a French teacher. As long as she slaughtered the dictionary and tortured
the grammar I adored her. Our conversations were simple. They revealed to
me her surprising gracefulness and matchless elegance; they showed her to
me as a wonderful speaking jewel, a living doll made to be kissed, knowing,
after a fashion, how to express what she loved. She reminded me of the pretty
little toys which say ‘papa’ and ‘mamma’ when you pull a string.
“Now she talks — badly — very badly. She makes as many mistakes as
ever — but I can understand her.
“I have opened my doll to look inside — and I have seen. And now I have
to talk to her!
“Ah! you don’t know, as I do, the opinions, the ideas, the theories of a
well-educated young English girl, whom I can blame in nothing, and who
repeats to me from morning till night sentences from a French reader
prepared in England for the use of young ladies’ schools.
“You have seen those cotillon favors, those pretty gilt papers, which
enclose candies with an abominable taste. I have one of them. I tore it open. I
wished to eat what was inside and it disgusted me so that I feel nauseated at
seeing her compatriots.
“I have married a parrot to whom some old English governess might have
taught French. Do you understand?”
The harbor of Trouville was now showing its wooden piers covered with
people.
I said:
“Where is your wife?”
He answered:
“I took her back to Etretat.”
“And you, where are you going?”
“I? Oh, I am going to rest up here at Trouville.”
Then, after a pause, he added:
“You have no idea what a fool a woman can be at times!”
 THE ACCURSED BREAD

Daddy Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest, who was scarcely ever
mentioned in the family; Rose, the second girl, who was eighteen, and Clara,
the youngest, who was a girl of fifteen.
Old Taille was a widower and a foreman in M. Lebrument’s button
manufactory. He was a very upright man, very well thought of, abstemious; in
fact, a sort of model workman. He lived at Havre, in the Rue d’Angouleme.
When Anna ran away from home the old man flew into a fearful rage. He
threatened to kill the head clerk in a large draper’s establishment in that
town, whom he suspected. After a time, when he was told by various people
that she was very steady and investing money in government securities, that
she was no gadabout, but was a great friend of Monsieur Dubois, who was a
judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, the father was appeased.
He even showed some anxiety as to how she was getting on, and asked
some of her old friends who had been to see her, and when told that she had
her own furniture, and that her mantelpiece was covered with vases and the
walls with pictures, that there were clocks and carpets everywhere, he gave
a broad contented smile. He had been working for thirty years to get together
a wretched five or six thousand francs. This girl was evidently no fool.
One fine morning the son of Touchard, the cooper, at the other end of the
street, came and asked him for the hand of Rose, the second girl. The old
man’s heart began to beat, for the Touchards were rich and in a good
position. He was decidedly lucky with his girls.
The marriage was agreed upon, and it was settled that it should be a grand
affair, and the wedding dinner was to be held at Sainte-Adresse, at Mother
Jusa’s restaurant. It would cost a lot certainly, but never mind, it did not
matter just for once in a way.
But one morning, just as the old man was going home to luncheon with his
two daughters, the door opened suddenly, and Anna appeared. She was well
dressed and looked undeniably pretty and nice. She threw her arms round her
father’s neck before he could say a word, then fell into her sisters’ arms with
many tears and then asked for a plate, so that she might share the family soup.
Taille was moved to tears in his turn and said several times:
“That is right, dear, that is right.”
Then she told them about herself. She did not wish Rose’s wedding to take
place at Sainte-Adresse — certainly not. It should take place at her house
and would cost her father nothing. She had settled everything and arranged
everything, so it was “no good to say any more about it — there!”
“Very well, my dear! very well!” the old man said; “we will leave it so.”
But then he felt some doubt. Would the Touchards consent? But Rose, the
bride-elect, was surprised and asked: “Why should they object, I should like
to know? Just leave that to me; I will talk to Philip about it.”
She mentioned it to her lover the very same day, and he declared it would
suit him exactly. Father and Mother Touchard were naturally delighted at the
idea of a good dinner which would cost them nothing and said:
“You may be quite sure that everything will be in first-rate style.”
They asked to be allowed to bring a friend, Madame Florence, the cook
on the first floor, and Anna agreed to everything.
The wedding was fixed for the last Tuesday of the month.
After the civil formalities and the religious ceremony the wedding party
went to Anna’s house. Among those whom the Tailles had brought was a
cousin of a certain age, a Monsieur Sauvetanin, a man given to philosophical
reflections, serious, and always very self-possessed, and Madame
Lamondois, an old aunt.
Monsieur Sautevanin had been told off to give Anna his arm, as they were
looked upon as the two most important persons in the company.
As soon as they had arrived at the door of Anna’s house she let go her
companion’s arm, and ran on ahead, saying: “I will show you the way,” and
ran upstairs while the invited guests followed more slowly; and, when they
got upstairs, she stood on one side to let them pass, and they rolled their eyes
and turned their heads in all directions to admire this mysterious and
luxurious dwelling.
The table was laid in the drawing-room, as the dining-room had been
thought too small. Extra knives, forks and spoons had been hired from a
neighboring restaurant, and decanters stood full of wine under the rays of the
sun which shone in through the window.
The ladies went into the bedroom to take off their shawls and bonnets, and
Father Touchard, who was standing at the door, made funny and suggestive
signs to the men, with many a wink and nod. Daddy Taille, who thought a
great deal of himself, looked with fatherly pride at his child’s well-furnished
rooms and went from one to the other, holding his hat in his hand, making a
mental inventory of everything, and walking like a verger in a church.
Anna went backward and forward, ran about giving orders and hurrying
on the wedding feast. Soon she appeared at the door of the dining-room and
cried: “Come here, all of you, for a moment,” and as the twelve guests
entered the room they saw twelve glasses of Madeira on a small table.
Rose and her husband had their arms round each other’s waists and were
kissing each other in every corner. Monsieur Sauvetanin never took his eyes
off Anna.
They sat down, and the wedding breakfast began, the relations sitting at
one end of the table and the young people at the other. Madame Touchard, the
mother, presided on the right and the bride on the left. Anna looked after
everybody, saw that the glasses were kept filled and the plates well supplied.
The guests evidently felt a certain respectful embarrassment at the sight of all
the sumptuousness of the rooms and at the lavish manner in which they were
treated. They all ate heartily of the good things provided, but there were no
jokes such as are prevalent. at weddings of that sort; it was all too grand, and
it made them feel uncomfortable. Old Madame Touchard, who was fond of a
bit of fun, tried to enliven matters a little, and at the beginning of the dessert
she exclaimed: “I say, Philip, do sing us something.” The neighbors in their
street considered that he had the finest voice in all Havre.
The bridegroom got up, smiled, and, turning to his sister-in-law, from
politeness and gallantry, tried to think of something suitable for the occasion,
something serious and correct, to harmonize with the seriousness of the
repast.
Anna had a satisfied look on her face, and leaned back in her chair to
listen, and all assumed looks of attention, though prepared to smile should
smiles he called for.
The singer announced “The Accursed Bread,” and, extending his right
arm, which made his coat ruck up into his neck, he began.
It was decidedly long, three verses of eight lines each, with the last line
and the last but one repeated twice.
All went well for the first two verses; they were the usual commonplaces
about bread gained by honest labor and by dishonesty. The aunt and the bride
wept outright. The cook, who was present, at the end of the first verse looked
at a roll which she held in her hand, with streaming eyes, as if it applied to
her, while all applauded vigorously. At the end of the second verse the two
servants, who were standing with their backs to the wall, joined loudly in the
chorus, and the aunt and the bride wept outright.
Daddy Taille blew his nose with the noise of a trombone, and old
Touchard brandished a whole loaf half over the table, and the cook shed
silent tears on the crust which she was still holding.
Amid the general emotion Monsieur Sauvetanin said:
“That is the right sort of song; very different from the nasty, risky things
one generally hears at weddings.”
Anna, who was visibly affected, kissed her hand to her sister and pointed
to her husband with an affectionate nod, as if to congratulate her.
Intoxicated by his success, the young man continued, and unfortunately the
last verse contained words about the “bread of dishonor” gained by young
girls who had been led astray. No one took up the refrain about this bread,
supposed to be eaten with tears, except old Touchard and the two servants.
Anna had grown deadly pale and cast down her eyes, while the bridegroom
looked from one to the other without understanding the reason for this sudden
coldness, and the cook hastily dropped the crust as if it were poisoned.
Monsieur Sauvetanin said solemnly, in order to save the situation: “That
last couplet is not at all necessary”; and Daddy Taille, who had got red up to
his ears, looked round the table fiercely.
Then Anna, her eyes swimming in tears, told the servants in the faltering
voice of a woman trying to stifle her sobs, to bring the champagne.
All the guests were suddenly seized with exuberant joy, and all their faces
became radiant again. And when old Touchard, who had seen, felt and
understood nothing of what was going on, and pointing to the guests so as to
emphasize his words, sang the last words of the refrain:
“Children, I warn you all to eat not of that bread,” the whole company,
when they saw the champagne bottles, with their necks covered with gold
foil, appear, burst out singing, as if electrified by the sight:
“Children, I warn you all to eat not of that bread.”
 THE DOWRY

The marriage of Maitre Simon Lebrument with Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier

was a surprise to no one. Maitre Lebrument had bought out the practice of
Maitre Papillon; naturally, he had to have money to pay for it; and
Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier had three hundred thousand francs clear in
currency, and in bonds payable to bearer.
Maitre Lebrument was a handsome man. He was stylish, although in a
provincial way; but, nevertheless, he was stylish — a rare thing at Boutigny-
le-Rebours.
Mademoiselle Cordier was graceful and fresh-looking, although a trifle
awkward; nevertheless, she was a handsome girl, and one to be desired.
The marriage ceremony turned all Boutigny topsy-turvy. Everybody
admired the young couple, who quickly returned home to domestic felicity,
having decided simply to take a short trip to Paris, after a few days of
retirement.
This tete-a-tete was delightful, Maitre Lebrument having shown just the
proper amount of delicacy. He had taken as his motto: “Everything comes to
him who waits.” He knew how to be at the same time patient and energetic.
His success was rapid and complete.
After four days, Madame Lebrument adored her husband. She could not
get along without him. She would sit on his knees, and taking him by the ears
she would say: “Open your mouth and shut your eyes.” He would open his
mouth wide and partly close his eyes, and he would try to nip her fingers as
she slipped some dainty between his teeth. Then she would give him a kiss,
sweet and long, which would make chills run up and down his spine. And
then, in his turn, he would not have enough caresses to please his wife from
morning to night and from night to morning.
When the first week was over, he said to his young companion:
“If you wish, we will leave for Paris next Tuesday. We will be like two
lovers, we will go to the restaurants, the theatres, the concert halls,
everywhere, everywhere!”
She was ready to dance for joy.
 “Oh! yes, yes. Let us go as soon as possible.”
He continued:
“And then, as we must forget nothing, ask your father to have your dowry
ready; I shall pay Maitre Papillon on this trip.”
She answered:
“All right: I will tell him to-morrow morning.”
And he took her in his arms once more, to renew those sweet games of
love which she had so enjoyed for the past week.
The following Tuesday, father-in-law and mother-in-law went to the
station with their daughter and their son-in-law who were leaving for the
capital.
The father-in-law said:
“I tell you it is very imprudent to carry so much money about in a
pocketbook.” And the young lawyer smiled.
“Don’t worry; I am accustomed to such things. You understand that, in my
profession, I sometimes have as much as a million about me. In this manner,
at least we avoid a great amount of red tape and delay. You needn’t worry.”
The conductor was crying:
“All aboard for Paris!”
They scrambled into a car, where two old ladies were already seated.
Lebrument whispered into his wife’s ear:
“What a bother! I won’t be able to smoke.”
She answered in a low voice
“It annoys me too, but not an account of your cigar.”
The whistle blew and the train started. The trip lasted about an hour,
during which time they did not say very much to each other, as the two old
ladies did not go to sleep.
As soon as they were in front of the Saint-Lazare Station, Maitre
Lebrument said to his wife:
“Dearie, let us first go over to the Boulevard and get something to eat;
then we can quietly return and get our trunk and bring it to the hotel.”
She immediately assented.
“Oh! yes. Let’s eat at the restaurant. Is it far?”
He answered:
“Yes, it’s quite a distance, but we will take the omnibus.”
She was surprised:
“Why don’t we take a cab?”
 He began to scold her smilingly:
“Is that the way you save money? A cab for a five minutes’ ride at six
cents a minute! You would deprive yourself of nothing.”
“That’s so,” she said, a little embarrassed.
A big omnibus was passing by, drawn by three big horses, which were
trotting along. Lebrument called out:
“Conductor! Conductor!”
The heavy carriage stopped. And the young lawyer, pushing his wife, said
to her quickly:
“Go inside; I’m going up on top, so that I may smoke at least one cigarette
before lunch.”
She had no time to answer. The conductor, who had seized her by the arm
to help her up the step, pushed her inside, and she fell into a seat,
bewildered, looking through the back window at the feet of her husband as he
climbed up to the top of the vehicle.
And she sat there motionless, between a fat man who smelled of cheap
tobacco and an old woman who smelled of garlic.
All the other passengers were lined up in silence — a grocer’s boy, a
young girl, a soldier, a gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles and a big silk
hat, two ladies with a self-satisfied and crabbed look, which seemed to say:
“We are riding in this thing, but we don’t have to,” two sisters of charity and
an undertaker. They looked like a collection of caricatures.
The jolting of the wagon made them wag their heads and the shaking of the
wheels seemed to stupefy them — they all looked as though they were
asleep.
The young woman remained motionless.
“Why didn’t he come inside with me?” she was saying to herself. An
unaccountable sadness seemed to be hanging over her. He really need not
have acted so.
The sisters motioned to the conductor to stop, and they got off one after the
other, leaving in their wake the pungent smell of camphor. The bus started tip
and soon stopped again. And in got a cook, red-faced and out of breath. She
sat down and placed her basket of provisions on her knees. A strong odor of
dish-water filled the vehicle.
“It’s further than I imagined,” thought Jeanne.
The undertaker went out, and was replaced by a coachman who seemed to
bring the atmosphere of the stable with him. The young girl had as a
successor a messenger, the odor of whose feet showed that he was
continually walking.
The lawyer’s wife began to feel ill at ease, nauseated, ready to cry
without knowing why.
Other persons left and others entered. The stage went on through
interminable streets, stopping at stations and starting again.
“How far it is!” thought Jeanne. “I hope he hasn’t gone to sleep! He has
been so tired the last few days.”
Little by little all the passengers left. She was left alone, all alone. The
conductor cried:
“Vaugirard!”
Seeing that she did not move, he repeated:
“Vaugirard!”
She looked at him, understanding that he was speaking to her, as there was
no one else there. For the third time the man said:
“Vaugirard!”
Then she asked:
“Where are we?”
He answered gruffly:
“We’re at Vaugirard, of course! I have been yelling it for the last half
hour!”
“Is it far from the Boulevard?” she said.
“Which boulevard?”
“The Boulevard des Italiens.”
“We passed that a long time ago!”
“Would you mind telling my husband?”
“Your husband! Where is he?”
“On the top of the bus.”
“On the top! There hasn’t been anybody there for a long time.”
She started, terrified.
“What? That’s impossible! He got on with me. Look well! He must be
there.”
The conductor was becoming uncivil:
“Come on, little one, you’ve talked enough! You can find ten men for
every one that you lose. Now run along. You’ll find another one somewhere.”
Tears were coming to her eyes. She insisted:
 “But, monsieur, you are mistaken; I assure you that you must be mistaken.
He had a big portfolio under his arm.”
The man began to laugh:
“A big portfolio! Oh, yes! He got off at the Madeleine. He got rid of you,
all right! Ha! ha! ha!”
The stage had stopped. She got out and, in spite of herself, she looked up
instinctively to the roof of the bus. It was absolutely deserted.
Then she began to cry, and, without thinking that anybody was listening or
watching her, she said out loud:
“What is going to become of me?”
An inspector approached:
“What’s the matter?”
The conductor answered, in a bantering tone of voice:
“It’s a lady who got left by her husband during the trip.”
The other continued:
“Oh! that’s nothing. You go about your business.”
Then he turned on his heels and walked away.
She began to walk straight ahead, too bewildered, too crazed even to
understand what had happened to her. Where was she to go? What could she
do? What could have happened to him? How could he have made such a
mistake? How could he have been so forgetful?
She had two francs in her pocket. To whom could she go? Suddenly she
remembered her cousin Barral, one of the assistants in the offices of the
Ministry of the Navy.
She had just enough to pay for a cab. She drove to his house. He met her
just as he was leaving for his office. He was carrying a large portfolio under
his arm, just like Lebrument.
She jumped out of the carriage.
“Henry!” she cried.
He stopped, astonished:
“Jeanne! Here — all alone! What are you doing? Where have you come
from?”
Her eyes full of tears, she stammered:
“My husband has just got lost!”
“Lost! Where?”
“On an omnibus.”
“On an omnibus?”
 Weeping, she told him her whole adventure.
He listened, thought, and then asked:
“Was his mind clear this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Did he have much money with him?”
“Yes, he was carrying my dowry.”
“Your dowry! The whole of it?”
“The whole of it — in order to pay for the practice which he bought.”
“Well, my dear cousin, by this time your husband must be well on his way
to Belgium.”
She could not understand. She kept repeating:
“My husband — you say— “
“I say that he has disappeared with your — your capital — that’s all!”
She stood there, a prey to conflicting emotions, sobbing.
“Then he is — he is — he is a villain!”
And, faint from excitement, she leaned her head on her cousin’s shoulder
and wept.
As people were stopping to look at them, he pushed her gently into the
vestibule of his house, and, supporting her with his arm around her waist, he
led her up the stairs, and as his astonished servant opened the door, he
ordered:
“Sophie, run to the restaurant and get a luncheon for two. I am not going to
the office to-day.”
 HAUTOT SENIOR AND HAUTOT JUNIOR
(1889)
I.

In front of the building, half farmhouse, half manor-house, one of those rural
habitations of a mixed character which were all but seigneurial, and which
are at the present time occupied by large cultivators, the dogs, lashed beside
the apple-trees in the orchard near the house, kept barking and howling at the
sight of the shooting-bags carried by the gamekeepers and the boys. In the
spacious dining-room kitchen, Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior, M. Bermont,
the tax-collector, and M. Mondaru, the notary, were taking a bite and drinking
some wine before going out to shoot, for it was the opening day.
Hautot Senior, proud of all his possessions, talked boastfully beforehand
of the game which his guests were going to find on his lands. He was a big
Norman, one of those powerful, ruddy, bony men, who can lift wagonloads of
apples on their shoulders. Half peasant, half gentleman, rich, respected,
influential, invested with authority, he made his son César go as far as the
third form at school, so that he might be an educated man, and there he had
brought his studies to a stop for fear of his becoming a fine gentleman and
paying no attention to the land.
César Hautot, almost as tall as his father, but thinner, was a good son,
docile, content with everything, full of admiration, respect, and deference for
the wishes and opinions of his sire.
M. Bermont, the tax-collector, a stout little man, who showed on his red
cheeks a thin network of violet veins resembling the tributaries and the
winding courses of rivers on maps, asked:
“And hares — are there any hares on it?”
Hautot Senior answered: “As many as you like, especially in the Puysatier
lands.”
“Which direction shall we begin in?” asked the notary, a jolly notary, fat
and pale, big-paunched too, and strapped up in an entirely new hunting
costume bought at Rouen.
“Well, that way, through these grounds. We will drive the partridges into
the plain, and we will beat there again.”
 And Hautot Senior rose up. They all followed his example, took their guns
out of the corners, examined the locks, stamped with their feet in order to feel
themselves firmer in their boots which were rather hard, not having as yet
been rendered flexible by the heat of the blood. Then they went out; and the
dogs, standing erect at the ends of their leashes, gave vent to piercing howls
while beating the air with their paws.
They set forth for the lands referred to. These consisted of a little glen, or
rather a long undulating stretch of inferior soil, which had on that account
remained uncultivated, furrowed with mountain-torrents, covered with ferns,
an excellent preserve for game.
The sportsmen took up their positions at some distance from each other,
Hautot Senior posting himself at the right, Hautot Junior at the left, and the
two guests in the middle. The keeper and those who carried the game-bags
followed. It was the anxious moment when the first shot is awaited, when the
heart beats a little, while the nervous finger keeps feeling at the trigger every
second.
Suddenly the shot went off. Hautot Senior had fired. They all stopped, and
saw a partridge breaking off from a covey which was rushing along at great
speed to fall down into a ravine under a thick growth of brushwood. The
sportsman, becoming excited, rushed forward with rapid strides, thrusting
aside the briers which stood in his path, and disappeared in his turn into the
thicket in quest of his game.
Almost at the same instant, a second shot was heard.
“Ha! ha! the rascal!” exclaimed M. Bermont, “he will unearth a hare
down there.”
They all waited, with their eyes riveted on the heap of branches through
which their gaze failed to penetrate.
The notary, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, shouted:
“Have you got them?”
Hautot Senior made no response.
Then César, turning toward the keeper, said to him:
“Just go and assist him, Joseph. We must keep walking in a straight line.
We’ll wait.”
And Joseph, an old stump of a man, lean and knotty, all of whose joints
formed protuberances, proceeded at an easy pace down the ravine, searching
at every opening through which a passage could be effected with the
cautiousness of a fox. Then, suddenly, he cried:
 “Oh! come! come! an unfortunate thing has occurred.”
They all hurried forward, plunging through the briers.
The elder Hautot, who had fallen on his side, in a fainting condition, kept
both his hands over his stomach, from which flowed down upon the grass
through the linen vest torn by the lead, long streamlets of blood. As he was
laying down his gun, in order to seize the partridge within reach of him, he
had let the firearm fall, and the second discharge, going off with the shock,
had torn open his entrails. They drew him out of the trench; they removed his
clothes and they saw a frightful wound, through which the intestines came
out. Then, after having bandaged him the best way they could, they brought
him back to his own house, and awaited the doctor, who had been sent for, as
well as a priest.
When the doctor arrived, he gravely shook his head, and, turning toward
young Hautot, who was sobbing on a chair:
“My poor boy,” said he, “this does not look well.”
But, when the dressing was finished, the wounded man moved his fingers,
opened his mouth, then his eyes, cast around him troubled, haggard glances,
then appeared to search about in his memory, to recollect, to understand, and
he murmured:
“Ah! good God! this has done for me!”
The doctor held his hand.
“Why no, why no, some days of rest merely — it will be nothing.”
Hautot returned:
“It has done for me! My stomach is split open! I know it well.”
Then, all of a sudden:
“I want to talk to the son, if I have the time.”
Hautot Junior, in spite of himself, shed tears, and kept repeating like a
little boy:
“P’pa, p’pa, poor p’pa!”
But the father, in a firmer tone:
“Come! stop crying — this is not the time for it. I have to talk to you. Sit
down there quite close to me. It will be quickly done, and I shall be more
calm. As for the rest of you, kindly give me one minute.”
They all went out, leaving the father and son face to face.
As soon as they were alone:
“Listen, son! you are twenty-four years; one can say things like this to you.
And then there is not such mystery about these matters as we import into
them. You know well that your mother has been seven years dead, isn’t that
so? and that I am not more than forty-five years myself, seeing that I got
married at nineteen? Is not that true?”
The son faltered:
“Yes, it is true.”
“So then your mother has been seven years dead, and I have remained a
widower. Well! a man like me cannot remain without a wife at thirty-eight,
isn’t that true?”
The son replied:
“Yes, it is true.”
The father, out of breath, quite pale, and his face contracted with suffering,
went on:
“God! what pain I feel! Well, you understand. Man is not made to live
alone, but I did not want to take a successor to your mother, since I promised
her not to do so. Then — you understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“So, I kept a young girl at Rouen, Rue d’Eperlan 18, in the third story, the
second door, — I tell you all this, don’t forget, — but a young girl, who has
been very nice to me, loving, devoted, a true woman, eh? You comprehend,
my lad?”
“Yes, father.”
“So then, if I am carried off, I owe something to her, something
substantial, that will place her in a safe position. You understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“I tell you that she is an honest girl, and that, but for you, and the
remembrance of your mother, and again but for the house in which we three
lived, I would have brought her here, and then married her, for certain —
listen — listen, my lad. I might have made a will — I haven’t done so. I did
not wish to do so — for it is not necessary to write down things — things of
this sort — it is too hurtful to the legitimate children — and then it embroils
everything — it ruins everyone! Look you, the stamped paper, there’s no need
of it — never make use of it. If I am rich, it is because I have not made waste
of what I have during my own life. You understand, my son?”
“Yes, father.”
“Listen again — listen well to me! So then, I have made no will — I did
not desire to do so — and then I knew what you were; you have a good heart;
you are not niggardly, not too near, in any way; I said to myself that when my
end approached I would tell you all about it, and that I would beg of you not
to forget the girl. And then listen again! When I am gone, make your way to
the place at once — and make such arrangements that she may not blame my
memory. You have plenty of means. I leave it to you — I leave you enough.
Listen! You won’t find her at home every day in the week. She works at
Madame Moreau’s in the Rue Beauvoisine. Go there on a Thursday. That is
the day she expects me. It has been my day for the past six years. Poor little
thing! she will weep! — I say all this to you because I have known you so
well, my son. One does not tell these things in public either to the notary or to
the priest. They happen — everyone knows that — but they are not talked
about, save in case of necessity. Then there is no outsider in the secret,
nobody except the family, because the family consists of one person alone.
You understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, father.”
“Do you swear it?”
“Yes, father.”
“I beg of you, I implore of you, so do not forget. I bind you to it.”
“No, father.”
“You will go yourself. I want you to make sure of everything.”
“Yes, father.”
“And, then, you will see — you will see what she will explain to you. As
for me, I can say no more to you. You have vowed to do it.”
“Yes, father.”
“That’s good, my son. Embrace me. Farewell. I am going to break up, I’m
sure. Tell them they may come in.”
Young Hautot embraced his father, groaning while he did so; then, always
docile, he opened the door, and the priest appeared in a white surplice,
carrying the holy oils.
But the dying man had closed his eyes and he refused to open them again,
he refused to answer, he refused to show, even by a sign, that he understood.
He had spoken enough, this man; he could speak no more. Besides he now
felt his heart calm; he wanted to die in peace. What need had he to make a
confession to the deputy of God, since he had just done so to his son, who
constituted his own family?
 He received the last rites, was purified and absolved, in the midst of his
friends and his servants on their bended knees, without any movement of his
face indicating that he still lived.
He expired about midnight, after four hours’ convulsive movements,
which showed that he must have suffered dreadfully in his last moments.

II.

It was on the following Tuesday that they buried him; the shooting had
opened on Sunday. On his return home, after having accompanied his father
to the cemetery, César Hautot spent the rest of the day weeping. He scarcely
slept at all on the following night, and he felt so sad on awakening that he
asked himself how he could go on living.
However, he kept thinking until evening that, in order to obey the last wish
of his father, he ought to repair to Rouen next day, and see this girl Catholine
Donet, who resided in the Rue d’Eperlan in the third story, second door. He
had repeated to himself in a whisper, just as a little boy repeats a prayer, this
name and address a countless number of times, so that he might not forget
them, and he ended by lisping them continually, without being able to stop or
to think of what they were, so much were his tongue and his mind possessed
by the commission.
Accordingly, on the following day, about eight o’clock, he ordered
Graindorge to be yoked to the tilbury, and set forth at the quick trotting pace
of the heavy Norman horse, along the highroad from Ainville to Rouen. He
wore his black frock-coat, a tall silk hat on his head, and breeches with
straps; and he did not, on account of the occasion, dispense with the
handsome costume, the blue overalls which swelled in the wind, protecting
the cloth from dust and from stains, and which was to be removed quickly the
moment he jumped out of the coach.
He entered Rouen accordingly just as it was striking ten o’clock, drew up,
as he had usually done, at the Hôtel des Bon-Enfants, in the Rue des Trois-
Marcs, submitted to the hugs of the landlord and his wife and their five
children, for they had heard the melancholy news. After that, he had to tell
them all the particulars about the accident, which caused him to shed tears, to
repel all the proffered attentions which they sought to thrust upon him merely
because he was wealthy, and to decline even the breakfast they wanted him to
partake of, thus wounding their sensibilities.
Then, having wiped the dust off his hat, brushed his coat and removed the
mud stains from his boots, he set forth in search of the Rue d’Eperlan,
without venturing to make inquiries from anyone, for fear of being recognized
and arousing suspicions.
At length, being unable to find the place, he saw a priest passing by, and,
trusting to the professional discretion which churchmen possess, he
questioned the ecclesiastic.
He had only a hundred steps farther to go; it was exactly the second street
to the right.
Then he hesitated. Up to that moment, he had obeyed, like a mere animal,
the expressed wish of the deceased. Now he felt quite agitated, confused,
humiliated, at the idea of finding himself — the son — in the presence of this
woman who had been his father’s mistress. All the morality which lies
buried in our breasts, heaped up at the bottom of our sensuous emotions by
centuries of hereditary instruction, all that he had been taught, since he had
learned his catechism, about creatures of evil life, the instinctive contempt
which every man entertains for them, even though he may marry one of them,
all the narrow honesty of the peasant in his character, was stirred up within
him and held him back, making him grow red with shame.
But he said to himself:
“I promised the father, I must not break my promise.”
Then he gave a push to the door of the house bearing the number 18, which
stood ajar, discovered a gloomy-looking staircase, ascended three flights,
perceived a door, then a second door, came upon the string of a bell, and
pulled it. The ringing, which resounded in the apartment before which he
stood, sent a shiver through his frame. The door was opened, and he found
himself facing a young lady very well dressed, a brunette with a fresh
complexion, who gazed at him with eyes of astonishment.
He did not know what to say to her, and she, who suspected nothing, and
who was waiting for him to speak, did not invite him to come in. They stood
looking thus at one another for nearly half a minute, at the end of which she
said in a questioning tone:
“You have something to tell me, Monsieur?”
He falteringly replied:
“I am M. Hautot’s son.”
 She gave a start, turned pale, and stammered out as if she had known him
for a long time:
“Monsieur César?”
“Yes.”
“And what next?”
“I have come to speak to you on the part of my father.”
She articulated:
“Oh, my God!”
She then drew back so that he might enter. He shut the door and followed
her into the interior. Then he saw a little boy of four or five years playing
with a cat, seated on the floor in front of a stove, from which rose the steam
of dishes which were being kept hot.
“Take a seat,” she said.
He sat down.
She asked:
“Well?”
He no longer ventured to speak, keeping his eyes fixed on the table which
stood in the center of the room, with three covers laid on it, one of which
was for a child. He glanced at the chair which had its back turned to the fire.
They had been expecting him. That was his bread which he saw, and which
he recognized near the fork, for the crust had been removed on account of
Hautot’s bad teeth. Then, raising his eyes, he noticed on the wall his father’s
portrait, the large photograph taken at Paris the year of the exhibition, the
same as that which hung above the bed in the sleeping apartment at Ainville.
The young woman again asked:
“Well, Monsieur César?”
He kept staring at her. Her face was livid with anguish; and she waited,
her hands trembling with fear.
Then he took courage.
“Well, Mam’zelle, papa died on Sunday last just after he had opened the
shooting.”
She was so much overwhelmed that she did not move. After a silence of a
few seconds, she faltered in an almost inaudible tone:
“Oh! it is not possible!”
Then, on a sudden, tears showed themselves in her eyes, and covering her
face with her hands, she burst out sobbing.
 At that point the little boy turned round, and, seeing his mother weeping,
began to howl. Then, realizing that this sudden trouble was brought about by
the stranger, he rushed at César, caught hold of his breeches with one hand
and with the other hit him with all his strength on the thigh. And César
remained agitated, deeply affected, with this woman mourning for his father
at one side of him, and the little boy defending his mother at the other. He felt
their emotion taking possession of himself, and his eyes were beginning to
brim over with the same sorrow; so, to recover his self-command, he began
to talk:
“Yes,” he said, “the accident occurred on Sunday, at eight o’clock— “
And he told, as if she were listening to him, all the facts without forgetting
a single detail, mentioning the most trivial matters with the minuteness of a
countryman. And the child still kept assailing him, making kicks at his ankles.
When he came to the time at which his father had spoken about her, her
attention was caught by hearing her own name, and, uncovering her face, she
said:
“Pardon me! I was not following you; I would like to know — if you do
not mind beginning over again.”
He related everything at great length, with stoppages, breaks, and
reflections of his own from time to time. She listened to him eagerly now
perceiving with a woman’s keen sensibility all the sudden changes of fortune
which his narrative indicated, and trembling with horror, every now and then,
exclaiming:
“Oh, my God!”
The little fellow, believing that she had calmed down, ceased beating
César, in order to catch his mother’s hand, and he listened, too, as if he
understood.
When the narrative was finished, young Hautot continued:
“Now, we will settle matters together in accordance with his wishes.
Listen: I am well off, he has left me plenty of means. I don’t want you to have
anything to complain about— “
But she quickly interrupted him:
“Oh! Monsieur César, Monsieur César, not today. I am cut to the heart —
another time — another day. No, not to-day. If I accept, listen! ’Tis not for
myself — no, no, no, I swear to you. ’Tis for the child. Besides this
provision will be put to his account.”
Thereupon César scared, divined the truth, and stammering:
 “So then— ’tis his — the child?”
“Why, yes,” she said.
And Hautot Junior gazed at his brother with a confused emotion, intense
and painful.
After a lengthened silence, for she had begun to weep afresh, César, quite
embarrassed, went on:
“Well, then, Mam’zelle Donet, I am going. When would you wish to talk
this over with me?”
She exclaimed:
“Oh! no, don’t go! don’t go! Don’t leave me all alone with Emile. I would
die of grief. I have no longer anyone, anyone but my child. Oh! what
wretchedness, what wretchedness. Monsieur César! Stop! Sit down again.
You will say something more to me. You will tell me what he was doing over
there all the week.”
And César resumed his seat, accustomed to obey.
She drew over another chair for herself in front of the stove, where the
dishes had all this time been simmering, took Emile upon her knees, and
asked César a thousand questions about his father with reference to matters
of an intimate nature, which made him feel, without reasoning on the subject,
that she had loved Hautot with all the strength of her frail woman’s heart.
And, by the natural concatenation of his ideas — which were rather
limited in number — he recurred once more to the accident, and set about
telling the story over again with all the same details.
When he said: “He had a hole in his stomach — you could put your two
fists into it,” she gave vent to a sort of shriek, and the tears gushed forth again
from her eyes.
Then, seized by the contagion of her grief, César began to weep, too, and
as tears always soften the fibers of the heart, he bent over Emile whose
forehead was close to his own mouth and kissed him.
The mother, recovering her breath, murmured:
“Poor lad, he is an orphan now!”
“And so am I,” said César.
And they ceased to talk.
But suddenly the practical instinct of the housewife, accustomed to be
thoughtful about many things, revived in the young woman’s breast.
“You have perhaps taken nothing all the morning, Monsieur César.”
“No, Mam’zelle.”
 “Oh! you must be hungry. You will eat a morsel.”
“Thanks,” he said, “I am not hungry; I have had too much trouble.”
She replied:
“In spite of sorrow, we must live. You will not refuse to let me get
something for you! And then you will remain a little longer. When you are
gone I don’t know what will become of me.”
He yielded after some further resistance, and, sitting down with his back
to the fire, facing her, he ate a plateful of tripe, which had been bubbling in
the stove, and drank a glass of red wine. But he would not allow her to
uncork the bottle of white wine. He several times wiped the mouth of the
little boy, who had smeared all his chin with sauce.
As he was rising up to go, he asked:
“When would you like me to come back to speak about this business to
you, Mam’zelle Donet?”
“If it is all the same to you, say next Thursday, Monsieur César. In that
way I would lose none of my time, as I always have my Thursdays free.”
“That will suit me — next Thursday.”
“You will come to lunch. Won’t you?”
“Oh! On that point I can’t give you a promise.”
“The reason I suggested it is that people can chat better when they are
eating. One has more time, too.”
“Well, be it so. About twelve o’clock, then.” And he took his departure,
after he had again kissed little Emile, and pressed Mademoiselle Donet’s
hand.

III.

The week appeared long to César Hautot. He had never before found himself
alone, and the isolation seemed to him insupportable. Till now, he had lived
at his father’s side, just like his shadow, followed him into the fields,
superintended the execution of his orders, and, when they had been a short
time separated, again met him at dinner. They had spent the evenings smoking
their pipes, face to face with one another, chatting about horses, cows, or
sheep, and the grip of their hands when they rose up in the morning might
have been regarded as a manifestation of deep family affection on both sides.
 Now César was alone, he went vacantly through the process of dressing
the soil in autumn, every moment expecting to see the tall gesticulating
silhouette of his father rising up at the end of a plain. To kill time, he entered
the houses of his neighbors, told about the accident to all who had not heard
of it, and sometimes repeated it to the others. Then, after he had finished his
occupations and his reflections, he would sit down at the side of the road,
asking himself whether this kind of life was going to last forever.
He frequently thought of Mademoiselle Donet. He liked her. He
considered her thoroughly respectable, a gentle and honest young woman, as
his father had said. Yes, undoubtedly she was an honest girl. He resolved to
act handsomely toward her, and to give her two thousand francs a year,
settling the capital on the child. He even experienced a certain pleasure in
thinking that he was going to see her on the following Thursday and arrange
this matter with her. And then the notion of this brother, this little chap of
five, who was his father’s son, plagued him, annoyed him a little, and at the
same time, excited him. He had, as it were, a family in this brat, sprung from
a clandestine alliance, who would never bear the name of Hautot, a family
which he might take or leave, just as he pleased, but which would recall his
father.
And so, when he saw himself on the road to Rouen on Thursday morning,
carried along by Graindorge trotting with clattering foot-beats, he felt his
heart lighter, more at peace than he had hitherto felt it since his bereavement.
On entering Mademoiselle Donet’s apartment, he saw the table laid as on
the previous Thursday, with the sole difference that the crust had not been
removed from the bread. He pressed the young woman’s hand, kissed Emile
on the cheeks, and sat down, more or less as if he were in his own house, his
heart swelling in the same way. Mademoiselle Donet seemed to him a little
thinner and paler. She must have grieved sorely. She wore now an air of
constraint in his presence, as if she understood what she had not felt the week
before under the first blow of her misfortune, and she exhibited an excessive
deference toward him, a mournful humility, and made touching efforts to
please him, as if to pay him back by her attentions for the kindness he had
manifested toward her. They were a long time at lunch talking over the
business which had brought him there. She did not want so much money. It
was too much. She earned enough to live on herself, but she only wished that
Emile might find a few sous awaiting him when he grew big. César held out,
however, and even added a gift of a thousand francs for herself for the
expense of mourning.
When he had taken his coffee, she asked:
“Do you smoke?”
“Yes — I have my pipe.”
He felt in his pocket. Good God! He had forgotten it! He was becoming
quite woe-begone about it when she offered him a pipe of his father’s that
had been shut up in a cupboard. He accepted it, took it up in his hand,
recognized it, smelled it, spoke of its quality in a tone of emotion, filled it
with tobacco, and lighted it. Then he set Emile astride on his knee, and made
him play the cavalier, while she removed the tablecloth and put the soiled
plates at one end of the sideboard in order to wash them as soon as he was
gone.
About three o’clock, he rose up with regret, quite annoyed at the thought
of having to go.
“Well! Mademoiselle Donet,” he said, “I wish you good evening, and am
delighted to have found you like this.”
She remained standing before him, blushing, much affected, and gazed at
him while she thought of the other.
“Shall we not see one another again?” she said.
He replied simply:
“Why, yes, Mam’zelle, if it gives you pleasure.”
“Certainly, Monsieur César. Will next Thursday suit you then?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Donet.”
“You will come to lunch, of course?”
“Well — if you are so kind as to invite me, I can’t refuse.”
“It is understood, then, Monsieur César — next Thursday, at twelve, the
same as to-day.”
“Thursday at twelve, Mam’zelle Donet!”
 THE DIARY OF A MADMAN

He was dead — the head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate whose
irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France. Advocates,
young counsellors, judges had greeted him at sight of his large, thin, pale face
lighted up by two sparkling deep-set eyes, bowing low in token of respect.
He had passed his life in pursuing crime and in protecting the weak.
Swindlers and murderers had no more redoubtable enemy, for he seemed to
read the most secret thoughts of their minds.
He was dead, now, at the age of eighty-two, honored by the homage and
followed by the regrets of a whole people. Soldiers in red trousers had
escorted him to the tomb and men in white cravats had spoken words and
shed tears that seemed to be sincere beside his grave.
But here is the strange paper found by the dismayed notary in the desk
where he had kept the records of great criminals! It was entitled: WHY?
20th June, 1851. I have just left court. I have condemned Blondel to death!
Now, why did this man kill his five children? Frequently one meets with
people to whom the destruction of life is a pleasure. Yes, yes, it should be a
pleasure, the greatest of all, perhaps, for is not killing the next thing to
creating? To make and to destroy! These two words contain the history of the
universe, all the history of worlds, all that is, all! Why is it not intoxicating to
kill?
25th June. To think that a being is there who lives, who walks, who runs.
A being? What is a being? That animated thing, that bears in it the principle
of motion and a will ruling that motion. It is attached to nothing, this thing. Its
feet do not belong to the ground. It is a grain of life that moves on the earth,
and this grain of life, coming I know not whence, one can destroy at one’s
will. Then nothing — nothing more. It perishes, it is finished.
26th June. Why then is it a crime to kill? Yes, why? On the contrary, it is
the law of nature. The mission of every being is to kill; he kills to live, and
he kills to kill. The beast kills without ceasing, all day, every instant of his
existence. Man kills without ceasing, to nourish himself; but since he needs,
besides, to kill for pleasure, he has invented hunting! The child kills the
insects he finds, the little birds, all the little animals that come in his way.
But this does not suffice for the irresistible need to massacre that is in us. It
is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this need was
satisfied by human sacrifices. Now the requirements of social life have made
murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin! But as we cannot live
without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve
ourselves, from time to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters
another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and that
intoxicates civilians, women and children, who read, by lamplight at night,
the feverish story of massacre.
One might suppose that those destined to accomplish these butcheries of
men would be despised! No, they are loaded with honors. They are clad in
gold and in resplendent garments; they wear plumes on their heads and
ornaments on their breasts, and they are given crosses, rewards, titles of
every kind. They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the
crowd, solely because their mission is to shed human blood; They drag
through the streets their instruments of death, that the passer-by, clad in black,
looks on with envy. For to kill is the great law set by nature in the heart of
existence! There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing!
30th June. To kill is the law, because nature loves eternal youth. She
seems to cry in all her unconscious acts: “Quick! quick! quick!” The more
she destroys, the more she renews herself.
2d July. A human being — what is a human being? Through thought it is a
reflection of all that is; through memory and science it is an abridged edition
of the universe whose history it represents, a mirror of things and of nations,
each human being becomes a microcosm in the macrocosm.
3d July. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill; to have there
before one the living, thinking being; to make therein a little hole, nothing but
a little hole, to see that red thing flow which is the blood, which makes life;
and to have before one only a heap of limp flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!
5th August. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by
the spoken word, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the knife, I,
I, if I should do as all the assassins have done whom I have smitten, I — I —
who would know it?
10th August. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, me,
me, especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away
with?
 15th August. The temptation has come to me. It pervades my whole being;
my hands tremble with the desire to kill.
22d August. I could resist no longer. I killed a little creature as an
experiment, for a beginning. Jean, my servant, had a goldfinch in a cage hung
in the office window. I sent him on an errand, and I took the little bird in my
hand, in my hand where I felt its heart beat. It was warm. I went up to my
room. From time to time I squeezed it tighter; its heart beat faster; this was
atrocious and delicious. I was near choking it. But I could not see the blood.
Then I took scissors, short-nail scissors, and I cut its throat with three
slits, quite gently. It opened its bill, it struggled to escape me, but I held it,
oh! I held it — I could have held a mad dog — and I saw the blood trickle.
And then I did as assassins do — real ones. I washed the scissors, I
washed my hands. I sprinkled water and took the body, the corpse, to the
garden to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry-plant. It will never be found.
Every day I shall eat a strawberry from that plant. How one can enjoy life
when one knows how!
My servant cried; he thought his bird flown. How could he suspect me?
Ah! ah!
25th August. I must kill a man! I must —
30th August. It is done. But what a little thing! I had gone for a walk in the
forest of Vernes. I was thinking of nothing, literally nothing. A child was in
the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and butter.
He stops to see me pass and says, “Good-day, Mr. President.”
And the thought enters my head, “Shall I kill him?”
I answer: “You are alone, my boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All alone in the wood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The wish to kill him intoxicated me like wine. I approached him quite
softly, persuaded that he was going to run away. And, suddenly, I seized him
by the throat. He looked at me with terror in his eyes — such eyes! He held
my wrists in his little hands and his body writhed like a feather over the fire.
Then he moved no more. I threw the body in the ditch, and some weeds on
top of it. I returned home, and dined well. What a little thing it was! In the
evening I was very gay, light, rejuvenated; I passed the evening at the
Prefect’s. They found me witty. But I have not seen blood! I am tranquil.
 31st August. The body has been discovered. They are hunting for the
assassin. Ah! ah!
1st September. Two tramps have been arrested. Proofs are lacking.
2d September. The parents have been to see me. They wept! Ah! ah!
6th October. Nothing has been discovered. Some strolling vagabond must
have done the deed. Ah! ah! If I had seen the blood flow, it seems to me I
should be tranquil now! The desire to kill is in my blood; it is like the
passion of youth at twenty.
20th October. Yet another. I was walking by the river, after breakfast. And
I saw, under a willow, a fisherman asleep. It was noon. A spade was
standing in a potato-field near by, as if expressly, for me.
I took it. I returned; I raised it like a club, and with one blow of the edge I
cleft the fisherman’s head. Oh! he bled, this one! Rose-colored blood. It
flowed into the water, quite gently. And I went away with a grave step. If I
had been seen! Ah! ah! I should have made an excellent assassin.
25th October. The affair of the fisherman makes a great stir. His nephew,
who fished with him, is charged with the murder.
26th October. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty.
Everybody in town believes it. Ah! ah!
27th October. The nephew makes a very poor witness. He had gone to the
village to buy bread and cheese, he declared. He swore that his uncle had
been killed in his absence! Who would believe him?
28th October. The nephew has all but confessed, they have badgered him
so. Ah! ah! justice!
15th November. There are overwhelming proofs against the nephew, who
was his uncle’s heir. I shall preside at the sessions.
25th January. To death! to death! to death! I have had him condemned to
death! Ah! ah! The advocate-general spoke like an angel! Ah! ah! Yet
another! I shall go to see him executed!
10th March. It is done. They guillotined him this morning. He died very
well! very well! That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a man’s head
cut off!
Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let myself
be caught.
The manuscript contained yet other pages, but without relating any new
crime.
 Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare
that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much
to be feared as this monstrous lunatic.
 THE MASK

There was a masquerade ball at the Elysee-Montmartre that evening. It was

the ‘Mi-Careme’, and the crowds were pouring into the brightly lighted
passage which leads to the dance ball, like water flowing through the open
lock of a canal. The loud call of the orchestra, bursting like a storm of sound,
shook the rafters, swelled through the whole neighborhood and awoke, in the
streets and in the depths of the houses, an irresistible desire to jump, to get
warm, to have fun, which slumbers within each human animal.
The patrons came from every quarter of Paris; there were people of all
classes who love noisy pleasures, a little low and tinged with debauch.
There were clerks and girls — girls of every description, some wearing
common cotton, some the finest batiste; rich girls, old and covered with
diamonds, and poor girls of sixteen, full of the desire to revel, to belong to
men, to spend money. Elegant black evening suits, in search of fresh or faded
but appetizing novelty, wandering through the excited crowds, looking,
searching, while the masqueraders seemed moved above all by the desire for
amusement. Already the far-famed quadrilles had attracted around them a
curious crowd. The moving hedge which encircled the four dancers swayed
in and out like a snake, sometimes nearer and sometimes farther away,
according to the motions of the performers. The two women, whose lower
limbs seemed to be attached to their bodies by rubber springs, were making
wonderful and surprising motions with their legs. Their partners hopped and
skipped about, waving their arms about. One could imagine their panting
breath beneath their masks.
One of them, who had taken his place in the most famous quadrille, as
substitute for an absent celebrity, the handsome “Songe-au-Gosse,” was
trying to keep up with the tireless “Arete-de-Veau” and was making strange
fancy steps which aroused the joy and sarcasm of the audience.
He was thin, dressed like a dandy, with a pretty varnished mask on his
face. It had a curly blond mustache and a wavy wig. He looked like a wax
figure from the Musee Grevin, like a strange and fantastic caricature of the
charming young man of fashion plates, and he danced with visible effort,
clumsily, with a comical impetuosity. He appeared rusty beside the others
when he tried to imitate their gambols: he seemed overcome by rheumatism,
as heavy as a great Dane playing with greyhounds. Mocking bravos
encouraged him. And he, carried away with enthusiasm, jigged about with
such frenzy that suddenly, carried away by a wild spurt, he pitched head
foremost into the living wall formed by the audience, which opened up
before him to allow him to pass, then closed around the inanimate body of the
dancer, stretched out on his face.
Some men picked him up and carried him away, calling for a doctor. A
gentleman stepped forward, young and elegant, in well-fitting evening
clothes, with large pearl studs. “I am a professor of the Faculty of
Medicine,” he said in a modest voice. He was allowed to pass, and he
entered a small room full of little cardboard boxes, where the still lifeless
dancer had been stretched cut on some chairs. The doctor at first wished to
take off the mask, and he noticed that it was attached in a complicated
manner, with a perfect network of small metal wires which cleverly bound it
to his wig and covered the whole head. Even the neck was imprisoned in a
false skin which continued the chin and was painted the color of flesh, being
attached to the collar of the shirt.
All this had to be cut with strong scissors. When the physician had slit
open this surprising arrangement, from the shoulder to the temple, he opened
this armor and found the face of an old man, worn out, thin and wrinkled. The
surprise among those who had brought in this seemingly young dancer was so
great that no one laughed, no one said a word.
All were watching this sad face as he lay on the straw chairs, his eyes
closed, his face covered with white hair, some long, falling from the
forehead over the face, others short, growing around the face and the chin,
and beside this poor head, that pretty little, neat varnished, smiling mask.
The man regained consciousness after being inanimate for a long time, but
he still seemed to be so weak and sick that the physician feared some
dangerous complication. He asked: “Where do you live?”
The old dancer seemed to be making an effort to remember, and then he
mentioned the name of the street, which no one knew. He was asked for more
definite information about the neighborhood. He answered with a great
slowness, indecision and difficulty, which revealed his upset state of mind.
The physician continued:
“I will take you home myself.”
 Curiosity had overcome him to find out who this strange dancer, this
phenomenal jumper might be. Soon the two rolled away in a cab to the other
side of Montmartre.
They stopped before a high building of poor appearance. They went up a
winding staircase. The doctor held to the banister, which was so grimy that
the hand stuck to it, and he supported the dizzy old man, whose forces were
beginning to return. They stopped at the fourth floor.
The door at which they had knocked was opened by an old woman, neat
looking, with a white nightcap enclosing a thin face with sharp features, one
of those good, rough faces of a hard-working and faithful woman. She cried
out:
“For goodness sake! What’s the matter?”
He told her the whole affair in a few words. She became reassured and
even calmed the physician himself by telling him that the same thing had
happened many times. She said: “He must be put to bed, monsieur, that is all.
Let him sleep and tomorrow he will be all right.”
The doctor continued: “But he can hardly speak.”
“Oh! that’s just a little drink, nothing more; he has eaten no dinner, in
order to be nimble, and then he took a few absinthes in order to work himself
up to the proper pitch. You see, drink gives strength to his legs, but it stops
his thoughts and words. He is too old to dance as he does. Really, his lack of
common sense is enough to drive one mad!”
The doctor, surprised, insisted:
“But why does he dance like that at his age?”
She shrugged her shoulders and turned red from the anger which was
slowly rising within her and she cried out:
“Ah! yes, why? So that the people will think him young under his mask; so
that the women will still take him for a young dandy and whisper nasty things
into his ears; so that he can rub up against all their dirty skins, with their
perfumes and powders and cosmetics. Ah! it’s a fine business! What a life I
have had for the last forty years! But we must first get him to bed, so that he
may have no ill effects. Would you mind helping me? When he is like that I
can’t do anything with him alone.”
The old man was sitting on his bed, with a tipsy look, his long white hair
falling over his face. His companion looked at him with tender yet indignant
eyes. She continued:
 “Just see the fine head he has for his age, and yet he has to go and disguise
himself in order to make people think that he is young. It’s a perfect shame!
Really, he has a fine head, monsieur! Wait, I’ll show it to you before putting
him to bed.”
She went to a table on which stood the washbasin a pitcher of water, soap
and a comb and brush. She took the brush, returned to the bed and pushed
back the drunkard’s tangled hair. In a few seconds she made him look like a
model fit for a great painter, with his long white locks flowing on his neck.
Then she stepped back in order to observe him, saying: “There! Isn’t he fine
for his age?”
“Very,” agreed the doctor, who was beginning to be highly amused.
She added: “And if you had known him when he was twenty-five! But we
must get him to bed, otherwise the drink will make him sick. Do you mind
drawing off that sleeve? Higher-like that-that’s right. Now the trousers. Wait,
I will take his shoes off — that’s right. Now, hold him upright while I open
the bed. There — let us put him in. If you think that he is going to disturb
himself when it is time for me to get in you are mistaken. I have to find a little
corner any place I can. That doesn’t bother him! Bah! You old pleasure
seeker!”
As soon as he felt himself stretched out in his sheets the old man closed
his eyes, opened them closed them again, and over his whole face appeared
an energetic resolve to sleep. The doctor examined him with an ever-
increasing interest and asked: “Does he go to all the fancy balls and try to be
a young man?” “To all of them, monsieur, and he comes back to me in the
morning in a deplorable condition. You see, it’s regret that leads him on and
that makes him put a pasteboard face over his own. Yes, the regret of no
longer being what he was and of no longer making any conquests!”
He was sleeping now and beginning to snore. She looked at him with a
pitying expression and continued: “Oh! how many conquests that man has
made! More than one could believe, monsieur, more than the finest gentlemen
of the world, than all the tenors and all the generals.”
“Really? What did he do?”
“Oh! it will surprise you at first, as you did not know him in his palmy
days. When I met him it was also at a ball, for he has always frequented
them. As soon as I saw him I was caught — caught like a fish on a hook. Ah!
how pretty he was, monsieur, with his curly raven locks and black eyes as
large as saucers! Indeed, he was good looking! He took me away that evening
and I never have left him since, never, not even for a day, no matter what he
did to me! Oh! he has often made it hard for me!”
The doctor asked: “Are you married?”
She answered simply: “Yes, monsieur, otherwise he would have dropped
me as he did the others. I have been his wife and his servant, everything,
everything that he wished. How he has made me cry — tears which I did not
show him; for he would tell all his adventures to me — to me, monsieur —
without understanding how it hurt me to listen.”
“But what was his business?”
“That’s so. I forgot to tell you. He was the foreman at Martel’s — a
foreman such as they never had had — an artist who averaged ten francs an
hour.”
“Martel? — who is Martel?”
“The hairdresser, monsieur, the great hairdresser of the Opera, who had
all the actresses for customers. Yes, sir, all the smartest actresses had their
hair dressed by Ambrose and they would give him tips that made a fortune
for him. Ah! monsieur, all the women are alike, yes, all of them. When a man
pleases their fancy they offer themselves to him. It is so easy — and it hurt
me so to hear about it. For he would tell me everything — he simply could
not hold his tongue — it was impossible. Those things please the men so
much! They seem to get even more enjoyment out of telling than doing.
“When I would see him coming in the evening, a little pale, with a pleased
look and a bright eye, would say to myself: ‘One more. I am sure that he has
caught one more.’ Then I felt a wild desire to question him and then, again,
not to know, to stop his talking if he should begin. And we would look at
each other.
“I knew that he would not keep still, that he would come to the point. I
could feel that from his manner, which seemed to laugh and say: ‘I had a fine
adventure to-day, Madeleine.’ I would pretend to notice nothing, to guess
nothing; I would set the table, bring on the soup and sit down opposite him.
“At those times, monsieur, it was as if my friendship for him had been
crushed in my body as with a stone. It hurt. But he did not understand; he did
not know; he felt a need to tell all those things to some one, to boast, to show
how much he was loved, and I was the only one he had to whom he could
talk-the only one. And I would have to listen and drink it in, like poison.
“He would begin to take his soup and then he would say: ‘One more,
Madeleine.’
 “And I would think: ‘Here it comes! Goodness! what a man! Why did I
ever meet him?’
“Then he would begin: ‘One more! And a beauty, too.’ And it would be
some little one from the Vaudeville or else from the Varietes, and some of the
big ones, too, some of the most famous. He would tell me their names, how
their apartments were furnished, everything, everything, monsieur.
Heartbreaking details. And he would go over them and tell his story over
again from beginning to end, so pleased with himself that I would pretend to
laugh so that he would not get angry with me.
“Everything may not have been true! He liked to glorify himself and was
quite capable of inventing such things! They may perhaps also have been
true! On those evenings he would pretend to be tired and wish to go to bed
after supper. We would take supper at eleven, monsieur, for he could never
get back from work earlier.
“When he had finished telling about his adventure he would walk round
the room and smoke cigarettes, and he was so handsome, with his mustache
and curly hair, that I would think: ‘It’s true, just the same, what he is telling.
Since I myself am crazy about that man, why should not others be the same?’
Then I would feel like crying, shrieking, running away and jumping out of the
window while I was clearing the table and he was smoking. He would yawn
in order to show how tired he was, and he would say two or three times
before going to bed: ‘Ah! how well I shall sleep this evening!’
“I bear him no ill will, because he did not know how he was hurting me.
No, he could not know! He loved to boast about the women just as a peacock
loves to show his feathers. He got to the point where he thought that all of
them looked at him and desired him.
“It was hard when he grew old. Oh, monsieur, when I saw his first white
hair I felt a terrible shock and then a great joy — a wicked joy — but so
great, so great! I said to myself: ‘It’s the end-it’s the end.’ It seemed as if I
were about to be released from prison. At last I could have him to myself, all
to myself, when the others would no longer want him.
“It was one morning in bed. He was still sleeping and I leaned over him to
wake him up with a kiss, when I noticed in his curls, over his temple, a little
thread which shone like silver. What a surprise! I should not have thought it
possible! At first I thought of tearing it out so that he would not see it, but as I
looked carefully I noticed another farther up. White hair! He was going to
have white hair! My heart began to thump and perspiration stood out all over
me, but away down at the bottom I was happy.
“It was mean to feel thus, but I did my housework with a light heart that
morning, without waking him up, and, as soon as he opened his eyes of his
own accord, I said to him: ‘Do you know what I discovered while you were
asleep?’
“‘No.’
“‘I found white hairs.’
“He started up as if I had tickled him and said angrily: ‘It’s not true!’
“‘Yes, it is. There are four of them over your left temple.’
“He jumped out of bed and ran over to the mirror. He could not find them.
Then I showed him the first one, the lowest, the little curly one, and I said:
‘It’s no wonder, after the life that you have been leading. In two years all will
be over for you.’
“Well, monsieur, I had spoken true; two years later one could not
recognize him. How quickly a man changes! He was still handsome, but he
had lost his freshness, and the women no longer ran after him. Ah! what a life
I led at that time! How he treated me! Nothing suited him. He left his trade to
go into the hat business, in which he ate up all his money. Then he
unsuccessfully tried to be an actor, and finally he began to frequent public
balls. Fortunately, he had had common sense enough to save a little
something on which we now live. It is sufficient, but it is not enormous. And
to think that at one time he had almost a fortune.
“Now you see what he does. This habit holds him like a frenzy. He has to
be young; he has to dance with women who smell of perfume and cosmetics.
You poor old darling!”
She was looking at her old snoring husband fondly, ready to cry. Then,
gently tiptoeing up to him, she kissed his hair. The physician had risen and
was getting ready to leave, finding nothing to say to this strange couple. Just
as he was leaving she asked:
“Would you mind giving me your address? If he should grow worse, I
could go and get you.”
 THE PENGUINS’ ROCK

This is the season for penguins.

From April to the end of May, before the Parisian visitors arrive, one
sees, all at once, on the little beach at Etretat several old gentlemen, booted
and belted in shooting costume. They spend four or five days at the Hotel
Hauville, disappear, and return again three weeks later. Then, after a fresh
sojourn, they go away altogether.
One sees them again the following spring.
These are the last penguin hunters, what remain of the old set. There were
about twenty enthusiasts thirty or forty years ago; now there are only a few of
the enthusiastic sportsmen.
The penguin is a very rare bird of passage, with peculiar habits. It lives
the greater part of the year in the latitude of Newfoundland and the islands of
St. Pierre and Miquelon. But in the breeding season a flight of emigrants
crosses the ocean and comes every year to the same spot to lay their eggs, to
the Penguins’ Rock near Etretat. They are found nowhere else, only there.
They have always come there, have always been chased away, but return
again, and will always return. As soon as the young birds are grown they all
fly away, and disappear for a year.
Why do they not go elsewhere? Why not choose some other spot on the
long white, unending cliff that extends from the Pas-de-Calais to Havre?
What force, what invincible instinct, what custom of centuries impels these
birds to come back to this place? What first migration, what tempest,
possibly, once cast their ancestors on this rock? And why do the children, the
grandchildren, all the descendants of the first parents always return here?
There are not many of them, a hundred at most, as if one single family,
maintaining the tradition, made this annual pilgrimage.
And each spring, as soon as the little wandering tribe has taken up its
abode an the rock, the same sportsmen also reappear in the village. One
knew them formerly when they were young; now they are old, but constant to
the regular appointment which they have kept for thirty or forty years. They
would not miss it for anything in the world.
 It was an April evening in one of the later years. Three of the old
sportsmen had arrived; one was missing — M. d’Arnelles.
He had written to no one, given no account of himself. But he was not
dead, like so many of the rest; they would have heard of it. At length, tired of
waiting for him, the other three sat down to table. Dinner was almost over
when a carriage drove into the yard of the hotel, and the late corner presently
entered the dining room.
He sat down, in a good humor, rubbing his hands, and ate with zest. When
one of his comrades remarked with surprise at his being in a frock-coat, he
replied quietly:
“Yes, I had no time to change my clothes.”
They retired on leaving the table, for they had to set out before daybreak
in order to take the birds unawares.
There is nothing so pretty as this sport, this early morning expedition.
At three o’clock in the morning the sailors awoke the sportsmen by
throwing sand against the windows. They were ready in a few minutes and
went down to the beach. Although it was still dark, the stars had paled a
little. The sea ground the shingle on the beach. There was such a fresh breeze
that it made one shiver slightly in spite of one’s heavy clothing.
Presently two boats were pushed down the beach, by the sailors, with a
sound as of tearing cloth, and were floated on the nearest waves. The brown
sail was hoisted, swelled a little, fluttered, hesitated and swelling out again
as round as a paunch, carried the boats towards the large arched entrance that
could be faintly distinguished in the darkness.
The sky became clearer, the shadows seemed to melt away. The coast still
seemed veiled, the great white coast, perpendicular as a wall.
They passed through the Manne-Porte, an enormous arch beneath which a
ship could sail; they doubled the promontory of La Courtine, passed the little
valley of Antifer and the cape of the same name; and suddenly caught sight of
a beach on which some hundreds of seagulls were perched.
That was the Penguins’ Rock. It was just a little protuberance of the cliff,
and on the narrow ledges of rock the birds’ heads might be seen watching the
boats.
They remained there, motionless, not venturing to fly off as yet. Some of
them perched on the edges, seated upright, looked almost like bottles, for
their little legs are so short that when they walk they glide along as if they
were on rollers. When they start to fly they cannot make a spring and let
themselves fall like stones almost down to the very men who are watching
them.
They know their limitation and the danger to which it subjects them, and
cannot make up their minds to fly away.
But the boatmen begin to shout, beating the sides of the boat with the
wooden boat pins, and the birds, in affright, fly one by one into space until
they reach the level of the waves. Then, moving their wings rapidly, they
scud, scud along until they reach the open sea; if a shower of lead does not
knock them into the water.
For an hour the firing is kept up, obliging them to give up, one after
another. Sometimes the mother birds will not leave their nests, and are
riddled with shot, causing drops of blood to spurt out on the white cliff, and
the animal dies without having deserted her eggs.
The first day M. d’Arnelles fired at the birds with his habitual zeal; but
when the party returned toward ten o’clock, beneath a brilliant sun, which
cast great triangles of light on the white cliffs along the coast he appeared a
little worried, and absentminded, contrary to his accustomed manner.
As soon as they got on shore a kind of servant dressed in black came up to
him and said something in a low tone. He seemed to reflect, hesitate, and then
replied:
“No, to-morrow.”
The following day they set out again. This time M, d’Arnelles frequently
missed his aim, although the birds were close by. His friends teased him,
asked him if he were in love, if some secret sorrow was troubling his mind
and heart. At length he confessed.
“Yes, indeed, I have to leave soon, and that annoys me.”
“What, you must leave? And why?”
“Oh, I have some business that calls me back. I cannot stay any longer.”
They then talked of other matters.
As soon as breakfast was over the valet in black appeared. M. d’Arnelles
ordered his carriage, and the man was leaving the room when the three
sportsmen interfered, insisting, begging, and praying their friend to stay. One
of them at last said:
“Come now, this cannot be a matter of such importance, for you have
already waited two days.”
M. d’Arnelles, altogether perplexed, began to think, evidently baffled,
divided between pleasure and duty, unhappy and disturbed.
 After reflecting for some time he stammered:
“The fact is — the fact is — I am not alone here. I have my son-in-law.”
There were exclamations and shouts of “Your son-in-law! Where is he?”
He suddenly appeared confused and his face grew red.
“What! do you not know? Why — why — he is in the coach house. He is
dead.”
They were all silent in amazement.
M. d’Arnelles continued, more and more disturbed:
“I had the misfortune to lose him; and as I was taking the body to my
house, in Briseville, I came round this way so as not to miss our appointment.
But you can see that I cannot wait any longer.”
Then one of the sportsmen, bolder than the rest said:
“Well, but — since he is dead — it seems to me that he can wait a day
longer.”
The others chimed in:
“That cannot be denied.”
M. d’Arnelles appeared to be relieved of a great weight, but a little
uneasy, nevertheless, he asked:
“But, frankly — do you think— “
The three others, as one man, replied:
“Parbleu! my dear boy, two days more or less can make no difference in
his present condition.”
And, perfectly calmly, the father-in-law turned to the undertaker’s
assistant, and said:
“Well, then, my friend, it will be the day after tomorrow.”
 AN ARTIFICE

The old doctor sat by the fireside, talking to his fair patient who was lying on
the lounge. There was nothing much the matter with her, except that she had
one of those little feminine ailments from which pretty women frequently
suffer — slight anaemia, a nervous attack, etc.
“No, doctor,” she said; “I shall never be able to understand a woman
deceiving her husband. Even allowing that she does not love him, that she
pays no heed to her vows and promises, how can she give herself to another
man? How can she conceal the intrigue from other people’s eyes? How can it
be possible to love amid lies and treason?”
The doctor smiled, and replied: “It is perfectly easy, and I can assure you
that a woman does not think of all those little subtle details when she has
made up her mind to go astray.
“As for dissimulation, all women have plenty of it on hand for such
occasions, and the simplest of them are wonderful, and extricate themselves
from the greatest dilemmas in a remarkable manner.”
The young woman, however, seemed incredulous.
“No, doctor,” she said; “one never thinks until after it has happened of
what one ought to have done in a critical situation, and women are certainly
more liable than men to lose their head on such occasions:”
The doctor raised his hands. “After it has happened, you say! Now I will
tell you something that happened to one of my female patients, whom I
always considered an immaculate woman.
“It happened in a provincial town, and one night when I was asleep, in
that deep first sleep from which it is so difficult to rouse us, it seemed to me,
in my dreams, as if the bells in the town were sounding a fire alarm, and I
woke up with a start. It was my own bell, which was ringing wildly, and as
my footman did not seem to be answering the door, I, in turn, pulled the bell
at the head of my bed, and soon I heard a banging, and steps in the silent
house, and Jean came into my room, and handed me a letter which said:
‘Madame Lelievre begs Dr. Simeon to come to her immediately.’
 “I thought for a few moments, and then I said to myself: ‘A nervous attack,
vapors; nonsense, I am too tired.’ And so I replied: ‘As Dr. Simeon is not at
all well, he must beg Madame Lelievre to be kind enough to call in his
colleague, Monsieur Bonnet.’ I put the note into an envelope and went to
sleep again, but about half an hour later the street bell rang again, and Jean
came to me and said: ‘There is somebody downstairs; I do not quite know
whether it is a man or a woman, as the individual is so wrapped up, but they
wish to speak to you immediately. They say it is a matter of life and death for
two people.’ Whereupon I sat up in bed and told him to show the person in.
“A kind of black phantom appeared and raised her veil as soon as Jean
had left the room. It was Madame Berthe Lelievre, quite a young woman,
who had been married for three years to a large a merchant in the town, who
was said to have married the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.
“She was terribly pale, her face was contracted as the faces of insane
people are, occasionally, and her hands trembled violently. Twice she tried
to speak without being able to utter a sound, but at last she stammered out:
‘Come — quick — quick, doctor. Come — my — friend has just died in my
bedroom.’ She stopped, half suffocated with emotion, and then went on: ‘My
husband will be coming home from the club very soon.’
“I jumped out of bed without even considering that I was only in my
nightshirt, and dressed myself in a few moments, and then I said: ‘Did you
come a short time ago?’ ‘No,’ she said, standing like a statue petrified with
horror. ‘It was my servant — she knows.’ And then, after a short silence, she
went on: ‘I was there — by his side.’ And she uttered a sort of cry of horror,
and after a fit of choking, which made her gasp, she wept violently, and
shook with spasmodic sobs for a minute: or two. Then her tears suddenly
ceased, as if by an internal fire, and with an air of tragic calmness, she said:
‘Let us make haste.’
“I was ready, but exclaimed: ‘I quite forgot to order my carriage.’ ‘I have
one,’ she said; ‘it is his, which was waiting for him!’ She wrapped herself
up, so as to completely conceal her face, and we started.
“When she was by my side in the carriage she suddenly seized my hand,
and crushing it in her delicate fingers, she said, with a shaking voice, that
proceeded from a distracted heart: ‘Oh! if you only knew, if you only knew
what I am suffering! I loved him, I have loved him distractedly, like a
madwoman, for the last six months.’ ‘Is anyone up in your house?’ I asked.
‘No, nobody except those, who knows everything.’
 “We stopped at the door, and evidently everybody was asleep. We went in
without making any noise, by means of her latch-key, and walked upstairs on
tiptoe. The frightened servant was sitting on the top of the stairs with a
lighted candle by her side, as she was afraid to remain with the dead man,
and I went into the room, which was in great disorder. Wet towels, with
which they had bathed the young man’s temples, were lying on the floor, by
the side of a washbasin and a glass, while a strong smell of vinegar pervaded
the room.
“The dead man’s body was lying at full length in the middle of the room,
and I went up to it, looked at it, and touched it. I opened the eyes and felt the
hands, and then, turning to the two women, who were shaking as if they were
freezing, I said to them: ‘Help me to lift him on to the bed.’ When we had
laid him gently on it, I listened to his heart and put a looking-glass to his lips,
and then said: ‘It is all over.’ It was a terrible sight!
“I looked at the man, and said: ‘You ought to arrange his hair a little.’ The
girl went and brought her mistress’ comb and brush, but as she was
trembling, and pulling out his long, matted hair in doing it, Madame Lelievre
took the comb out of her hand, and arranged his hair as if she were caressing
him. She parted it, brushed his beard, rolled his mustaches gently round her
fingers, then, suddenly, letting go of his hair, she took the dead man’s inert
head in her hands and looked for a long time in despair at the dead face,
which no longer could smile at her, and then, throwing herself on him, she
clasped him in her arms and kissed him ardently. Her kisses fell like blows
on his closed mouth and eyes, his forehead and temples; and then, putting her
lips to his ear, as if he could still hear her, and as if she were about to
whisper something to him, she said several times, in a heartrending voice:
“‘Good-by, my darling!’
“Just then the clock struck twelve, and I started up. ‘Twelve o’clock!’ I
exclaimed. ‘That is the time when the club closes. Come, madame, we have
not a moment to lose!’ She started up, and I said:
“‘We must carry him into the drawing-room.’ And when we had done this,
I placed him on a sofa, and lit the chandeliers, and just then the front door
was opened and shut noisily. ‘Rose, bring me the basin and the towels, and
make the room look tidy. Make haste, for Heaven’s sake! Monsieur Lelievre
is coming in.’
“I heard his steps on the stairs, and then his hands feeling along the walls.
‘Come here, my dear fellow,’ I said; ‘we have had an accident.’
 “And the astonished husband appeared in the door with a cigar in his
mouth, and said: ‘What is the matter? What is the meaning of this?’ ‘My dear
friend,’ I said, going up to him, ‘you find us in great embarrassment. I had
remained late, chatting with your wife and our friend, who had brought me in
his carriage, when he suddenly fainted, and in spite of all we have done, he
has remained unconscious for two hours. I did not like to call in strangers,
and if you will now help me downstairs with him, I shall be able to attend to
him better at his own house.’
“The husband, who was surprised, but quite unsuspicious, took off his hat,
and then he took his rival, who would be quite inoffensive for the future,
under the arms. I got between his two legs, as if I had been a horse between
the shafts, and we went downstairs, while his wife held a light for us. When
we got outside I stood the body up, so as to deceive the coachman, and said:
‘Come, my friend; it is nothing; you feel better already I expect. Pluck up
your courage, and make an effort. It will soon be over.’ But as I felt that he
was slipping out of my hands, I gave him a slap on the shoulder, which sent
him forward and made him fall into the carriage, and then I got in after him.
Monsieur Lelievre, who was rather alarmed, said to me: ‘Do you think it is
anything serious?’ To which I replied: ‘No,’ with a smile, as I looked at his
wife, who had put her arm into that of her husband, and was trying to see into
the carriage.
“I shook hands with them and told my coachman to start, and during the
whole drive the dead man kept falling against me. When we got to his house I
said that he had become unconscious on the way home, and helped to carry
him upstairs, where I certified that he was dead, and acted another comedy to
his distracted family, and at last I got back to bed, not without swearing at
lovers.”
The doctor ceased, though he was still smiling, and the young woman,
who was in a very nervous state, said: “Why have you told me that terrible
story?”
He gave her a gallant bow, and replied:
“So that I may offer you my services if they should be needed.”
 DREAMS

They had just dined together, five old friends, a writer, a doctor and three
rich bachelors without any profession.
They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came over
them, that feeling which precedes and leads to the departure of guests after
festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the last five minutes
been gazing silently at the surging boulevard dotted with gas-lamps, with its
rattling vehicles, said suddenly:
“When you’ve nothing to do from morning till night, the days are long.”
“And the nights too,” assented the guest who sat next to him. “I sleep very
little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous. Never do I come
across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to any one, a violent longing to
say nothing and to listen to nothing. I don’t know what to do with my
evenings.”
The third idler remarked:
“I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just two
pleasant hours every day.”
The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned round
to them, and said:
“The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his
fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a
greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing to
them eternal salvation and eternal youth.”
The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:
“Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely, been
seeking for — and working for the object you refer to since the beginning of
the world. The men who came first reached perfection at once in this way.
We are hardly equal to them.”
One of the three idlers murmured:
“What a pity!”
Then, after a minute’s pause, he added:
 “If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep
with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams.”
“Why without dreams?” asked the guest sitting next to him.
The other replied:
“Because dreams are not always pleasant; they are always fantastic,
improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have
the sort of dreams we like. We ought to dream waking.”
“And what’s to prevent you?” asked the writer.
The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.
“My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake, you need great
power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great weariness
is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our thoughts through
delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest experience in the world; but it
must come naturally, it must not be provoked in a painful, manner, and must
be accompanied by absolute bodily comfort. This power of dreaming I can
give you, provided you promise that you will not abuse it.”
The writer shrugged his shoulders:
“Ah! yes, I know — hasheesh, opium, green tea — artificial paradises. I
have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me
very sick.”
But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:
“No; ether, nothing but ether; and I would suggest that you literary men
should use it sometimes.”
The three rich bachelors drew closer to the doctor.
One of them said:
“Explain to us the effects of it.”
And the doctor replied:
“Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of medicine or
morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up every day to
excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to you a new
sensation, possible only to intelligent men — let us say even very intelligent
men — dangerous, like everything else that overexcites our organs, but
exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain preparation, that is to
say, practice, to feel in all their completeness the singular effects of ether.
“They are different from the effects of hasheesh, of opium, or morphia,
and they cease as soon as the absorption of the drug is interrupted, while the
other generators of day dreams continue their action for hours.
“I am now going to try to analyze these feelings as clearly as possible. But
the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost imperceptible, are these
sensations.
“It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of this
remedy, which since then I have, perhaps, slightly abused.
“I had acute pains in my head and neck, and an intolerable heat of the skin,
a feverish restlessness. I took up a large bottle of ether, and, lying down, I
began to inhale it slowly.
“At the end of some minutes I thought I heard a vague murmur, which ere
long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the interior of my
body had become light, light as air, that it was dissolving into vapor.
“Then came a sort of torpor, a sleepy sensation of comfort, in spite of the
pains which still continued, but which had ceased to make themselves felt. It
was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure and not any of
those frightful wrenches against which our tortured body protests.
“Soon the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in my
chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as light as if
the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only were left, the skin
necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of living, of bathing in this
sensation of well-being. Then I perceived that I was no longer suffering. The
pain had gone, melted away, evaporated. And I heard voices, four voices,
two dialogues, without understanding what was said. At one time there were
only indistinct sounds, at another time a word reached my ear. But I
recognized that this was only the humming I had heard before, but
emphasized. I was not asleep; I was not awake; I comprehended, I felt, I
reasoned with the utmost clearness and depth, with extraordinary energy and
intellectual pleasure, with a singular intoxication arising from this separation
of my mental faculties.
“It was not like the dreams caused by hasheesh or the somewhat sickly
visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of reasoning, a
new way of seeing, judging and appreciating the things of life, and with the
certainty, the absolute consciousness that this was the true way.
“And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a new,
strange and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings, proofs rose up in a
heap before my brain only to be immediately displaced by some stronger
proof, reasoning, argument. My head had, in fact, become a battleground of
ideas. I was a superior being, armed with invincible intelligence, and I
experienced a huge delight at the manifestation of my power.
“It lasted a long, long time. I still kept inhaling the ether from my flagon.
Suddenly I perceived that it was empty.”
The four men exclaimed at the same time:
“Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!”
But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied:
“As to that, certainly not; go and let some one else poison you!”
And he left them.
Ladies and gentlemen, what is your opinion on the subject?
 THE CHILD

Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife
devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during their entire
married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple, sincere, without
suspicion or malice.
He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was
making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business, and he
did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might have accepted him for
anything else but himself.
She made him happy. She was everything to him; he only thought of her,
looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes. During meals he would
make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his eyes from the
beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the water in the salt-
cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating:
“You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy.”
She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look
away, as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try to
make him talk about something else; but he would take her hand under the
table and he would hold it in his, whispering:
“My little Jeanne, my darling little Jeanne!”
She sometimes lost patience and said:
“Come, come, be reasonable; eat and let me eat.”
He would sigh and break off a mouthful of bread, which he would then
chew slowly.
For five years they had no children. Then suddenly she announced to him
that this state of affairs would soon cease. He was wild with joy. He no
longer left her for a minute, until his old nurse, who had brought him up and
who often ruled the house, would push him out and close the door behind
him, in order to compel him to go out in the fresh air.
He had grown very intimate with a young man who had known his wife
since childhood, and who was one of the prefect’s secretaries. M. Duretour
would dine three times a week with the Lemonniers, bringing flowers to
madame, and sometimes a box at the theater; and often, at the end of the
dinner, Lemonnier, growing tender, turning towards his wife, would explain:
“With a companion like you and a friend like him, a man is completely happy
on earth.”
She died in childbirth. The shock almost killed him. But the sight of the
child, a poor, moaning little creature, gave him courage.
He loved it with a passionate and sorrowful love, with a morbid love in
which stuck the memory of death, but in which lived something of his
worship for the dead mother. It was the flesh of his wife, her being continued,
a sort of quintessence of herself. This child was her very life transferred to
another body; she had disappeared that it might exist, and the father would
smother it in with kisses. But also, this child had killed her; he had stolen this
beloved creature, his life was at the cost of hers. And M. Lemonnier would
place his son in the cradle and would sit down and watch him. He would sit
this way by the hour, looking at him, dreaming of thousands of things, sweet
or sad. Then, when the little one was asleep, he would bend over him and
sob.
The child grew. The father could no longer spend an hour away from him;
he would stay near him, take him out for walks, and himself dress him, wash
him, make him eat. His friend, M. Duretour, also seemed to love the boy; he
would kiss him wildly, in those frenzies of tenderness which are
characteristic of parents. He would toss him in his arms, he would trot him
on his knees, by the hour, and M. Lemonnier, delighted, would mutter:
“Isn’t he a darling? Isn’t he a darling?”
And M. Duretour would hug the child in his arms and tickle his neck with
his mustache.
Celeste, the old nurse, alone, seemed to have no tenderness for the little
one. She would grow angry at his pranks, and seemed impatient at the
caresses of the two men. She would exclaim:
“How can you expect to bring a child up like that? You’ll make a perfect
monkey out of him.”
Years went by, and Jean was nine years old. He hardly knew how to read;
he had been so spoiled, and only did as he saw fit. He was willful, stubborn
and quick-tempered. The father always gave in to him and let him have his
own way. M. Duretour would always buy him all the toys he wished, and he
fed him on cake and candies. Then Celeste would grow angry and exclaim:
 “It’s a shame, monsieur, a shame. You are spoiling this child. But it will
have to stop; yes, sir, I tell you it will have to stop, and before long, too.”
M. Lemonnier would answer, smiling:
“What can you expect? I love him too much, I can’t resist him; you must
get used to it.”
Jean was delicate, rather. The doctor said that he was anaemic,
prescribed iron, rare meat and broth.
But the little fellow loved only cake and refused all other nourishment;
and the father, in despair, stuffed him with cream-puffs and chocolate eclairs.
One evening, as they were sitting down to supper, Celeste brought on the
soup with an air of authority and an assurance which she did not usually
have. She took off the cover and, dipping the ladle into the dish, she
declared:
“Here is some broth such as I have never made; the young one will have
to take some this time.”
M. Lemonnier, frightened, bent his head. He saw a storm brewing.
Celeste took his plate, filled it herself and placed it in front of him.
He tasted the soup and said:
“It is, indeed, excellent.”
The servant took the boy’s plate and poured a spoonful of soup in it. Then
she retreated a few steps and waited.
Jean smelled the food and pushed his plate away with an expression of
disgust. Celeste, suddenly pale, quickly stepped forward and forcibly poured
a spoonful down the child’s open mouth.
He choked, coughed, sneezed, spat; howling, he seized his glass and threw
it at his nurse. She received it full in the stomach. Then, exasperated, she
took the young shaver’s head under her arm and began pouring spoonful after
spoonful of soup down his throat. He grew as red as a beet, and he would
cough it up, stamping, twisting, choking, beating the air with his hands.
At first the father was so surprised that he could not move. Then,
suddenly, he rushed forward, wild with rage, seized the servant by the throat
and threw her up against the wall stammering:
“Out! Out! Out! you brute!”
But she shook him off, and, her hair streaming down her back, her eyes
snapping, she cried out:
“What’s gettin’ hold of you? You’re trying to thrash me because I am
making this child eat soup when you are filling him with sweet stuff!”
 He kept repeating, trembling from head to foot:
“Out! Get out-get out, you brute!”
Then, wild, she turned to him and, pushing her face up against his, her
voice trembling:
“Ah! — you think-you think that you can treat me like that? Oh! no. And
for whom? — for that brat who is not even yours. No, not yours! No, not
yours — not yours! Everybody knows it, except yourself! Ask the grocer, the
butcher, the baker, all of them, any one of them!”
She was growling and mumbling, choked with passion; then she stopped
and looked at him.
He was motionless livid, his arms hanging by his sides. After a short
pause, he murmured in a faint, shaky voice, instinct with deep feeling:
“You say? you say? What do you say?”
She remained silent, frightened by his appearance. Once more he stepped
forward, repeating:
“You say — what do you say?”
Then in a calm voice, she answered:
“I say what I know, what everybody knows.”
He seized her and, with the fury of a beast, he tried to throw her down.
But, although old, she was strong and nimble. She slipped under his arm, and
running around the table once more furious, she screamed:
“Look at him, just look at him, fool that you are! Isn’t he the living image
of M. Durefour? just look at his nose and his eyes! Are yours like that? And
his hair! Is it like his mother’s? I tell you that everyone knows it, everyone
except yourself! It’s the joke of the town! Look at him!”
She went to the door, opened it, and disappeared.
Jean, frightened, sat motionless before his plate of soup.
At the end of an hour, she returned gently, to see how matters stood. The
child, after doing away with all the cakes and a pitcher full of cream and one
of syrup, was now emptying the jam-pot with his soup-spoon.
The father had gone out.
Celeste took the child, kissed him, and gently carried him to his room and
put him to bed. She came back to the dining-room, cleared the table, put
everything in place, feeling very uneasy all the time.
Not a single sound could be heard throughout the house. She put her ear
against’s her master’s door. He seemed to be perfectly still. She put her eye
to the keyhole. He was writing, and seemed very calm.
 Then she returned to the kitchen and sat down, ready for any emergency.
She slept on a chair and awoke at daylight.
She did the rooms as she had been accustomed to every morning; she
swept and dusted, and, towards eight o’clock, prepared M. Lemonnier’s
breakfast.
But she did not dare bring it to her master, knowing too well how she
would be received; she waited for him to ring. But he did not ring. Nine
o’clock, then ten o’clock went by.
Celeste, not knowing what to think, prepared her tray and started up with
it, her heart beating fast.
She stopped before the door and listened. Everything was still. She
knocked; no answer. Then, gathering up all her courage, she opened the door
and entered. With a wild shriek, she dropped the breakfast tray which she
had been holding in her hand.
In the middle of the room, M. Lemonnier was hanging by a rope from a
ring in the ceiling. His tongue was sticking out horribly. His right slipper was
lying on the ground, his left one still on his foot. An upturned chair had rolled
over to the bed.
Celeste, dazed, ran away shrieking. All the neighbors crowded together.
The physician declared that he had died at about midnight.
A letter addressed to M. Duretdur was found on the table of the suicide. It
contained these words:
“I leave and entrust the child to you!”
 A COUNTRY EXCURSION

For five months they had been talking of going to take luncheon in one of the
country suburbs of Paris on Madame Dufour’s birthday, and as they were
looking forward very impatiently to the outing, they rose very early that
morning. Monsieur Dufour had borrowed the milkman’s wagon and drove
himself. It was a very tidy, two-wheeled conveyance, with a cover supported
by four iron rods, with curtains that had been drawn up, except the one at the
back, which floated out like a sail. Madame Dufour, resplendent in a
wonderful, cherry colored silk dress, sat by the side of her husband.
The old grandmother and a girl sat behind them on two chairs, and a boy
with yellow hair was lying at the bottom of the wagon, with nothing to be
seen of him except his head.
When they reached the bridge of Neuilly, Monsieur Dufour said: “Here
we are in the country at last!” and at that signal his wife grew sentimental
about the beauties of nature. When they got to the crossroads at Courbevoie
they were seized with admiration for the distant landscape. On the right was
Argenteuil with its bell tower, and above it rose the hills of Sannois and the
mill of Orgemont, while on the left the aqueduct of Marly stood out against
the clear morning sky, and in the distance they could see the terrace of Saint-
Germain; and opposite them, at the end of a low chain of hills, the new fort of
Cormeilles. Quite in the distance; a very long way off, beyond the plains and
village, one could see the sombre green of the forests.
The sun was beginning to burn their faces, the dust got into their eyes, and
on either side of the road there stretched an interminable tract of bare, ugly
country with an unpleasant odor. One might have thought that it had been
ravaged by a pestilence, which had even attacked the buildings, for skeletons
of dilapidated and deserted houses, or small cottages, which were left in an
unfinished state, because the contractors had not been paid, reared their four
roofless walls on each side.
Here and there tall factory chimneys rose up from the barren soil. The
only vegetation on that putrid land, where the spring breezes wafted an odor
of petroleum and slate, blended with another odor that was even less
agreeable. At last, however, they crossed the Seine a second time, and the
bridge was a delight. The river sparkled in the sun, and they had a feeling of
quiet enjoyment, felt refreshed as they drank in the purer air that was not
impregnated by the black smoke of factories nor by the miasma from the
deposits of night soil. A man whom they met told them that the name of the
place was Bezons. Monsieur Dufour pulled up and read the attractive
announcement outside an eating house: Restaurant Poulin, matelottes and
fried fish, private rooms, arbors, and swings.
“Well, Madame Dufour, will this suit you? Will you make up your mind at
last?”
She read the announcement in her turn and then looked at the house for
some time.
It was a white country inn, built by the roadside, and through the open
door she could see the bright zinc of the counter, at which sat two workmen
in their Sunday clothes. At last she made up her mind and said:
“Yes, this will do; and, besides, there is a view.”
They drove into a large field behind the inn, separated from the river by
the towing path, and dismounted. The husband sprang out first and then held
out his arms for his wife, and as the step was very high Madame Dufour, in
order to reach him, had to show the lower part of her limbs, whose former
slenderness had disappeared in fat, and Monsieur Dufour, who was already
getting excited by the country air, pinched her calf, and then, taking her in his
arms, he set her on the ground, as if she had been some enormous bundle. She
shook the dust out of the silk dress and then looked round to see in what sort
of a place she was.
She was a stout woman, of about thirty-six, full-blown, and delightful to
look at. She could hardly breathe, as her corsets were laced too tightly, and
their pressure forced her superabundant bosom up to her double chin. Next
the girl placed her hand on her father’s shoulder and jumped down lightly.
The boy with the yellow hair had got down by stepping on the wheel, and he
helped Monsieur Dufour to lift his grandmother out. Then they unharnessed
the horse, which they had tied to a tree, and the carriage fell back, with both
shafts in the air. The men took off their coats and washed their hands in a pail
of water and then went and joined the ladies, who had already taken
possession of the swings.
Mademoiselle Dufour was trying to swing herself standing up, but she
could not succeed in getting a start. She was a pretty girl of about eighteen,
one of those women who suddenly excite your desire when you meet them in
the street and who leave you with a vague feeling of uneasiness and of
excited senses. She was tall, had a small waist and large hips, with a dark
skin, very large eyes and very black hair. Her dress clearly marked the
outlines of her firm, full figure, which was accentuated by the motion of her
hips as she tried to swing herself higher. Her arms were stretched upward to
hold the rope, so that her bosom rose at every movement she made. Her hat,
which a gust of wind had blown off, was hanging behind her, and as the
swing gradually rose higher and higher, she showed her delicate limbs up to
the knees each time, and the breeze from her flying skirts, which was more
heady than the fumes of wine, blew into the faces of the two men, who were
looking at her and smiling.
Sitting in the other swing, Madame Dufour kept saying in a monotonous
voice:
“Cyprian, come and swing me; do come and swing me, Cyprian!”
At last he went, and turning up his shirt sleeves, as if undertaking a hard
piece of work, with much difficulty he set his wife in motion. She clutched
the two ropes and held her legs out straight, so as not to touch the ground. She
enjoyed feeling dizzy at the motion of the swing, and her whole figure shook
like a jelly on a dish, but as she went higher and higher; she became too
giddy and was frightened. Each time the swing came down she uttered a
piercing scream, which made all the little urchins in the neighborhood come
round, and down below, beneath the garden hedge, she vaguely saw a row of
mischievous heads making various grimaces as they laughed.
When a servant girl came out they ordered luncheon.
“Some fried fish, a rabbit saute, salad and dessert,” Madame Dufour said,
with an important air.
“Bring two quarts of beer and a bottle of claret,” her husband said.
“We will have lunch on the grass,” the girl added.
The grandmother, who had an affection for cats, had been running after
one that belonged to the house, trying to coax it to come to her for the last ten
minutes. The animal, who was no doubt secretly flattered by her attentions,
kept close to the good woman, but just out of reach of her hand, and quietly
walked round the trees, against which she rubbed herself, with her tail up,
purring with pleasure.
“Hello!” suddenly exclaimed the young man with the yellow hair, who
was wandering about. “Here are two swell boats!” They all went to look at
them and saw two beautiful canoes in a wooden shed; they were as
beautifully finished as if they had been ornamental furniture. They hung side
by side, like two tall, slender girls, in their narrow shining length, and made
one wish to float in them on warm summer mornings and evenings along the
flower-covered banks of the river, where the trees dip their branches into the
water, where the rushes are continually rustling in the breeze and where the
swift kingfishers dart about like flashes of blue lightning.
The whole family looked at them with great respect.
“Oh, they are indeed swell boats!” Monsieur Dufour repeated gravely, as
he examined them like a connoiseur. He had been in the habit of rowing in his
younger days, he said, and when he had spat in his hands — and he went
through the action of pulling the oars — he did not care a fig for anybody. He
had beaten more than one Englishman formerly at the Joinville regattas. He
grew quite excited at last and offered to make a bet that in a boat like that he
could row six leagues an hour without exerting himself.
“Luncheon is ready,” the waitress said, appearing at the entrance to the
boathouse, and they all hurried off. But two young men had taken the very
seats that Madame Dufour had selected and were eating their luncheon. No
doubt they were the owners of the sculls, for they were in boating costume.
They were stretched out, almost lying on the chairs; they were sun-browned
and their thin cotton jerseys, with short sleeves, showed their bare arms,
which were as strong as a blacksmith’s. They were two strong, athletic
fellows, who showed in all their movements that elasticity and grace of limb
which can only be acquired by exercise and which is so different to the
deformity with which monotonous heavy work stamps the mechanic.
They exchanged a rapid smile when they saw the mother and then a glance
on seeing the daughter.
“Let us give up our place,” one of them said; “it will make us acquainted
with them.”
The other got up immediately, and holding his black and red boating cap
in his hand, he politely offered the ladies the only shady place in the garden.
With many excuses they accepted, and that it might be more rural, they sat on
the grass, without either tables or chairs.
The two young men took their plates, knives, forks, etc., to a table a little
way off and began to eat again, and their bare arms, which they showed
continually, rather embarrassed the girl. She even pretended to turn her head
aside and not to see them, while Madame Dufour, who was rather bolder,
tempted by feminine curiosity, looked at them every moment, and, no doubt,
compared them with the secret unsightliness of her husband. She had squatted
herself on ground, with her legs tucked under her, after the manner of tailors,
and she kept moving about restlessly, saying that ants were crawling about
her somewhere. Monsieur Dufour, annoyed at the presence of the polite
strangers, was trying to find a comfortable position which he did not,
however, succeed in doing, and the young man with the yellow hair was
eating as silently as an ogre.
“It is lovely weather, monsieur,” the stout lady said to one of the boating
men. She wished to be friendly because they had given up their place.
“It is, indeed, madame,” he replied. “Do you often go into the country?”
“Oh, only once or twice a year to get a little fresh air. And you,
monsieur?”
“I come and sleep here every night.”
“Oh, that must be very nice!”
“Certainly it is, madame.” And he gave them such a practical account of
his daily life that it awakened afresh in the hearts of these shopkeepers who
were deprived of the meadows and who longed for country walks, to that
foolish love of nature which they all feel so strongly the whole year round
behind the counter in their shop.
The girl raised her eyes and looked at the oarsman with emotion and
Monsieur Dufour spoke for the first time.
“It is indeed a happy life,” he said. And then he added: “A little more
rabbit, my dear?”
“No, thank you,” she replied, and turning to the young men again, and
pointing to their arms, asked: “Do you never feel cold like that?”
They both began to laugh, and they astonished the family with an account
of the enormous fatigue they could endure, of their bathing while in a state of
tremendous perspiration, of their rowing in the fog at night; and they struck
their chests violently to show how hollow they sounded.
“Ah! You look very strong,” said the husband, who did not talk any more
of the time when he used to beat the English. The girl was looking at them
sideways now, and the young fellow with the yellow hair, who had
swallowed some wine the wrong way, was coughing violently and
bespattering Madame Dufour’s cherry-colored silk dress. She got angry and
sent for some water to wash the spots.
 Meanwhile it had grown unbearably hot, the sparkling river looked like a
blaze of fire and the fumes of the wine were getting into their heads.
Monsieur Dufour, who had a violent hiccough, had unbuttoned his waistcoat
and the top button of his trousers, while his wife, who felt choking, was
gradually unfastening her dress. The apprentice was shaking his yellow wig
in a happy frame of mind, and kept helping himself to wine, and the old
grandmother, feeling the effects of the wine, was very stiff and dignified. As
for the girl, one noticed only a peculiar brightness in her eyes, while the
brown cheeks became more rosy.
The coffee finished, they suggested singing, and each of them sang or
repeated a couplet, which the others applauded frantically. Then they got up
with some difficulty, and while the two women, who were rather dizzy, were
trying to get a breath of air, the two men, who were altogether drunk, were
attempting gymnastics. Heavy, limp and with scarlet faces they hung or,
awkwardly to the iron rings, without being able to raise themselves.
Meanwhile the two boating men had got their boats into the water, and
they came back and politely asked the ladies whether they would like a row.
“Would you like one, Monsieur Dufour?” his wife exclaimed. “Please
come!”
He merely gave her a drunken nod, without understanding what she said.
Then one of the rowers came up with two fishing rods in his hands, and the
hope of catching a gudgeon, that great vision of the Parisian shopkeeper,
made Dufour’s dull eyes gleam, and he politely allowed them to do whatever
they liked, while he sat in the shade under the bridge, with his feet dangling
over the river, by the side of the young man with the yellow hair, who was
sleeping soundly.
One of the boating men made a martyr of himself and took the mother.
“Let us go to the little wood on the Ile aux Anglais!” he called out as he
rowed off. The other boat went more slowly, for the rower was looking at his
companion so intently that by thought of nothing else, and his emotion seemed
to paralyze his strength, while the girl, who was sitting in the bow, gave
herself up to the enjoyment of being on the water. She felt a disinclination to
think, a lassitude in her limbs and a total enervation, as if she were
intoxicated, and her face was flushed and her breathing quickened. The
effects of the wine, which were increased by the extreme heat, made all the
trees on the bank seem to bow as she passed. A vague wish for enjoyment
and a fermentation of her blood seemed to pervade her whole body, which
was excited by the heat of the day, and she was also disturbed at this tete-a-
tete on the water, in a place which seemed depopulated by the heat, with this
young man who thought her pretty, whose ardent looks seemed to caress her
skin and were as penetrating and pervading as the sun’s rays.
Their inability to speak increased their emotion, and they looked about
them. At last, however, he made an effort and asked her name.
“Henriette,” she said.
“Why, my name is Henri,” he replied. The sound of their voices had
calmed them, and they looked at the banks. The other boat had passed them
and seemed to be waiting for them, and the rower called out:
“We will meet you in the wood; we are going as far as Robinson’s,
because Madame Dufour is thirsty.” Then he bent over his oars again and
rowed off so quickly that he was soon out of sight.
Meanwhile a continual roar, which they had heard for some time, came
nearer, and the river itself seemed to shiver, as if the dull noise were rising
from its depths.
“What is that noise?” she asked. It was the noise of the weir which cut the
river in two at the island, and he was explaining it to her, when, above the
noise of the waterfall, they heard the song of a bird, which seemed a long
way off.
“Listen!” he said; “the nightingales are singing during the day, so the
female birds must be sitting.”
A nightingale! She had never heard one before, and the idea of listening to
one roused visions of poetic tenderness in her heart. A nightingale! That is to
say, the invisible witness of her love trysts which Juliet invoked on her
balcony; that celestial music which it attuned to human kisses, that eternal
inspirer of all those languorous romances which open an ideal sky to all the
poor little tender hearts of sensitive girls!
She was going to hear a nightingale.
“We must not make a noise,” her companion said, “and then we can go
into the wood, and sit down close beside it.”
The boat seemed to glide. They saw the trees on the island, the banks of
which were so low that they could look into the depths of the thickets. They
stopped, he made the boat fast, Henriette took hold of Henri’s arm, and they
went beneath the trees.
“Stoop,” he said, so she stooped down, and they went into an inextricable
thicket of creepers, leaves and reed grass, which formed an undiscoverable
retreat, and which the young man laughingly called “his private room.”
Just above their heads, perched in one of the trees which hid them, the
bird was still singing. He uttered trills and roulades, and then loud, vibrating
notes that filled the air and seemed to lose themselves on the horizon, across
the level country, through that burning silence which weighed upon the whole
landscape. They did not speak for fear of frightening it away. They were
sitting close together, and, slowly, Henri’s arm stole round the girl’s waist
and squeezed it gently. She took that daring hand without any anger, and kept
removing it whenever he put it round her; without, however, feeling at all
embarrassed by this caress, just as if it had been something quite natural,
which she was resisting just as naturally.
She was listening to the bird in ecstasy. She felt an infinite longing for
happiness, for some sudden demonstration of tenderness, for the revelation of
superhuman poetry, and she felt such a softening at her heart, and relaxation
of her nerves, that she began to cry, without knowing why. The young man
was now straining her close to him, yet she did not remove his arm; she did
not think of it. Suddenly the nightingale stopped, and a voice called out in the
distance:
“Henriette!”
“Do not reply,” he said in a low voice; “you will drive the bird away.”
But she had no idea of doing so, and they remained in the same position
for some time. Madame Dufour had sat down somewhere or other, for from
time to time they heard the stout lady break out into little bursts of laughter.
The girl was still crying; she was filled with strange sensations. Henri’s
head was on her shoulder, and suddenly he kissed her on the lips. She was
surprised and angry, and, to avoid him, she stood up.
They were both very pale when they left their grassy retreat. The blue sky
appeared to them clouded and the ardent sun darkened; and they felt the
solitude and the silence. They walked rapidly, side by side, without speaking
or touching each other, for they seemed to have become irreconcilable
enemies, as if disgust and hatred had arisen between them, and from time to
time Henriette called out: “Mamma!”
By and by they heard a noise behind a bush, and the stout lady appeared,
looking rather confused, and her companion’s face was wrinkled with smiles
which he could not check.
Madame Dufour took his arm, and they returned to the boats, and Henri,
who was ahead, walked in silence beside the young girl. At last they got back
to Bezons. Monsieur Dufour, who was now sober, was waiting for them very
impatiently, while the young man with the yellow hair was having a mouthful
of something to eat before leaving the inn. The carriage was waiting in the
yard, and the grandmother, who had already got in, was very frightened at the
thought of being overtaken by night before they reached Paris, as the outskirts
were not safe.
They all shook bands, and the Dufour family drove off.
“Good-by, until we meet again!” the oarsmen cried, and the answer they
got was a sigh and a tear.
Two months later, as Henri was going along the Rue des Martyrs, he saw
Dufour, Ironmonger, over a door, and so he went in, and saw the stout lady
sitting at the counter. They recognized each other immediately, and after an
interchange of polite greetings, he asked after them all.
“And how is Mademoiselle Henriette?” he inquired specially.
“Very well, thank you; she is married.”
“Ah!” He felt a certain emotion, but said: “Whom did she marry?”
“That young man who accompanied us, you know; he has joined us in
business.”
“I remember him perfectly.”
He was going out, feeling very unhappy, though scarcely knowing why,
when madame called him back.
“And how is your friend?” she asked rather shyly.
“He is very well, thank you.”
“Please give him our compliments, and beg him to come and call, when he
is in the neighborhood.”
She then added: “Tell him it will give me great pleasure.”
“I will be sure to do so. Adieu!”
“Do not say that; come again very soon.”
The next year, one very hot Sunday, all the details of that adventure, which
Henri had never forgotten, suddenly came back to him so clearly that he
returned alone to their room in the wood, and was overwhelmed with
astonishment when he went in. She was sitting on the grass, looking very sad,
while by her side, still in his shirt sleeves, the young man with the yellow
hair was sleeping soundly, like some animal.
She grew so pale when she saw Henri that at first he thought she was
going to faint; then, however, they began to talk quite naturally. But when he
told her that he was very fond of that spot, and went there frequently on
Sundays to indulge in memories, she looked into his eyes for a long time.
“I too, think of it,” she replied.
“Come, my dear,” her husband said, with a yawn. “I think it is time for us
to be going.”
 ROSE

The two young women appear to be buried under a blanket of flowers. They
are alone in the immense landau, which is filled with flowers like a giant
basket. On the front seat are two small hampers of white satin filled with
violets, and on the bearskin by which their knees are covered there is a mass
of roses, mimosas, pinks, daisies, tuberoses and orange blossoms,
interwoven with silk ribbons; the two frail bodies seem buried under this
beautiful perfumed bed, which hides everything but the shoulders and arms
and a little of the dainty waists.
The coachman’s whip is wound with a garland of anemones, the horses’
traces are dotted with carnations, the spokes of the wheels are clothed in
mignonette, and where the lanterns ought to be are two enormous round
bouquets which look as though they were the eyes of this strange, rolling,
flower-bedecked creature.
The landau drives rapidly along the road, through the Rue d’Antibes,
preceded, followed, accompanied, by a crowd of other carriages covered
with flowers, full of women almost hidden by a sea of violets. It is the
flower carnival at Cannes.
The carriage reaches the Boulevard de la Fonciere, where the battle is
waged. All along the immense avenue a double row of flower-bedecked
vehicles are going and coming like an endless ribbon. Flowers are thrown
from one to the other. They pass through the air like balls, striking fresh
faces, bouncing and falling into the dust, where an army of youngsters pick
them up.
A thick crowd is standing on the sidewalks looking on and held in check
by the mounted police, who pass brutally along pushing back the curious
pedestrians as though to prevent the common people from mingling with the
rich.
In the carriages, people call to each other, recognize each other and
bombard each other with roses. A chariot full of pretty women, dressed in
red, like devils, attracts the eyes of all. A gentleman, who looks like the
portraits of Henry IV., is throwing an immense bouquet which is held back by
an elastic. Fearing the shock, the women hide their eyes and the men lower
their heads, but the graceful, rapid and obedient missile describes a curve
and returns to its master, who immediately throws it at some new face.
The two young women begin to throw their stock of flowers by handfuls,
and receive a perfect hail of bouquets; then, after an hour of warfare, a little
tired, they tell the coachman to drive along the road which follows the
seashore.
The sun disappears behind Esterel, outlining the dark, rugged mountain
against the sunset sky. The clear blue sea, as calm as a mill-pond, stretches
out as far as the horizon, where it blends with the sky; and the fleet, anchored
in the middle of the bay, looks like a herd of enormous beasts, motionless on
the water, apocalyptic animals, armored and hump-backed, their frail masts
looking like feathers, and with eyes which light up when evening approaches.
The two young women, leaning back under the heavy robes, look out
lazily over the blue expanse of water. At last one of them says:
“How delightful the evenings are! How good everything seems! Don’t you
think so, Margot?”
“Yes, it is good. But there is always something lacking.”
“What is lacking? I feel perfectly happy. I don’t need anything else.”
“Yes, you do. You are not thinking of it. No matter how contented we may
be, physically, we always long for something more — for the heart.”
The other asked with a smile:
“A little love?”
“Yes.”
They stopped talking, their eyes fastened on the distant horizon, then the
one called Marguerite murmured: “Life without that seems to me unbearable.
I need to be loved, if only by a dog. But we are all alike, no matter what you
may say, Simone.”
“Not at all, my dear. I had rather not be loved at all than to be loved by the
first comer. Do you think, for instance, that it would be pleasant to be loved
by — by— “
She was thinking by whom she might possibly be loved, glancing across
the wide landscape. Her eyes, after traveling around the horizon, fell on the
two bright buttons which were shining on the back of the coachman’s livery,
and she continued, laughing: “by my coachman?”
Madame Margot barely smiled, and said in a low tone of voice:
 “I assure you that it is very amusing to be loved by a servant. It has
happened to me two or three times. They roll their eyes in such a funny
manner — it’s enough to make you die laughing! Naturally, the more in love
they are, the more severe one must be with them, and then, some day, for
some reason, you dismiss them, because, if anyone should notice it, you
would appear so ridiculous.”
Madame Simone was listening, staring straight ahead of her, then she
remarked:
“No, I’m afraid that my footman’s heart would not satisfy me. Tell me how
you noticed that they loved you.”
“I noticed it the same way that I do with other men — when they get
stupid.”
“The others don’t seem stupid to me, when they love me.”
“They are idiots, my dear, unable to talk, to answer, to understand
anything.”
“But how did you feel when you were loved by a servant? Were you —
moved — flattered?”
“Moved? no, flattered — yes a little. One is always flattered to be loved
by a man, no matter who he may be.”
“Oh, Margot!”
“Yes, indeed, my dear! For instance, I will tell you of a peculiar incident
which happened to me. You will see how curious and complex our emotions
are, in such cases.
“About four years ago I happened to be without a maid. I had tried five or
six, one right after the other, and I was about ready to give up in despair,
when I saw an advertisement in a newspaper of a young girl knowing how to
cook, embroider, dress hair, who was looking for a position and who could
furnish the best of references. Besides all these accomplishments, she could
speak English.
“I wrote to the given address, and the next day the person in question
presented herself. She was tall, slender, pale, shy-looking. She had beautiful
black eyes and a charming complexion; she pleased me immediately. I asked
for her certificates; she gave me one in English, for she came, as she said,
from Lady Rymwell’s, where she had been for ten years.
“The certificate showed that the young girl had left of her own free will,
in order to return to France, and the only thing which they had had to find
fault in her during her long period of service was a little French
coquettishness.
“This prudish English phrase even made me smile, and I immediately
engaged this maid.
“She came to me the same day. Her name was Rose.
“At the end of a month I would have been helpless without her. She was a
treasure, a pearl, a phenomenon.
“She could dress my hair with infinite taste; she could trim a hat better
than most milliners, and she could even make my dresses.
“I was astonished at her accomplishments. I had never before been waited
on in such a manner.
“She dressed me rapidly and with a surprisingly light touch. I never felt
her fingers on my skin, and nothing is so disagreeable to me as contact with a
servant’s hand. I soon became excessively lazy; it was so pleasant to be
dressed from head to foot, and from lingerie to gloves, by this tall, timid girl,
always blushing a little, and never saying a word. After my bath she would
rub and massage me while I dozed a little on my couch; I almost considered
her more of a friend than a servant.
“One morning the janitor asked, mysteriously, to speak to me. I was
surprised, and told him to come in. He was a good, faithful man, an old
soldier, one of my husband’s former orderlies.
“He seemed to be embarrassed by what he had to say to me. At last he
managed to mumble:
“‘Madame, the superintendent of police is downstairs.’
“I asked quickly:
“‘What does he wish?’
“‘He wishes to search the house.’
“Of course the police are useful, but I hate them. I do not think that it is a
noble profession. I answered, angered and hurt:
“‘Why this search? For what reason? He shall not come in.’
“The janitor continued:
“‘He says that there is a criminal hidden in the house.’
“This time I was frightened and I told him to bring the inspector to me, so
that I might get some explanation. He was a man with good manners and
decorated with the Legion of Honor. He begged my pardon for disturbing me,
and then informed me that I had, among my domestics, a convict.
 “I was shocked; and I answered that I could guarantee every servant in the
house, and I began to enumerate them.
“‘The janitor, Pierre Courtin, an old soldier.’
“‘It’s not he.’
“‘A stable-boy, son of farmers whom I know, and a groom whom you have
just seen.’
“‘It’s not he.’
“‘Then, monsieur, you see that you must be mistaken.’
“‘Excuse me, madame, but I am positive that I am not making a mistake.
“As the conviction of a notable criminal is at stake, would you be so kind
as to send for all your servants?”
“At first I refused, but I finally gave in, and sent downstairs for
everybody, men and women.
“The inspector glanced at them and then declared:
“‘This isn’t all.’
“‘Excuse me, monsieur, there is no one left but my maid, a young girl
whom you could not possibly mistake for a convict.’
“He asked:
“‘May I also see her?’
“‘Certainly.’
“I rang for Rose, who immediately appeared. She had hardly entered the
room, when the inspector made a motion, and two men whom I had not seen,
hidden behind the door, sprang forward, seized her and tied her hands behind
her back.
“I cried out in anger and tried to rush forward to defend her. The inspector
stopped me:
“‘This girl, madame, is a man whose name is Jean Nicolas Lecapet,
condemned to death in 1879 for assaulting a woman and injuring her so that
death resulted. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He
escaped four months ago. We have been looking for him ever since.’
“I was terrified, bewildered. I did not believe him. The commissioner
continued, laughing:
“‘I can prove it to you. His right arm is tattooed.’
“‘The sleeve was rolled up. It was true. The inspector added, with bad
taste:
“‘You can trust us for the other proofs.’
“And they led my maid away!
 “Well, would you believe me, the thing that moved me most was not anger
at having thus been played upon, deceived and made ridiculous, it was not
the shame of having thus been dressed and undressed, handled and touched
by this man — but a deep humiliation — a woman’s humiliation. Do you
understand?”
“I am afraid I don’t.”
“Just think — this man had been condemned for — for assaulting a
woman. Well! I thought of the one whom he had assaulted — and — and I felt
humiliated — There! Do you understand now?”
Madame Margot did not answer. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes
fastened on the two shining buttons of the livery, with that sphinx-like smile
which women sometimes have.
 ROSALIE PRUDENT

There was a real mystery in this affair which neither the jury, nor the
president, nor the public prosecutor himself could understand.
The girl Prudent (Rosalie), servant at the Varambots’, of Nantes, having
become enceinte without the knowledge of her masters, had, during the night,
killed and buried her child in the garden.
It was the usual story of the infanticides committed by servant girls. But
there was one inexplicable circumstance about this one. When the police
searched the girl Prudent’s room they discovered a complete infant’s outfit,
made by Rosalie herself, who had spent her nights for the last three months in
cutting and sewing it. The grocer from whom she had bought her candles, out
of her own wages, for this long piece of work had come to testify. It came
out, moreover, that the sage-femme of the district, informed by Rosalie of her
condition, had given her all necessary instructions and counsel in case the
event should happen at a time when it might not be possible to get help. She
had also procured a place at Poissy for the girl Prudent, who foresaw that her
present employers would discharge her, for the Varambot couple did not
trifle with morality.
There were present at the trial both the man and the woman, a middle-
class pair from the provinces, living on their income. They were so
exasperated against this girl, who had sullied their house, that they would
have liked to see her guillotined on the spot without a trial. The spiteful
depositions they made against her became accusations in their mouths.
The defendant, a large, handsome girl of Lower Normandy, well educated
for her station in life, wept continuously and would not answer to anything.
The court and the spectators were forced to the opinion that she had
committed this barbarous act in a moment of despair and madness, since
there was every indication that she had expected to keep and bring up her
child.
The president tried for the last time to make her speak, to get some
confession, and, having urged her with much gentleness, he finally made her
understand that all these men gathered here to pass judgment upon her were
not anxious for her death and might even have pity on her.
Then she made up her mind to speak.
“Come, now, tell us, first, who is the father of this child?” he asked.
Until then she had obstinately refused to give his name.
But she replied suddenly, looking at her masters who had so cruelly
calumniated her:
“It is Monsieur Joseph, Monsieur Varambot’s nephew.”
The couple started in their seats and cried with one voice— “That’s not
true! She lies! This is infamous!”
The president had them silenced and continued, “Go on, please, and tell
us how it all happened.”
Then she suddenly began to talk freely, relieving her pent-up heart, that
poor, solitary, crushed heart — laying bare her sorrow, her whole sorrow,
before those severe men whom she had until now taken for enemies and
inflexible judges.
“Yes, it was Monsieur Joseph Varambot, when he came on leave last
year.”
“What does Mr. Joseph Varambot do?”
“He is a non-commissioned officer in the artillery, monsieur. Well, he
stayed two months at the house, two months of the summer. I thought nothing
about it when he began to look at me, and then flatter me, and make love to
me all day long. And I let myself be taken in, monsieur. He kept saying to me
that I was a handsome girl, that I was good company, that I just suited him —
and I, I liked him well enough. What could I do? One listens to these things
when one is alone — all alone — as I was. I am alone in the world,
monsieur. I have no one to talk to — no one to tell my troubles to. I have no
father, no mother, no brother, no sister, nobody. And when he began to talk to
me it was as if I had a brother who had come back. And then he asked me to
go with him to the river one evening, so that we might talk without disturbing
any one. I went — I don’t know — I don’t know how it happened. He had his
arm around me. Really I didn’t want to — no — no — I could not — I felt
like crying, the air was so soft — the moon was shining. No, I swear to you
— I could not — he did what he wanted. That went on three weeks, as long
as he stayed. I could have followed him to the ends of the world. He went
away. I did not know that I was enceinte. I did not know it until the month
after— “
 She began to cry so bitterly that they had to give her time to collect
herself.
Then the president resumed with the tone of a priest at the confessional:
“Come, now, go on.”
She began to talk again: “When I realized my condition I went to see
Madame Boudin, who is there to tell you, and I asked her how it would be, in
case it should come if she were not there. Then I made the outfit, sewing
night after night, every evening until one o’clock in the morning; and then I
looked for another place, for I knew very well that I should be sent away, but
I wanted to stay in the house until the very last, so as to save my pennies, for
I have not got very much and I should need my money for the little one.”
“Then you did not intend to kill him?”
“Oh, certainly not, monsieur!”
“Why did you kill him, then?”
“It happened this way. It came sooner than I expected. It came upon me in
the kitchen, while I was doing the dishes. Monsieur and Madame Varambot
were already asleep, so I went up, not without difficulty, dragging myself up
by the banister, and I lay down on the bare floor. It lasted perhaps one hour,
or two, or three; I don’t know, I had such pain; and then I pushed him out with
all my strength. I felt that he came out and I picked him up.
“Ah! but I was glad, I assure you! I did all that Madame Boudin told me to
do. And then I laid him on my bed. And then such a pain griped me again that
I thought I should die. If you knew what it meant, you there, you would not do
so much of this. I fell on my knees, and then toppled over backward on the
floor; and it griped me again, perhaps one hour, perhaps two. I lay there all
alone — and then another one comes — another little one — two, yes, two,
like this. I took him up as I did the first one, and then I put him on the bed, the
two side by side. Is it possible, tell me, two children, and I who get only
twenty francs a month? Say, is it possible? One, yes, that can be managed by
going without things, but not two. That turned my head. What do I know about
it? Had I any choice, tell me?
“What could I do? I felt as if my last hour had come. I put the pillow over
them, without knowing why. I could not keep them both; and then I threw
myself down, and I lay there, rolling over and over and crying until I saw the
daylight come into the window. Both of them were quite dead under the
pillow. Then I took them under my arms and went down the stairs out in the
vegetable garden. I took the gardener’s spade and I buried them under the
earth, digging as deep a hole as I could, one here and the other one there, not
together, so that they might not talk of their mother if these little dead bodies
can talk. What do I know about it?
“And then, back in my bed, I felt so sick that I could not get up. They sent
for the doctor and he understood it all. I’m telling you the truth, Your Honor.
Do what you like with me; I’m ready.”
Half of the jury were blowing their noses violently to keep from crying.
The women in the courtroom were sobbing.
The president asked her:
“Where did you bury the other one?”
“The one that you have?” she asked.
“Why, this one — this one was in the artichokes.”
“Oh, then the other one is among the strawberries, by the well.”
And she began to sob so piteously that no one could hear her unmoved.
The girl Rosalie Prudent was acquitted.
 REGRET

Monsieur Saval, who was called in Mantes “Father Saval,” had just risen
from bed. He was weeping. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling.
They fell slowly in the rain, like a heavier and slower rain. M. Saval was not
in good spirits. He walked from the fireplace to the window, and from the
window to the fireplace. Life has its sombre days. It would no longer have
any but sombre days for him, for he had reached the age of sixty-two. He is
alone, an old bachelor, with nobody about him. How sad it is to die alone, all
alone, without any one who is devoted to you!
He pondered over his life, so barren, so empty. He recalled former days,
the days of his childhood, the home, the house of his parents; his college
days, his follies; the time he studied law in Paris, his father’s illness, his
death. He then returned to live with his mother. They lived together very
quietly, and desired nothing more. At last the mother died. How sad life is!
He lived alone since then, and now, in his turn, he, too, will soon be dead.
He will disappear, and that will be the end. There will be no more of Paul
Saval upon the earth. What a frightful thing! Other people will love, will
laugh. Yes, people will go on amusing themselves, and he will no longer
exist! Is it not strange that people can laugh, amuse themselves, be joyful
under that eternal certainty of death? If this death were only probable, one
could then have hope; but no, it is inevitable, as inevitable as that night
follows the day.
If, however, his life had been full! If he had done something; if he had had
adventures, great pleasures, success, satisfaction of some kind or another.
But no, nothing. He had done nothing, nothing but rise from bed, eat, at the
same hours, and go to bed again. And he had gone on like that to the age of
sixty-two years. He had not even taken unto himself a wife, as other men do.
Why? Yes, why was it that he had not married? He might have done so, for he
possessed considerable means. Had he lacked an opportunity? Perhaps! But
one can create opportunities. He was indifferent; that was all. Indifference
had been his greatest drawback, his defect, his vice. How many men wreck
their lives through indifference! It is so difficult for some natures to get out of
bed, to move about, to take long walks, to speak, to study any question.
He had not even been loved. No woman had reposed on his bosom, in a
complete abandon of love. He knew nothing of the delicious anguish of
expectation, the divine vibration of a hand in yours, of the ecstasy of
triumphant passion.
What superhuman happiness must overflow your heart, when lips
encounter lips for the first time, when the grasp of four arms makes one being
of you, a being unutterably happy, two beings infatuated with one another.
M. Saval was sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, in his dressing
gown. Assuredly his life had been spoiled, completely spoiled. He had,
however, loved. He had loved secretly, sadly, and indifferently, in a manner
characteristic of him in everything. Yes, he had loved his old friend, Madame
Sandres, the wife of his old companion, Sandres. Ah! if he had known her as
a young girl! But he had met her too late; she was already married.
Unquestionably, he would have asked her hand! How he had loved her,
nevertheless, without respite, since the first day he set eyes on her!
He recalled his emotion every time he saw her, his grief on leaving her,
the many nights that he could not sleep, because he was thinking of her.
On rising in the morning he was somewhat more rational than on the
previous evening.
Why?
How pretty she was formerly, so dainty, with fair curly hair, and always
laughing. Sandres was not the man she should have chosen. She was now
fifty-two years of age. She seemed happy. Ah! if she had only loved him in
days gone by; yes, if she had only loved him! And why should she not have
loved him, he, Saval, seeing that he loved her so much, yes, she, Madame
Sandres!
If only she could have guessed. Had she not guessed anything, seen
anything, comprehended anything? What would she have thought? If he had
spoken, what would she have answered?
And Saval asked himself a thousand other things. He reviewed his whole
life, seeking to recall a multitude of details.
He recalled all the long evenings spent at the house of Sandres, when the
latter’s wife was young, and so charming.
He recalled many things that she had said to him, the intonations of her
voice, the little significant smiles that meant so much.
 He recalled their walks, the three of them together, along the banks of the
Seine, their luncheon on the grass on Sundays, for Sandres was employed at
the sub-prefecture. And all at once the distinct recollection came to him of an
afternoon spent with her in a little wood on the banks of the river.
They had set out in the morning, carrying their provisions in baskets. It
was a bright spring morning, one of those days which intoxicate one.
Everything smells fresh, everything seems happy. The voices of the birds
sound more joyous, and-they fly more swiftly. They had luncheon on the
grass, under the willow trees, quite close to the water, which glittered in the
sun’s rays. The air was balmy, charged with the odors of fresh vegetation;
they drank it in with delight. How pleasant everything was on that day!
After lunch, Sandres went to sleep on the broad of his back. “The best nap
he had in his life,” said he, when he woke up.
Madame Sandres had taken the arm of Saval, and they started to walk
along the river bank.
She leaned tenderly on his arm. She laughed and said to him: “I am
intoxicated, my friend, I am quite intoxicated.” He looked at her, his heart
going pit-a-pat. He felt himself grow pale, fearful that he might have looked
too boldly at her, and that the trembling of his hand had revealed his passion.
She had made a wreath of wild flowers and water-lilies, and she asked
him: “Do I look pretty like that?”
As he did not answer — for he could find nothing to say, he would have
liked to go down on his knees — she burst out laughing, a sort of annoyed,
displeased laugh, as she said: “Great goose, what ails you? You might at
least say something.”
He felt like crying, but could not even yet find a word to say.
All these things came back to him now, as vividly as on the day when they
took place. Why had she said this to him, “Great goose, what ails you? You
might at least say something!”
And he recalled how tenderly she had leaned on his arm. And in passing
under a shady tree he had felt her ear brushing his cheek, and he had moved
his head abruptly, lest she should suppose he was too familiar.
When he had said to her: “Is it not time to return?” she darted a singular
look at him. “Certainly,” she said, “certainly,” regarding him at the same time
in a curious manner. He had not thought of it at the time, but now the whole
thing appeared to him quite plain.
“Just as you like, my friend. If you are tired let us go back.”
 And he had answered: “I am not fatigued; but Sandres may be awake
now.”
And she had said: “If you are afraid of my husband’s being awake, that is
another thing. Let us return.”
On their way back she remained silent, and leaned no longer on his arm.
Why?
At that time it had never occurred to him, to ask himself “why.” Now he
seemed to apprehend something that he had not then understood.
Could it?
M. Saval felt himself blush, and he got up at a bound, as if he were thirty
years younger and had heard Madame Sandres say, “I love you.”
Was it possible? That idea which had just entered his mind tortured him.
Was it possible that he had not seen, had not guessed?
Oh! if that were true, if he had let this opportunity of happiness pass
without taking advantage of it!
He said to himself: “I must know. I cannot remain in this state of doubt. I
must know!” He thought: “I am sixty-two years of age, she is fifty-eight; I
may ask her that now without giving offense.”
He started out.
The Sandres’ house was situated on the other side of the street, almost
directly opposite his own. He went across and knocked at the door, and a
little servant opened it.
“You here at this hour, Saval! Has some accident happened to you?”
“No, my girl,” he replied; “but go and tell your mistress that I want to
speak to her at once.”
“The fact is madame is preserving pears for the winter, and she is in the
preserving room. She is not dressed, you understand.”
“Yes, but go and tell her that I wish to see her on a very important matter.”
The little servant went away, and Saval began to walk, with long, nervous
strides, up and down the drawing-room. He did not feel in the least
embarrassed, however. Oh! he was merely going to ask her something, as he
would have asked her about some cooking recipe. He was sixty-two years of
age!
The door opened and madame appeared. She was now a large woman, fat
and round, with full cheeks and a sonorous laugh. She walked with her arms
away from her sides and her sleeves tucked up, her bare arms all covered
with fruit juice. She asked anxiously:
 “What is the matter with you, my friend? You are not ill, are you?”
“No, my dear friend; but I wish to ask you one thing, which to me is of the
first importance, something which is torturing my heart, and I want you to
promise that you will answer me frankly.”
She laughed, “I am always frank. Say on.”
“Well, then. I have loved you from the first day I ever saw you. Can you
have any doubt of this?”
She responded, laughing, with something of her former tone of voice.
“Great goose! what ails you? I knew it from the very first day!”
Saval began to tremble. He stammered out: “You knew it? Then . . .”
He stopped.
She asked:
“Then?”
He answered:
“Then — what did you think? What — what — what would you have
answered?”
She broke into a peal of laughter. Some of the juice ran off the tips of her
fingers on to the carpet.
“What?”
“I? Why, you did not ask me anything. It was not for me to declare
myself!”
He then advanced a step toward her.
“Tell me — tell me . . . . You remember the day when Sandres went to
sleep on the grass after lunch . . . when we had walked together as far as the
bend of the river, below . . .”
He waited, expectantly. She had ceased to laugh, and looked at him,
straight in the eyes.
“Yes, certainly, I remember it.”
He answered, trembling all over:
“Well — that day — if I had been — if I had been — venturesome —
what would you have done?”
She began to laugh as only a happy woman can laugh, who has nothing to
regret, and responded frankly, in a clear voice tinged with irony:
“I would have yielded, my friend.”
She then turned on her heels and went back to her jam-making.
Saval rushed into the street, cast down, as though he had met with some
disaster. He walked with giant strides through the rain, straight on, until he
reached the river bank, without thinking where he was going. He then turned
to the right and followed the river. He walked a long time, as if urged on by
some instinct. His clothes were running with water, his hat was out of shape,
as soft as a rag, and dripping like a roof. He walked on, straight in front of
him. At last, he came to the place where they had lunched on that day so long
ago, the recollection of which tortured his heart. He sat down under the
leafless trees, and wept.
 A SISTER’S CONFESSION

Marguerite de Therelles was dying. Although she was-only fifty-six years

old she looked at least seventy-five. She gasped for breath, her face whiter
than the sheets, and had spasms of violent shivering, with her face convulsed
and her eyes haggard as though she saw a frightful vision.
Her elder sister, Suzanne, six years older than herself, was sobbing on her
knees beside the bed. A small table close to the dying woman’s couch bore,
on a white cloth, two lighted candles, for the priest was expected at any
moment to administer extreme unction and the last communion.
The apartment wore that melancholy aspect common to death chambers; a
look of despairing farewell. Medicine bottles littered the furniture; linen lay
in the corners into which it had been kicked or swept. The very chairs
looked, in their disarray, as if they were terrified and had run in all
directions. Death — terrible Death — was in the room, hidden, awaiting his
prey.
This history of the two sisters was an affecting one. It was spoken of far
and wide; it had drawn tears from many eyes.
Suzanne, the elder, had once been passionately loved by a young man,
whose affection she returned. They were engaged to be married, and the
wedding day was at hand, when Henry de Sampierre suddenly died.
The young girl’s despair was terrible, and she took an oath never to marry.
She faithfully kept her vow and adopted widow’s weeds for the remainder of
her life.
But one morning her sister, her little sister Marguerite, then only twelve
years old, threw herself into Suzanne’s arms, sobbing: “Sister, I don’t want
you to be unhappy. I don’t want you to mourn all your life. I’ll never leave
you — never, never, never! I shall never marry, either. I’ll stay with you
always — always!”
Suzanne kissed her, touched by the child’s devotion, though not putting any
faith in her promise.
But the little one kept her word, and, despite her parents’ remonstrances,
despite her elder sister’s prayers, never married. She was remarkably pretty
and refused many offers. She never left her sister.
They spent their whole life together, without a single day’s separation.
They went everywhere together and were inseparable. But Marguerite was
pensive, melancholy, sadder than her sister, as if her sublime sacrifice had
undermined her spirits. She grew older more quickly; her hair was white at
thirty; and she was often ill, apparently stricken with some unknown, wasting
malady.
And now she would be the first to die.
She had not spoken for twenty-four hours, except to whisper at daybreak:
“Send at once for the priest.”
And she had since remained lying on her back, convulsed with agony, her
lips moving as if unable to utter the dreadful words that rose in her heart, her
face expressive of a terror distressing to witness.
Suzanne, distracted with grief, her brow pressed against the bed, wept
bitterly, repeating over and over again the words:
“Margot, my poor Margot, my little one!”
She had always called her “my little one,” while Marguerite’s name for
the elder was invariably “sister.”
A footstep sounded on the stairs. The door opened. An acolyte appeared,
followed by the aged priest in his surplice. As soon as she saw him the dying
woman sat up suddenly in bed, opened her lips, stammered a few words and
began to scratch the bed-clothes, as if she would have made hole in them.
Father Simon approached, took her hand, kissed her on the forehead and
said in a gentle voice:
“May God pardon your sins, my daughter. Be of good courage. Now is the
moment to confess them — speak!”
Then Marguerite, shuddering from head to foot, so that the very bed shook
with her nervous movements, gasped:
“Sit down, sister, and listen.”
The priest stooped toward the prostrate Suzanne, raised her to her feet,
placed her in a chair, and, taking a hand of each of the sisters, pronounced:
“Lord God! Send them strength! Shed Thy mercy upon them.”
And Marguerite began to speak. The words issued from her lips one by
one — hoarse, jerky, tremulous.
“Pardon, pardon, sister! pardon me! Oh, if only you knew how I have
dreaded this moment all my life!”
Suzanne faltered through her tears:
 “But what have I to pardon, little one? You have given me everything,
sacrificed all to me. You are an angel.”
But Marguerite interrupted her:
“Be silent, be silent! Let me speak! Don’t stop me! It is terrible. Let me
tell all, to the very end, without interruption. Listen. You remember — you
remember — Henry— “
Suzanne trembled and looked at her sister. The younger one went on:
“In order to understand you must hear everything. I was twelve years old
— only twelve — you remember, don’t you? And I was spoilt; I did just as I
pleased. You remember how everybody spoilt me? Listen. The first time he
came he had on his riding boots; he dismounted, saying that he had a message
for father. You remember, don’t you? Don’t speak. Listen. When I saw him I
was struck with admiration. I thought him so handsome, and I stayed in a
corner of the drawing-room all the time he was talking. Children are strange
— and terrible. Yes, indeed, I dreamt of him.
“He came again — many times. I looked at him with all my eyes, all my
heart. I was large for my age and much more precocious than — any one
suspected. He came often. I thought only of him. I often whispered to myself:
“‘Henry-Henry de Sampierre!’
“Then I was told that he was going to marry you. That was a blow! Oh,
sister, a terrible blow — terrible! I wept all through three sleepless nights.
“He came every afternoon after lunch. You remember, don’t you? Don’t
answer. Listen. You used to make cakes that he was very fond of — with
flour, butter and milk. Oh, I know how to make them. I could make them still,
if necessary. He would swallow them at one mouthful and wash them down
with a glass of wine, saying: ‘Delicious!’ Do you remember the way he said
it?
“I was jealous — jealous! Your wedding day was drawing near. It was
only a fortnight distant. I was distracted. I said to myself: ‘He shall not marry
Suzanne — no, he shall not! He shall marry me when I am old enough! I shall
never love any one half so much.’ But one evening, ten days before the
wedding, you went for a stroll with him in the moonlight before the house —
and yonder — under the pine tree, the big pine tree — he kissed you —
kissed you — and held you in his arms so long — so long! You remember,
don’t you? It was probably the first time. You were so pale when you came
back to the drawing-room!
 “I saw you. I was there in the shrubbery. I was mad with rage! I would
have killed you both if I could!
“I said to myself: ‘He shall never marry Suzanne — never! He shall marry
no one! I could not bear it.’ And all at once I began to hate him intensely.
“Then do you know what I did? Listen. I had seen the gardener prepare
pellets for killing stray dogs. He would crush a bottle into small pieces with
a stone and put the ground glass into a ball of meat.
“I stole a small medicine bottle from mother’s room. I ground it fine with
a hammer and hid the glass in my pocket. It was a glistening powder. The
next day, when you had made your little cakes; I opened them with a knife
and inserted the glass. He ate three. I ate one myself. I threw the six others
into the pond. The two swans died three days later. You remember? Oh, don’t
speak! Listen, listen. I, I alone did not die. But I have always been ill. Listen
— he died — you know — listen — that was not the worst. It was afterward,
later — always — the most terrible — listen.
“My life, all my life — such torture! I said to myself: ‘I will never leave
my sister. And on my deathbed I will tell her all.’ And now I have told. And I
have always thought of this moment — the moment when all would be told.
Now it has come. It is terrible — oh! — sister —
“I have always thought, morning and evening, day and night: ‘I shall have
to tell her some day!’ I waited. The horror of it! It is done. Say nothing. Now
I am afraid — I am afraid! Oh! Supposing I should see him again, by and by,
when I am dead! See him again! Only to think of it! I dare not — yet I must. I
am going to die. I want you to forgive me. I insist on it. I cannot meet him
without your forgiveness. Oh, tell her to forgive me, Father! Tell her. I
implore you! I cannot die without it.”
She was silent and lay back, gasping for breath, still plucking at the sheets
with her fingers.
Suzanne had hidden her face in her hands and did not move. She was
thinking of him whom she had loved so long. What a life of happiness they
might have had together! She saw him again in the dim and distant past-that
past forever lost. Beloved dead! how the thought of them rends the heart! Oh!
that kiss, his only kiss! She had retained the memory of it in her soul. And,
after that, nothing, nothing more throughout her whole existence!
The priest rose suddenly and in a firm, compelling voice said:
“Mademoiselle Suzanne, your sister is dying!”
 Then Suzanne, raising her tear-stained face, put her arms round her sister,
and kissing her fervently, exclaimed:
“I forgive you, I forgive you, little one!”
 COCO

Throughout the whole countryside the Lucas farn, was known as “the Manor.”
No one knew why. The peasants doubtless attached to this word, “Manor,” a
meaning of wealth and of splendor, for this farm was undoubtedly the largest,
richest and the best managed in the whole neighborhood.
The immense court, surrounded by five rows of magnificent trees, which
sheltered the delicate apple trees from the harsh wind of the plain, inclosed
in its confines long brick buildings used for storing fodder and grain,
beautiful stables built of hard stone and made to accommodate thirty horses,
and a red brick residence which looked like a little chateau.
Thanks for the good care taken, the manure heaps were as little offensive
as such things can be; the watch-dogs lived in kennels, and countless poultry
paraded through the tall grass.
Every day, at noon, fifteen persons, masters, farmhands and the women
folks, seated themselves around the long kitchen table where the soup was
brought in steaming in a large, blue-flowered bowl.
The beasts-horses, cows, pigs and sheep-were fat, well fed and clean.
Maitre Lucas, a tall man who was getting stout, would go round three times a
day, overseeing everything and thinking of everything.
A very old white horse, which the mistress wished to keep until its natural
death, because she had brought it up and had always used it, and also
because it recalled many happy memories, was housed, through sheer
kindness of heart, at the end of the stable.
A young scamp about fifteen years old, Isidore Duval by name, and
called, for convenience, Zidore, took care of this pensioner, gave him his
measure of oats and fodder in winter, and in summer was supposed to change
his pasturing place four times a day, so that he might have plenty of fresh
grass.
The animal, almost crippled, lifted with difficulty his legs, large at the
knees and swollen above the hoofs. His coat, which was no longer curried,
looked like white hair, and his long eyelashes gave to his eyes a sad
expression.
 When Zidore took the animal to pasture, he had to pull on the rope with all
his might, because it walked so slowly; and the youth, bent over and out of
breath, would swear at it, exasperated at having to care for this old nag.
The farmhands, noticing the young rascal’s anger against Coco, were
amused and would continually talk of the horse to Zidore, in order to
exasperate him. His comrades would make sport with him. In the village he
was called Coco-Zidore.
The boy would fume, feeling an unholy desire to revenge himself on the
horse. He was a thin, long-legged, dirty child, with thick, coarse, bristly red
hair. He seemed only half-witted, and stuttered as though ideas were unable
to form in his thick, brute-like mind.
For a long time he had been unable to understand why Coco should be
kept, indignant at seeing things wasted on this useless beast. Since the horse
could no longer work, it seemed to him unjust that he should be fed; he
revolted at the idea of wasting oats, oats which were so expensive, on this
paralyzed old plug. And often, in spite of the orders of Maitre Lucas, he
would economize on the nag’s food, only giving him half measure. Hatred
grew in his confused, childlike mind, the hatred of a stingy, mean, fierce,
brutal and cowardly peasant.
When summer came he had to move the animal about in the pasture. It was
some distance away. The rascal, angrier every morning, would start, with his
dragging step, across the wheat fields. The men working in the fields would
shout to him, jokingly:
“Hey, Zidore, remember me to Coco.”
He would not answer; but on the way he would break off a switch, and, as
soon as he had moved the old horse, he would let it begin grazing; then,
treacherously sneaking up behind it, he would slash its legs. The animal
would try to escape, to kick, to get away from the blows, and run around in a
circle about its rope, as though it had been inclosed in a circus ring. And the
boy would slash away furiously, running along behind, his teeth clenched in
anger.
Then he would go away slowly, without turning round, while the horse
watched him disappear, his ribs sticking out, panting as a result of his
unusual exertions. Not until the blue blouse of the young peasant was out of
sight would he lower his thin white head to the grass.
As the nights were now warm, Coco was allowed to sleep out of doors, in
the field behind the little wood. Zidore alone went to see him. The boy threw
stones at him to amuse himself. He would sit down on an embankment about
ten feet away and would stay there about half an hour, from time to time
throwing a sharp stone at the old horse, which remained standing tied before
his enemy, watching him continually and not daring to eat before he was
gone.
This one thought persisted in the mind of the young scamp: “Why feed this
horse, which is no longer good for anything?” It seemed to him that this old
nag was stealing the food of the others, the goods of man and God, that he
was even robbing him, Zidore, who was working.
Then, little by little, each day, the boy began to shorten the length of rope
which allowed the horse to graze.
The hungry animal was growing thinner, and starving. Too feeble to break
his bonds, he would stretch his head out toward the tall, green, tempting
grass, so near that he could smell, and yet so far that he could not touch it.
But one morning Zidore had an idea: it was, not to move Coco any more.
He was tired of walking so far for that old skeleton. He came, however, in
order to enjoy his vengeance. The beast watched him anxiously. He did not
beat him that day. He walked around him with his hands in his pockets. He
even pretended to change his place, but he sank the stake in exactly the same
hole, and went away overjoyed with his invention.
The horse, seeing him leave, neighed to call him back; but the rascal
began to run, leaving him alone, entirely alone in his field, well tied down
and without a blade of grass within reach.
Starving, he tried to reach the grass which he could touch with the end of
his nose. He got on his knees, stretching out his neck and his long, drooling
lips. All in vain. The old animal spent the whole day in useless, terrible
efforts. The sight of all that green food, which stretched out on all sides of
him, served to increase the gnawing pangs of hunger.
The scamp did not return that day. He wandered through the woods in
search of nests.
The next day he appeared upon the scene again. Coco, exhausted, had lain
down. When he saw the boy, he got up, expecting at last to have his place
changed.
But the little peasant did not even touch the mallet, which was lying on the
ground. He came nearer, looked at the animal, threw at his head a clump of
earth which flattened out against the white hair, and he started off again,
whistling.
 The horse remained standing as long as he could see him; then, knowing
that his attempts to reach the near-by grass would be hopeless, he once more
lay down on his side and closed his eyes.
The following day Zidore did not come.
When he did come at last, he found Coco still stretched out; he saw that he
was dead.
Then he remained standing, looking at him, pleased with what he had
done, surprised that it should already be all over. He touched him with his
foot, lifted one of his legs and then let it drop, sat on him and remained there,
his eyes fixed on the grass, thinking of nothing. He returned to the farm, but
did not mention the accident, because he wished to wander about at the hours
when he used to change the horse’s pasture. He went to see him the next day.
At his approach some crows flew away. Countless flies were walking over
the body and were buzzing around it. When he returned home, he announced
the event. The animal was so old that nobody was surprised. The master said
to two of the men:
“Take your shovels and dig a hole right where he is.”
The men buried the horse at the place where he had died of hunger. And
the grass grew thick, green and vigorous, fed by the poor body.
 DEAD WOMAN’S SECRET

The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life
had been blameless. Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her
eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as
though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale
countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that
one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet
existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent
had been.
Kneeling beside the bed, her son, a magistrate with inflexible principles,
and her daughter, Marguerite, known as Sister Eulalie, were weeping as
though their hearts would break. She had, from childhood up, armed them
with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty,
without compromise. He, the man, had become a judge and handled the law
as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. She, the girl,
influenced by the virtue which had bathed her in this austere family, had
become the bride of the Church through her loathing for man.
They had hardly known their father, knowing only that he had made their
mother most unhappy, without being told any other details.
The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman’s hand, an ivory hand as
white as the large crucifix lying across the bed. On the other side of the long
body the other hand seemed still to be holding the sheet in the death grasp;
and the sheet had preserved the little creases as a memory of those last
movements which precede eternal immobility.
A few light taps on the door caused the two sobbing heads to look up, and
the priest, who had just come from dinner, returned. He was red and out of
breath from his interrupted digestion, for he had made himself a strong
mixture of coffee and brandy in order to combat the fatigue of the last few
nights and of the wake which was beginning.
He looked sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest for whom death is
a bread winner. He crossed himself and approaching with his professional
gesture: “Well, my poor children! I have come to help you pass these last sad
hours.” But Sister Eulalie suddenly arose. “Thank you, father, but my brother
and I prefer to remain alone with her. This is our last chance to see her, and
we wish to be together, all three of us, as we — we — used to be when we
were small and our poor mo — mother — — “
Grief and tears stopped her; she could not continue.
Once more serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his bed. “As you wish,
my children.” He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went out
quietly, murmuring: “She was a saint!”
They remained alone, the dead woman and her children. The ticking of the
clock, hidden in the shadow, could be heard distinctly, and through the open
window drifted in the sweet smell of hay and of woods, together with the soft
moonlight. No other noise could be heard over the land except the occasional
croaking of the frog or the chirping of some belated insect. An infinite peace,
a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded this dead woman, seemed
to be breathed out from her and to appease nature itself.
Then the judge, still kneeling, his head buried in the bed clothes, cried in a
voice altered by grief and deadened by the sheets and blankets: “Mamma,
mamma, mamma!” And his sister, frantically striking her forehead against the
woodwork, convulsed, twitching and trembling as in an epileptic fit,
moaned: “Jesus, Jesus, mamma, Jesus!” And both of them, shaken by a storm
of grief, gasped and choked.
The crisis slowly calmed down and they began to weep quietly, just as on
the sea when a calm follows a squall.
A rather long time passed and they arose and looked at their dead. And the
memories, those distant memories, yesterday so dear, to-day so torturing,
came to their minds with all the little forgotten details, those little intimate
familiar details which bring back to life the one who has left. They recalled
to each other circumstances, words, smiles, intonations of the mother who
was no longer to speak to them. They saw her again happy and calm. They
remembered things which she had said, and a little motion of the hand, like
beating time, which she often used when emphasizing something important.
And they loved her as they never had loved her before. They measured the
depth of their grief, and thus they discovered how lonely they would find
themselves.
It was their prop, their guide, their whole youth, all the best part of their
lives which was disappearing. It was their bond with life, their mother, their
mamma, the connecting link with their forefathers which they would
thenceforth miss. They now became solitary, lonely beings; they could no
longer look back.
The nun said to her brother: “You remember how mamma used always to
read her old letters; they are all there in that drawer. Let us, in turn, read
them; let us live her whole life through tonight beside her! It would be like a
road to the cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of our
grandparents, whom we never knew, but whose letters are there and of whom
she so often spoke, do you remember?”
Out of the drawer they took about ten little packages of yellow paper, tied
with care and arranged one beside the other. They threw these relics on the
bed and chose one of them on which the word “Father” was written. They
opened and read it.
It was one of those old-fashioned letters which one finds in old family
desk drawers, those epistles which smell of another century. The first one
started: “My dear,” another one: “My beautiful little girl,” others: “My dear
child,” or: “My dear (laughter).” And suddenly the nun began to read aloud,
to read over to the dead woman her whole history, all her tender memories.
The judge, resting his elbow on the bed, was listening with his eyes fastened
on his mother. The motionless body seemed happy.
Sister Eulalie, interrupting herself, said suddenly:
“These ought to be put in the grave with her; they ought to be used as a
shroud and she ought to be buried in it.” She took another package, on which
no name was written. She began to read in a firm voice: “My adored one, I
love you wildly. Since yesterday I have been suffering the tortures of the
damned, haunted by our memory. I feel your lips against mine, your eyes in
mine, your breast against mine. I love you, I love you! You have driven me
mad. My arms open, I gasp, moved by a wild desire to hold you again. My
whole soul and body cries out for you, wants you. I have kept in my mouth
the taste of your kisses— “
The judge had straightened himself up. The nun stopped reading. He
snatched the letter from her and looked for the signature. There was none, but
only under the words, “The man who adores you,” the name “Henry.” Their
father’s name was Rene. Therefore this was not from him. The son then
quickly rummaged through the package of letters, took one out and read: “I
can no longer live without your caresses.” Standing erect, severe as when
sitting on the bench, he looked unmoved at the dead woman. The nun, straight
as a statue, tears trembling in the corners of her eyes, was watching her
brother, waiting. Then he crossed the room slowly, went to the window and
stood there, gazing out into the dark night.
When he turned around again Sister Eulalie, her eyes dry now, was still
standing near the bed, her head bent down.
He stepped forward, quickly picked up the letters and threw them pell-
mell back into the drawer. Then he closed the curtains of the bed.
When daylight made the candles on the table turn pale the son slowly left
his armchair, and without looking again at the mother upon whom he had
passed sentence, severing the tie that united her to son and daughter, he said
slowly: “Let us now retire, sister.”
 A HUMBLE DRAMA

Meetings that are unexpected constitute the charm of traveling. Who has not
experienced the joy of suddenly coming across a Parisian, a college friend,
or a neighbor, five hundred miles from home? Who has not passed a night
awake in one of those small, rattling country stage-coaches, in regions where
steam is still a thing unknown, beside a strange young woman, of whom one
has caught only a glimpse in the dim light of the lantern, as she entered the
carriage in front of a white house in some small country town?
And the next morning, when one’s head and ears feel numb with the
continuous tinkling of the bells and the loud rattling of the windows, what a
charming sensation it is to see your pretty neighbor open her eyes, startled,
glance around her, arrange her rebellious hair with her slender fingers, adjust
her hat, feel with sure hand whether her corset is still in place, her waist
straight, and her skirt not too wrinkled.
She glances at you coldly and curiously. Then she leans back and no
longer seems interested in anything but the country.
In spite of yourself, you watch her; and in spite of yourself you keep on
thinking of her. Who is she? Whence does she come? Where is she going? In
spite of yourself you spin a little romance around her. She is pretty; she
seems charming! Happy he who . . . Life might be delightful with her. Who
knows? She is perhaps the woman of our dreams, the one suited to our
disposition, the one for whom our heart calls.
And how delicious even the disappointment at seeing her get out at the
gate of a country house! A man stands there, who is awaiting her, with two
children and two maids. He takes her in his arms and kisses as he lifts her
out. Then she stoops over the little ones, who hold up their hands to her; she
kisses them tenderly; and then they all go away together, down a path, while
the maids catch the packages which the driver throws down to them from the
coach.
Adieu! It is all over. You never will see her again! Adieu to the young
woman who has passed the night by your side. You know her no more, you
have not spoken to her; all the same, you feel a little sad to see her go. Adieu!
 I have had many of these souvenirs of travel, some joyous and some sad.
Once I was in Auvergne, tramping through those delightful French
mountains, that are not too high, not too steep, but friendly and familiar. I had
climbed the Sancy, and entered a little inn, near a pilgrim’s chapel called
Notre-Dame de Vassiviere, when I saw a queer, ridiculous-looking old
woman breakfasting alone at the end table.
She was at least seventy years old, tall, skinny, and angular, and her white
hair was puffed around her temples in the old-fashioned style. She was
dressed like a traveling Englishwoman, in awkward, queer clothing, like a
person who is indifferent to dress. She was eating an omelet and drinking
water.
Her face was peculiar, with restless eyes and the expression of one with
whom fate has dealt unkindly. I watched her, in spite of myself, thinking:
“Who is she? What is the life of this woman? Why is she wandering alone
through these mountains?”
She paid and rose to leave, drawing up over her shoulders an astonishing
little shawl, the two ends of which hung over her arms. From a corner of the
room she took an alpenstock, which was covered with names traced with a
hot iron; then she went out, straight, erect, with the long steps of a letter-
carrier who is setting out on his route.
A guide was waiting for her at the door, and both went away. I watched
them go down the valley, along the road marked by a line of high wooden
crosses. She was taller than her companion, and seemed to walk faster than
he.
Two hours later I was climbing the edge of the deep funnel that incloses
Lake Pavin in a marvelous and enormous basin of verdure, full of trees,
bushes, rocks, and flowers. This lake is so round that it seems as if the
outline had been drawn with a pair of compasses, so clear and blue that one
might deem it a flood of azure come down from the sky, so charming that one
would like to live in a but on the wooded slope which dominates this crater,
where the cold, still water is sleeping. The Englishwoman was standing there
like a statue, gazing upon the transparent sheet down in the dead volcano. She
was straining her eyes to penetrate below the surface down to the unknown
depths, where monstrous trout which have devoured all the other fish are
said to live. As I was passing close by her, it seemed to me that two big tears
were brimming her eyes. But she departed at a great pace, to rejoin her
guide, who had stayed behind in an inn at the foot of the path leading to the
lake.
I did not see her again that day.
The next day, at nightfall, I came to the chateau of Murol. The old fortress,
an enormous tower standing on a peak in the midst of a large valley, where
three valleys intersect, rears its brown, uneven, cracked surface into the sky;
it is round, from its large circular base to the crumbling turrets on its
pinnacles.
It astonishes the eye more than any other ruin by its simple mass, its
majesty, its grave and imposing air of antiquity. It stands there, alone, high as
a mountain, a dead queen, but still the queen of the valleys stretched out
beneath it. You go up by a slope planted with firs, then you enter a narrow
gate, and stop at the foot of the walls, in the first inclosure, in full view of the
entire country.
Inside there are ruined halls, crumbling stairways, unknown cavities,
dungeons, walls cut through in the middle, vaulted roofs held up one knows
not how, and a mass of stones and crevices, overgrown with grass, where
animals glide in and out.
I was exploring this ruin alone.
Suddenly I perceived behind a bit of wall a being, a kind of phantom, like
the spirit of this ancient and crumbling habitation.
I was taken aback with surprise, almost with fear, when I recognized the
old lady whom I had seen twice.
She was weeping, with big tears in her eyes, and held her handkerchief in
her hand.
I turned around to go away, when she spoke to me, apparently ashamed to
have been surprised in her grief.
“Yes, monsieur, I am crying. That does not happen often to me.”
“Pardon me, madame, for having disturbed you,” I stammered, confused,
not knowing what to say. “Some misfortune has doubtless come to you.”
“Yes. No — I am like a lost dog,” she murmured, and began to sob, with
her handkerchief over her eyes.
Moved by these contagious tears, I took her hand, trying to calm her. Then
brusquely she told me her history, as if no longer ably to bear her grief alone.
“Oh! Oh! Monsieur — if you knew — the sorrow in which I live — in
what sorrow.
 “Once I was happy. I have a house down there — a home. I cannot go
back to it any more; I shall never go back to it again, it is too hard to bear.
“I have a son. It is he! it is he! Children don’t know. Oh, one has such a
short time to live! If I should see him now I should perhaps not recognize
him. How I loved him? How I loved him! Even before he was born, when I
felt him move. And after that! How I have kissed and caressed and cherished
him! If you knew how many nights I have passed in watching him sleep, and
how many in thinking of him. I was crazy about him. When he was eight years
old his father sent him to boarding-school. That was the end. He no longer
belonged to me. Oh, heavens! He came to see me every Sunday. That was all!
“He went to college in Paris. Then he came only four times a year, and
every time I was astonished to see how he had changed, to find him taller
without having seen him grow. They stole his childhood from me, his
confidence, and his love which otherwise would not have gone away from
me; they stole my joy in seeing him grow, in seeing him become a little man.
“I saw him four times a year. Think of it! And at every one of his visits his
body, his eye, his movements, his voice his laugh, were no longer the same,
were no longer mine. All these things change so quickly in a child; and it is
so sad if one is not there to see them change; one no longer recognizes him.
“One year he came with down on his cheek! He! my son! I was
dumfounded — would you believe it? I hardly dared to kiss him. Was it
really he, my little, little curly head of old, my dear; dear child, whom I had
held in his diapers or my knee, and who had nursed at my breast with his
little greedy lips — was it he, this tall, brown boy, who no longer knew how
to kiss me, who seemed to love me as a matter of duty, who called me
‘mother’ for the sake of politeness, and who kissed me on the forehead, when
I felt like crushing him in my arms?
“My husband died. Then my parents, and then my two sisters. When Death
enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as not to
have to return for a long time after that. He spares only one or two to mourn
the others.
“I remained alone. My tall son was then studying law. I was hoping to live
and die near him, and I went to him so that we could live together. But he had
fallen into the ways of young men, and he gave me to understand that I was in
his way. So I left. I was wrong in doing so, but I suffered too much in feeling
myself in his way, I, his mother! And I came back home.
“I hardly ever saw him again.
 “He married. What a joy! At last we should be together for good. I should
have grandchildren. His wife was an Englishwoman, who took a dislike to
me. Why? Perhaps she thought that I loved him too much.
“Again I was obliged to go away. And I was alone. Yes, monsieur.
“Then he went to England, to live with them, with his wife’s parents. Do
you understand? They have him — they have my son for themselves. They
have stolen him from me. He writes to me once a month. At first he came to
see me. But now he no longer comes.
“It is now four years since I saw him last. His face then was wrinkled and
his hair white. Was that possible? This man, my son, almost an old man? My
little rosy child of old? No doubt I shall never see him again.
“And so I travel about all the year. I go east and west, as you see, with no
companion.
“I am like a lost dog. Adieu, monsieur! don’t stay here with me for it hurts
me to have told you all this.”
I went down the hill, and on turning round to glance back, I saw the old
woman standing on a broken wall, looking out upon the mountains, the long
valley and Lake Chambon in the distance.
And her skirt and the queer little shawl which she wore around her thin
shoulders were fluttering like a flag in the wind.
 MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE

We were just leaving the asylum when I saw a tall, thin man in a corner of the
court who kept on calling an imaginary dog. He was crying in a soft, tender
voice: “Cocotte! Come here, Cocotte, my beauty!” and slapping his thigh as
one does when calling an animal. I asked the physician, “Who is that man?”
He answered: “Oh! he is not at all interesting. He is a coachman named
Francois, who became insane after drowning his dog.”
I insisted: “Tell me his story. The most simple and humble things are
sometimes those which touch our hearts most deeply.”
Here is this man’s adventure, which was obtained from a friend of his, a
groom:
There was a family of rich bourgeois who lived in a suburb of Paris. They
had a villa in the middle of a park, at the edge of the Seine. Their coachman
was this Francois, a country fellow, somewhat dull, kind-hearted, simple and
easy to deceive.
One evening, as he was returning home, a dog began to follow him. At
first he paid no attention to it, but the creature’s obstinacy at last made him
turn round. He looked to see if he knew this dog. No, he had never seen it. It
was a female dog and frightfully thin. She was trotting behind him with a
mournful and famished look, her tail between her legs, her ears flattened
against her head and stopping and starting whenever he did.
He tried to chase this skeleton away and cried:
“Run along! Get out! Kss! kss!” She retreated a few steps, then sat down
and waited. And when the coachman started to walk again she followed
along behind him.
He pretended to pick up some stones. The animal ran a little farther away,
but came back again as soon as the man’s back was turned.
Then the coachman Francois took pity on the beast and called her. The dog
approached timidly. The man patted her protruding ribs, moved by the beast’s
misery, and he cried: “Come! come here!” Immediately she began to wag her
tail, and, feeling herself taken in, adopted, she began to run along ahead of
her new master.
 He made her a bed on the straw in the stable, then he ran to the kitchen for
some bread. When she had eaten all she could she curled up and went to
sleep.
When his employers heard of this the next day they allowed the coachman
to keep the animal. It was a good beast, caressing and faithful, intelligent and
gentle.
Nevertheless Francois adored Cocotte, and he kept repeating: “That beast
is human. She only lacks speech.”
He had a magnificent red leather collar made for her which bore these
words engraved on a copper plate: “Mademoiselle Cocotte, belonging to the
coachman Francois.”
She was remarkably prolific and four times a year would give birth to a
batch of little animals belonging to every variety of the canine race. Francois
would pick out one which he would leave her and then he would
unmercifully throw the others into the river. But soon the cook joined her
complaints to those of the gardener. She would find dogs under the stove, in
the ice box, in the coal bin, and they would steal everything they came
across.
Finally the master, tired of complaints, impatiently ordered Francois to get
rid of Cocotte. In despair the man tried to give her away. Nobody wanted her.
Then he decided to lose her, and he gave her to a teamster, who was to drop
her on the other side of Paris, near Joinville-le-Pont.
Cocotte returned the same day. Some decision had to be taken. Five francs
was given to a train conductor to take her to Havre. He was to drop her there.
Three days later she returned to the stable, thin, footsore and tired out.
The master took pity on her and let her stay. But other dogs were attracted
as before, and one evening, when a big dinner party was on, a stuffed turkey
was carried away by one of them right under the cook’s nose, and she did not
dare to stop him.
This time the master completely lost his temper and said angrily to
Francois: “If you don’t throw this beast into the water before — to-morrow
morning, I’ll put you out, do you hear?”
The man was dumbfounded, and he returned to his room to pack his trunk,
preferring to leave the place. Then he bethought himself that he could find no
other situation as long as he dragged this animal about with him. He thought
of his good position, where he was well paid and well fed, and he decided
that a dog was really not worth all that. At last he decided to rid himself of
Cocotte at daybreak.
He slept badly. He rose at dawn, and taking a strong rope, went to get the
dog. She stood up slowly, shook herself, stretched and came to welcome her
master.
Then his courage forsook him, and he began to pet her affectionately,
stroking her long ears, kissing her muzzle and calling her tender names.
But a neighboring clock struck six. He could no longer hesitate. He
opened the door, calling: “Come!” The beast wagged her tail, understanding
that she was to be taken out.
They reached the beach, and he chose a place where the water seemed
deep. Then he knotted the rope round the leather collar and tied a heavy stone
to the other end. He seized Cocotte in his arms and kissed her madly, as
though he were taking leave of some human being. He held her to his breast,
rocked her and called her “my dear little Cocotte, my sweet little Cocotte,”
and she grunted with pleasure.
Ten times he tried to throw her into the water and each time he lost
courage.
But suddenly he made up his mind and threw her as far from him as he
could. At first she tried to swim, as she did when he gave her a bath, but her
head, dragged down by the stone, kept going under, and she looked at her
master with wild, human glances as she struggled like a drowning person.
Then the front part of her body sank, while her hind legs waved wildly out of
the water. Finally those also disappeared.
Then, for five minutes, bubbles rose to the surface as though the river
were boiling, and Francois, haggard, his heart beating, thought that he saw
Cocotte struggling in the mud, and, with the simplicity of a peasant, he kept
saying to himself: “What does the poor beast think of me now?”
He almost lost his mind. He was ill for a month and every night he
dreamed of his dog. He could feel her licking his hands and hear her barking.
It was necessary to call in a physician. At last he recovered, and toward the
2nd of June his employers took him to their estate at Biesard, near Rouen.
There again he was near the Seine. He began to take baths. Each morning
he would go down with the groom and they would swim across the river.
One day, as they were disporting themselves in the water, Francois
suddenly cried to his companion: “Look what’s coming! I’m going to give
you a chop!”
 It was an enormous, swollen corpse that was floating down with its feet
sticking straight up in the air.
Francois swam up to it, still joking: “Whew! it’s not fresh. What a catch,
old man! It isn’t thin, either!” He kept swimming about at a distance from the
animal that was in a state of decomposition. Then, suddenly, he was silent
and looked at it: attentively. This time he came near enough to touch, it. He
looked fixedly at the collar, then he stretched out his arm, seized the neck,
swung the corpse round and drew it up close to him and read on the copper
which had turned green and which still stuck to the discolored leather:
“Mademoiselle Cocotte, belonging to the coachman Francois.”
The dead dog had come more than a hundred miles to find its master.
He let out a frightful shriek and began to swim for the beach with all his
might, still howling; and as soon as he touched land he ran away wildly, stark
naked, through the country. He was insane!
 THE CORSICAN BANDIT

The road ascended gently through the forest of Aitone. The large pines
formed a solemn dome above our heads, and that mysterious sound made by
the wind in the trees sounded like the notes of an organ.
After walking for three hours, there was a clearing, and then at intervals
an enormous pine umbrella, and then we suddenly came to the edge of the
forest, some hundred meters below, the pass leading to the wild valley of
Niolo.
On the two projecting heights which commanded a view of this pass,
some old trees, grotesquely twisted, seemed to have mounted with painful
efforts, like scouts sent in advance of the multitude in the rear. When we
turned round, we saw the entire forest stretched beneath our feet, like a
gigantic basin of verdure, inclosed by bare rocks whose summits seemed to
reach the sky.
We resumed our walk, and, ten minutes later, found ourselves in the pass.
Then I beheld a remarkable landscape. Beyond another forest stretched a
valley, but a valley such as I had never seen before; a solitude of stone, ten
leagues long, hollowed out between two high mountains, without a field or a
tree to be seen. This was the Niolo valley, the fatherland of Corsican liberty,
the inaccessible citadel, from which the invaders had never been able to
drive out the mountaineers.
My companion said to me: “This is where all our bandits have taken
refuge?”
Ere long we were at the further end of this gorge, so wild, so
inconceivably beautiful.
Not a blade of grass, not a plant-nothing but granite. As far as our eyes
could reach, we saw in front of us a desert of glittering stone, heated like an
oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that very purpose right
above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards the crests, we stood
dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked like a festoon of coral;
all the summits are of porphyry; and the sky overhead was violet, purple,
tinged with the coloring of these strange mountains. Lower down, the granite
was of scintillating gray, and seemed ground to powder beneath our feet. At
our right, along a long and irregular course, roared a tumultuous torrent. And
we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning, arid, desolate
valley cut by this torrent of turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying
onward, without fertilizing the rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily
drank it up without being saturated or refreshed by it.
But, suddenly, there was visible at our right a little wooden cross sunk in
a little heap of stones. A man had been killed there; and I said to my
companion.
“Tell me about your bandits.”
He replied:
“I knew the most celebrated of them, the terrible St. Lucia. I will tell you
his history.
“His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the district, it is
said; and St. Lucia was left alone with his sister. He was a weak, timid
youth, small, often ill, without any energy. He did not proclaim vengeance
against the assassin of his father. All his relatives came to see him, and
implored of him to avenge his death; he remained deaf to their menaces and
their supplications.
“Then, following the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her indignation
carried away his black clothes, in order that he might not wear mourning for
a dead man who had not been avenged. He was insensible to even this
affront, and rather than take down from the rack his father’s gun, which was
still loaded, he shut himself up, not daring to brave the looks of the young
men of the district.
“He seemed to have even forgotten the crime, and lived with his sister in
the seclusion of their dwelling.
“But, one day, the man who was suspected of having committed the
murder, was about to get married. St. Lucia did not appear to be moved by
this news, but, out of sheer bravado, doubtless, the bridegroom, on his way to
the church, passed before the house of the two orphans.
“The brother and the sister, at their window, were eating frijoles, when
the young man saw the bridal procession going by. Suddenly he began to
tremble, rose to his feet without uttering a word, made the sign of the cross,
took the gun which was hanging over the fireplace, and went out.
“When he spoke of this later on, he said: ‘I don’t know what was the
matter with me; it was like fire in my blood; I felt that I must do it, that, in
spite of everything, I could not resist, and I concealed the gun in a cave on the
road to Corte.
“An hour later, he came back, with nothing in his hand, and with his
habitual air of sad weariness. His sister believed that there was nothing
further in his thoughts.
“But when night fell he disappeared.
“His enemy had, the same evening, to repair to Corte on foot,
accompanied by his two groomsmen.
“He was walking along, singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood before
him, and looking straight in the murderer’s face, exclaimed: ‘Now is the
time!’ and shot him point-blank in the chest.
“One of the men fled; the other stared at, the young man, saying:
“‘What have you done, St. Lucia?’ and he was about to hasten to Corte for
help, when St. Lucia said in a stern tone:
“‘If you move another step, I’ll shoot you in the leg.’
“The other, aware of his timidity hitherto, replied: ‘You would not dare to
do it!’ and was hurrying off when he fell instantaneously, his thigh shattered
by a bullet.
“And St. Lucia, coming over to where he lay, said:
“‘I am going to look at your wound; if it is not serious, I’ll leave you
there; if it is mortal I’ll finish you off.”
“He inspected the wound, considered it mortal, and slowly reloading his
gun, told the wounded man to say a prayer, and shot him through the head.
“Next day he was in the mountains.
“And do you know what this St. Lucia did after this?
“All his family were arrested by the gendarmes. His uncle, the cure, who
was suspected of having incited him to this deed of vengeance, was himself
put in prison, and accused by the dead man’s relatives. But he escaped, took
a gun in his turn, and went to join his nephew in the brush.
“Next, St. Lucia killed, one after the other, his uncle’s accusers, and tore
out their eyes to teach the others never to state what they had seen with their
eyes.
“He killed all the relatives, all the connections of his enemy’s family. He
slew during his life fourteen gendarmes, burned down the houses of his
adversaries, and was, up to the day of his death, the most terrible of all the
bandits whose memory we have preserved.”
 The sun disappeared behind Monte Cinto and the tall shadow of the
granite mountain went to sleep on the granite of the valley. We quickened our
pace in order to reach before night the little village of Albertaccio, nothing
but a pile of stones welded into the stone flanks of a wild gorge. And I said
as I thought of the bandit:
“What a terrible custom your vendetta is!”
My companion answered with an air of resignation:
“What would you have? A man must do his duty!”
 THE GRAVE

The seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three, at half-
past two in the morning, the watchman in the cemetery of Besiers, who lived
in a small cottage on the edge of this field of the dead, was awakened by the
barking of his dog, which was shut up in the kitchen.
Going down quickly, he saw the animal sniffing at the crack of the door
and barking furiously, as if some tramp had been sneaking about the house.
The keeper, Vincent, therefore took his gun and went out.
His dog, preceding him, at once ran in the direction of the Avenue General
Bonnet, stopping short at the monument of Madame Tomoiseau.
The keeper, advancing cautiously, soon saw a faint light on the side of the
Avenue Malenvers, and stealing in among the graves, he came upon a
horrible act of profanation.
A man had dug up the coffin of a young woman who had been buried the
evening before and was dragging the corpse out of it.
A small dark lantern, standing on a pile of earth, lighted up this hideous
scene.
Vincent sprang upon the wretch, threw him to the ground, bound his hands
and took him to the police station.
It was a young, wealthy and respected lawyer in town, named
Courbataille.
He was brought into court. The public prosecutor opened the case by
referring to the monstrous deeds of the Sergeant Bertrand.
A wave of indignation swept over the courtroom. When the magistrate sat
down the crowd assembled cried: “Death! death!” With difficulty the
presiding judge established silence.
Then he said gravely:
“Defendant, what have you to say in your defense?”
Courbataille, who had refused counsel, rose. He was a handsome fellow,
tall, brown, with a frank face, energetic manner and a fearless eye.
Paying no attention to the whistlings in the room, he began to speak in a
voice that was low and veiled at first, but that grew more firm as he
proceeded.
“Monsieur le President, gentlemen of the jury: I have very little to say.
The woman whose grave I violated was my sweetheart. I loved her.
“I loved her, not with a sensual love and not with mere tenderness of heart
and soul, but with an absolute, complete love, with an overpowering passion.
“Hear me:
“When I met her for the first time I felt a strange sensation. It was not
astonishment nor admiration, nor yet that which is called love at first sight,
but a feeling of delicious well-being, as if I had been plunged into a warm
bath. Her gestures seduced me, her voice enchanted me, and it was with
infinite pleasure that I looked upon her person. It seemed to me as if I had
seen her before and as if I had known her a long time. She had within her
something of my spirit.
“She seemed to me like an answer to a cry uttered by my soul, to that
vague and unceasing cry with which we call upon Hope during our whole
life.
“When I knew her a little better, the mere thought of seeing her again filled
me with exquisite and profound uneasiness; the touch of her hand in mine was
more delightful to me than anything that I had imagined; her smile filled me
with a mad joy, with the desire to run, to dance, to fling myself upon the
ground.
“So we became lovers.
“Yes, more than that: she was my very life. I looked for nothing further on
earth, and had no further desires. I longed for nothing further.
“One evening, when we had gone on a somewhat long walk by the river,
we were overtaken by the rain, and she caught cold. It developed into
pneumonia the next day, and a week later she was dead.
“During the hours of her suffering astonishment and consternation
prevented my understanding and reflecting upon it, but when she was dead I
was so overwhelmed by blank despair that I had no thoughts left. I wept.
“During all the horrible details of the interment my keen and wild grief
was like a madness, a kind of sensual, physical grief.
“Then when she was gone, when she was under the earth, my mind at once
found itself again, and I passed through a series of moral sufferings so
terrible that even the love she had vouchsafed to me was dear at that price.
“Then the fixed idea came to me: I shall not see her again.
 “When one dwells on this thought for a whole day one feels as if he were
going mad. Just think of it! There is a woman whom you adore, a unique
woman, for in the whole universe there is not a second one like her. This
woman has given herself to you and has created with you the mysterious
union that is called Love. Her eye seems to you more vast than space, more
charming than the world, that clear eye smiling with her tenderness. This
woman loves you. When she speaks to you her voice floods you with joy.
“And suddenly she disappears! Think of it! She disappears, not only for
you, but forever. She is dead. Do you understand what that means? Never,
never, never, not anywhere will she exist any more. Nevermore will that eye
look upon anything again; nevermore will that voice, nor any voice like it,
utter a word in the same way as she uttered it.
“Nevermore will a face be born that is like hers. Never, never! The molds
of statues are kept; casts are kept by which one can make objects with the
same outlines and forms. But that one body and that one face will never more
be born again upon the earth. And yet millions and millions of creatures will
be born, and more than that, and this one woman will not reappear among all
the women of the future. Is it possible? It drives one mad to think of it.
“She lived for twenty-years, not more, and she has disappeared forever,
forever, forever! She thought, she smiled, she loved me. And now nothing!
The flies that die in the autumn are as much as we are in this world. And now
nothing! And I thought that her body, her fresh body, so warm, so sweet, so
white, so lovely, would rot down there in that box under the earth. And her
soul, her thought, her love — where is it?
“Not to see her again! The idea of this decomposing body, that I might yet
recognize, haunted me. I wanted to look at it once more.
“I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the
cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed entirely; I
uncovered the coffin and took up a board. An abominable odor, the stench of
putrefaction, greeted my nostrils. Oh, her bed perfumed with orris!
“Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I
saw her. Her face was blue, swollen, frightful. A black liquid had oozed out
of her mouth.
“She! That was she! Horror seized me. But I stretched out my arm to draw
this monstrous face toward me. And then I was caught.
“All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of my
well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love embrace.
 “Do with me what you will.”
A strange silence seemed to oppress the room. They seemed to be waiting
for something more. The jury retired to deliberate.
When they came back a few minutes later the accused showed no fear and
did not even seem to think.
The president announced with the usual formalities that his judges
declared him to be not guilty.
He did not move and the room applauded.
The Grave appeared in Gil Blas, July 29, 1883, under the signature
of “Maufrigneuse.”
 OLD JUDAS

This entire stretch of country was amazing; it was characterized by a

grandeur that was almost religious, and yet it had an air of sinister
desolation.
A great, wild lake, filled with stagnant, black water, in which thousands
of reeds were waving to and fro, lay in the midst of a vast circle of naked
hills, where nothing grew but broom, or here and there an oak curiously
twisted by the wind.
Just one house stood on the banks of that dark lake, a small, low house
inhabited by Uncle Joseph, an old boatman, who lived on what he could
make by his fishing. Once a week he carried the fish he caught into the
surrounding villages, returning with the few provisions that he needed for his
sustenance.
I went to see this old hermit, who offered to take me with him to his nets,
and I accepted.
His boat was old, worm-eaten and clumsy, and the skinny old man rowed
with a gentle and monotonous stroke that was soothing to the soul, already
oppressed by the sadness of the land round about.
It seemed to me as if I were transported to olden times, in the midst of that
ancient country, in that primitive boat, which was propelled by a man of
another age.
He took up his nets and threw the fish into the bottom of the boat, as the
fishermen of the Bible might have done. Then he took me down to the end of
the lake, where I suddenly perceived a ruin on the other side of the bank a
dilapidated hut, with an enormous red cross on the wall that looked as if it
might have been traced with blood, as it gleamed in the last rays of the setting
sun.
“What is that?” I asked.
“That is where Judas died,” the man replied, crossing himself.
I was not surprised, being almost prepared for this strange answer.
Still I asked:
“Judas? What Judas?”
“The Wandering Jew, monsieur,” he added.
 I asked him to tell me this legend.
But it was better than a legend, being a true story, and quite a recent one,
since Uncle Joseph had known the man.
This hut had formerly been occupied by a large woman, a kind of beggar,
who lived on public charity.
Uncle Joseph did not remember from whom she had this hut. One evening
an old man with a white beard, who seemed to be at least two hundred years
old, and who could hardly drag himself along, asked alms of this forlorn
woman, as he passed her dwelling.
“Sit down, father,” she replied; “everything here belongs to all the world,
since it comes from all the world.”
He sat down on a stone before the door. He shared the woman’s bread,
her bed of leaves, and her house.
He did not leave her again, for he had come to the end of his travels.
“It was Our Lady the Virgin who permitted this, monsieur,” Joseph added,
“it being a woman who had opened her door to a Judas, for this old
vagabond was the Wandering Jew. It was not known at first in the country, but
the people suspected it very soon, because he was always walking; it had
become a sort of second nature to him.”
And suspicion had been aroused by still another thing. This woman, who
kept that stranger with her, was thought to be a Jewess, for no one had ever
seen her at church. For ten miles around no one ever called her anything else
but the Jewess.
When the little country children saw her come to beg they cried out:
“Mamma, mamma, here is the Jewess!”
The old man and she began to go out together into the neighboring
districts, holding out their hands at all the doors, stammering supplications
into the ears of all the passers. They could be seen at all hours of the day, on
by-paths, in the villages, or again eating bread, sitting in the noon heat under
the shadow of some solitary tree. And the country people began to call the
beggar Old Judas.
One day he brought home in his sack two little live pigs, which a farmer
had given him after he had cured the farmer of some sickness.
Soon he stopped begging, and devoted himself entirely to his pigs. He
took them out to feed by the lake, or under isolated oaks, or in the near-by
valleys. The woman, however, went about all day begging, but she always
came back to him in the evening.
 He also did not go to church, and no one ever had seen him cross himself
before the wayside crucifixes. All this gave rise to much gossip:
One night his companion was attacked by a fever and began to tremble
like a leaf in the wind. He went to the nearest town to get some medicine, and
then he shut himself up with her, and was not seen for six days.
The priest, having heard that the “Jewess” was about to die, came to offer
the consolation of his religion and administer the last sacrament. Was she a
Jewess? He did not know. But in any case, he wished to try to save her soul.
Hardly had he knocked at the door when old Judas appeared on the
threshold, breathing hard, his eyes aflame, his long beard agitated, like
rippling water, and he hurled blasphemies in an unknown language, extending
his skinny arms in order to prevent the priest from entering.
The priest attempted to speak, offered his purse and his aid, but the old
man kept on abusing him, making gestures with his hands as if throwing;
stones at him.
Then the priest retired, followed by the curses of the beggar.
The companion of old Judas died the following day. He buried her
himself, in front of her door. They were people of so little account that no
one took any interest in them.
Then they saw the man take his pigs out again to the lake and up the
hillsides. And he also began begging again to get food. But the people gave
him hardly anything, as there was so much gossip about him. Every one knew,
moreover, how he had treated the priest.
Then he disappeared. That was during Holy Week, but no one paid any
attention to him.
But on Easter Sunday the boys and girls who had gone walking out to the
lake heard a great noise in the hut. The door was locked; but the boys broke it
in, and the two pigs ran out, jumping like gnats. No one ever saw them again.
The whole crowd went in; they saw some old rags on the floor, the
beggar’s hat, some bones, clots of dried blood and bits of flesh in the
hollows of the skull.
His pigs had devoured him.
“This happened on Good Friday, monsieur.” Joseph concluded his story,
“three hours after noon.”
“How do you know that?” I asked him.
“There is no doubt about that,” he replied.
 I did not attempt to make him understand that it could easily happen that
the famished animals had eaten their master, after he had died suddenly in his
hut.
As for the cross on the wall, it had appeared one morning, and no one
knew what hand traced it in that strange color.
Since then no one doubted any longer that the Wandering Jew had died on
this spot.
I myself believed it for one hour.
 THE LITTLE CASK

He was a tall man of forty or thereabout, this Jules Chicot, the innkeeper of
Spreville, with a red face and a round stomach, and said by those who knew
him to be a smart business man. He stopped his buggy in front of Mother
Magloire’s farmhouse, and, hitching the horse to the gatepost, went in at the
gate.
Chicot owned some land adjoining that of the old woman, which he had
been coveting for a long while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times,
but she had always obstinately refused to part with it.
“I was born here, and here I mean to die,” was all she said.
He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a
woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost dried
up in fact and much bent but as active and untiring as a girl. Chicot patted her
on the back in a friendly fashion and then sat down by her on a stool.
“Well mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see.”
“Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you,
Monsieur Chicot?”
“Oh, pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally;
otherwise I have nothing to complain of.”
“So much the better.”
And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.
Her crooked, knotted fingers, hard as a lobster’s claws, seized the tubers,
which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of pincers, and she
peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin with an old knife which
she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes into the water as they were
done. Three daring fowls jumped one after the other into her lap, seized a bit
of peel and then ran away as fast as their legs would carry them with it in
their beak.
Chicot seemed embarrassed, anxious, with something on the tip of his
tongue which he could not say. At last he said hurriedly:
“Listen, Mother Magloire— “
“Well, what is it?”
 “You are quite sure that you do not want to sell your land?”
“Certainly not; you may make up your mind to that. What I have said I
have said, so don’t refer to it again.”
“Very well; only I think I know of an arrangement that might suit us both
very well.”
“What is it?”
“Just this. You shall sell it to me and keep it all the same. You don’t
understand? Very well, then follow me in what I am going to say.”
The old woman left off peeling potatoes and looked at the innkeeper
attentively from under her heavy eyebrows, and he went on:
“Let me explain myself. Every month I will give you a hundred and fifty
francs. You understand me! suppose! Every month I will come and bring you
thirty crowns, and it will not make the slightest difference in your life — not
the very slightest. You will have your own home just as you have now, need
not trouble yourself about me, and will owe me nothing; all you will have to
do will be to take my money. Will that arrangement suit you?”
He looked at her good-humoredly, one might almost have said
benevolently, and the old woman returned his looks distrustfully, as if she
suspected a trap, and said:
“It seems all right as far as I am concerned, but it will not give you the
farm.”
“Never mind about that,” he said; “you may remain here as long as it
pleases God Almighty to let you live; it will be your home. Only you will
sign a deed before a lawyer making it over to me; after your death. You have
no children, only nephews and nieces for whom you don’t care a straw. Will
that suit you? You will keep everything during your life, and I will give you
the thirty crowns a month. It is pure gain as far as you are concerned.”
The old woman was surprised, rather uneasy, but, nevertheless, very much
tempted to agree, and answered:
“I don’t say that I will not agree to it, but I must think about it. Come back
in a week, and we will talk it over again, and I will then give you my definite
answer.”
And Chicot went off as happy as a king who had conquered an empire.
Mother Magloire was thoughtful, and did not sleep at all that night; in fact,
for four days she was in a fever of hesitation. She suspected that there was
something underneath the offer which was not to her advantage; but then the
thought of thirty crowns a month, of all those coins clinking in her apron,
falling to her, as it were, from the skies, without her doing anything for it,
aroused her covetousness.
She went to the notary and told him about it. He advised her to accept
Chicot’s offer, but said she ought to ask for an annuity of fifty instead of
thirty, as her farm was worth sixty thousand francs at the lowest calculation.
“If you live for fifteen years longer,” he said, “even then he will only have
paid forty-five thousand francs for it.”
The old woman trembled with joy at this prospect of getting fifty crowns a
month, but she was still suspicious, fearing some trick, and she remained a
long time with the lawyer asking questions without being able to make up her
mind to go. At last she gave him instructions to draw up the deed and
returned home with her head in a whirl, just as if she had drunk four jugs of
new cider.
When Chicot came again to receive her answer she declared, after a lot of
persuading, that she could not make up her mind to agree to his proposal,
though she was all the time trembling lest he should not consent to give the
fifty crowns, but at last, when he grew urgent, she told him what she expected
for her farm.
He looked surprised and disappointed and refused.
Then, in order to convince him, she began to talk about the probable
duration of her life.
“I am certainly not likely to live more than five or six years longer. I am
nearly seventy-three, and far from strong, even considering my age. The other
evening I thought I was going to die, and could hardly manage to crawl into
bed.”
But Chicot was not going to be taken in.
“Come, come, old lady, you are as strong as the church tower, and will
live till you are a hundred at least; you will no doubt see me put under ground
first.”
The whole day was spent in discussing the money, and as the old woman
would not give in, the innkeeper consented to give the fifty crowns, and she
insisted upon having ten crowns over and above to strike the bargain.
Three years passed and the old dame did not seem to have grown a day
older. Chicot was in despair, and it seemed to him as if he had been paying
that annuity for fifty years, that he had been taken in, done, ruined. From time
to time he went to see the old lady, just as one goes in July to see when the
harvest is likely to begin. She always met him with a cunning look, and one
might have supposed that she was congratulating herself on the trick she had
played him. Seeing how well and hearty she seemed he very soon got into his
buggy again, growling to himself:
“Will you never die, you old hag?”
He did not know what to do, and he felt inclined to strangle her when he
saw her. He hated her with a ferocious, cunning hatred, the hatred of a
peasant who has been robbed, and began to cast about for some means of
getting rid of her.
One day he came to see her again, rubbing his hands as he did the first
time he proposed the bargain, and, after having chatted for a few minutes, he
said:
“Why do you never come and have a bit of dinner at my place when you
are in Spreville? The people are talking about it, and saying we are not on
friendly terms, and that pains me. You know it will cost you nothing if you
come, for I don’t look at the price of a dinner. Come whenever you feel
inclined; I shall be very glad to see you.”
Old Mother Magloire did not need to be asked twice, and the next day but
one, as she had to go to the town in any case, it being market day, she let her
man drive her to Chicot’s place, where the buggy was put in the barn while
she went into the house to get her dinner.
The innkeeper was delighted and treated her like a lady, giving her roast
fowl, black pudding, leg of mutton and bacon and cabbage. But she ate next
to nothing. She had always been a small eater, and had generally lived on a
little soup and a crust of bread and butter.
Chicot was disappointed and pressed her to eat more, but she refused, and
she would drink little, and declined coffee, so he asked her:
“But surely you will take a little drop of brandy or liqueur?”
“Well, as to that, I don’t know that I will refuse.” Whereupon he shouted
out:
“Rosalie, bring the superfine brandy — the special — you know.”
The servant appeared, carrying a long bottle ornamented with a paper
vine-leaf, and he filled two liqueur glasses.
“Just try that; you will find it first rate.”
The good woman drank it slowly in sips, so as to make the pleasure last
all the longer, and when she had finished her glass, she said:
“Yes, that is first rate!”
 Almost before she had said it Chicot had poured her out another glassful.
She wished to refuse, but it was too late, and she drank it very slowly, as she
had done the first, and he asked her to have a third. She objected, but he
persisted.
“It is as mild as milk, you know; I can drink ten or a dozen glasses without
any ill effects; it goes down like sugar and does not go to the head; one
would think that it evaporated on the tongue: It is the most wholesome thing
you can drink.”
She took it, for she really enjoyed it, but she left half the glass.
Then Chicot, in an excess of generosity, said:
“Look here, as it is so much to your taste, I will give you a small keg of it,
just to show that you and I are still excellent friends.” So she took one away
with her, feeling slightly overcome by the effects of what she had drunk.
The next day the innkeeper drove into her yard and took a little iron-
hooped keg out of his gig. He insisted on her tasting the contents, to make
sure it was the same delicious article, and, when they had each of them drunk
three more glasses, he said as he was going away:
“Well, you know when it is all gone there is more left; don’t be modest,
for I shall not mind. The sooner it is finished the better pleased I shall be.”
Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door
cutting up the bread for her soup.
He went up to her and put his face close to hers, so that he might smell her
breath; and when he smelt the alcohol he felt pleased.
“I suppose you will give me a glass of the Special?” he said. And they
had three glasses each.
Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire
was in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up in her
kitchen, then in her yard, then in the roads in the neighborhood, and she was
often brought home like a log.
The innkeeper did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to
him about her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:
“It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age, but when
people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in the long run.”
And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter. About
Christmas time she fell down, unconscious, in the snow, and was found dead
the next morning.
And when Chicot came in for the farm, he said:
 “It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she would
probably have lived ten years longer.”
 BOITELLE

Father Boitelle (Antoine) made a specialty of undertaking dirty jobs all

through the countryside. Whenever there was a ditch or a cesspool to be
cleaned out, a dunghill removed, a sewer cleansed, or any dirt hole
whatever, he way always employed to do it.
He would come with the instruments of his trade, his sabots covered with
dirt, and set to work, complaining incessantly about his occupation. When
people asked him then why he did this loathsome work, he would reply
resignedly:
“Faith, ’tis for my children, whom I must support. This brings me in more
than anything else.”
He had, indeed, fourteen children. If any one asked him what had become
of them, he would say with an air of indifference:
“There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at service and
five are married.”
When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he
replied vivaciously:
“I did not oppose them. I opposed them in nothing. They married just as
they pleased. We shouldn’t go against people’s likings, it turns out badly. I
am a night scavenger because my parents went against my likings. But for that
I would have become a workman like the others.”
Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:
He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than
another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, however. When he was not
on duty, his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay, where the bird
dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a soldier from his own
part of the country, he would slowly saunter along by cages containing
parrots with green backs and yellow heads from the banks of the Amazon, or
parrots with gray backs and red heads from Senegal, or enormous macaws,
which look like birds reared in hot-houses, with their flower-like feathers,
their plumes and their tufts. Parrots of every size, who seem painted with
minute care by the miniaturist, God Almighty, and the little birds, all the
smaller birds hopped about, yellow, blue and variegated, mingling their cries
with the noise of the quay; and adding to the din caused by unloading the
vessels, as well as by passengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill
and deafening, as if from some distant forest of monsters.
Boitelle would pause, with wondering eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing
and enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive cockatoos, who kept nodding
their white or yellow topknots toward the glaring red of his breeches and the
copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that could talk he put
questions to it, and if it happened at the time to be disposed to reply and to
hold a conversation with him he would carry away enough amusement to last
him till evening. He also found heaps of amusement in looking at the
monkeys, and could conceive no greater luxury for a rich man than to own
these animals as one owns cats and dogs. This kind of taste for the exotic he
had in his blood, as people have a taste for the chase, or for medicine, or for
the priesthood. He could not help returning to the quay every time the gates of
the barracks opened, drawn toward it by an irresistible longing.
On one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstasy before an enormous
macaw, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward and bridling up
again as if making the court curtseys of parrot-land, he saw the door of a
little cafe adjoining the bird dealer’s shop open, and a young negress
appeared, wearing on her head a red silk handkerchief. She was sweeping
into the street the corks and sand of the establishment.
Boitelle’s attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman,
and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated with
the greater astonishment and delight.
The negress, having swept the rubbish into the street, raised her eyes, and,
in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier’s uniform. There she stood facing him
with her broom in her hands as if she were bringing him a rifle, while the
macaw continued bowing. But at the end of a few seconds the soldier began
to feel embarrassed at this attention, and he walked away quietly so as not to
look as if he were beating a retreat.
But he came back. Almost every day he passed before the Cafe des
Colonies, and often he could distinguish through the window the figure of the
little black-skinned maid serving “bocks” or glasses of brandy to the sailors
of the port. Frequently, too, she would come out to the door on seeing him;
soon, without even having exchanged a word, they smiled at one another like
acquaintances; and Boitelle felt his heart touched when he suddenly saw,
glittering between the dark lips of the girl, a shining row of white teeth. At
length, one day he ventured to enter, and was quite surprised to find that she
could speak French like every one else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she
was good enough to accept a glassful, remained in the soldier’s recollection
memorably delicious, and it became a custom with him to come and absorb
in this little tavern on the quay all the agreeable drinks which he could
afford.
For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts dwelt
constantly, to watch the black hand of the little maid pouring something into
his glass while her teeth laughed more than her eyes. At the end of two
months they became fast friends, and Boitelle, after his first astonishment at
discovering that this negress had as good principles as honest French girls,
that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry, religion and good conduct,
loved her more on that account, and was so charmed with her that he wanted
to marry her.
He told her his intentions, which made her dance with joy. She had also a
little money, left her by, a female oyster dealer, who had picked her up when
she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain
had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of
cotton in the hold of his ship, some hours after his departure from New York.
On his arrival in Havre he abandoned to the care of this compassionate
oyster dealer the little black creature, who had been hidden on board his
vessel, he knew not why or by whom.
The oyster woman having died, the young negress became a servant at the
Colonial Tavern.
Antoine Boitelle added: “This will be all right if my parents don’t oppose
it. I will never go against them, you understand, never! I’m going to say a
word or two to them the first time I go back to the country.”
On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours’ leave,
he went to see his family, who cultivated a little farm at Tourteville, near
Yvetot.
He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee baptized
with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing his parents
that he had found a girl who satisfied his tastes, all his tastes, so completely
that there could not exist any other in all the world so perfectly suited to him.
The old people, on hearing this, immediately assumed a cautious manner
and wanted explanations. He had concealed nothing from them except the
color of her skin.
She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean, well-
conducted and sensible. All these things were better than money would be in
the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few sous, left her by a
woman who had reared her, a good number of sous, almost a little dowry,
fifteen hundred francs in the savings bank. The old people, persuaded by his
talk, and relying also on their own judgment, were gradually weakening,
when he came to the delicate point. Laughing in rather a constrained fashion,
he said:
“There’s only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip.”
They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very
cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky race of
which they had only seen samples in pictures at Epinal. Then they became
restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had proposed a union with the devil.
The mother said: “Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of
her?”
He replied: “Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere.”
The father interposed: “Black? Is it as black as the pot?”
The son answered: “Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but not
disgustingly black. The cure’s cassock is black, but it is not uglier than a
surplice which is white.”
The father said: “Are there more black people besides her in her
country?”
And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed: “Certainly!”
But the old man shook his head.
“That must be unpleasant.”
And the son:
“It isn’t more disagreeable than anything else when you get accustomed to
it.”
The mother asked:
“It doesn’t soil the underwear more than other skins, this black skin?”
“Not more than your own, as it is her proper color.”
Then, after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should see
this girl before coming; to any decision, and that the young fellow, whose,
term of military service would be over in a month, should bring her to the
house in order that they might examine her and decide by talking the matter
over whether or not she was too dark to enter the Boitelle family.
 Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22d of May, the day of
his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.
She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover’s parents, her
most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red and blue were
the prevailing colors, so that she looked as if she were adorned for a national
festival.
At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her, and
Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who commanded so much
attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in which she took a seat by his
side, she aroused so much astonishment among the country folks that the
people in the adjoining compartments stood up on their benches to look at her
over the wooden partition which divides the compartments. A child, at sight
of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed his face in his mother’s
apron. Everything went off well, however, up to their arrival at their
destination. But when the train slackened its rate of motion as they drew near
Yvetot, Antoine felt: ill at ease, as he would have done at a review when; he
did not know his drill practice. Then, as he; leaned his head out, he
recognized in the distance: his father, holding the bridle of the horse
harnessed to a carryall, and his mother, who had come forward to the grating,
behind which stood those who were expecting friends.
He alighted first, gave his hand to his sweetheart, and holding himself
erect, as if he were escorting a general, he went to meet his family.
The mother, on seeing this black lady in variegated costume in her son’s
company, remained so stupefied that she could not open her mouth; and the
father found it hard to hold the horse, which the engine or the negress caused
to rear continuously. But Antoine, suddenly filled with unmixed joy at seeing
once more the old people, rushed forward with open arms, embraced his
mother, embraced his father, in spite of the nag’s fright, and then turning
toward his companion, at whom the passengers on the platform stopped to
stare with amazement, he proceeded to explain:
“Here she is! I told you that, at first sight, she is not attractive; but as soon
as you know her, I can assure you there’s not a better sort in the whole world.
Say good-morning to her so that she may not feel badly.”
Thereupon Mere Boitelle, almost frightened out of her wits, made a sort
of curtsy, while the father took off his cap, murmuring:
“I wish you good luck!”
 Then, without further delay, they climbed into the carryall, the two women
at the back, on seats which made them jump up and down as the vehicle went
jolting along the road, and the two men in front on the front seat.
Nobody spoke. Antoine, ill at ease, whistled a barrack-room air; his
father whipped the nag; and his mother, from where she sat in the corner, kept
casting sly glances at the negress, whose forehead and cheekbones shone in
the sunlight like well-polished shoes.
Wishing to break the ice, Antoine turned round.
“Well,” said he, “we don’t seem inclined to talk.”
“We must have time,” replied the old woman.
He went on:
“Come! Tell us the little story about that hen of yours that laid eight eggs.”
It was a funny anecdote of long standing in the family. But, as his mother
still remained silent, paralyzed by her emotion, he undertook himself to tell
the story, laughing as he did so at the memorable incident. The father, who
knew it by heart brightened at the opening words of the narrative; his wife
soon followed his example; and the negress herself, when he reached the
drollest part of it, suddenly gave vent to a laugh, such a loud, rolling torrent
of laughter that the horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a while.
This served to cement their acquaintance. They all began to chat.
They had scarcely reached the house and had all alighted, when Antoine
conducted his sweetheart to a room, so that she might take off her dress, to
avoid staining it, as she was going to prepare a nice dish, intended to win the
old people’s affections through their stomachs. He drew his parents outside
the house, and, with beating heart, asked:
“Well, what do you say now?”
The father said nothing. The mother, less timid, exclaimed:
“She is too black. No, indeed, this is too much for me. It turns my blood.”
“You will get used to it,” said Antoine.
“Perhaps so, but not at first.”
They went into the house, where the good woman was somewhat affected
at the spectacle of the negress engaged in cooking. She at once proceeded to
assist her, with petticoats tucked up, active in spite of her age.
The meal was an excellent one, very long, very enjoyable. When they
were taking a turn after dinner, Antoine took his father aside.
“Well, dad, what do you say about it?”
The peasant took care never to compromise himself.
 “I have no opinion about it. Ask your mother.”
So Antoine went back to his mother, and, detaining her behind the rest,
said:
“Well, mother, what do you think of her?”
“My poor lad, she is really too black. If she were only a little less black, I
would not go against you, but this is too much. One would think it was
Satan!”
He did not press her, knowing how obstinate the old woman had always
been, but he felt a tempest of disappointment sweeping over his heart. He
was turning over in his mind what he ought to do, what plan he could devise,
surprised, moreover, that she had not conquered them already as she had
captivated himself. And they, all four, walked along through the wheat fields,
having gradually relapsed into silence. Whenever they passed a fence they
saw a countryman sitting on the stile, and a group of brats climbed up to stare
at them, and every one rushed out into the road to see the “black” whore
young Boitelle had brought home with him. At a distance they noticed people
scampering across the fields just as when the drum beats to draw public
attention to some living phenomenon. Pere and Mere Boitelle, alarmed at this
curiosity, which was exhibited everywhere through the country at their
approach, quickened their pace, walking side by side, and leaving their son
far behind. His dark companion asked what his parents thought of her.
He hesitatingly replied that they had not yet made up their minds.
But on the village green people rushed out of all the houses in a flutter of
excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering crowd, old Boitelle took to his
heels, and regained his abode, while Antoine; swelling with rage, his
sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically under the staring eyes, which
opened wide in amazement.
He understood that it was at an end, and there was no hope for him, that he
could not marry his negress. She also understood it; and as they drew near
the farmhouse they both began to weep. As soon as they had got back to the
house, she once more took off her dress to aid the mother in the household
duties, and followed her everywhere, to the dairy, to the stable, to the hen
house, taking on herself the hardest part of the work, repeating always: “Let
me do it, Madame Boitelle,” so that, when night came on, the old woman,
touched but inexorable, said to her son: “She is a good girl, all the same. It’s
a pity she is so black; but indeed she is too black. I could not get used to it.
She must go back again. She is too, too black!”
 And young Boitelle said to his sweetheart:
“She will not consent. She thinks you are too black. You must go back
again. I will go with you to the train. No matter — don’t fret. I am going to
talk to them after you have started.”
He then took her to the railway station, still cheering her with hope, and,
when he had kissed her, he put her into the train, which he watched as it
passed out of sight, his eyes swollen with tears.
In vain did he appeal to the old people. They would never give their
consent.
And when he had told this story, which was known all over the country,
Antoine Boitelle would always add:
“From that time forward I have had no heart for anything — for anything at
all. No trade suited me any longer, and so I became what I am — a night
scavenger.”
People would say to him:
“Yet you got married.”
“Yes, and I can’t say that my wife didn’t please me, seeing that I have
fourteen children; but she is not the other one, oh, no — certainly not! The
other one, mark you, my negress, she had only to give me one glance, and I
felt as if I were in Heaven.”
 A WIDOW

This story was told during the hunting season at the Chateau Baneville. The
autumn had been rainy and sad. The red leaves, instead of rustling under the
feet, were rotting under the heavy downfalls.
The forest was as damp as it could be. From it came an odor of must, of
rain, of soaked grass and wet earth; and the sportsmen, their backs hunched
under the downpour, mournful dogs, with tails between their legs and hairs
sticking to their sides, and the young women, with their clothes drenched,
returned every evening, tired in body and in mind.
After dinner, in the large drawing-room, everybody played lotto, without
enjoyment, while the wind whistled madly around the house. Then they tried
telling stories like those they read in books, but no one was able to invent
anything amusing. The hunters told tales of wonderful shots and of the
butchery of rabbits; and the women racked their brains for ideas without
revealing the imagination of Scheherezade. They were about to give up this
diversion when a young woman, who was idly caressing the hand of an old
maiden aunt, noticed a little ring made of blond hair, which she had often
seen, without paying any attention to it.
She fingered it gently and asked, “Auntie, what is this ring? It looks as if it
were made from the hair of a child.”
The old lady blushed, grew pale, then answered in a trembling voice: “It
is sad, so sad that I never wish to speak of it. All the unhappiness of my life
comes from that. I was very young then, and the memory has remained so
painful that I weep every time I think of it.”
Immediately everybody wished to know the story, but the old lady refused
to tell it. Finally, after they had coaxed her for a long time, she yielded. Here
is the story:
“You have often heard me speak of the Santeze family, now extinct. I knew
the last three male members of this family. They all died in the same manner;
this hair belongs to the last one. He was thirteen when he killed himself for
me. That seems strange to you, doesn’t it?
 “Oh! it was a strange family — mad, if you will, but a charming madness,
the madness of love. From father to son, all had violent passions which filled
their whole being, which impelled them to do wild things, drove them to
frantic enthusiasm, even to crime. This was born in them, just as burning
devotion is in certain souls. Trappers have not the same nature as minions of
the drawing-room. There was a saying: ‘As passionate as a Santeze.’ This
could be noticed by looking at them. They all had wavy hair, falling over
their brows, curly beards and large eyes whose glance pierced and moved
one, though one could not say why.
“The grandfather of the owner of this hair, of whom it is the last souvenir,
after many adventures, duels and elopements, at about sixty-five fell madly in
love with his farmer’s daughter. I knew them both. She was blond, pale,
distinguished-looking, with a slow manner of talking, a quiet voice and a
look so gentle that one might have taken her for a Madonna. The old
nobleman took her to his home and was soon so captivated with her that he
could not live without her for a minute. His daughter and daughter-in-law,
who lived in the chateau, found this perfectly natural, love was such a
tradition in the family. Nothing in regard to a passion surprised them, and if
one spoke before them of parted lovers, even of vengeance after treachery,
both said in the same sad tone: ‘Oh, how he must have suffered to come to
that point!’ That was all. They grew sad over tragedies of love, but never
indignant, even when they were criminal.
“Now, one day a young man named Monsieur de Gradelle, who had been
invited for the shooting, eloped with the young girl.
“Monsieur de Santeze remained calm as if nothing had happened, but one
morning he was found hanging in the kennels, among his dogs.
“His son died in the same manner in a hotel in Paris during a journey
which he made there in 1841, after being deceived by a singer from the
opera.
“He left a twelve-year-old child and a widow, my mother’s sister. She
came to my father’s house with the boy, while we were living at Bertillon. I
was then seventeen.
“You have no idea how wonderful and precocious this Santeze child was.
One might have thought that all the tenderness and exaltation of the whole
race had been stored up in this last one. He was always dreaming and
walking about alone in a great alley of elms leading from the chateau to the
forest. I watched from my window this sentimental boy, who walked with
thoughtful steps, his hands behind his back, his head bent, and at times
stopping to raise his eyes as if he could see and understand things that were
not comprehensible at his age.
“Often, after dinner on clear evenings, he would say to me: ‘Let us go
outside and dream, cousin.’ And we would go outside together in the park.
He would stop quickly before a clearing where the white vapor of the moon
lights the woods, and he would press my hand, saying: ‘Look! look! but you
don’t understand me; I feel it. If you understood me, we should be happy. One
must love to know! I would laugh and then kiss this child, who loved me
madly.
“Often, after dinner, he would sit on my mother’s knees. ‘Come, auntie,’
he would say, ‘tell me some love-stories.’ And my mother, as a joke, would
tell him all the old legends of the family, all the passionate adventures of his
forefathers, for thousands of them were current, some true and some false. It
was their reputation for love and gallantry which was the ruin of every one of
these-men; they gloried in it and then thought that they had to live up to the
renown of their house.
“The little fellow became exalted by these tender or terrible stories, and
at times he would clap his hands, crying: ‘I, too, I, too, know how to love,
better than all of them!’
“Then, he began to court me in a timid and tender manner, at which every
one laughed, it was, so amusing. Every morning I had some flowers picked
by him, and every evening before going to his room he would kiss my hand
and murmur: ‘I love you!’
“I was guilty, very guilty, and I grieved continually about it, and I have
been doing penance all my life; I have remained an old maid — or, rather, I
have lived as a widowed fiancee, his widow.
“I was amused at this childish tenderness, and I even encouraged him. I
was coquettish, as charming as with a man, alternately caressing and severe.
I maddened this child. It was a game for me and a joyous diversion for his
mother and mine. He was twelve! think of it! Who would have taken this
atom’s passion seriously? I kissed him as often as he wished; I even wrote
him little notes, which were read by our respective mothers; and he
answered me by passionate letters, which I have kept. Judging himself as a
man, he thought that our loving intimacy was secret. We had forgotten that he
was a Santeze.
 “This lasted for about a year. One evening in the park he fell at my feet
and, as he madly kissed the hem of my dress, he kept repeating: ‘I love you! I
love you! I love you! If ever you deceive me, if ever you leave me for
another, I’ll do as my father did.’ And he added in a hoarse voice, which
gave me a shiver: ‘You know what he did!’
“I stood there astonished. He arose, and standing on the tips of his toes in
order to reach my ear, for I was taller than he, he pronounced my first name:
‘Genevieve!’ in such a gentle, sweet, tender tone that I trembled all over. I
stammered: ‘Let us return! let us return!’ He said no more and followed me;
but as we were going up the steps of the porch, he stopped me, saying: ‘You
know, if ever you leave me, I’ll kill myself.’
“This time I understood that I had gone too far, and I became quite
reserved. One day, as he was reproaching me for this, I answered: ‘You are
now too old for jesting and too young for serious love. I’ll wait.’
“I thought that this would end the matter. In the autumn he was sent to a
boarding-school. When he returned the following summer I was engaged to
be married. He understood immediately, and for a week he became so
pensive that I was quite anxious.
“On the morning of the ninth day I saw a little paper under my door as I
got up. I seized it, opened it and read: ‘You have deserted me and you know
what I said. It is death to which you have condemned me. As I do not wish to
be found by another than you, come to the park just where I told you last year
that I loved you and look in the air.’
“I thought that I should go mad. I dressed as quickly as I could and ran
wildly to the place that he had mentioned. His little cap was on the ground in
the mud. It had been raining all night. I raised my eyes and saw something
swinging among the leaves, for the wind was blowing a gale.
“I don’t know what I did after that. I must have screamed at first, then
fainted and fallen, and finally have run to the chateau. The next thing that I
remember I was in bed, with my mother sitting beside me.
“I thought that I had dreamed all this in a frightful nightmare. I stammered:
‘And what of him, what of him, Gontran?’ There was no answer. It was true!
“I did not dare see him again, but I asked for a lock of his blond hair. Here
— here it is!”
And the old maid stretched out her trembling hand in a despairing gesture.
Then she blew her nose several times, wiped her eyes and continued:
 “I broke off my marriage — without saying why. And I — I always have
remained the — the widow of this thirteen-year-old boy.” Then her head fell
on her breast and she wept for a long time.
As the guests were retiring for the night a large man, whose quiet she had
disturbed, whispered in his neighbor’s ear: “Isn’t it unfortunate to, be so
sentimental?”
 THE ENGLISHMAN OF ETRETAT

A great English poet has just crossed over to France in order to greet Victor
Hugo. All the newspapers are full of his name and he is the great topic of
conversation in all drawing-rooms. Fifteen years ago I had occasion several
times to meet Algernon Charles Swinburne. I will attempt to show him just as
I saw him and to give an idea of the strange impression he made on me,
which will remain with me throughout time.
I believe it was in 1867 or in 1868 that an unknown young Englishman
came to Etretat and bought a little but hidden under great trees. It was said
that he lived there, always alone, in a strange manner; and he aroused the
inimical surprise of the natives, for the inhabitants were sullen and foolishly
malicious, as they always are in little towns.
They declared that this whimsical Englishman ate nothing but boiled.
roasted or stewed monkey; that he would see no one; that he talked to himself
hours at a time and many other surprising things that made people think that
he was different from other men. They were surprised that he should live
alone with a monkey. Had it been a cat or a dog they would have said
nothing. But a monkey! Was that not frightful? What savage tastes the man
must have!
I knew this young man only from seeing him in the streets. He was short,
plump, without being fat, mild-looking, and he wore a little blond mustache,
which was almost invisible.
Chance brought us together. This savage had amiable and pleasing
manners, but he was one of those strange Englishmen that one meets here and
there throughout the world.
Endowed with remarkable intelligence, he seemed to live in a fantastic
dream, as Edgar Poe must have lived. He had translated into English a
volume of strange Icelandic legends, which I ardently desired to see
translated into French. He loved the supernatural, the dismal and grewsome,
but he spoke of the most marvellous things with a calmness that was typically
English, to which his gentle and quiet voice gave a semblance of reality that
was maddening.
 Full of a haughty disdain for the world, with its conventions, prejudices
and code of morality, he had nailed to his house a name that was boldly
impudent. The keeper of a lonely inn who should write on his door:
“Travellers murdered here!” could not make a more sinister jest. I never had
entered his dwelling, when one day I received an invitation to luncheon,
following an accident that had occurred to one of his friends, who had been
almost drowned and whom I had attempted to rescue.
Although I was unable to reach the man until he had already been rescued,
I received the hearty thanks of the two Englishmen, and the following day I
called upon them.
The friend was a man about thirty years old. He bore an enormous head on
a child’s body — a body without chest or shoulders. An immense forehead,
which seemed to have engulfed the rest of the man, expanded like a dome
above a thin face which ended in a little pointed beard. Two sharp eyes and a
peculiar mouth gave one the impression of the head of a reptile, while the
magnificent brow suggested a genius.
A nervous twitching shook this peculiar being, who walked, moved, acted
by jerks like a broken spring.
This was Algernon Charles Swinburne, son of an English admiral and
grandson, on the maternal side, of the Earl of Ashburnham.
He strange countenance was transfigured when he spoke. I have seldom
seen a man more impressive, more eloquent, incisive or charming in
conversation. His rapid, clear, piercing and fantastic imagination seemed to
creep into his voice and to lend life to his words. His brusque gestures
enlivened his speech, which penetrated one like a dagger, and he had bursts
of thought, just as lighthouses throw out flashes of fire, great, genial lights
that seemed to illuminate a whole world of ideas.
The home of the two friends was pretty and by no means commonplace.
Everywhere were paintings, some superb, some strange, representing
different conceptions of insanity. Unless I am mistaken, there was a water-
color which represented the head of a dead man floating in a rose-colored
shell on a boundless ocean, under a moon with a human face.
Here and there I came across bones. I clearly remember a flayed hand on
which was hanging some dried skin and black muscles, and on the snow-
white bones could be seen the traces of dried blood.
The food was a riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad? I
could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady diet
of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at large and
playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink cured me of
any desire I might have to take one of his brothers as a companion for the rest
of my days.
As for the two men, they gave me the impression of two strange, original,
remarkable minds, belonging to that peculiar race of talented madmen from
among whom have arisen Poe, Hoffmann and many others.
If genius is, as is commonly believed, a sort of aberration of great minds,
then Algernon Charles Swinburne is undoubtedly a genius.
Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this
sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are
slightly touched by madness.
At any rate, this poet remains one of the first of his time, through his
originality and polished form. He is an exalted lyrical singer who seldom
bothers about the good and humble truth, which French poets are now seeking
so persistently and patiently. He strives to set down dreams, subtle thoughts,
sometimes great, sometimes visibly forced, but sometimes magnificent.
Two years later I found the house closed and its tenants gone. The
furniture was being sold. In memory of them I bought the hideous flayed hand.
On the grass an enormous square block of granite bore this simple word:
“Nip.” Above this a hollow stone offered water to the birds. It was the grave
of the monkey, who had been hanged by a young, vindictive negro servant. It
was said that this violent domestic had been forced to flee at the point of his
exasperated master’s revolver. After wandering about without home or food
for several days, he returned and began to peddle barley-sugar in the streets.
He was expelled from the country after he had almost strangled a displeased
customer.
The world would be gayer if one could often meet homes like that.
This story appeared in the “Gaulois,” November 29, 1882. It was the
original sketch for the introductory study of Swinburne, written by
Maupassant for the French translation by Gabriel Mourey of “Poems
and Ballads.”
 MAGNETISM

It was a men’s dinner party, and they were sitting over their cigars and
brandy and discussing magnetism. Donato’s tricks and Charcot’s
experiments. Presently, the sceptical, easy-going men, who cared nothing for
religion of any sort, began telling stories of strange occurrences, incredible
things which, nevertheless, had really occurred, so they said, falling back
into superstitious beliefs, clinging to these last remnants of the marvellous,
becoming devotees of this mystery of magnetism, defending it in the name of
science. There was only one person who smiled, a vigorous young fellow, a
great ladies’ man who was so incredulous that he would not even enter upon
a discussion of such matters.
He repeated with a sneer:
“Humbug! humbug! humbug! We need not discuss Donato, who is merely a
very smart juggler. As for M. Charcot, who is said to be a remarkable man of
science, he produces on me the effect of those story-tellers of the school of
Edgar Poe, who end by going mad through constantly reflecting on queer
cases of insanity. He has authenticated some cases of unexplained and
inexplicable nervous phenomena; he makes his way into that unknown region
which men are exploring every day, and unable always to understand what he
sees, he recalls, perhaps, the ecclesiastical interpretation of these mysteries.
I should like to hear what he says himself.”
The words of the unbeliever were listened to with a kind of pity, as if he
had blasphemed in an assembly of monks.
One of these gentlemen exclaimed:
“And yet miracles were performed in olden times.”
“I deny it,” replied the other: “Why cannot they be performed now?”
Then, each mentioned some fact, some fantastic presentiment some
instance of souls communicating with each other across space, or some case
of the secret influence of one being over another. They asserted and
maintained that these things had actually occurred, while the sceptic angrily
repeated:
“Humbug! humbug! humbug!”
 At last he rose, threw away his cigar, and with his hands in his pockets,
said: “Well, I also have two stories to tell you, which I will afterwards
explain. Here they are:
“In the little village of Etretat, the men, who are all seafaring folk, go
every year to Newfoundland to fish for cod. One night the little son of one of
these fishermen woke up with a start, crying out that his father was dead. The
child was quieted, and again he woke up exclaiming that his father was
drowned. A month later the news came that his father had, in fact, been swept
off the deck of his smack by a billow. The widow then remembered how her
son had woke up and spoken of his father’s death. Everyone said it was a
miracle, and the affair caused a great sensation. The dates were compared,
and it was found that the accident and the dream were almost coincident,
whence they concluded that they had happened on the same night and at the
same hour. And there is a mystery of magnetism.”
The story-teller stopped suddenly.
Thereupon, one of those who had heard him, much affected by the
narrative, asked:
“And can you explain this?”
“Perfectly, monsieur. I have discovered the secret. The circumstance
surprised me and even perplexed me very much; but you see, I do not believe
on principle. Just as others begin by believing, I begin by doubting; and when
I cannot understand, I continue to deny that there can be any telepathic
communication between souls; certain that my own intelligence will be able
to explain it. Well, I kept on inquiring into the matter, and by dint of
questioning all the wives of the absent seamen, I was convinced that not a
week passed without one of them, or one of their children dreaming and
declaring when they woke up that the father was drowned. The horrible and
continual fear of this accident makes them always talk about it. Now, if one
of these frequent predictions coincides, by a very simple chance, with the
death of the person referred to, people at once declare it to be a miracle; for
they suddenly lose sight of all the other predictions of misfortune that have
remained unfulfilled. I have myself known fifty cases where the persons who
made the prediction forgot all about it a week after wards. But, if, then one
happens to die, then the recollection of the thing is immediately revived, and
people are ready to believe in the intervention of God, according to some,
and magnetism, according to others.”
One of the smokers remarked:
 “What you say is right enough; but what about your second story?”
“Oh! my second story is a very delicate matter to relate. It happened to
myself, and so I don’t place any great value on my own view of the matter.
An interested party can never give an impartial opinion. However, here it is:
“Among my acquaintances was a young woman on whom I had never
bestowed a thought, whom I had never even looked at attentively, never taken
any notice of.
“I classed her among the women of no importance, though she was not
bad-looking; she appeared, in fact, to possess eyes, a nose, a mouth, some
sort of hair — just a colorless type of countenance. She was one of those
beings who awaken only a chance, passing thought, but no special interest, no
desire.
“Well, one night, as I was writing some letters by my fireside before going
to bed, I was conscious, in the midst of that train of sensuous visions that
sometimes pass through one’s brain in moments of idle reverie, of a kind of
slight influence, passing over me, a little flutter of the heart, and immediately,
without any cause, without any logical connection of thought, I saw distinctly,
as if I were touching her, saw from head to foot, and disrobed, this young
woman to whom I had never given more that three seconds’ thought at a time.
I suddenly discovered in her a number of qualities which I had never before
observed, a sweet charm, a languorous fascination; she awakened in me that
sort of restless emotion that causes one to pursue a woman. But I did not
think of her long. I went to bed and was soon asleep. And I dreamed.
“You have all had these strange dreams which make you overcome the
impossible, which open to you double-locked doors, unexpected joys, tightly
folded arms?
“Which of us in these troubled, excising, breathless slumbers, has not
held, clasped, embraced with rapture, the woman who occupied his thoughts?
And have you ever noticed what superhuman delight these happy dreams give
us? Into what mad intoxication they cast you! with what passionate spasms
they shake you! and with what infinite, caressing, penetrating tenderness they
fill your heart for her whom you hold clasped in your arms in that adorable
illusion that is so like reality!
“All this I felt with unforgettable violence. This woman was mine, so
much mine that the pleasant warmth of her skin remained in my fingers, the
odor of her skin, in my brain, the taste of her kisses, on my lips, the sound of
her voice lingered in my ears, the touch of her clasp still clung to me, and the
burning charm of her tenderness still gratified my senses long after the delight
but disillusion of my awakening.
“And three times that night I had the same dream.
“When the day dawned she haunted me, possessed me, filled my senses to
such an extent that I was not one second without thinking of her.
“At last, not knowing what to do, I dressed myself and went to call on her.
As I went upstairs to her apartment, I was so overcome by emotion that I
trembled, and my heart beat rapidly.
“I entered the apartment. She rose the moment she heard my name
mentioned; and suddenly our eyes met in a peculiar fixed gaze.
“I sat down. I stammered out some commonplaces which she seemed not
to hear. I did not know what to say or do. Then, abruptly, clasping my arms
round her, my dream was realized so suddenly that I began to doubt whether I
was really awake. We were friends after this for two years.”
“What conclusion do you draw from it?” said a voice.
The story-teller seemed to hesitate.
“The conclusion I draw from it — well, by Jove, the conclusion is that it
was just a coincidence! And then — who can tell? Perhaps it was some
glance of hers which I had not noticed and which came back that night to me
through one of those mysterious and unconscious — recollections that often
bring before us things ignored by our own consciousness, unperceived by our
minds!”
“Call it whatever you like,” said one of his table companions, when the
story was finished; “but if you don’t believe in magnetism after that, my dear
boy, you are an ungrateful fellow!”
 A FATHER’S CONFESSION

All Veziers-le-Rethel had followed the funeral procession of M. Badon-

Leremince to the grave, and the last words of the funeral oration pronounced
by the delegate of the district remained in the minds of all: “He was an
honest man, at least!”
An honest man he had been in all the known acts of his life, in his words,
in his examples, his attitude, his behavior, his enterprises, in the cut of his
beard and the shape of his hats. He never had said a word that did not set an
example, never had given an alms without adding a word of advice, never
had extended his hand without appearing to bestow a benediction.
He left two children, a boy and a girl. His son was counselor general, and
his daughter, having married a lawyer, M. Poirel de la Voulte, moved in the
best society of Veziers.
They were inconsolable at the death of their father, for they loved him
sincerely.
As soon as the ceremony was over, the son, daughter and son-in-law
returned to the house of mourning, and, shutting themselves in the library, they
opened the will, the seals of which were to be broken by them alone and only
after the coffin had been placed in the ground. This wish was expressed by a
notice on the envelope.
M. Poirel de la Voulte tore open the envelope, in his character of a lawyer
used to such operations, and having adjusted his spectacles, he read in a
monotonous voice, made for reading the details of contracts:
My children, my dear children, I could not sleep the eternal sleep in peace
if I did not make to you from the tomb a confession, the confession of a
crime, remorse for which has ruined my life. Yes, I committed a crime, a
frightful, abominable crime.
I was twenty-six years old, and I had just been called to the bar in Paris,
and was living the life off young men from the provinces who are stranded in
this town without acquaintances, relatives, or friends.
I took a sweetheart. There are beings who cannot live alone. I was one of
those. Solitude fills me with horrible anguish, the solitude of my room beside
my fire in the evening. I feel then as if I were alone on earth, alone, but
surrounded by vague dangers, unknown and terrible things; and the partition
that separates me from my neighbor, my neighbor whom I do not know, keeps
me at as great a distance from him as the stars that I see through my window.
A sort of fever pervades me, a fever of impatience and of fear, and the
silence of the walls terrifies me. The silence of a room where one lives
alone is so intense and so melancholy It is not only a silence of the mind;
when a piece of furniture cracks a shudder goes through you for you expect
no noise in this melancholy abode.
How many times, nervous and timid from this motionless silence, I have
begun to talk, to repeat words without rhyme or reason, only to make some
sound. My voice at those times sounds so strange that I am afraid of that, too.
Is there anything more dreadful than talking to one’s self in an empty house?
One’s voice sounds like that of another, an unknown voice talking aimlessly,
to no one, into the empty air, with no ear to listen to it, for one knows before
they escape into the solitude of the room exactly what words will be uttered.
And when they resound lugubriously in the silence, they seem no more than
an echo, the peculiar echo of words whispered by ones thought.
My sweetheart was a young girl like other young girls who live in Paris
on wages that are insufficient to keep them. She was gentle, good, simple.
Her parents lived at Poissy. She went to spend several days with them from
time to time.
For a year I lived quietly with her, fully decided to leave her when I
should find some one whom I liked well enough to marry. I would make a
little provision for this one, for it is an understood thing in our social set that
a woman’s love should be paid for, in money if she is poor, in presents if she
is rich.
But one day she told me she was enceinte. I was thunderstruck, and saw in
a second that my life would be ruined. I saw the fetter that I should wear until
my death, everywhere, in my future family life, in my old age, forever; the
fetter of a woman bound to my life through a child; the fetter of the child
whom I must bring up, watch over, protect, while keeping myself unknown to
him, and keeping him hidden from the world.
I was greatly disturbed at this news, and a confused longing, a criminal
desire, surged through my mind; I did not formulate it, but I felt it in my heart,
ready to come to the surface, as if some one hidden behind a portiere should
await the signal to come out. If some accident might only happen! So many of
these little beings die before they are born!
Oh! I did not wish my sweetheart to die! The poor girl, I loved her very
much! But I wished, possibly, that the child might die before I saw it.
He was born. I set up housekeeping in my little bachelor apartment, an
imitation home, with a horrible child. He looked like all children; I did not
care for him. Fathers, you see, do not show affection until later. They have
not the instinctive and passionate tenderness of mothers; their affection has to
be awakened gradually, their mind must become attached by bonds formed
each day between beings that live in each other’s society.
A year passed. I now avoided my home, which was too small, where
soiled linen, baby-clothes and stockings the size of gloves were lying round,
where a thousand articles of all descriptions lay on the furniture, on the arm
of an easy-chair, everywhere. I went out chiefly that I might not hear the child
cry, for he cried on the slightest pretext, when he was bathed, when he was
touched, when he was put to bed, when he was taken up in the morning,
incessantly.
I had made a few acquaintances, and I met at a reception the woman who
was to be your mother. I fell in love with her and became desirous to marry
her. I courted her; I asked her parents’ consent to our marriage and it was
granted.
I found myself in this dilemma: I must either marry this young girl whom I
adored, having a child already, or else tell the truth and renounce her, and
happiness, my future, everything; for her parents, who were people of rigid
principles, would not give her to me if they knew.
I passed a month of horrible anguish, of mortal torture, a month haunted by
a thousand frightful thoughts; and I felt developing in me a hatred toward my
son, toward that little morsel of living, screaming flesh, who blocked my
path, interrupted my life, condemned me to an existence without hope,
without all those vague expectations that make the charm of youth.
But just then my companion’s mother became ill, and I was left alone with
the child.
It was in December, and the weather was terribly cold. What a night!
My companion had just left. I had dined alone in my little dining-room and
I went gently into the room where the little one was asleep.
I sat down in an armchair before the fire. The wind was blowing, making
the windows rattle, a dry, frosty wind; and I saw trough the window the stars
shining with that piercing brightness that they have on frosty nights.
Then the idea that had obsessed me for a month rose again to the surface.
As soon as I was quiet it came to me and harassed me. It ate into my mind
like a fixed idea, just as cancers must eat into the flesh. It was there, in my
head, in my heart, in my whole body, it seemed to me; and it swallowed me
up as a wild beast might have. I endeavored to drive it away, to repulse it, to
open my mind to other thoughts, as one opens a window to the fresh morning
breeze to drive out the vitiated air; but I could not drive it from my brain, not
even for a second. I do not know how to express this torture. It gnawed at my
soul, and I felt a frightful pain, a real physical and moral pain.
My life was ruined! How could I escape from this situation? How could I
draw back, and how could I confess?
And I loved the one who was to become your mother with a mad passion,
which this insurmountable obstacle only aggravated.
A terrible rage was taking possession of me, choking me, a rage that
verged on madness! Surely I was crazy that evening!
The child was sleeping. I got up and looked at it as it slept. It was he, this
abortion, this spawn, this nothing, that condemned me to irremediable
unhappiness!
He was asleep, his mouth open, wrapped in his bed-clothes in a crib
beside my bed, where I could not sleep.
How did I ever do what I did? How do I know? What force urged me on?
What malevolent power took possession of me? Oh! the temptation to crime
came to me without any forewarning. All I recall is that my heart beat
tumultuously. It beat so hard that I could hear it, as one hears the strokes of a
hammer behind a partition. That is all I can recall — the beating of my heart!
In my head there was a strange confusion, a tumult, a senseless disorder, a
lack of presence of mind. It was one of those hours of bewilderment and
hallucination when a man is neither conscious of his actions nor able to guide
his will.
I gently raised the coverings from the body of the child; I turned them
down to the foot of the crib, and he lay there uncovered and naked.
He did not wake. Then I went toward the window, softly, quite softly, and
I opened it.
A breath of icy air glided in like an assassin; it was so cold that I drew
aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing near the window,
not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing what was doing on behind
me, and feeling the icy air continually across my forehead, my cheeks, my
hands, the deadly air which kept streaming in. I stood there a long time.
I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once a little cough caused
me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder that I feel still to the
roots of my hair. And with a frantic movement I abruptly closed both sides of
the window and, turning round, ran over to the crib.
He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I touched his legs; they
were icy cold and I covered them up.
My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with pity, tenderness, love
for this poor innocent being that I had wished to kill. I kissed his fine, soft
hair long and tenderly; then I went and sat down before the fire.
I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had done, asking myself
whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses all perspective
of things, all command over himself and acts as in a condition of mad
intoxication, not knowing whither he is going — like a vessel in a hurricane.
The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a wrench. Suppose it
should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?
I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my hand I
leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt reassured, when he
coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock that I started backward, just as
one does at sight of something horrible, and let my candle fall.
As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that my temples were bathed
in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of anguish of soul. And I
remained until daylight bending over my son, becoming calm when he
remained quiet for some time, and filled with atrocious pain when a weak
cough came from his mouth.
He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and with an air of
suffering.
When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her at once for a
doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining the child:
“Did he not catch cold?”
I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I faltered:
“No, I do not think so.”
And then I said:
“What is the matter? Is it serious?”
“I do not know yet,” he replied. “I will come again this evening.”
 He came that evening. My son had remained almost all day in a condition
of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the night inflammation of
the lungs set in.
That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered in those interminable
hours that divide morning from night, right from morning.
He died.
And since — since that moment, I have not passed one hour, not a single
hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing recollection, a
memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me like a savage beast
imprisoned in the depth of my soul.
Oh! if I could have gone mad!
M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a motion that was
peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and the three heirs
of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and motionless.
At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:
“That must be destroyed.”
The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He lighted a candle,
carefully separated the pages containing the damaging confession from those
relating to the disposition of money, then he held them over the candle and
threw them into the fireplace.
And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till they were presently
reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words were still
visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes of the toe of her shoe,
crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the old ashes in the fireplace.
Then all three stood there watching it for some time, as if they feared that
the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.
 A MOTHER OF MONSTERS

I recalled this horrible story, the events of which occurred long ago, and this
horrible woman, the other day at a fashionable seaside resort, where I saw
on the beach a well-known young, elegant and charming Parisienne, adored
and respected by everyone.
I had been invited by a friend to pay him a visit in a little provincial town.
He took me about in all directions to do the honors of the place, showed me
noted scenes, chateaux, industries, ruins. He pointed out monuments,
churches, old carved doorways, enormous or distorted trees, the oak of St.
Andrew, and the yew tree of Roqueboise.
When I had exhausted my admiration and enthusiasm over all the sights,
my friend said with a distressed expression on his face, that there was
nothing left to look at. I breathed freely. I would now be able to rest under the
shade of the trees. But, all at once, he uttered an exclamation:
“Oh, yes! We have the ‘Mother of Monsters’; I must take you to see her.”
“Who is that, the ‘Mother of Monsters’?” I asked.
“She is an abominable woman,” he replied, “a regular demon, a being
who voluntarily brings into the world deformed, hideous, frightful children,
monstrosities, in fact, and then sells them to showmen who exhibit such
things.
“These exploiters of freaks come from time to time to find out if she has
any fresh monstrosity, and if it meets with their approval they carry it away
with them, paying the mother a compensation.
“She has eleven of this description. She is rich.
“You think I am joking, romancing, exaggerating. No, my friend; I am
telling you the truth, the exact truth.
“Let us go and see this woman. Then I will tell you her history.”
He took me into one of the suburbs. The woman lived in a pretty little
house by the side of the road. It was attractive and well kept. The garden was
filled with fragrant flowers. One might have supposed it to be the residence
of a retired lawyer.
 A maid ushered us into a sort of little country parlor, and the wretch
appeared. She was about forty. She was a tall, big woman with hard features,
but well formed, vigorous and healthy, the true type of a robust peasant
woman, half animal, and half woman.
She was aware of her reputation and received everyone with a humility
that smacked of hatred.
“What do the gentlemen wish?” she asked.
“They tell me that your last child is just like an ordinary child, that he
does not resemble his brothers at all,” replied my friend. “I wanted to be
sure of that. Is it true?”
She cast on us a malicious and furious look as she said:
“Oh, no, oh, no, my poor sir! He is perhaps even uglier than the rest. I
have no luck, no luck!
“They are all like that, it is heartbreaking! How can the good God be so
hard on a poor woman who is all alone in the world, how can He?” She
spoke hurriedly, her eyes cast down, with a deprecating air as of a wild beast
who is afraid. Her harsh voice became soft, and it seemed strange to hear
those tearful falsetto tones issuing from that big, bony frame, of unusual
strength and with coarse outlines, which seemed fitted for violent action, and
made to utter howls like a wolf.
“We should like to see your little one,” said my friend.
I fancied she colored up. I may have been deceived. After a few moments
of silence, she said in a louder tone:
“What good will that do you?”
“Why do you not wish to show it to us?” replied my friend. “There are
many people to whom you will show it; you know whom I mean.”
She gave a start, and resuming her natural voice, and giving free play to
her anger, she screamed:
“Was that why you came here? To insult me? Because my children are like
animals, tell me? You shall not see him, no, no, you shall not see him! Go
away, go away! I do not know why you all try to torment me like that.”
She walked over toward us, her hands on her hips. At the brutal tone of
her voice, a sort of moaning, or rather a mewing, the lamentable cry of an
idiot, came from the adjoining room. I shivered to the marrow of my bones.
We retreated before her.
“Take care, Devil” (they called her the Devil); said my friend, “take care;
some day you will get yourself into trouble through this.”
 She began to tremble, beside herself with fury, shaking her fist and
roaring:
“Be off with you! What will get me into trouble? Be off with you,
miscreants!”
She was about to attack us, but we fled, saddened at what we had seen.
When we got outside, my friend said:
“Well, you have seen her, what do you think of her?”
“Tell me the story of this brute,” I replied.
And this is what he told me as we walked along the white high road, with
ripe crops on either side of it which rippled like the sea in the light breeze
that passed over them.
“This woman was one a servant on a farm. She was an honest girl, steady
and economical. She was never known to have an admirer, and never
suspected of any frailty. But she went astray, as so many do.
“She soon found herself in trouble, and was tortured with fear and shame.
Wishing to conceal her misfortune, she bound her body tightly with a corset
of her own invention, made of boards and cord. The more she developed, the
more she bound herself with this instrument of torture, suffering martyrdom,
but brave in her sorrow, not allowing anyone to see, or suspect, anything. She
maimed the little unborn being, cramping it with that frightful corset, and
made a monster of it. Its head was squeezed and elongated to a point, and its
large eyes seemed popping out of its head. Its limbs, exaggeratedly long, and
twisted like the stalk of a vine, terminated in fingers like the claws of a
spider. Its trunk was tiny, and round as a nut.
“The child was born in an open field, and when the weeders saw it, they
fled away, screaming, and the report spread that she had given birth to a
demon. From that time on, she was called ‘the Devil.’
“She was driven from the farm, and lived on charity, under a cloud. She
brought up the monster, whom she hated with a savage hatred, and would
have strangled, perhaps, if the priest had not threatened her with arrest.
“One day some travelling showmen heard about the frightful creature, and
asked to see it, so that if it pleased them they might take it away. They were
pleased, and counted out five hundred francs to the mother. At first, she had
refused to let them see the little animal, as she was ashamed; but when she
discovered it had a money value, and that these people were anxious to get it,
she began to haggle with them, raising her price with all a peasant’s
persistence.
 “She made them draw up a paper, in which they promised to pay her four
hundred francs a year besides, as though they had taken this deformity into
their employ.
“Incited by the greed of gain, she continued to produce these phenomena,
so as to have an assured income like a bourgeoise.
“Some of them were long, some short, some like crabs-all bodies-others
like lizards. Several died, and she was heartbroken.
“The law tried to interfere, but as they had no proof they let her continue
to produce her freaks.
“She has at this moment eleven alive, and they bring in, on an average,
counting good and bad years, from five to six thousand francs a year. One,
alone, is not placed, the one she was unwilling to show us. But she will not
keep it long, for she is known to all the showmen in the world, who come
from time to time to see if she has anything new.
“She even gets bids from them when the monster is valuable.”
My friend was silent. A profound disgust stirred my heart, and a feeling of
rage, of regret, to think that I had not strangled this brute when I had the
opportunity.
I had forgotten this story, when I saw on the beach of a fashionable resort
the other day, an elegant, charming, dainty woman, surrounded by men who
paid her respect as well as admiration.
I was walking along the beach, arm in arm with a friend, the resident
physician. Ten minutes later, I saw a nursemaid with three children, who
were rolling in the sand. A pair of little crutches lay on the ground, and
touched my sympathy. I then noticed that these three children were all
deformed, humpbacked, or crooked; and hideous.
“Those are the offspring of that charming woman you saw just now,” said
the doctor.
I was filled with pity for her, as well as for them, and exclaimed: “Oh, the
poor mother! How can she ever laugh!”
“Do not pity her, my friend. Pity the poor children,” replied the doctor.
“This is the consequence of preserving a slender figure up to the last. These
little deformities were made by the corset. She knows very well that she is
risking her life at this game. But what does she care, as long as he can be
beautiful and have admirers!”
And then I recalled that other woman, the peasant, the “Devil,” who sold
her children, her monsters.
 AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED

One autumn I went to spend the hunting season with some friends in a chateau
in Picardy.
My friends were fond of practical jokes. I do not care to know people
who are not.
When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once
awakened suspicion in my mind. They fired off rifles, embraced me, made
much of me, as if they expected to have great fun at my expense.
I said to myself:
“Look out, old ferret! They have something in store for you.”
During the dinner the mirth was excessive, exaggerated, in fact. I thought:
“Here are people who have more than their share of amusement, and
apparently without reason. They must have planned some good joke.
Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke. Attention!”
During the entire evening every one laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I
scented a practical joke in the air, as a dog scents game. But what was it? I
was watchful, restless. I did not let a word, or a meaning, or a gesture escape
me. Every one seemed to me an object of suspicion, and I even looked
distrustfully at the faces of the servants.
The hour struck for retiring; and the whole household came to escort me to
my room. Why?
They called to me: “Good-night.” I entered the apartment, shut the door,
and remained standing, without moving a single step, holding the wax candle
in my hand.
I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they were
spying on me. I cast a glance round the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the
hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I heard persons moving
about outside my door. I had no doubt they were looking through the keyhole.
An idea came into my head: “My candle may suddenly go out and leave
me in darkness.”
Then I went across to the mantelpiece and lighted all the wax candles that
were on it. After that I cast another glance around me without discovering
anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining the apartment.
Nothing. I inspected every article, one after the other. Still nothing. I went
over to the window. The shutters, large wooden shutters, were open. I shut
them with great care, and then drew the curtains, enormous velvet curtains,
and placed a chair in front of them, so as to have nothing to fear from outside.
Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture to
get into the bed. However, the night was advancing; and I ended by coming to
the conclusion that I was foolish. If they were spying on me, as I supposed,
they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing
for me, have been laughing immoderately at my terror. So I made up my mind
to go to bed. But the bed was particularly suspicious-looking. I pulled at the
curtains. They seemed to be secure.
All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to receive a cold
shower both from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I stretched myself out, to
find myself sinking to the floor with my mattress. I searched in my memory
for all the practical jokes of which I ever had experience. And I did not want
to be caught. Ah! certainly not! certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought
myself of a precaution which I considered insured safety. I caught hold of the
side of the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it toward me. It came
away, followed by the sheet and the rest of the bedclothes. I dragged all these
objects into the very middle of the room, facing the entrance door. I made my
bed over again as best I could at some distance from the suspected bedstead
and the corner which had filled me with such anxiety. Then I extinguished all
the candles, and, groping my way, I slipped under the bed clothes.
For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest sound.
Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.
I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden I was
awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right on top of my
own, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on my neck, and on my
chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain. And a dreadful
noise, as if a sideboard laden with plates and dishes had fallen down, almost
deafened me.
I was smothering beneath the weight that was crushing me and preventing
me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what was the nature of
this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers. Then, with all my strength, I
launched out a blow at this face. But I immediately received a hail of cuffings
which made me jump straight out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my
nightshirt into the corridor, the door of which I found open.
Oh, heavens! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
into my apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed, the
dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had tripped
over this obstacle in the middle of the floor and fallen on his stomach,
spilling my breakfast over my face in spite of himself.
The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep in
the middle of the room had only brought about the practical joke I had been
trying to avoid.
Oh, how they all laughed that day!
 A PORTRAIT

“Hello! there’s Milial!” said somebody near me. I looked at the man who had
been pointed out as I had been wishing for a long time to meet this Don Juan.
He was no longer young. His gray hair looked a little like those fur
bonnets worn by certain Northern peoples, and his long beard, which fell
down over his chest, had also somewhat the appearance of fur. He was
talking to a lady, leaning toward her, speaking in a low voice and looking at
her with an expression full of respect and tenderness.
I knew his life, or at least as much as was known of it. He had loved
madly several times, and there had been certain tragedies with which his
name had been connected. When I spoke to women who were the loudest in
his praise, and asked them whence came this power, they always answered,
after thinking for a while: “I don’t know — he has a certain charm about
him.”
He was certainly not handsome. He had none of the elegance that we
ascribe to conquerors of feminine hearts. I wondered what might be his hid
den charm. Was it mental? I never had heard of a clever saying of his. In his
glance? Perhaps. Or in his voice? The voices of some beings have a certain
irresistible attraction, almost suggesting the flavor of things good to eat. One
is hungry for them, and the sound of their words penetrates us like a dainty
morsel. A friend was passing. I asked him: “Do you know Monsieur Milial?”
“Yes.”
“Introduce us.”
A minute later we were shaking hands and talking in the doorway. What
he said was correct, agreeable to hear; it contained no irritable thought. The
voice was sweet, soft, caressing, musical; but I had heard others much more
attractive, much more moving. One listened to him with pleasure, just as one
would look at a pretty little brook. No tension of the mind was necessary in
order to follow him, no hidden meaning aroused curiosity, no expectation
awoke interest. His conversation was rather restful, but it did not awaken in
one either a desire to answer, to contradict or to approve, and it was as easy
to answer him as it was to listen to him. The response came to the lips of its
own accord, as soon as he had finished talking, and phrases turned toward
him as if he had naturally aroused them.
One thought soon struck me. I had known him for a quarter of an hour, and
it seemed as if he were already one of my old friends, that I had known all
about him for a long time; his face, his gestures, his voice, his ideas.
Suddenly, after a few minutes of conversation, he seemed already to be
installed in my intimacy. All constraint disappeared between us, and, had he
so desired, I might have confided in him as one confides only in old friends.
Certainly there was some mystery about him. Those barriers that are
closed between most people and that are lowered with time when sympathy,
similar tastes, equal intellectual culture and constant intercourse remove
constraint — those barriers seemed not to exist between him and me, and no
doubt this was the case between him and all people, both men and women,
whom fate threw in his path.
After half an hour we parted, promising to see each other often, and he
gave me his address after inviting me to take luncheon with him in two days.
I forgot what hour he had stated, and I arrived too soon; he was not yet
home. A correct and silent domestic showed me into a beautiful, quiet, softly
lighted parlor. I felt comfortable there, at home. How often I have noticed the
influence of apartments on the character and on the mind! There are some
which make one feel foolish; in others, on the contrary, one always feels
lively. Some make us sad, although well lighted and decorated in light-
colored furniture; others cheer us up, although hung with sombre material.
Our eye, like our heart, has its likes and dislikes, of which it does not inform
us, and which it secretly imposes on our temperament. The harmony of
furniture, walls, the style of an ensemble, act immediately on our mental
state, just as the air from the woods, the sea or the mountains modifies our
physical natures.
I sat down on a cushion-covered divan and felt myself suddenly carried
and supported by these little silk bags of feathers, as if the outline of my body
had been marked out beforehand on this couch.
Then I looked about. There was nothing striking about the room; every-
where were beautiful and modest things, simple and rare furniture, Oriental
curtains which did not seem to come from a department store but from the
interior of a harem; and exactly opposite me hung the portrait of a woman. It
was a portrait of medium size, showing the head and the upper part of the
body, and the hands, which were holding a book. She was young,
bareheaded; ribbons were woven in her hair; she was smiling sadly. Was it
because she was bareheaded, was it merely her natural expression? I never
have seen a portrait of a lady which seemed so much in its place as that one
in that dwelling. Of all those I knew I have seen nothing like that one. All
those that I know are on exhibition, whether the lady be dressed in her
gaudiest gown, with an attractive headdress and a look which shows that she
is posing first of all before the artist and then before those who will look at
her or whether they have taken a comfortable attitude in an ordinary gown.
Some are standing majestically in all their beauty, which is not at all natural
to them in life. All of them have something, a flower or, a jewel, a crease in
the dress or a curve of the lip, which one feels to have been placed there for
effect by the artist. Whether they wear a hat or merely their hair one can
immediately notice that they are not entirely natural. Why? One cannot say
without knowing them, but the effect is there. They seem to be calling
somewhere, on people whom they wish to please and to whom they wish to
appear at their best advantage; and they have studied their attitudes,
sometimes modest, Sometimes haughty.
What could one say about this one? She was at home and alone. Yes, she
was alone, for she was smiling as one smiles when thinking in solitude of
something sad or sweet, and not as one smiles when one is being watched.
She seemed so much alone and so much at home that she made the whole
large apartment seem absolutely empty. She alone lived in it, filled it, gave it
life. Many people might come in and converse, laugh, even sing; she would
still be alone with a solitary smile, and she alone would give it life with her
pictured gaze.
That look also was unique. It fell directly on me, fixed and caressing,
without seeing me. All portraits know that they are being watched, and they
answer with their eyes, which see, think, follow us without leaving us, from
the very moment we enter the apartment they inhabit. This one did not see me;
it saw nothing, although its look was fixed directly on me. I remembered the
surprising verse of Baudelaire:
And your eyes, attractive as those of a portrait.
They did indeed attract me in an irresistible manner; those painted eyes
which had lived, or which were perhaps still living, threw over me a strange,
powerful spell. Oh, what an infinite and tender charm, like a passing breeze,
like a dying sunset of lilac rose and blue, a little sad like the approaching
night, which comes behind the sombre frame and out of those impenetrable
eyes! Those eyes, created by a few strokes from a brush, hide behind them
the mystery of that which seems to be and which does not exist, which can
appear in the eyes of a woman, which can make love blossom within us.
The door opened and M. Milial entered. He excused himself for being
late. I excused myself for being ahead of time. Then I said: “Might I ask you
who is this lady?”
He answered: “That is my mother. She died very young.”
Then I understood whence came the inexplicable attraction of this man.
 THE DRUNKARD

The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through the sky big, black,
heavy clouds from which the rain poured down on the earth with terrific
violence.
A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the
coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other
close, rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam as they broke.
The storm engulfed itself in the little valley of Yport, whistling and
moaning, tearing the shingles from the roofs, smashing the shutters, knocking
down the chimneys, rushing through the narrow streets in such gusts that one
could walk only by holding on to the walls, and children would have been
lifted up like leaves and carried over the houses into the fields.
The fishing smacks had been hauled high up on land, because at high tide
the sea would sweep the beach. Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved
bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea.
Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm,
wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.
Just two men remained, their hands plunged deep into their pockets,
bending their backs beneath the squall, their woolen caps pulled down over
their ears; two big Normandy fishermen, bearded, their skin tanned through
exposure, with the piercing black eyes of the sailor who looks over the
horizon like a bird of prey.
One of them was saying:
“Come on, Jeremie, let’s go play dominoes. It’s my treat.”
The other hesitated a while, tempted on one hand by the game and the
thought of brandy, knowing well that, if he went to Paumelle’s, he would
return home drunk; held back, on the other hand, by the idea of his wife
remaining alone in the house.
He asked:
“Any one might think that you had made a bet to get me drunk every night.
Say, what good is it doing you, since it’s always you that’s treating?”
 Nevertheless he was smiling at the idea of all this brandy drunk at the
expense of another. He was smiling the contented smirk of an avaricious
Norman.
Mathurin, his friend, kept pulling him by the sleeve.
“Come on, Jeremie. This isn’t the kind of a night to go home without
anything to warm you up. What are you afraid of? Isn’t your wife going to
warm your bed for you?”
Jeremie answered:
“The other night I couldn’t find the door — I had to be fished out of the
ditch in front of the house!”
He was still laughing at this drunkard’s recollection, and he was
unconsciously going toward Paumelle’s Cafe, where a light was shining in
the window; he was going, pulled by Mathurin and pushed by the wind,
unable to resist these combined forces.
The low room was full of sailors, smoke and noise. All these men, clad in
woolens, their elbows on the tables, were shouting to make themselves
heard. The more people came in, the more one had to shout in order to
overcome the noise of voices and the rattling of dominoes on the marble
tables.
Jeremie and Mathurin sat down in a corner and began a game, and the
glasses were emptied in rapid succession into their thirsty throats.
Then they played more games and drank more glasses. Mathurin kept
pouring and winking to the saloon keeper, a big, red-faced man, who
chuckled as though at the thought of some fine joke; and Jeremie kept
absorbing alcohol and wagging his head, giving vent to a roar of laughter and
looking at his comrade with a stupid and contented expression.
All the customers were going away. Every time that one of them would
open the door to leave a gust of wind would blow into the cafe, making the
tobacco smoke swirl around, swinging the lamps at the end of their chains
and making their flames flicker, and suddenly one could hear the deep
booming of a breaking wave and the moaning of the wind.
Jeremie, his collar unbuttoned, was taking drunkard’s poses, one leg
outstretched, one arm hanging down and in the other hand holding a domino.
They were alone now with the owner, who had come up to them,
interested.
He asked:
 “Well, Jeremie, how goes it inside? Feel less thirsty after wetting your
throat?”
Jeremie muttered:
“The more I wet it, the drier it gets inside.”
The innkeeper cast a sly glance at Mathurin. He said:
“And your brother, Mathurin, where’s he now?”
The sailor laughed silently:
“Don’t worry; he’s warm, all right.”
And both of them looked toward Jeremie, who was triumphantly putting
down the double six and announcing:
“Game!”
Then the owner declared:
“Well, boys, I’m goin’ to bed. I will leave you the lamp and the bottle;
there’s twenty cents’ worth in it. Lock the door when you go, Mathurin, and
slip the key under the mat the way you did the other night.”
Mathurin answered:
“Don’t worry; it’ll be all right.”
Paumelle shook hands with his two customers and slowly went up the
wooden stairs. For several minutes his heavy step echoed through the little
house. Then a loud creaking announced that he had got into bed.
The two men continued to play. From time to time a more violent gust of
wind would shake the whole house, and the two drinkers would look up, as
though some one were about to enter. Then Mathurin would take the bottle
and fill Jeremie’s glass. But suddenly the clock over the bar struck twelve.
Its hoarse clang sounded like the rattling of saucepans. Then Mathurin got up
like a sailor whose watch is over.
“Come on, Jeremie, we’ve got to get out.”
The other man rose to his feet with difficulty, got his balance by leaning
on the table, reached the door and opened it while his companion was putting
out the light.
As soon as they were in the street Mathurin locked the door and then said:
“Well, so long. See you to-morrow night!”
And he disappeared in the darkness.
Jeremie took a few steps, staggered, stretched out his hands, met a wall
which supported him and began to stumble along. From time to time a gust of
wind would sweep through the street, pushing him forward, making him run
for a few steps; then, when the wind would die down, he would stop short,
having lost his impetus, and once more he would begin to stagger on his
unsteady drunkard’s legs.
He went instinctively toward his home, just as birds go to their nests.
Finally he recognized his door, and began to feel about for the keyhole and
tried to put the key in it. Not finding the hole, he began to swear. Then he
began to beat on the door with his fists, calling for his wife to come and help
him:
“Melina! Oh, Melina!”
As he leaned against the door for support, it gave way and opened, and
Jeremie, losing his prop, fell inside, rolling on his face into the middle of his
room, and he felt something heavy pass over him and escape in the night.
He was no longer moving, dazed by fright, bewildered, fearing the devil,
ghosts, all the mysterious beings of darkness, and he waited a long time
without daring to move. But when he found out that nothing else was moving,
a little reason returned to him, the reason of a drunkard.
Gently he sat up. Again he waited a long time, and at last, growing bolder,
he called:
“Melina!”
His wife did not answer.
Then, suddenly, a suspicion crossed his darkened mind, an indistinct,
vague suspicion. He was not moving; he was sitting there in the dark, trying
to gather together his scattered wits, his mind stumbling over incomplete
ideas, just as his feet stumbled along.
Once more he asked:
“Who was it, Melina? Tell me who it was. I won’t hurt you!”
He waited, no voice was raised in the darkness. He was now reasoning
with himself out loud.
“I’m drunk, all right! I’m drunk! And he filled me up, the dog; he did it, to
stop my goin’ home. I’m drunk!”
And he would continue:
“Tell me who it was, Melina, or somethin’ll happen to you.”
After having waited again, he went on with the slow and obstinate logic of
a drunkard:
“He’s been keeping me at that loafer Paumelle’s place every night, so as
to stop my going home. It’s some trick. Oh, you damned carrion!”
Slowly he got on his knees. A blind fury was gaining possession of him,
mingling with the fumes of alcohol.
 He continued:
“Tell me who it was, Melina, or you’ll get a licking — I warn you!”
He was now standing, trembling with a wild fury, as though the alcohol
had set his blood on fire. He took a step, knocked against a chair, seized it,
went on, reached the bed, ran his hands over it and felt the warm body of his
wife.
Then, maddened, he roared:
“So! You were there, you piece of dirt, and you wouldn’t answer!”
And, lifting the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor’s grip, he
swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst from the bed,
an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around like a thresher in a
barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was broken to pieces, but he
still held one leg and beat away with it, panting.
At last he stopped to ask:
“Well, are you ready to tell me who it was?”
Melina did not answer.
Then tired out, stupefied from his exertion, he stretched himself out on the
ground and slept.
When day came a neighbor, seeing the door open, entered. He saw
Jeremie snoring on the floor, amid the broken pieces of a chair, and on the
bed a pulp of flesh and blood.
 THE WARDROBE

As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned on

women, for lack of something else.
One of us said:
“Here’s a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject.” And he
told us the following story:
One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering
sense of misery and languor that takes possession of one from time to time. I
was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if I gave in to
my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia, one of those
attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often.
I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I was
going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to wander along
by the almost empty cafes. It was raining, a fine rain that affects your mind as
it does your clothing, not one of those good downpours which come down in
torrents, driving breathless passers-by into doorways, but a rain without
drops that deposits on your clothing an imperceptible spray and soon covers
you with a sort of iced foam that chills you through.
What should I do? I walked in one direction and then came back, looking
for some place where I could spend two hours, and discovering for the first
time that there is no place of amusement in Paris in the evening. At last I
decided to go to the Folies-Bergere, that entertaining resort for gay women.
There were very few people in the main hall. In the long horseshoe curve
there were only a few ordinary looking people, whose plebeian origin was
apparent in their manners, their clothes, the cut of their hair and beard, their
hats, their complexion. It was rarely that one saw from time to time a man
whom you suspected of having washed himself thoroughly, and his whole
make-up seemed to match. As for the women, they were always the same,
those frightful women you all know, ugly, tired looking, drooping, and
walking along in their lackadaisical manner, with that air of foolish
superciliousness which they assume, I do not know why.
 I thought to myself that, in truth, not one of those languid creatures, greasy
rather than fat, puffed out here and thin there, with the contour of a monk and
the lower extremities of a bow-legged snipe, was worth the louis that they
would get with great difficulty after asking five.
But all at once I saw a little creature whom I thought attractive, not in her
first youth, but fresh, comical and tantalizing. I stopped her, and stupidly,
without thinking, I made an appointment with her for that night. I did not want
to go back to my own home alone, all alone; I preferred the company and the
caresses of this hussy.
And I followed her. She lived in a great big house in the Rue des Martyrs.
The gas was already extinguished on the stairway. I ascended the steps
slowly, lighting a candle match every few seconds, stubbing my foot against
the steps, stumbling and angry as I followed the rustle of the skirt ahead of
me.
She stopped on the fourth floor, and having closed the outer door she said:
“Then you will stay till to-morrow?”
“Why, yes. You know that that was the agreement.”
“All right, my dear, I just wanted to know. Wait for me here a minute, I
will be right back.”
And she left me in the darkness. I heard her shutting two doors and then I
thought I heard her talking. I was surprised and uneasy. The thought that she
had a protector staggered me. But I have good fists and a solid back. “We
shall see,” I said to myself.
I listened attentively with ear and mind. Some one was stirring about,
walking quietly and very carefully. Then another door was opened and I
thought I again heard some one talking, but in a very low tone.
She came back carrying a lighted candle.
“You may come in,” she said.
She said “thou” in speaking to me, which was an indication of possession.
I went in and after passing through a dining room in which it was very
evident that no one ever ate, I entered a typical room of all these women, a
furnished room with red curtains and a soiled eiderdown bed covering.
“Make yourself at home, ‘mon chat’,” she said.
I gave a suspicious glance at the room, but there seemed no reason for
uneasiness.
As she took off her wraps she began to laugh.
 “Well, what ails you? Are you changed into a pillar of salt? Come, hurry
up.”
I did as she suggested.
Five minutes later I longed to put on my things and get away. But this
terrible languor that had overcome me at home took possession of me again,
and deprived me of energy enough to move and I stayed in spite of the disgust
that I felt for this association. The unusual attractiveness that I supposed I had
discovered in this creature over there under the chandeliers of the theater had
altogether vanished on closer acquaintance, and she was nothing more to me
now than a common woman, like all the others, whose indifferent and
complaisant kiss smacked of garlic.
I thought I would say something.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked.
“Over six months on the fifteenth of January.”
“Where were you before that?”
“In the Rue Clauzel. But the janitor made me very uncomfortable and I
left.”
And she began to tell me an interminable story of a janitor who had talked
scandal about her.
But, suddenly, I heard something moving quite close to us. First there was
a sigh, then a slight, but distinct, sound as if some one had turned round on a
chair.
I sat up abruptly and asked.
“What was that noise?”
She answered quietly and confidently:
“Do not be uneasy, my dear boy, it is my neighbor. The partition is so thin
that one can hear everything as if it were in the room. These are wretched
rooms, just like pasteboard.”
I felt so lazy that I paid no further attention to it. We resumed our
conversation. Driven by the stupid curiosity that prompts all men to question
these creatures about their first experiences, to attempt to lift the veil of their
first folly, as though to find in them a trace of pristine innocence, to love
them, possibly, in a fleeting memory of their candor and modesty of former
days, evoked by a word, I insistently asked her about her earlier lovers.
I knew she was telling me lies. What did it matter? Among all these lies I
might, perhaps, discover something sincere and pathetic.
“Come,” said I, “tell me who he was.”
 “He was a boating man, my dear.”
“Ah! Tell me about it. Where were you?”
“I was at Argenteuil.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was waitress in a restaurant.”
“What restaurant?”
“‘The Freshwater Sailor.’ Do you know it?”
“I should say so, kept by Bonanfan.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And how did he make love to you, this boating man?”
“While I was doing his room. He took advantage of me.”
But I suddenly recalled the theory of a friend of mine, an observant and
philosophical physician whom constant attendance in hospitals has brought
into daily contact with girl-mothers and prostitutes, with all the shame and all
the misery of women, of those poor women who have become the frightful
prey of the wandering male with money in his pocket.
“A woman,” he said, “is always debauched by a man of her own class and
position. I have volumes of statistics on that subject. We accuse the rich of
plucking the flower of innocence among the girls of the people. This is not
correct. The rich pay for what they want. They may gather some, but never
for the first time.”
Then, turning to my companion, I began to laugh.
“You know that I am aware of your history. The boating man was not the
first.”
“Oh, yes, my dear, I swear it:”
“You are lying, my dear.”
“Oh, no, I assure you.”
“You are lying; come, tell me all.”
She seemed to hesitate in astonishment. I continued:
“I am a sorcerer, my dear girl, I am a clairvoyant. If you do not tell me the
truth, I will go into a trance sleep and then I can find out.”
She was afraid, being as stupid as all her kind. She faltered:
“How did you guess?”
“Come, go on telling me,” I said.
“Oh, the first time didn’t amount to anything.
“There was a festival in the country. They had sent for a special chef, M.
Alexandre. As soon as he came he did just as he pleased in the house. He
bossed every one, even the proprietor and his wife, as if he had been a king.
He was a big handsome man, who did not seem fitted to stand beside a
kitchen range. He was always calling out, ‘Come, some butter — some eggs
— some Madeira!’ And it had to be brought to him at once in a hurry, or he
would get cross and say things that would make us blush all over.
“When the day was over he would smoke a pipe outside the door. And as
I was passing by him with a pile of plates he said to me, like that: ‘Come,
girlie, come down to the water with me and show me the country.’ I went
with him like a fool, and we had hardly got down to the bank of the river
when he took advantage of me so suddenly that I did not even know what he
was doing. And then he went away on the nine o’clock train. I never saw him
again.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
She hesitated.
“Oh, I think Florentin belongs to him.”
“Who is Florentin?”
“My little boy.”
“Oh! Well, then, you made the boating man believe that he was the father,
did you not?”
“You bet!”
“Did he have any money, this boating man?”
“Yes, he left me an income of three hundred francs, settled on Florentin.”
I was beginning to be amused and resumed:
“All right, my girl, all right. You are all of you less stupid than one would
imagine, all the same. And how old is he now, Florentin?”
She replied:
“He is now twelve. He will make his first communion in the spring.”
“That is splendid. And since then you have carried on your business
conscientiously?”
She sighed in a resigned manner.
“I must do what I can.”
But a loud noise just then coming from the room itself made me start up
with a bound. It sounded like some one falling and picking themselves up
again by feeling along the wall with their hands.
I had seized the candle and was looking about me, terrified and furious.
She had risen also and was trying to hold me back to stop me, murmuring:
“That’s nothing, my dear, I assure you it’s nothing.”
 But I had discovered what direction the strange noise came from. I walked
straight towards a door hidden at the head of the bed and I opened it abruptly
and saw before me, trembling, his bright, terrified eyes opened wide at sight
of me, a little pale, thin boy seated beside a large wicker chair off which he
had fallen.
As soon as he saw me he began to cry. Stretching out his arms to his
mother, he cried:
“It was not my fault, mamma, it was not my fault. I was asleep, and I fell
off. Do not scold me, it was not my fault.”
I turned to the woman and said:
“What does this mean?”
She seemed confused and worried, and said in a broken voice:
“What do you want me to do? I do not earn enough to put him to school! I
have to keep him with me, and I cannot afford to pay for another room, by
heavens! He sleeps with me when I am alone. If any one comes for one hour
or two he can stay in the wardrobe; he keeps quiet, he understands it. But
when people stay all night, as you have done, it tires the poor child to sleep
on a chair.
“It is not his fault. I should like to see you sleep all night on a chair — you
would have something to say.”
She was getting angry and excited and was talking loud.
The child was still crying. A poor delicate timid little fellow, a veritable
child of the wardrobe, of the cold, dark closet, a child who from time to time
was allowed to get a little warmth in the bed if it chanced to be unoccupied.
I also felt inclined to cry.
And I went home to my own bed.
 THE MOUNTAIN POOL

Saint Agnes, May 6.

MY DEAR FRIEND:
You asked me to write to you often and to tell you in particular about
the things I might see. You also begged me to rummage among my
recollections of travels for some of those little anecdotes gathered from
a chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from some strange traveling
acquaintance, which remain as landmarks in the memory. With a
landscape
depicted in a few lines, and a little story told in a few sentences you
think one can give the true characteristics of a country, make it living,
visible, dramatic. I will try to do as you wish. I will, therefore,
send you from time to time letters in which I will mention neither you
nor myself, but only the landscape and the people who move about in it.
And now I will begin.
Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to me, to drink and eat the
landscape. It is the season of chills, just as autumn is the season of reflection.
In spring the country rouses the physical senses, in autumn it enters into the
soul.
I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange blossoms and I set out for
the South of France just at the time that every one else was returning home. I
visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of Mecca and Jerusalem,
without leaving any gold in any one else’s pockets, and I climbed the high
mountain beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olive branches.
Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange trees in flower? The
air that one inhales with delight is a quintessence of perfumes. The strong yet
sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to blend with our being, to
saturate us, to intoxicate us, to enervate us, to plunge us into a sleepy, dreamy
torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by the hands of fairies and not
by those of druggists.
This is a country of ravines. The surface of the mountains is cleft,
hollowed out in all directions, and in these sinuous crevices grow veritable
forests of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep gorge is interrupted by
a sort of step, a kind of reservoir has been built which holds the water of the
rain storms.
They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing for any one to grasp
hold of should they fall in.
I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys or gorges,
glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued fruit that remained on the
branches. The narrow gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still more
penetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it. A feeling of lassitude came
over me and I looked for a place to sit down. A few drops of water glistened
in the grass. I thought that there was a spring near by and I climbed a little
further to look for it. But I only reached the edge of one of these large, deep
reservoirs.
I sat down tailor fashion, with my legs crossed under me, and remained
there in a reverie before this hole, which looked as if it were filled with ink,
so black and stagnant was the liquid it contained. Down yonder, through the
branches, I saw, like patches, bits of the Mediterranean gleaming so that they
fairly dazzled my eyes. But my glance always returned to the immense
somber well that appeared to be inhabited by no aquatic animals, so
motionless was its surface. Suddenly a voice made me tremble. An old
gentleman who was picking flowers — this country is the richest in Europe
for herbalists — asked me:
“Are you a relation of those poor children, monsieur?”
I looked at him in astonishment.
“What children, monsieur?”
He seemed embarrassed and answered with a bow:
“I beg your pardon. On seeing you sitting thus absorbed in front of this
reservoir I thought you were recalling the frightful tragedy that occurred
here.”
Now I wanted to know about it, and I begged him to tell me the story.
It is very dismal and very heart-rending, my dear friend, and very trivial
at the same time. It is a simple news item. I do not know whether to attribute
my emotion to the dramatic manner in which the story was told to me, to the
setting of the mountains, to the contrast between the joy of the sunlight and the
flowers and this black, murderous hole, but my heart was wrung, all my
nerves unstrung by this tale which, perhaps, may not appear so terribly
harrowing to you as you read it in your room without having the scene of the
tragedy before your eyes.
It was one spring in recent years. Two little boys frequently came to play
on the edge of this cistern while their tutor lay under a tree reading a book.
One warm afternoon a piercing cry awoke the tutor who was dozing and the
sound of splashing caused by something falling into the water made him jump
to his feet abruptly. The younger of the children, eight years of age, was
shouting, as he stood beside the reservoir, the surface of which was stirred
and eddying at the spot where the older boy had fallen in as he ran along the
stone coping.
Distracted, without waiting or stopping to think what was best to do, the
tutor jumped into the black water and did not rise again, having struck his
head at the bottom of the cistern.
At the same moment the young boy who had risen to the surface was
waving his stretched-out arms toward his brother. The little fellow on land
lay down full length, while the other tried to swim, to approach the wall, and
presently the four little hands clasped each other, tightened in each other’s
grasp, contracted as though they were fastened together. They both felt the
intense joy of an escape from death, a shudder at the danger past.
The older boy tried to climb up to the edge, but could not manage it, as the
wall was perpendicular, and his brother, who was too weak, was sliding
slowly towards the hole.
Then they remained motionless, filled anew with terror. And they waited.
The little fellow squeezed his brother’s hands with all his might and wept
from nervousness as he repeated: “I cannot drag you out, I cannot drag you
out.” And all at once he began to shout, “Help! Help!” But his light voice
scarcely penetrated beyond the dome of foliage above their heads.
They remained thus a long time, hours and hours, facing each other, these
two children, with one thought, one anguish of heart and the horrible dread
that one of them, exhausted, might let go the hands of the other. And they kept
on calling, but all in vain.
At length the older boy, who was shivering with cold, said to the little
one: “I cannot hold out any longer. I am going to fall. Good-by, little brother.”
And the other, gasping, replied: “Not yet, not yet, wait.”
Evening came on, the still evening with its stars mirrored in the water.
The older lad, his endurance giving out, said: “Let go my hand, I am going to
give you my watch.” He had received it as a present a few days before, and
ever since it had been his chief amusement. He was able to get hold of it, and
held it out to the little fellow who was sobbing and who laid it down on the
grass beside him.
It was night now. The two unhappy beings, exhausted, had almost
loosened their grasp. The elder, at last, feeling that he was lost, murmured
once more: “Good-by, little brother, kiss mamma and papa.” And his numbed
fingers relaxed their hold. He sank and did not rise again . . . . The little
fellow, left alone, began to shout wildly: “Paul! Paul!” But the other did not
come to the surface.
Then he darted across the mountain, falling among the stones, overcome
by the most frightful anguish that can wring a child’s heart, and with a face
like death reached the sitting-room, where his parents were waiting. He
became bewildered again as he led them to the gloomy reservoir. He could
not find his way. At last he reached the spot. “It is there; yes, it is there!”
But the cistern had to be emptied, and the proprietor would not permit it
as he needed the water for his lemon trees.
The two bodies were found, however, but not until the next day.
You see, my dear friend, that this is a simple news item. But if you had
seen the hole itself your heart would have been wrung, as mine was, at the
thought of the agony of that child hanging to his brother’s hands, of the long
suspense of those little chaps who were accustomed only to laugh and to
play, and at the simple incident of the giving of the watch.
I said to myself: “May Fate preserve me from ever receiving a similar
relic!” I know of nothing more terrible than such a recollection connected
with a familiar object that one cannot dispose of. Only think of it; each time
that he handles this sacred watch the survivor will picture once more the
horrible scene; the pool, the wall, the still water, and the distracted face of
his brother-alive, and yet as lost as though he were already dead. And all
through his life, at any moment, the vision will be there, awakened the instant
even the tip of his finger touches his watch pocket.
And I was sad until evening. I left the spot and kept on climbing, leaving
the region of orange trees for the region of olive trees, and the region of olive
trees for the region of pines; then I came to a valley of stones, and finally
reached the ruins of an ancient castle, built, they say, in the tenth century by a
Saracen chief, a good man, who was baptized a Christian through love for a
young girl. Everywhere around me were mountains, and before me the sea,
the sea with an almost imperceptible patch on it: Corsica, or, rather, the
shadow of Corsica. But on the mountain summits, blood-red in the glow of
the sunset, in the boundless sky and on the sea, in all this superb landscape
that I had come here to admire I saw only two poor children, one lying prone
on the edge of a hole filled with black water, the other submerged to his neck,
their hands intertwined, weeping opposite each other, in despair. And it
seemed as though I continually heard a weak, exhausted voice saying:
“Good-by, little brother, I am going to give you my watch.”
This letter may seem rather melancholy, dear friend. I will try to be more
cheerful some other day.
 A CREMATION

Last Monday an Indian prince died at Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay,
a relation of His Highness, the Maharajah Gaikwar, prince of Baroda, in the
province of Guzerat, Presidency of Bombay.
For about three weeks there had been seen walking in the streets about ten
young East Indians, small, lithe, with dark skins, dressed all in gray and
wearing on their heads caps such as English grooms wear. They were men of
high rank who had come to Europe to study the military institutions of the
principal Western nations. The little band consisted of three princes, a
nobleman, an interpreter and three servants.
The head of the commission had just died, an old man of forty-two and
father-in-law of Sampatro Kashivao Gaikwar, brother of His Highness, the
Gaikwar of Baroda.
The son-in-law accompanied his father-in-law.
The other East Indians were called Ganpatrao Shravanrao Gaikwar,
cousin of His Highness Khasherao Gadhav; Vasudev Madhav Samarth,
interpreter and secretary; the slaves: Ramchandra Bajaji, Ganu bin Pukiram
Kokate, Rhambhaji bin Fabji.
On leaving his native land the one who died recently was overcome with
terrible grief, and feeling convinced that he would never return he wished to
give up the journey, but he had to obey the wishes of his noble relative, the
Prince of Baroda, and he set out.
They came to spend the latter part of the summer at Etretat, and people
would go out of curiosity every morning to see them taking their bath at the
Etablissment des Roches-Blanches.
Five or six days ago Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay was taken with pains
in his gums; then the inflammation spread to the throat and became ulceration.
Gangrene set in and, on Monday, the doctors told his young friends that their
relative was dying. The final struggle was already beginning, and the breath
had almost left the unfortunate man’s body when his friends seized him,
snatched him from his bed and laid him on the stone floor of the room, so
that, stretched out on the earth, our mother, he should yield up his soul,
according to the command of Brahma.
They then sent to ask the mayor, M. Boissaye, for a permit to burn the
body that very day so as to fulfill the prescribed ceremonial of the Hindoo
religion. The mayor hesitated, telegraphed to the prefecture to demand
instructions, at the same time sending word that a failure to reply would be
considered by him tantamount to a consent. As he had received no reply at 9
o’clock that evening, he decided, in view of the infectious character of the
disease of which the East Indian had died, that the cremation of the body
should take place that very night, beneath the cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide.
The mayor is being criticized now for this decision, though he acted as an
intelligent, liberal and determined man, and was upheld and advised by the
three physicians who had watched the case and reported the death.
They were dancing at the Casino that evening. It was an early autumn
evening, rather chilly. A pretty strong wind was blowing from the ocean,
although as yet there was no sea on, and swift, light, ragged clouds were
driving across the sky. They came from the edge of the horizon, looking dark
against the background of the sky, but as they approached the moon they grew
whiter and passed hurriedly across her face, veiling it for a few seconds
without completely hiding it.
The tall straight cliffs that inclose the rounded beach of Etretat and
terminate in two celebrated arches, called “the Gates,” lay in shadow, and
made two great black patches in the softly lighted landscape.
It had rained all day.
The Casino orchestra was playing waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. A
rumor was presently circulated among the groups of dancers. It was said that
an East Indian prince had just died at the Hotel des Bains and that the
ministry had been approached for permission to burn the body. No one
believed it, or at least no one supposed that such a thing could occur so
foreign was the custom as yet to our customs, and as the night was far
advanced every one went home.
At midnight, the lamplighter, running from street to street, extinguished,
one after another, the yellow jets of flame that lighted up the sleeping houses,
the mud and the puddles of water. We waited, watching for the hour when the
little town should be quiet and deserted.
Ever since noon a carpenter had been cutting up wood and asking himself
with amazement what was going to be done with all these planks sawn up
into little bits, and why one should destroy so much good merchandise. This
wood was piled up in a cart which went along through side streets as far as
the beach, without arousing the suspicion of belated persons who might meet
it. It went along on the shingle at the foot of the cliff, and having dumped its
contents on the beach the three Indian servants began to build a funeral pile, a
little longer than it was wide. They worked alone, for no profane hand must
aid in this solemn duty.
It was one o’clock in the morning when the relations of the deceased were
informed that they might accomplish their part of the work.
The door of the little house they occupied was open, and we perceived,
lying on a stretcher in the small, dimly lighted vestibule the corpse covered
with white silk. We could see him plainly as he lay stretched out on his back,
his outline clearly defined beneath this white veil.
The East Indians, standing at his feet, remained motionless, while one of
them performed the prescribed rites, murmuring unfamiliar words in a low,
monotonous tone. He walked round and round the corpse; touching it
occasionally, then, taking an urn suspended from three slender chains, he
sprinkled it for some time with the sacred water of the Ganges, that East
Indians must always carry with them wherever they go.
Then the stretcher was lifted by four of them who started off at a slow
march. The moon had gone down, leaving the muddy, deserted streets in
darkness, but the body on the stretcher appeared to be luminous, so
dazzlingly white was the silk, and it was a weird sight to see, passing along
through the night, the semi-luminous form of this corpse, borne by those men,
the dusky skin of whose faces and hands could scarcely be distinguished
from their clothing in the darkness.
Behind the corpse came three Indians, and then, a full head taller than
themselves and wrapped in an ample traveling coat of a soft gray color,
appeared the outline of an Englishman, a kind and superior man, a friend of
theirs, who was their guide and counselor in their European travels.
Beneath the cold, misty sky of this little northern beach I felt as if I were
taking part in a sort of symbolical drama. It seemed to me that they were
carrying there, before me, the conquered genius of India, followed, as in a
funeral procession, by the victorious genius of England robed in a gray ulster.
On the shingly beach the four bearers halted a few moments to take breath,
and then proceeded on their way. They now walked quickly, bending beneath
the weight of their burden. At length they reached the funeral pile. It was
erected in an indentation, at the very foot of the cliff, which rose above it
perpendicularly a hundred meters high, perfectly white but looking gray in
the night.
The funeral pile was about three and a half feet high. The corpse was
placed on it and then one of the Indians asked to have the pole star pointed
out to him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his feet turned
towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene were poured
over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of pine wood. For
almost another hour the relations and servants kept piling up the funeral pyre
which looked like one of those piles of wood that carpenters keep in their
yards. Then on top of this was poured the contents of twenty bottles of oil,
and on top of all they emptied a bag of fine shavings. A few steps further on,
a flame was glimmering in a little bronze brazier, which had remained
lighted since the arrival of the corpse.
The moment had arrived. The relations went to fetch the fire. As it was
barely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame arose lighting
up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian who was leaning
over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, his elbows bent, and
all at once we saw arising, all black on the immense white cliff, a colossal
shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieratic posture. And the little pointed
toque that the man wore on his head even looked like the head-dress of the
god.
The effect was so striking and unexpected that I felt my heart beat as
though some supernatural apparition had risen up before me.
That was just what it was — the ancient and sacred image, come from the
heart of the East to the ends of Europe, and watching over its son whom they
were going to cremate there.
It vanished. They brought fire. The shavings on top of the pyre were
lighted and then the wood caught fire and a brilliant light illumined the cliff,
the shingle and the foam of the waves as they broke on the beach.
It grew brighter from second to second, lighting up on the sea in the
distance the dancing crest of the waves.
The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the flame
which flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out millions of
sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and were lost in the
sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number. Some sea birds who had
awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and, describing long curves, flew, with
their white wings extended, through the gleam from the funeral pyre and then
disappeared in the night.
Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not red but
yellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And, suddenly,
beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as it leaned towards
the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length, blackened on his couch of
flame and burning with long blue flames:
The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turned
over as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh wood
and the fire started up again more furiously than ever.
The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out with
sad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had drawn nearer
to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces. There was no odor
save that of burning pine and petroleum.
Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o’clock in the morning
nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up, cast
some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a brass vase
that they had brought from India. They then retired to their home to give
utterance to lamentations.
These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the most
inadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of their
relation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkable
dignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigid
ordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.
The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion
in Etretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others that they
were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put in jail, others
that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of cholera.
The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent the
day on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of bone in the shingle
that was still warm. They found enough bones to reconstruct ten skeletons,
for the farmers on shore frequently throw their dead sheep into the sea. The
finders carefully placed these various fragments in their pocketbooks. But not
one of them possesses a true particle of the Indian prince.
That very night a deputy sent by the government came to hold an inquest.
He, however, formed an estimate of this singular case like a man of
intelligence and good sense. But what should he say in his report?
 The East Indians declared that if they had been prevented in France from
cremating their dead they would have taken him to a freer country where they
could have carried out their customs.
Thus, I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me a
wish to disappear in the same manner.
In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work of
nature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which one decomposes
for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Fire which purifies
disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; it casts it to the winds,
converting it into air and ashes, and not into ignominious corruption.
This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closed
box where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has about it
something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as it descends into
this muddy hole wrings one’s heart with anguish. But the funeral pyre which
flames up beneath the sky has about it something grand, beautiful and solemn.
 MISTI

I was very much interested at that time in a droll little woman. She was
married, of course, as I have a horror of unmarried flirts. What enjoyment is
there in making love to a woman who belongs to nobody and yet belongs to
any one? And, besides, morality aside, I do not understand love as a trade.
That disgusts me somewhat.
The especial attraction in a married woman to a bachelor is that she gives
him a home, a sweet, pleasant home where every one takes care of you and
spoils you, from the husband to the servants. One finds everything combined
there, love, friendship, even fatherly interest, bed and board, all, in fact, that
constitutes the happiness of life, with this incalculable advantage, that one
can change one’s family from time to time, take up one’s abode in all kinds of
society in turn: in summer, in the country with the workman who rents you a
room in his house; in winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if
one is ambitious.
I have another weakness; it is that I become attached to the husband as
well as the wife. I acknowledge even that some husbands, ordinary or coarse
as they may be, give me a feeling of disgust for their wives, however
charming they may be. But when the husband is intellectual or charming I
invariably become very much attached to him. I am careful if I quarrel with
the wife not to quarrel with the husband. In this way I have made some of my
best friends, and have also proved in many cases the incontestable
superiority of the male over the female in the human species. The latter
makes all sorts of trouble-scenes, reproaches, etc.; while the former, who has
just as good a right to complain, treats you, on the contrary, as though you
were the special Providence of his hearth.
Well, my friend was a quaint little woman, a brunette, fanciful, capricious,
pious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. She had a way of
kissing one that I never saw in any one else — but that was not the attraction
— and such a soft skin! It gave me intense delight merely to hold her hands.
And an eye — her glance was like a slow caress, delicious and unending.
Sometimes I would lean my head on her knee and we would remain
motionless, she leaning over me with that subtle, enigmatic, disturbing smile
that women have, while my eyes would be raised to hers, drinking sweetly
and deliciously into my heart, like a form of intoxication, the glance of her
limpid blue eyes, limpid as though they were full of thoughts of love, and
blue as though they were a heaven of delights.
Her husband, inspector of some large public works, was frequently away
from home and left us our evenings free. Sometimes I spent them with her
lounging on the divan with my forehead on one of her knees; while on the
other lay an enormous black cat called “Misti,” whom she adored. Our
fingers would meet on the cat’s back and would intertwine in her soft silky
fur. I felt its warm body against my cheek, trembling with its eternal purring,
and occasionally a paw would reach out and place on my mouth, or my
eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids, and then be
immediately withdrawn.
Sometimes we would go out on what we called our escapades. They were
very innocent, however. They consisted in taking supper at some inn in the
suburbs, or else, after dining at her house or at mine, in making the round of
the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.
We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the
end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A cloud
of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from dinner,
filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as they drank their
petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before us two cherry
brandies.
She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as
far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one feels at
doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed made her
feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of the burning liquor
had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden enjoyment.
Then she would say to me in a low tone: “Let us go.” And we would
leave, she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who
watched her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into
the street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some
terrible danger.
Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:
“Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what
would you do?” “Why, I would defend you, parbleu!” I would reply in a
resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps with
a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she might see men
fight on her account, even those men, with me!
One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an old
woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of dirty
cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and offered
to tell my friend’s fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in everything,
was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place beside her for
the old woman.
The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them, and
her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty cards on the
table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up, and then dealt them out
again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma, turning pale, listened with
bated breath, gasping with anxiety and curiosity.
The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings:
happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a dark
man, the return of some one, success, a death. The mention of this death
attracted the younger woman’s attention. “Whose death? When? In what
manner?”
The old woman replied: “Oh, as to that, these cards are not certain
enough. You must come to my place to-morrow; I will tell you about it with
coffee grounds which never make a mistake.”
Emma turned anxiously to me:
“Say, let us go there to-morrow. Oh, please say yes. If not, you cannot
imagine how worried I shall be.”
I began to laugh.
“We will go if you wish it, dearie.”
The old woman gave us her address. She lived on the sixth floor, in a
wretched house behind the Buttes-Chaumont. We went there the following
day.
Her room, an attic containing two chairs and a bed, was filled with
strange objects, bunches of herbs hanging from nails, skins of animals, flasks
and phials containing liquids of various colors. On the table a stuffed black
cat looked out of eyes of glass. He seemed like the demon of this sinister
dwelling.
Emma, almost fainting with emotion, sat down on a chair and exclaimed:
“Oh, dear, look at that cat; how like it is to Misti.”
 And she explained to the old woman that she had a cat “exactly like that,
exactly like that!”
The old woman replied gravely:
“If you are in love with a man, you must not keep it.”
Emma, suddenly filled with fear, asked:
“Why not?”
The old woman sat down familiarly beside her and took her hand.
“It was the undoing of my life,” she said.
My friend wanted to hear about it. She leaned against the old woman,
questioned her, begged her to tell. At length the woman agreed to do so.
“I loved that cat,” she said, “as one would love a brother. I was young
then and all alone, a seamstress. I had only him, Mouton. One of the tenants
had given it to me. He was as intelligent as a child, and gentle as well, and
he worshiped me, my dear lady, he worshiped me more than one does a
fetish. All day long he would sit on my lap purring, and all night long on my
pillow; I could feel his heart beating, in fact.
“Well, I happened to make an acquaintance, a fine young man who was
working in a white-goods house. That went on for about three months on a
footing of mere friendship. But you know one is liable to weaken, it may
happen to any one, and, besides, I had really begun to love him. He was so
nice, so nice, and so good. He wanted us to live together, for economy’s
sake. I finally allowed him to come and see me one evening. I had not made
up my mind to anything definite; oh, no! But I was pleased at the idea that we
should spend an hour together.
“At first he behaved very well, said nice things to me that made my heart
go pit-a-pat. And then he kissed me, madame, kissed me as one does when
they love. I remained motionless, my eyes closed, in a paroxysm of
happiness. But, suddenly, I felt him start violently and he gave a scream, a
scream that I shall never forget. I opened my eyes and saw that Mouton had
sprung at his face and was tearing the skin with his claws as if it had been a
linen rag. And the blood was streaming down like rain, madame.
“I tried to take the cat away, but he held on tight, scratching all the time;
and he bit me, he was so crazy. I finally got him and threw him out of the
window, which was open, for it was summer.
“When I began to bathe my poor friend’s face, I noticed that his eyes were
destroyed, both his eyes!
 “He had to go to the hospital. He died of grief at the end of a year. I
wanted to keep him with me and provide for him, but he would not agree to
it. One would have supposed that he hated me after the occurrence.
“As for Mouton, his back was broken by the fall, The janitor picked up his
body. I had him stuffed, for in spite of all I was fond of him. If he acted as he
did it was because he loved me, was it not?”
The old woman was silent and began to stroke the lifeless animal whose
body trembled on its iron framework.
Emma, with sorrowful heart, had forgotten about the predicted death —
or, at least, she did not allude to it again, and she left, giving the woman five
francs.
As her husband was to return the following day, I did not go to the house
for several days. When I did go I was surprised at not seeing Misti. I asked
where he was.
She blushed and replied:
“I gave him away. I was uneasy.”
I was astonished.
“Uneasy? Uneasy? What about?”
She gave me a long kiss and said in a low tone:
“I was uneasy about your eyes, my dear.”
Misti appeared in. Gil Blas of January 22, 1884, over the signature
of “MAUFRIGNEUSE.”
 MADAME HERMET

Crazy people attract me. They live in a mysterious land of weird dreams, in
that impenetrable cloud of dementia where all that they have witnessed in
their previous life, all they have loved, is reproduced for them in an
imaginary existence, outside of all laws that govern the things of this life and
control human thought.
For them there is no such thing as the impossible, nothing is improbable;
fairyland is a constant quantity and the supernatural quite familiar. The old
rampart, logic; the old wall, reason; the old main stay of thought, good sense,
break down, fall and crumble before their imagination, set free and escaped
into the limitless realm of fancy, and advancing with fabulous bounds, and
nothing can check it. For them everything happens, and anything may happen.
They make no effort to conquer events, to overcome resistance, to overturn
obstacles. By a sudden caprice of their flighty imagination they become
princes, emperors, or gods, are possessed of all the wealth of the world, all
the delightful things of life, enjoy all pleasures, are always strong, always
beautiful, always young, always beloved! They, alone, can be happy in this
world; for, as far as they are concerned, reality does not exist. I love to look
into their wandering intelligence as one leans over an abyss at the bottom of
which seethes a foaming torrent whose source and destination are both
unknown.
But it is in vain that we lean over these abysses, for we shall never
discover the source nor the destination of this water. After all, it is only
water, just like what is flowing in the sunlight, and we shall learn nothing by
looking at it.
It is likewise of no use to ponder over the intelligence of crazy people, for
their most weird notions are, in fact, only ideas that are already known,
which appear strange simply because they are no longer under the restraint of
reason. Their whimsical source surprises us because we do not see it
bubbling up. Doubtless the dropping of a little stone into the current was
sufficient to cause these ebullitions. Nevertheless crazy people attract me and
I always return to them, drawn in spite of myself by this trivial mystery of
dementia.
One day as I was visiting one of the asylums the physician who was my
guide said:
“Come, I will show you an interesting case.”
And he opened the door of a cell where a woman of about forty, still
handsome, was seated in a large armchair, looking persistently at her face in
a little hand mirror.
As soon as she saw us she rose to her feet, ran to the other end of the
room, picked up a veil that lay on a chair, wrapped it carefully round her
face, then came back, nodding her head in reply to our greeting.
“Well,” said the doctor, “how are you this morning?”
She gave a deep sigh.
“Oh, ill, monsieur, very ill. The marks are increasing every day.”
He replied in a tone of conviction:
“Oh, no; oh, no; I assure you that you are mistaken.”
She drew near to him and murmured:
“No. I am certain of it. I counted ten pittings more this morning, three on
the right cheek, four on the left cheek, and three on the forehead. It is frightful,
frightful! I shall never dare to let any one see me, not even my son; no, not
even him! I am lost, I am disfigured forever.”
She fell back in her armchair and began to sob.
The doctor took a chair, sat down beside her, and said soothingly in a
gentle tone:
“Come, let me see; I assure you it is nothing. With a slight cauterization I
will make it all disappear.”
She shook her head in denial, without speaking. He tried to touch her veil,
but she seized it with both hands so violently that her fingers went through it.
He continued to reason with her and reassure her.
“Come, you know very well that I remove those horrid pits every time and
that there is no trace of them after I have treated them. If you do not let me see
them I cannot cure you.”
“I do not mind your seeing them,” she murmured, “but I do not know that
gentleman who is with you.”
“He is a doctor also, who can give you better care than I can.”
She then allowed her face to be uncovered, but her dread, her emotion,
her shame at being seen brought a rosy flush to her face and her neck, down
to the collar of her dress. She cast down her eyes, turned her face aside, first
to the right; then to the left, to avoid our gaze and stammered out:
“Oh, it is torture to me to let myself be seen like this! It is horrible, is it
not? Is it not horrible?”
I looked at her in much surprise, for there was nothing on her face, not a
mark, not a spot, not a sign of one, nor a scar.
She turned towards me, her eyes still lowered, and said:
“It was while taking care of my son that I caught this fearful disease,
monsieur. I saved him, but I am disfigured. I sacrificed my beauty to him, to
my poor child. However, I did my duty, my conscience is at rest. If I suffer it
is known only to God.”
The doctor had drawn from his coat pocket a fine water-color paint brush.
“Let me attend to it,” he said, “I will put it all right.”
She held out her right cheek, and he began by touching it lightly with the
brush here and there, as though he were putting little points of paint on it. He
did the same with the left cheek, then with the chin, and the forehead, and
then exclaimed:
“See, there is nothing there now, nothing at all!”
She took up the mirror, gazed at her reflection with profound, eager
attention, with a strong mental effort to discover something, then she sighed:
“No. It hardly shows at all. I am infinitely obliged to you.”
The doctor had risen. He bowed to her, ushered me out and followed me,
and, as soon as he had locked the door, said:
“Here is the history of this unhappy woman.”
Her name is Mme. Hermet. She was once very beautiful, a great coquette,
very much beloved and very much in-love with life.
She was one of those women who have nothing but their beauty and their
love of admiration to sustain, guide or comfort them in this life. The constant
anxiety to retain her freshness, the care of her complexion, of her hands, her
teeth, of every portion of body that was visible, occupied all her time and all
her attention.
She became a widow, with one son. The boy was brought up as are all
children of society beauties. She was, however, very fond of him.
He grew up, and she grew older. Whether she saw the fatal crisis
approaching, I cannot say. Did she, like so many others, gaze for hours and
hours at her skin, once so fine, so transparent and free from blemish, now
beginning to shrivel slightly, to be crossed with a thousand little lines, as yet
imperceptible, that will grow deeper day by day, month by month? Did she
also see slowly, but surely, increasing traces of those long wrinkles on the
forehead, those slender serpents that nothing can check? Did she suffer the
torture, the abominable torture of the mirror, the little mirror with the silver
handle which one cannot make up one’s mind to lay down on the table, but
then throws down in disgust only to take it up again in order to look more
closely, and still more closely at the hateful and insidious approaches of old
age? Did she shut herself up ten times, twenty times a day, leaving her friends
chatting in the drawing-room, and go up to her room where, under the
protection of bolts and bars, she would again contemplate the work of time
on her ripe beauty, now beginning to wither, and recognize with despair the
gradual progress of the process which no one else had as yet seemed to
perceive, but of which she, herself, was well aware. She knows where to
seek the most serious, the gravest traces of age. And the mirror, the little
round hand-glass in its carved silver frame, tells her horrible things; for it
speaks, it seems to laugh, it jeers and tells her all that is going to occur, all
the physical discomforts and the atrocious mental anguish she will suffer
until the day of her death, which will be the day of her deliverance.
Did she weep, distractedly, on her knees, her forehead to the ground, and
pray, pray, pray to Him who thus slays his creatures and gives them youth
only that he may render old age more unendurable, and lends them beauty
only that he may withdraw it almost immediately? Did she pray to Him,
imploring Him to do for her what He has never yet done for any one, to let
her retain until her last day her charm, her freshness and her gracefulness?
Then, finding that she was imploring in vain an inflexible Unknown who
drives on the years, one after another, did she roll on the carpet in her room,
knocking her head against the furniture and stifling in her throat shrieks of
despair?
Doubtless she suffered these tortures, for this is what occurred:
One day (she was then thirty-five) her son aged fifteen, fell ill.
He took to his bed without any one being able to determine the cause or
nature of his illness.
His tutor, a priest, watched beside him and hardly ever left him, while
Mme. Hermet came morning and evening to inquire how he was.
She would come into the room in the morning in her night wrapper,
smiling, all powdered and perfumed, and would ask as she entered the door:
“Well, George, are you better?”
 The big boy, his face red, swollen and showing the ravages of fever,
would reply:
“Yes, little mother, a little better.”
She would stay in the room a few seconds, look at the bottles of medicine,
and purse her lips as if she were saying “phew,” and then would suddenly
exclaim: “Oh, I forgot something very important,” and would run out of the
room leaving behind her a fragrance of choice toilet perfumes.
In the evening she would appear in a decollete dress, in a still greater
hurry, for she was always late, and she had just time to inquire:
“Well, what does the doctor say?”
The priest would reply:
“He has not yet given an opinion, madame.”
But one evening the abbe replied: “Madame, your son has got the small-
pox.”
She uttered a scream of terror and fled from the room.
When her maid came to her room the following morning she noticed at
once a strong odor of burnt sugar, and she found her mistress, with wide-
open eyes, her face pale from lack of sleep, and shivering with terror in her
bed.
As soon as the shutters were opened Mme. Herrnet asked:
“How is George?”
“Oh, not at all well to-day, madame.”
She did not rise until noon, when she ate two eggs with a cup of tea, as if
she herself had been ill, and then she went out to a druggist’s to inquire about
prophylactic measures against the contagion of small-pox.
She did not come home until dinner time, laden with medicine bottles, and
shut herself up at once in her room, where she saturated herself with
disinfectants.
The priest was waiting for her in the dining-room. As soon as she saw
him she exclaimed in a voice full of emotion:
“Well?”
“No improvement. The doctor is very anxious:”
She began to cry and could eat nothing, she was so worried.
The next day, as soon as it was light, she sent to inquire for her son, but
there was no improvement and she spent the whole day in her room, where
little braziers were giving out pungent odors. Her maid said also that you
could hear her sighing all the evening.
 She spent a whole week in this manner, only going out for an hour or two
during the afternoon to breathe the air.
She now sent to make inquiries every hour, and would sob when the
reports were unfavorable.
On the morning of the eleventh day the priest, having been announced,
entered her room, his face grave and pale, and said, without taking the chair
she offered him:
“Madame, your son is very ill and wishes to see you.”
She fell on her knees, exclaiming:
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I would never dare! My God! My God! Help
me!”
The priest continued:
“The doctor holds out little hope, madame, and George is expecting you!”
And he left the room.
Two hours later as the young lad, feeling himself dying, again asked for
his mother, the abbe went to her again and found her still on her knees, still
weeping and repeating:
“I will not . . . . I will not. . . . I am too much afraid . . . . I will not. . . .”
He tried to persuade her, to strengthen her, to lead her. He only succeeded
in bringing on an attack of “nerves” that lasted some time and caused her to
shriek.
The doctor when he came in the evening was told of this cowardice and
declared that he would bring her in himself, of her own volition, or by force.
But after trying all manner of argument and just as he seized her round the
waist to carry her into her son’s room, she caught hold of the door and clung
to it so firmly that they could not drag her away. Then when they let go of her
she fell at the feet of the doctor, begging his forgiveness and acknowledging
that she was a wretched creature. And then she exclaimed: “Oh, he is not
going to die; tell me that he is not going to die, I beg of you; tell him that I
love him, that I worship him. . .”
The young lad was dying. Feeling that he had only a few moments more to
live, he entreated that his mother be persuaded to come and bid him a last
farewell. With that sort of presentiment that the dying sometimes have, he had
understood, had guessed all, and he said: “If she is afraid to come into the
room, beg her just to come on the balcony as far as my window so that I may
see her, at least, so that I may take a farewell look at her, as I cannot kiss
her.”
 The doctor and the abbe, once more, went together to this woman and
assured her: “You will run no risk, for there will be a pane of glass between
you and him.”
She consented, covered up her head, and took with her a bottle of smelling
salts. She took three steps on the balcony; then, all at once, hiding her face in
her hands, she moaned: “No . . . no . . . I would never dare to look at him . . .
never. . . . I am too much ashamed . . . too much afraid . . . . No . . . I cannot.”
They endeavored to drag her along, but she held on with both hands to the
railings and uttered such plaints that the passers-by in the street raised their
heads. And the dying boy waited, his eyes turned towards that window,
waited to die until he could see for the last time the sweet, beloved face, the
worshiped face of his mother.
He waited long, and night came on. Then he turned over with his face to
the wall and was silent.
When day broke he was dead. The day following she was crazy.
 THE MAGIC COUCH

The Seine flowed past my house, without a ripple on its surface, and
gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. It was a beautiful, broad, indolent
silver stream, with crimson lights here and there; and on the opposite side of
the river were rows of tall trees that covered all the bank with an immense
wall of verdure.
The sensation of life which is renewed each day, of fresh, happy, loving
life trembled in the leaves, palpitated in the air, was mirrored in the water.
The postman had just brought my papers, which were handed to me, and I
walked slowly to the river bank in order to read them.
In the first paper I opened I noticed this headline, “Statistics of Suicides,”
and I read that more than 8,500 persons had killed themselves in that year.
In a moment I seemed to see them! I saw this voluntary and hideous
massacre of the despairing who were weary of life. I saw men bleeding, their
jaws fractured, their skulls cloven, their breasts pierced by a bullet, slowly
dying, alone in a little room in a hotel, giving no thought to their wound, but
thinking only of their misfortunes.
I saw others seated before a tumbler in which some matches were
soaking, or before a little bottle with a red label.
They would look at it fixedly without moving; then they would drink and
await the result; then a spasm would convulse their cheeks and draw their
lips together; their eyes would grow wild with terror, for they did not know
that the end would be preceded by so much suffering.
They rose to their feet, paused, fell over and with their hands pressed to
their stomachs they felt their internal organs on fire, their entrails devoured
by the fiery liquid, before their minds began to grow dim.
I saw others hanging from a nail in the wall, from the fastening of the
window, from a hook in the ceiling, from a beam in the garret, from a branch
of a tree amid the evening rain. And I surmised all that had happened before
they hung there motionless, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. I
imagined the anguish of their heart, their final hesitation, their attempts to
fasten the rope, to determine that it was secure, then to pass the noose round
their neck and to let themselves fall.
I saw others lying on wretched beds, mothers with their little children, old
men dying of hunger, young girls dying for love, all rigid, suffocated,
asphyxiated, while in the center of the room the brasier still gave forth the
fumes of charcoal.
And I saw others walking at night along the deserted bridges. These were
the most sinister. The water flowed under the arches with a low sound. They
did not see it . . . they guessed at it from its cool breath! They longed for it
and they feared it. They dared not do it! And yet, they must. A distant clock
sounded the hour and, suddenly, in the vast silence of the night, there was
heard the splash of a body falling into the river, a scream or two, the sound of
hands beating the water, and all was still. Sometimes, even, there was only
the sound of the falling body when they had tied their arms down or fastened
a stone to their feet. Oh, the poor things, the poor things, the poor things, how
I felt their anguish, how I died in their death! I went through all their
wretchedness; I endured in one hour all their tortures. I knew all the sorrows
that had led them to this, for I know the deceitful infamy of life, and no one
has felt it more than I have.
How I understood them, these who weak, harassed by misfortune, having
lost those they loved, awakened from the dream of a tardy compensation,
from the illusion of another existence where God will finally be just, after
having been ferocious, and their minds disabused of the mirages of
happiness, have given up the fight and desire to put an end to this ceaseless
tragedy, or this shameful comedy.
Suicide! Why, it is the strength of those whose strength is exhausted, the
hope of those who no longer believe, the sublime courage of the conquered!
Yes, there is at least one door to this life we can always open and pass
through to the other side. Nature had an impulse of pity; she did not shut us up
in prison. Mercy for the despairing!
As for those who are simply disillusioned, let them march ahead with free
soul and quiet heart. They have nothing to fear since they may take their
leave; for behind them there is always this door that the gods of our illusions
cannot even lock.
I thought of this crowd of suicides: more than eight thousand five hundred
in one year. And it seemed to me that they had combined to send to the world
a prayer, to utter a cry of appeal, to demand something that should come into
effect later when we understood things better. It seemed to me that all these
victims, their throats cut, poisoned, hung, asphyxiated, or drowned, all came
together, a frightful horde, like citizens to the polls, to say to society:
“Grant us, at least, a gentle death! Help us to die, you who will not help us
to live! See, we are numerous, we have the right to speak in these days of
freedom, of philosophic independence and of popular suffrage. Give to those
who renounce life the charity of a death that will not be repugnant nor
terrible.”
I began to dream, allowing my fancy to roam at will in weird and
mysterious fashion on this subject.
I seemed to be all at once in a beautiful city. It was Paris; but at what
period? I walked about the streets, looking at the houses, the theaters, the
public buildings, and presently found myself in a square where I remarked a
large building; very handsome, dainty and attractive. I was surprised on
reading on the facade this inscription in letters of gold, “Suicide Bureau.”
Oh, the weirdness of waking dreams where the spirit soars into a world of
unrealities and possibilities! Nothing astonishes one, nothing shocks one; and
the unbridled fancy makes no distinction between the comic and the tragic.
I approached the building where footmen in knee-breeches were seated in
the vestibule in front of a cloak-room as they do at the entrance of a club.
I entered out of curiosity. One of the men rose and said:
“What does monsieur wish?”
“I wish to know what building this is.”
“Nothing more?”
“Why, no.”
“Then would monsieur like me to take him to the Secretary of the
Bureau?”
I hesitated, and asked:
“But will not that disturb him?”
“Oh, no, monsieur, he is here to receive those who desire information.”
“Well, lead the way.”
He took me through corridors where old gentlemen were chatting, and
finally led me into a beautiful office, somewhat somber, furnished throughout
in black wood. A stout young man with a corporation was writing a letter as
he smoked a cigar, the fragrance of which gave evidence of its quality.
He rose. We bowed to each other, and as soon as the footman had retired
he asked:
 “What can I do for you?”
“Monsieur,” I replied, “pardon my curiosity. I had never seen this
establishment. The few words inscribed on the facade filled me with
astonishment, and I wanted to know what was going on here.”
He smiled before replying, then said in a low tone with a complacent air:
“Mon Dieu, monsieur, we put to death in a cleanly and gentle — I do not
venture to say agreeable manner those persons who desire to die.”
I did not feel very shocked, for it really seemed to me natural and right.
What particularly surprised me was that on this planet, with its low,
utilitarian, humanitarian ideals, selfish and coercive of all true freedom, any
one should venture on a similar enterprise, worthy of an emancipated
humanity.
“How did you get the idea?” I asked.
“Monsieur,” he replied, “the number of suicides increased so enormously
during the five years succeeding the world exposition of 1889 that some
measures were urgently needed. People killed themselves in the streets, at
fetes, in restaurants, at the theater, in railway carriages, at the receptions held
by the President of the Republic, everywhere. It was not only a horrid sight
for those who love life, as I do, but also a bad example for children. Hence it
became necessary to centralize suicides.”
“What caused this suicidal epidemic?”
“I do not know. The fact is, I believe, the world is growing old. People
begin to see things clearly and they are getting disgruntled. It is the same to-
day with destiny as with the government, we have found out what it is;
people find that they are swindled in every direction, and they just get out of
it all. When one discovers that Providence lies, cheats, robs, deceives human
beings just as a plain Deputy deceives his constituents, one gets angry, and as
one cannot nominate a fresh Providence every three months as we do with
our privileged representatives, one just gets out of the whole thing, which is
decidedly bad.”
“Really!”
“Oh, as for me, I am not complaining.”
“Will you inform me how you carry on this establishment?”
“With pleasure. You may become a member when you please. It is a
club.”
“A club!”
 “Yes, monsieur, founded by the most eminent men in the country, by men of
the highest intellect and brightest intelligence. And,” he added, laughing
heartily, “I swear to you that every one gets a great deal of enjoyment out of
it.”
“In this place?”
“Yes, in this place.”
“You surprise me.”
“Mon Dieu, they enjoy themselves because they have not that fear of death
which is the great killjoy in all our earthly pleasures.”
“But why should they be members of this club if they do not kill
themselves?”
“One may be a member of the club without being obliged for that reason
to commit suicide.”
“But then?”
“I will explain. In view of the enormous increase in suicides, and of the
hideous spectacle they presented, a purely benevolent society was formed for
the protection of those in despair, which placed at their disposal the facilities
for a peaceful, painless, if not unforeseen death.”
“Who can have authorized such an institution?”
“General Boulanger during his brief tenure of power. He could never
refuse anything. However, that was the only good thing he did. Hence, a
society was formed of clear-sighted, disillusioned skeptics who desired to
erect in the heart of Paris a kind of temple dedicated to the contempt for
death. This place was formerly a dreaded spot that no one ventured to
approach. Then its founders, who met together here, gave a grand inaugural
entertainment with Mmes. Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo, Granier, and twenty
others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully, Paulus, etc., present,
followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of Meilhac, Halevy and
Sardon. We had only one thing to mar it, one drama by Becque which seemed
sad, but which subsequently had a great success at the Comedie-Francaise. In
fact all Paris came. The enterprise was launched.”
“In the midst of the festivities! What a funereal joke!”
“Not at all. Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of indifference.
We made death cheerful, crowned it with flowers, covered it with perfume,
made it easy. One learns to aid others through example; one can see that it is
nothing.”
 “I can well understand that they should come to the entertainments; but did
they come to . . . Death?”
“Not at first; they were afraid.”
“And later?”
“They came.”
“Many of them?”
“In crowds. We have had more than forty in a day. One finds hardly any
more drowned bodies in the Seine.”
“Who was the first?”
“A club member.”
“As a sacrifice to the cause?”
“I don’t think so. A man who was sick of everything, a ‘down and out’
who had lost heavily at baccarat for three months.”
“Indeed?”
“The second was an Englishman, an eccentric. We then advertised in the
papers, we gave an account of our methods, we invented some attractive
instances. But the great impetus was given by poor people.”
“How do you go to work?”
“Would you like to see? I can explain at the same time.”
“Yes, indeed.”
He took his hat, opened the door, allowed me to precede him, and we
entered a card room, where men sat playing as they, play in all gambling
places. They were chatting cheerfully, eagerly. I have seldom seen such a
jolly, lively, mirthful club.
As I seemed surprised, the secretary said:
“Oh, the establishment has an unheard of prestige. All the smart people all
over the world belong to it so as to appear as though they held death in scorn.
Then, once they get here, they feel obliged to be cheerful that they may not
appear to be afraid. So they joke and laugh and talk flippantly, they are witty
and they become so. At present it is certainly the most frequented and the
most entertaining place in Paris. The women are even thinking of building an
annex for themselves.”
“And, in spite of all this, you have many suicides in the house?”
“As I said, about forty or fifty a day. Society people are rare, but poor
devils abound. The middle class has also a large contingent.
“And how . . . do they do?”
“They are asphyxiated . . . very slowly.”
 “In what manner?”
“A gas of our own invention. We have the patent. On the other side of the
building are the public entrances — three little doors opening on small
streets. When a man or a woman present themselves they are interrogated.
Then they are offered assistance, aid, protection. If a client accepts, inquiries
are made; and sometimes we have saved their lives.”
“Where do you get your money?”
“We have a great deal. There are a large number of shareholders. Besides
it is fashionable to contribute to the establishment. The names of the donors
are published in Figaro. Then the suicide of every rich man costs a thousand
francs. And they look as if they were lying in state. It costs the poor nothing.”
“How can you tell who is poor?”
“Oh, oh, monsieur, we can guess! And, besides, they must bring a
certificate of indigency from the commissary of police of their district. If you
knew how distressing it is to see them come in! I visited their part of our
building once only, and I will never go again. The place itself is almost as
good as this part, almost as luxurious and comfortable; but they themselves . .
. they themselves!!! If you could see them arriving, the old men in rags
coming to die; persons who have been dying of misery for months, picking up
their food at the edges of the curbstone like dogs in the street; women in rags,
emaciated, sick, paralyzed, incapable of making a living, who say to us after
they have told us their story: ‘You see that things cannot go on like that, as I
cannot work any longer or earn anything.’ I saw one woman of eighty-seven
who had lost all her children and grandchildren, and who for the last six
weeks had been sleeping out of doors. It made me ill to hear of it. Then we
have so many different cases, without counting those who say nothing, but
simply ask: ‘Where is it?’ These are admitted at once and it is all over in a
minute.”
With a pang at my heart I repeated:
“And . . . where is it?”
“Here,” and he opened a door, adding:
“Go in; this is the part specially reserved for club members, and the one
least used. We have so far had only eleven annihilations here.”
“Ah! You call that an . . . annihilation!”
“Yes, monsieur. Go in.”
I hesitated. At length I went in. It was a wide corridor, a sort of
greenhouse in which panes of glass of pale blue, tender pink and delicate
green gave the poetic charm of landscapes to the inclosing walls. In this
pretty salon there were divans, magnificent palms, flowers, especially roses
of balmy fragrance, books on the tables, the Revue des Deuxmondes, cigars
in government boxes, and, what surprised me, Vichy pastilles in a
bonbonniere.
As I expressed my surprise, my guide said:
“Oh, they often come here to chat.” He continued: “The public corridors
are similar, but more simply furnished.”
In reply to a question of mine, he pointed to a couch covered with creamy
crepe de Chine with white embroidery, beneath a large shrub of unknown
variety at the foot of which was a circular bed of mignonette.
The secretary added in a lower tone:
“We change the flower and the perfume at will, for our gas, which is quite
imperceptible, gives death the fragrance of the suicide’s favorite flower. It is
volatilized with essences. Would you like to inhale it for a second?”
“‘No, thank you,” I said hastily, “not yet . . . .”
He began to laugh.
“Oh, monsieur, there is no danger. I have tried it myself several times.”
I was afraid he would think me a coward, and I said:
“Well, I’ll try it.”
“Stretch yourself out on the ‘endormeuse.”’
A little uneasy I seated myself on the low couch covered with crepe de
Chine and stretched myself full length, and was at once bathed in a delicious
odor of mignonette. I opened my mouth in order to breathe it in, for my mind
had already become stupefied and forgetful of the past and was a prey, in the
first stages of asphyxia, to the enchanting intoxication of a destroying and
magic opium.
Some one shook me by the arm.
“Oh, oh, monsieur,” said the secretary, laughing, “it looks to me as if you
were almost caught.”
But a voice, a real voice, and no longer a dream voice, greeted me with
the peasant intonation:
“Good morning, m’sieu. How goes it?”
My dream was over. I saw the Seine distinctly in the sunlight, and, coming
along a path, the garde champetre of the district, who with his right hand
touched his kepi braided in silver. I replied:
“Good morning, Marinel. Where are you going?”
 “I am going to look at a drowned man whom they fished up near the
Morillons. Another who has thrown himself into the soup. He even took off
his trousers in order to tie his legs together with them.” his trousers in order
to tie his legs together with them.”
 NO QUARTER

OR

OLD MILON
The broad sunlight threw its burning rays on the fields, and under this shower
of flame life burst forth in glowing vegetation from the earth. As far as the
eye could see, the soil was green; and the sky was blue to the verge of the
horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance
like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer,
on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for
all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The
weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure,
displayed beneath the sky their glittering domes, rosy and white. The sweet
perfume of their blossoms mingled with the heavy odors of the open stables
and with the fumes of the steaming dunghill, covered with hens and their
chickens. It was midday. The family sat at dinner in the shadow of the pear-
tree planted before the door — the father, the mother, the four children, the
two maidservants, and the three farm laborers. They scarcely uttered a word.
Their fare consisted of soup and of a stew composed of potatoes mashed up
in lard.
From time to time one of the maidservants rose up, and went to the cellar
to fetch a pitcher of cider.
The husband, a big fellow of about forty, stared at a vine-tree, quite
exposed to view, which stood close to the farmhouse, twining like a serpent
under the shutters the entire length of the wall.
He said, after a long silence:
“The father’s vine-tree is blossoming early this year. Perhaps it will bear
good fruit.”
The peasant’s wife also turned round, and gazed at the tree without
speaking.
 This vine-tree was planted exactly in the place where the father of the
peasant had been shot.
It was during the war of 1870. The Prussians were in occupation of the
entire country. General Faidherbe, with the Army of the North, was at their
head.
Now the Prussian staff had taken up its quarters in this farmhouse. The old
peasant who owned it, Père Milon, received them, and gave them the best
treatment he could.
For a whole month the German vanguard remained on the lookout in the
village. The French were posted ten leagues away without moving, and yet,
each night, some of the uhlans disappeared.
All the isolated scouts, those who were sent out on patrol, whenever they
started in groups of two or three, never came back.
They were picked up dead in the morning in a field, near a farmyard, in a
ditch. Their horses even were found lying on the roads with their throats cut
by a saber stroke. These murders seemed to have been accomplished by the
same men, who could not be discovered.
The country was terrorized. Peasants were shot on mere information,
women were imprisoned, attempts were made to obtain revelations from
children by fear.
But, one morning, Père Milon was found stretched in his stable with a
gash across his face.
Two uhlans ripped open were seen lying three kilometers away from the
farmhouse. One of them still grasped in his hand his blood-stained weapon.
He had fought and defended himself.
A council of war having been immediately constituted, in the open air, in
front of the farmhouse, the old man was brought before it.
He was sixty-eight years old. He was small, thin, a little crooked, with
long hands resembling the claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight,
like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The
brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his
jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district as a
miser and a hard man in business transactions.
He was placed standing between four soldiers in front of the kitchen table,
which had been carried out of the house for the purpose. Five officers and the
Colonel sat facing him. The Colonel was the first to speak.
 “Père Milon,” he said, in French, “since we came here we have had
nothing to say of you but praise. You have always been obliging, and even
considerate toward us. But to-day a terrible accusation rests on you, and the
matter must be cleared up. How did you get the wound on your face?”
The peasant gave no reply.
The Colonel went on:
“Your silence condemns you, Père Milon. But I want you to answer me,
do you understand? Do you know who has killed the two uhlans who were
found this morning near the crossroads?”
The old man said in a clear voice:
“It was I!”
The Colonel, surprised, remained silent for a second, looking steadfully at
the prisoner. Père Milon maintained his impassive demeanor, his air of rustic
stupidity, with downcast eyes, as if he were talking to his cure. There was
only one thing that could reveal his internal agitation, the way in which he
slowly swallowed his saliva with a visible effort, as if he were choking.
The old peasant’s family — his son Jean, his daughter-in-law, and two
little children stood ten paces behind, scared and dismayed.
The Colonel continued:
“Do you know also who killed all the scouts of our army whom we have
found every morning, for the past month, lying here and there in the fields?”
The old man answered with the same brutal impassiveness:
“It was I!”
“It is you, then, that killed them all?”
“All of them-yes, it was I.”
“You alone?”
“I alone.”
“Tell me the way you managed to do it?”
This time the peasant appeared to be affected; the necessity of speaking at
some length incommoded him.
“I know myself. I did it the way I found easiest.”
The Colonel proceeded:
“I warn you, you must tell me everything. You will do well, therefore, to
make up your mind about it at once. How did you begin it?”
The peasant cast an uneasy glance toward his family, who remained in a
listening attitude behind him. He hesitated for another second or so, then all
of a sudden he came to a resolution on the matter.
 “I came home one night about ten o’clock, and the next day you were here.
You and your soldiers gave me fifty crowns for forage with a cow and two
sheep. Said I to myself: ‘As long as I get twenty crowns out of them, I’ll sell
them the value of it.’ But then I had other things in my heart, which I’ll tell
you about now. I came across one of your cavalrymen smoking his pipe near
my dike, just behind my barn. I went and took my scythe off the hook, and I
came back with short steps from behind, while he lay there without hearing
anything. And I cut off his head with one stroke, like a feather, while he only
said ‘Oof!’ You have only to look at the bottom of the pond; you’ll find him
there in a coal bag with a big stone tied to it.
“I got an idea into my head. I took all he had on him from his boots to his
cap, and I hid them in the bakehouse in the Martin wood behind the
farmyard.”
The old man stopped. The officers, speechless, looked at one another. The
examination was resumed, and this is what they were told.
Once he had accomplished this murder, the peasant lived with only one
thought: “To kill the Prussians!” He hated them with the sly and ferocious
hatred of a countryman who was at the same time covetous and patriotic. He
had got an idea into his head, as he put it. He waited for a few days.
He was allowed to go and come freely, to go out and return just as he
pleased, as long as he displayed humility, submissiveness, and complaisance
toward the conquerors.
Now, every evening he saw the cavalrymen bearing dispatches leaving the
farmhouse; and he went out, one night, after discovering the name of the
village to which they were going, and after picking up by associating with the
soldiers the few words of German he needed.
He made his way through his farmyard, slipped into the wood, reached the
bakehouse, penetrated to the end of the long passage, and having found the
clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on. Then he
went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the slopes so as to
avoid observation, listening to the least sounds, restless as a poacher.
When he believed the time had arrived he took up his position at the
roadside, and hid himself in a clump of brushwood. He still waited. At
length, near midnight, he heard the galloping of a horse’s hoofs on the hard
soil of the road. The old man put his ear to the ground to make sure that only
one cavalryman was approaching; then he got ready.
 The uhlan came on at a very quick pace, carrying some dispatches. He
rode forward with watchful eyes and strained ears. As soon as he was no
more than ten paces away, Père Milon dragged himself across the road,
groaning: “Hilfe! hilfe!” (“Help! help!”).
The cavalryman drew up, recognized a German soldier dismounted,
believed that he was wounded, leaped down from his horse, drew near the
prostrate man, never suspecting anything, and, as he stooped over the
stranger, he received in the middle of the stomach the long, curved blade of
the saber. He sank down without any death throes, merely quivering with a
few last shudders.
Then the Norman, radiant with the mute joy of an old peasant, rose up, and
merely to please himself, cut the dead soldier’s throat. After that, he dragged
the corpse to the dike and threw it in.
The horse was quietly waiting for its rider, Père Milon got on the saddle
and started across the plain at the gallop.
At the end of an hour, he perceived two more uhlans approaching the staff-
quarters side by side. He rode straight toward them, crying: “Hilfe! hilfe!”
The Prussians let him come on, recognizing the uniform without any distrust.
And like a cannon ball the old man shot between the two, bringing both of
them to the ground with his saber and a revolver. The next thing he did was to
cut the throats of the horses — the German horses! Then, softly he re-entered
the bakehouse and hid the horse he had ridden himself in the dark passage.
There he took off the uniform, put on once more his own old clothes, and
going to his bed, slept till morning.
For four days, he did not stir out, awaiting the close of the open inquiry as
to the cause of the soldiers’ deaths; but, on the fifth day, he started out again,
and by a similar stratagem killed two more soldiers.
Thenceforth, he never stopped. Each night he wandered about, prowled
through the country at random, cutting down some Prussians, sometimes here,
sometimes there, galloping through the deserted fields under the moonlight, a
lost uhlan, a hunter of men. Then, when he had finished his task, leaving
behind him corpses lying along the roads, the old horseman went to the
bakehouse where he concealed both the animal and the uniform. About
midday he calmly returned to the spot to give the horse a feed of oats and
some water, and he took every care of the animal, exacting therefore the
hardest work.
 But, the night before his arrest, one of the soldiers he attacked put himself
on his guard, and cut the old peasant’s face with a slash of a saber.
He had, however, killed both of them. He had even managed to go back
and hide his horse and put on his everyday garb, but, when he reached the
stable, he was overcome by weakness and was not able to make his way into
the house.
He had been found lying on the straw, his face covered with blood.
When he had finished his story, he suddenly lifted his head and glanced
proudly at the Prussian officers.
The Colonel, tugging at his mustache, asked:
“Have you anything more to say?”
“No, nothing more; we are quits. I killed sixteen, not one more, not one
less.”
“You know you have to die?”
“I ask for no quarter!”
“Have you been a soldier?”
“Yes, I served at one time. And ’tis you killed my father, who was a
soldier of the first Emperor, not to speak of my youngest son François, whom
you killed last month near Evreux. I owed this to you, and I’ve paid you back.
’Tis tit for tat!”
The officers stared at one another.
The old man went on:
“Eight for my father, eight for my son — that pays it off! I sought for no
quarrel with you. I don’t know you! I only know where you came from. You
came to my house here and ordered me about as if the house was yours. I
have had my revenge, and I’m glad of it!”
And stiffening up his old frame, he folded his arms in the attitude of a
humble hero.
The Prussians held a long conference. A captain, who had also lost a son
the month before defended the brave old farmer.
Then the Colonel rose up, and, advancing toward Père Milon, he said,
lowering his voice:
“Listen, old man! There is perhaps one way of saving your life — it is—
“
But the old peasant was not listening to him, and, fixing his eyes directly
on the German officer, while the wind made the scanty hair move to and fro
on his skull, he made a frightful grimace, which shriveled up his pinched
countenance scarred by the saber-stroke, and, puffing out his chest, he spat,
with all his strength, right into the Prussian’s face.
The Colonel, stupefied, raised his hand, and for the second time the
peasant spat in his face.
All the officers sprang to their feet and yelled out orders at the same time.
In less than a minute the old man, still as impassive as ever, was stuck up
against the wall and shot, while he cast a smile at Jean, his eldest son, and
then at his daughter-in-law and the two children, who were staring with
terror at the scene.
 A LIVELY FRIEND

They had beer, constantly in each other’s society for a whole winter in Paris.
After having lost sight of each other, as generally happens in such cases, after
leaving college, the two friends met again one night, long years after, already
old and white-haired, the one a bachelor, the other married.
M. de Meroul lived six months in Paris and six months in his little château
at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a gentleman in the district, he
had lived a peaceful, happy life with the indolence of a man who has nothing
to do. With a calm temperament and a sedate mind, without any intellectual
audacity or tendency toward revolutionary independence of thought, he
passed his time in mildly regretting the past, in deploring the morals and the
institutions of to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised
her eyes to heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic
assent:
“Under what a government do we live, great God!”
Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had
been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first of all, to
reverence the Pope and the King!
And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart,
without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary devotion,
with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was kindly in every
feeling of her soul. She had no child, and was incessantly regretting it.
When M. de Meroul came across his old schoolfellow Joseph Mouradour
at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine delight,
for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.
After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in
their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of
questions as to their respective careers.
Joseph Mouradour, a native of the south of France, had become a
councillor-general in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he spoke
briskly and without any circumspection, telling all his thoughts with sheer
indifference to prudential considerations. He was a Republican, of that race
of good-natured Republicans who make their own ease the law of their
existence, and who carry freedom of speech to the verge of brutality.
He called at his friend’s address in Paris, and was immediately a favorite,
on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced opinions. Madame
de Meroul exclaimed:
“What a pity! such a charming man!”
M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone: “You
cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country.” He was attached to his
friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than those of childhood
renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the husband and wife,
called them “my loving turtles,” and occasionally gave vent to loud
declarations against people who were behind the age, against all sorts of
prejudices and traditions.
When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the married
pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of propriety and good-
breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the conversation in order to avoid
any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not want to know anyone unless he was
free to say what he liked.
Summer came round. The Merouls knew no greater pleasure than to
receive their old friends in their country house at Tourbeville. It was an
intimate and healthy pleasure, the pleasure of homely gentlefolk who had
spent most of their lives in the country. They used to go to the nearest railway
station to meet some of their guests, and drove them to the house in their
carriage, watching for compliments on their district, on the rapid vegetation,
on the condition of the roads in the department, on the cleanliness of the
peasants’ houses, on the bigness of the cattle they saw in the fields, on
everything that met the eye as far as the edge of the horizon.
They liked to have it noticed that their horse trotted in a wonderful manner
for an animal employed a part of the year in field-work; and they awaited
with anxiety the newcomer’s opinion on their family estate, sensitive to the
slightest word, grateful for the slightest gracious attention.
Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he announced his arrival. The wife
and the husband came to meet the train, delighted to have the opportunity of
doing the honors of their house.
As soon as he perceived them, Joseph Mouradour jumped out of his
carriage with a vivacity which increased their satisfaction. He grasped their
hands warmly, congratulated them, and intoxicated them with compliments.
 He was quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to the
house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the excellence of
the crops, and the quickness of the horse.
When he placed his foot on the steps in front of the chateau, M. de Meroul
said to him with a certain friendly solemnity:
“Now you are at home.”
Joseph Mouradour answered: “Thanks, old fellow; I counted on that. For
my part, besides, I never put myself out with my friends. That’s the only
hospitality I understand.”
Then he went up to his own room, where he put on the costume of a
peasant, as he was pleased to describe it, and he came down again not very
long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a
Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common,
more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic
garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His
new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at
home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle
“de” before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial even with
their intimate friends.
After lunch they went to visit the farms; and the Parisian stupefied the
respectable peasants by talking to them as if he were a comrade of theirs.
In the evening, the curé dined at the house — a fat old priest, wearing his
Sunday suit, who had been specially asked that day in order to meet the
newcomer.
When Joseph saw him he made a grimace, then he stared at the priest in
astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the like of
which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told a few stories
allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but apparently somewhat out of
place in the presence of an ecclesiastic. He did not say, “Monsieur l’Abbé,”
but merely “Monsieur”; and he embarrassed the priest with philosophical
views as to the various superstitions that prevailed on the surface of the
globe.
He remarked:
“Your God, Monsieur, is one of those persons whom we must respect, but
also one of those who must be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has from
time immemorial been the enemy of yours.”
 The Merouls, greatly put out, attempted to divert his thoughts. The curé
left very early.
Then the husband gently remarked:
“You went a little too far with that priest.”
But Joseph immediately replied:
“That’s a very good joke, too! Am I to bother my brains about a devil-
dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having such an old
fogy to dinner. Confound his impudence!”
“But, my friend, remember his sacred character.”
Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
“Yes, I know. We must treat them like girls who get roses for being well
behaved! That’s all right, my boy! When these people respect my
convictions, I will respect theirs!”
This was all that happened that day.
Next morning Madame de Meroul, on entering her drawing-room, saw
lying on the table three newspapers which made her draw back in horror, “Le
Voltaire,” “La République Française,” and “La Justice.”
Presently Joseph Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the
threshold, reading “L’Intransigéant” attentively. He exclaimed:
“Here is a splendid article by Rochefort. That fellow is marvelous.”
He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most
striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.
M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand: “Le Gaulois” for himself and “Le
Clarion” for his wife.
The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire,
violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the south, rang through the
peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid folds, seemed
to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the solemn furniture fixed in
the same position for the past century, with a hail of words, rebounding,
impudent, ironical, and crushing.
The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened in a
state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured to make a
gesture. Mouradour flung out the concluding passage in the article as one sets
off a stream of fireworks; then in an emphatic tone he remarked:
“That’s a stinger, eh?”
But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and he
seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then he came
across to his host with great strides, demanding in an angry tone:
“What do you want to do with these papers?”
M. de. Meroul replied in a hesitating voice:
“Why, these — these are my — my newspapers.”
“Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You will
do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new ideas, and, as for
yours — this is what I do with them— “
And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he seized
the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then he gravely
placed “La Justice” in the hands of Madame de Meroul and “Le Voltaire” in
those of her husband, himself sinking into an armchair to finish
“L’Intransigéant.”
The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of
reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers which they
touched with their finger-tips as if they had been poisoned.
Then Mouradour burst out laughing, and said:
“A week of this sort of nourishment, and I’ll have you converted to my
ideas.”
At the end of a week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the door on
the curé, whom Madame de Meroul went to see in secret. He gave orders that
neither the “Gaulois” nor the “Clarion” were to be admitted into the house,
which a manservant went to get in a mysterious fashion at the post-office, and
which, on his entrance, were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He
regulated everything just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured,
a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.
Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with
Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered it
would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and not knowing
what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that they were
obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little matter of
business, and they begged of him to remain in the house alone.
He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:
“Very well; ’tis all the same to me; I’ll wait here for you as long as you
like. What I say is this — there need be no ceremony between friends. You’re
quite right to look after your own affairs — why the devil shouldn’t you? I’ll
not take offense at your doing that, quite the contrary. It only makes me feel
quite at my ease with you. Go, my friends — I’ll wait for you.”
M. and Madame de Meroul started next morning.
He is waiting for them.
 HE?

My dear friend, you cannot understand it by any possible means, you say, and
I perfectly believe you. You think I am going mad? It may be so, but not for
the reasons which you suppose.
Yes, I am going to get married, and I will give you what has led me to take
that step.
My ideas and my convictions have not changed at all. I look upon all
legalized cohabitation as utterly stupid, for I am certain that nine husbands
out of ten are cuckolds; and they get no more than their deserts for having
been idiotic enough to fetter their lives, and renounce their freedom in love,
the only happy and good thing in the world, and for having clipped the wings
of fancy, which continually drives us on towards all women, &c., &c., &c.
You know what I mean. More than ever I feel that I am incapable of loving
one woman alone, because I shall always adore all the others too much. I
should like to have a thousand arms, a thousand mouths, and a thousand —
temperaments, to be able to strain an army of these charming creatures in my
embrace at the same moment.
And yet I am going to get married!
I may add that I know very little of the girl who is going to become my
wife to-morrow; I have only seen her four or five times. I know that there is
nothing unpleasing about her, and that is enough for my purpose. She is small,
fair, and stout; so of course the day after to-morrow I shall ardently wish for
a tall, dark, thin woman.
She is not rich, and belongs to the middle-classes. She is a girl such as
you may find by the gross, well adapted for matrimony, without any apparent
faults, and with no particularly striking qualities. People say of her:
“Mlle. Lajolle is a very nice girl,” and to-morrow they will say: “What a
very nice woman Madame Raymon is.” She belongs, in a word, to that
immense number of girls whom one is glad to have for one’s wife till the
moment comes, when one discovers that one happens to prefer all the other
women to that particular woman whom one has married.
“Well,” you will say to me, “what on earth did you get married for?”
 I hardly like to tell you the strange and seemingly improbable reason that
urged me on to this senseless act; the fact, however, is that I am frightened of
being alone!
I don’t know how to tell you or to make you understand me, but my state of
mind is so wretched that you will pity me and despise me.
I do not want to be alone any longer at night; I want to feel that there is
someone close to me, touching me, a being who can speak and say something,
no matter what it be.
I wish to be able to awaken somebody by my side, so that I may be able to
ask some sudden question, a stupid question even if I feel inclined, so that I
may hear a human voice, and feel that there is some waking soul close to me,
someone whose reason is at work; so that when I hastily light the candle I
may see some human face by my side — because — because — I am
ashamed to confess it — because I am afraid of being alone.
Oh! you don’t understand me yet.
I am not afraid of any danger; if a man were to come into the room I
should kill him without trembling. I am not afraid of ghosts, nor do I believe
in the supernatural. I am not afraid of dead people, for I believe in the total
annihilation of every being that disappears from the face of this earth.
Well, — yes, well, it must be told; I am afraid of myself, afraid of that
horrible sensation of incomprehensible fear.
You may laugh, if you like. It is terrible, and I cannot get over it. I am
afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar objects, which are
animated, as far as I am concerned, by a kind of animal life. Above all, I am
afraid of my own dreadful thoughts, of my reason, which seems as if it were
about to leave me, driven away by a mysterious and invisible agony.
At first I feel a vague uneasiness in my mind which causes a cold shiver to
run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to be seen, and I wish
there were something there, no matter what, as long as it were something
tangible: I am frightened, merely because I cannot understand my own terror.
If I speak, I am afraid of my own voice. If I walk, I am afraid of I know
not what, behind the door, behind the curtains, in the cupboard, or under my
bed, and yet all the time I know there is nothing anywhere, and I turn round
suddenly because I am afraid of what is behind me, although there is nothing
there, and I know it.
I get agitated; I feel that my fear increases, and so I shut myself up in my
own room, get into bed, and hide under the clothes, and there, cowering
down rolled into a ball, I close my eyes in despair, and remain thus for an
indefinite time, remembering that my candle is alight on the table by my
bedside, and that I ought to put it out, and yet — I dare not do it!
It is very terrible, is it not, to be like that?
Formerly I felt nothing of all that; I came home quite comfortably, and
went up and down in my rooms without anything disturbing my calmness of
mind. Had anyone told me that I should be attacked by a malady — for I can
call it nothing else — of most improbable fear, such a stupid and terrible
malady as it is, I should have laughed outright. I was certainly never afraid of
opening the door in the dark; I went to bed slowly without locking it, and
never got up in the middle of the night to make sure that everything was
firmly closed.
It began last year in a very strange manner, on a damp autumn evening.
When my servant had left the room, after I had dined, I asked myself what I
was going to do. I walked up and down my room for some time, feeling tired
without any reason for it, unable to work, and even without energy to read. A
fine rain was falling, and I felt unhappy, a prey to one of those fits of
despondency, without any apparent cause which makes us feel inclined to
cry, or to talk, no matter to whom, so as to shake off our depressing thoughts.
I felt that I was alone, and my rooms seemed to me to be more empty than
they had ever done before, while I was surrounded by a sensation of infinite
and overwhelming solitude. What was I to do? I sat down, but then a kind of
nervous impatience agitated my legs, so I got up and began to walk about
again. I was rather feverish, for my hands, which I had clasped behind me, as
one often does when walking slowly, almost seemed to burn one another.
Then suddenly a cold shiver ran down my back, and I thought the damp air
might have penetrated into my room, so I lit the fire for the first time that
year, and sat down again and looked at the flames. But soon I felt that I could
not possibly remain quiet, and so I got up again and determined to go out, to
pull myself together, and to find a friend to bear me company.
I could not find anyone, so I went on to the boulevards to try and meet
some acquaintance or other there.
It was wretched everywhere, and the wet pavement glistened in the
gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay
heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the light from the lamps.
I went on slowly, saying to myself, “I shall not find a soul to talk to.”
 I glanced into several cafés, from the Madeleine as far as the Faubourg
Poissonière, and saw many unhappy-looking individuals sitting at the tables,
who did not seem even to have enough energy left to finish the refreshments
they had ordered.
For a long time I wandered aimlessly up and down, and about midnight I
started off for home; I was very calm and very tired. My concierge opened
the door at once, which was quite unusual for him, and I thought that another
lodger had no doubt just come in.
When I go out I always double-lock the door of my room, and I found it
merely closed, which surprised me; but I supposed that some letters had been
brought up for me in the course of the evening.
I went in, and found my fire still burning, so that it lighted up the room a
little, and, in the act of taking up a candle, I noticed somebody sitting in my
armchair by the fire, warming his feet, with his back towards me.
I was not in the slightest degree frightened. I thought very naturally that
some friend or other had come to see me. No doubt the porter, whom I had
told when I went out, had lent him his own key. In a moment I remembered all
the circumstances of my return, how the street door had been opened
immediately, and that my own door was only latched, and not locked.
I could see nothing of my friend but his head, and he had evidently gone to
sleep while waiting for me, so I went up to him to rouse him. I saw him quite
clearly; his right arm was hanging down and his legs were crossed, while his
head, which was somewhat inclined to the left of the armchair, seemed to
indicate that he was asleep. “Who can it be?” I asked myself. I could not see
clearly, as the room was rather dark, so I put out my hand to touch him on the
shoulder, and it came in contact with the back of the chair. There was nobody
there; the seat was empty.
I fairly jumped with fright. For a moment I drew back as if some terrible
danger had suddenly appeared in my way; then I turned round again, impelled
by some imperious desire of looking at the armchair again, and I remained
standing upright, panting with fear, so upset that I could not collect my
thoughts, and ready to drop.
But I am a cool man, and soon recovered myself. I thought: “It is a mere
hallucination, that is all,” and I immediately began to reflect about this
phenomenon. Thoughts fly very quickly at such moments.
I had been suffering from a hallucination, that was an incontestable fact.
My mind had been perfectly lucid and had acted regularly and logically, so
there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only my eyes that had been
deceived; they had had a vision, one of those visions which lead simple folk
to believe in miracles. It was a nervous accident to the optical apparatus,
nothing more; the eyes were rather congested, perhaps.
I lit my candle, and when I stooped down to the fire in so doing, I noticed
that I was trembling, and I raised myself up with a jump, as if somebody had
touched me from behind.
I was certainly not by any means quiet.
I walked up and down a little, and hummed a tune or two.
Then I double-locked my door, and felt rather reassured; now, at any rate,
nobody could come in.
I sat down again, and thought over my adventure for a long time; then I
went to bed, and blew out my light.
For some minutes all went well; I lay quietly on my back, but then an
irresistible desire seized me to look round the room, and I turned on to my
side.
My fire was nearly out, and the few glowing embers threw a faint light on
to the floor by the chair, where I fancied I saw the man sitting again.
I quickly struck a match, but I had been mistaken, for there was nothing
there; I got up, however, and hid the chair behind my bed, and tried to get to
sleep as the room was now dark, but I had not forgotten myself for more than
five minutes when in my dream I saw all the scene which I had witnessed as
clearly as if it were reality. I woke up with a start, and having lit the candle, I
sat up in bed, without venturing even to try and go to sleep again.
Twice, however, sleep overcame me for a few moments in spite of
myself, and twice I saw the same thing again, till I fancied I was going mad;
when day broke, however, I thought that I was cured, and slept peacefully till
noon.
It was all past and over. I had been feverish, had had the nightmare; I
don’t know what. I had been ill, in a word, but yet I thought that I was a great
fool.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly that evening; I went and dined at a restaurant;
afterwards I went to the theater, and then started home. But as I got near the
house I was seized by a strange feeling of uneasiness once more; I was afraid
of seeing him again. I was not afraid of him, not afraid of his presence, in
which I did not believe; but I was afraid of being deceived again; I was
afraid of some fresh hallucination, afraid lest fear should take possession of
me.
Far more than an hour I wandered up and down the pavement; then I
thought that I was really too foolish, and at last I returned home. I panted so
that I could scarcely get upstairs, and I remained standing outside my door
for more than ten minutes; then suddenly I took courage, and screwed myself
together. I inserted my key into the lock, and went in with a candle in my
hand. I kicked open my half-open bedroom door, and gave a frightened look
towards the fireplace; there was nothing there. A — h!
What a relief and what a delight! What a deliverance! I walked up and
down briskly and boldly, but I was not altogether reassured, and kept turning
round with a jump; the very shadows in the corner disquieted me.
I slept badly, and was constantly disturbed by imaginary noises, but I did
not see him; no, that was all over.
Since that time I have been afraid of being alone at night. I feel that the
specter is there, close to me, around me; but it has not appeared to me again.
And supposing it did, what would it matter, since I do not believe in it, and
know that it is nothing?
It still worries me, however, because I am constantly thinking of it: his
right arm hanging down and his head inclined to the left like a man who
was asleep.... Enough of that, in Heaven’s name! I don’t want to think about
it!
Why, however, am I so persistently possessed with this idea? His feet
were close to the fire!
He haunts me; it is very stupid, but so it is. Who and what is HE? I know
that he does not exist except in my cowardly imagination, in my fears, and in
my agony! There — enough of that!...
Yes, it is all very well for me to reason with myself, to stiffen myself, so
to say; but I cannot remain at home, because I know he is there. I know I shall
not see him again; he will not show himself again; that is all over. But he is
there all the same in my thoughts. He remains invisible, but that does not
prevent his being there. He is behind the doors, in the closed cupboards, in
the wardrobe, under the bed, in every dark corner. If I open the door or the
cupboard, if I take the candle to look under the bed and throw a light on to the
dark places, he is there no longer, but I feel that he is behind me. I turn round,
certain that I shall not see him, that I shall never see him again; but he is, for
all that, none the less behind me.
 It is very stupid, it is dreadful; but what am I to do? I cannot help it.
But if there were two of us in the place, I feel certain that he would not be
there any longer, for he is there just because I am alone; simply and solely
because I am alone!
 A PHILOSOPHER

Blérot had been my most intimate friend from childhood; we had no secrets
from each other, and were united heart and soul by a brotherly intimacy and a
boundless confidence in each other, and I had been intrusted with the secret
of all his love affairs, as he had been with mine.
When he told me that he was going to get married I was hurt, just as if he
had been guilty of a treacherous act with regard to me. I felt that it must
interfere with that cordial and absolute affection which had united us
hitherto. His wife would come between us. The intimacy of the marriage-bed
establishes a kind of complicity of mysterious alliance between two persons,
even when they have ceased to love each other. Man and wife are like two
discreet partners who will not let anyone else into their secrets. But that
close bond which the conjugal kiss fastens is widely loosened on the day on
which the woman takes a lover.
I remember Blérot’s wedding as if it were but yesterday. I would not be
present at the signing of the marriage contract, as I have no particular liking
for such ceremonies, but I only went to the civil wedding and to the church.
His wife, whom I had never seen before, was a tall, slight girl, with pale
hair, pale cheeks, pale hands, and eyes to match. She walked with a slightly
undulating motion, as if she were on board a ship, and seemed to advance
with a succession of long, graceful curtsies.
Blérot seemed very much in love with her. He looked at her constantly,
and I felt a shiver of an immoderate desire for her pass through my frame.
I went to see him in a few days, and he said to me:
“You do not know how happy I am; I am madly in love with her; but then
she is ... she is ...” He did not finish his sentence, but he put the tips of his
fingers to his lips with a gesture which signified:
“Divine! delicious! perfect!” and a good deal more besides.
I asked, laughing, “What! all that?”
“Everything that you can imagine,” was his answer.
He introduced me to her. She was very pleasant, on easy terms with me,
as was natural, and begged me to look upon their house as my own. I felt that
he, Blérot, did not belong to me any longer. Our intimacy was altogether
checked, and we hardly found a word to say to each other.
I soon took my leave, and shortly afterwards went to the East, and
returned by way of Russia, Germany, Sweden, and Holland, after an absence
of eighteen months from Paris.
The morning after my arrival, as I was walking along the boulevards to
breathe the air once more, I saw a pale man with sunken cheeks coming
towards me, who was as much like Blérot as it was possible for a physically
emaciated man to be to a strong, ruddy, rather stout man. I looked at him in
surprise, and asked myself: “Can it possibly be he?” But he saw me, and
came towards me with outstretched arms, and we embraced in the middle of
the boulevard.
After we had gone up and down once or twice from the Rue Druot to the
Vaudeville Theater, just as we were taking leave of each other — for he
already seemed quite done up with walking — I said to him:
“You don’t look at all well. Are you ill?”
“I do feel rather out of sorts,” was all he said.
He looked like a man who was going to die, and I felt a flood of affection
for my old friend, the only real one that I had ever had. I squeezed his hands.
“What is the matter with you? Are you in pain?”
“A little tired; but it is nothing.”
“What does your doctor say?”
“He calls it anæmia, and has ordered me to eat no white meat and to take
tincture of iron.”
A suspicion flashed across me.
“Are you happy?” I asked him.
“Yes, very happy; my wife is charming, and I love her more than ever.”
But I noticed that he grew rather red and seemed embarrassed, as if he
was afraid of any further questions, so I took him by the arm and pushed him
into a café, which was nearly empty at that time of day. I forced him to sit
down, and looking him straight in the face, I said:
“Look here, old fellow, just tell me the exact truth.”
“I have nothing to tell you,” he stammered.
“That is not true,” I replied firmly. “You are ill, mentally perhaps, and you
dare not reveal your secret to anyone. Something or other is doing you harm,
and I mean you to tell me what it is. Come, I am waiting for you to begin.”
Again he got very red, stammered, and turning his head away, he said:
 “It is very idiotic — but I — I am done for!”
As he did not go on, I said:
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Well, I have got a wife who is killing me, that is all,” he said abruptly,
almost desperately.
I did not understand at first. “Does she make you unhappy? How? What is
it?”
“No,” he replied in a low voice, as if he were confessing some crime; “I
love her too much, that is all.”
I was thunderstruck at this brutal avowal, and then I felt inclined to laugh,
but at length I managed to reply:
“But surely, at least so it seems to me, you might manage to — to love her
a little less.”
He had got very pale again, and at length made up his mind to speak to me
openly, as he used to do formerly.
“No,” he said, “that is impossible; and I am dying from it I know; it is
killing me, and I am really frightened. Some days, like to-day, I feel inclined
to leave her, to go away altogether, to start for the other end of the world, so
as to live for a long time; and then, when the evening comes, I return home in
spite of myself, but slowly, and feeling uncomfortable. I go upstairs
hesitatingly and ring, and when I go in I see her there sitting in her easy chair,
and she says, ‘How late you are,’ I kiss her, and we sit down to dinner.
During the meal I think to myself: ‘I will go directly it is over, and take the
train for somewhere, no matter where;’ but when we get back to the drawing-
room I am so tired that I have not the courage to get up out of my chair, and so
I remain, and then — and then — I succumb again.”
I could not help smiling again. He saw it, and said: “You may laugh, but I
assure you it is very horrible.”
“Why don’t you tell your wife?” I asked him. “Unless she be a regular
monster she would understand.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It is all very well for you to talk. I don’t tell
her because I know her nature. Have you ever heard it said of certain women,
‘She has just married a third time?’ Well, and that makes you laugh like you
did just now, and yet it is true. What is to be done? It is neither her fault nor
mine. She is so, because nature has made her so; I assure you, my dear old
friend, she has the temperament of a Messalina. She does not know it, but I
do; so much the worse for me. She is charming, gentle, tender, and thinks that
our conjugal intercourse, which is wearing me out and killing me, is natural
and quite moderate. She seems like an ignorant schoolgirl, and she really is
ignorant, poor child.”
“Every day I form energetic resolutions, for you must understand that I am
dying. But one look of her eyes, one of those looks in which I can read the
ardent desire of her lips, is enough for me, and I succumb at once, saying to
myself: ‘This is really the end; I will have no more of her death-giving
kisses,’ and then, when I have yielded again, like I have to-day, I go out and
walk on ahead, thinking of death, and saying to myself that I am lost, that all
is over.”
“I am so mentally ill that I went for a walk to Père Lachaise cemetery
yesterday. I looked at all the graves, standing in a row like dominoes, and I
thought to myself: ‘I shall soon be there,’ and then I returned home, quite
determined to pretend to be ill, and so escape, but I could not.”
“Oh! You don’t know what it is. Ask a smoker who is poisoning himself
with nicotine whether he can give up his delicious and deadly habit. He will
tell you that he has tried a hundred times without success, and he will,
perhaps, add: ‘So much the worse, but I had rather die than go without
tobacco.’ That is just the case with me. When once one is in the clutches of
such a passion or such a vice, one must give oneself up to it entirely.”
He got up and gave me his hand. I felt seized with a tumult of rage, and
with hatred for this woman, this careless, charming, terrible woman; and as
he was buttoning up his coat to go out I said to him, brutally perhaps:
“But, in God’s name, why don’t you let her have a lover, rather than kill
yourself like that?”
He shrugged his shoulders without replying, and went off.
For six months I did not see him. Every morning I expected a letter of
invitation to his funeral, but I would not go to his house from a complicated
feeling of contempt for him and for that woman; of anger, of indignation, of a
thousand sensations.
One lovely spring morning I was walking in the Champs Elysées. It was
one of those warm days which makes our eyes bright and stir up in us a
tumultuous feeling of happiness from the mere sense of existence. Someone
tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I saw my old friend, looking
well, stout and rosy.
He gave me both hands, beaming with pleasure, and exclaimed:
“Here you are, you erratic individual!”
 I looked at him, utterly thunderstruck.
“Well, on my word — yes. By Jove! I congratulate you; you have indeed
changed in the last six months!”
He flushed scarlet, and said, with an embarrassed laugh:
“One can but do one’s best.”
I looked at him so obstinately that he evidently felt uncomfortable, so I
went on:
“So — now — you are — completely cured?”
He stammered, hastily:
“Yes, perfectly, thank you.” Then changing his tone, “How lucky that I
should have come across you, old fellow. I hope we shall often meet now.”
But I would not give up my idea; I wanted to know how matters really
stood, so I asked:
“Don’t you remember what you told me six months ago? I suppose — I —
eh — suppose you resist now?”
“Please don’t talk any more about it,” he replied, uneasily; “forget that I
mentioned it to you; leave me alone. But, you know, I have no intention of
letting you go; you must come and dine at my house.”
A sudden fancy took me to see for myself how matters stood, so that I
might understand all about it, and I accepted.
His wife received me in a most charming manner, and she was, as a matter
of fact, a most attractive woman. Her long hands, her neck and cheeks were
beautifully white and delicate, and marked her breeding, and her walk was
undulating and delightful.
René gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead and said:
“Has not Lucien come yet?”
“Not yet,” she replied, in a clear, soft voice; “you know he is almost
always rather late.”
At that moment the bell rang, and a tall man was shown in. He was dark,
with a thick beard, and looked like a modern Hercules. We were introduced
to each other; his name was Lucien Delabarre.
René and he shook hands in a most friendly manner, and then we went to
dinner.
It was a most enjoyable meal, without the least constraint. My old friend
spoke with me constantly, in the old familiar cordial manner, just as he used
to do. It was: “You know, old fellow!”— “I say, old fellow!”— “Just listen a
moment, old fellow!” Suddenly he exclaimed:
 “You don’t know how glad I am to see you again; it takes me back to old
times.”
I looked at his wife and the other man. Their attitude was perfectly
correct, though I fancied once or twice that they exchanged a rapid and
furtive look.
As soon as dinner was over René turned to his wife, and said:
“My dear, I have just met Pierre again, and I am going to carry him off for
a walk and a chat along the boulevards to remind us of old times. I am
leaving you in very good company.”
The young woman smiled, and said to me, as she shook hands with me:
“Don’t keep him too long.”
As we went along, arm-in-arm, I could not help saying to him, for I was
determined to know how matters stood:
“I say, what has happened? Do tell me!”
He, however, interrupted me roughly, and answered like a man who has
been disturbed without any reason.
“Just look here, old fellow leave one alone with your questions.”
Then he added, half aloud, as if talking to himself:
“After all, it would have been too stupid to have let oneself go to pot like
that.”
I did not press him. We walked on quickly and began to talk. All of a
sudden he whispered in my ear:
“I say, suppose we go and have a bottle of ‘fizz’ with some girls! Eh?”
I could not prevent myself from laughing heartily.
“Just as you like; come along, let us go.”
 ALWAYS LOCK THE DOOR!

The four glasses which were standing in front of the diners were now still
nearly half full, which is a sign, as a general rule, that the guests are quite so.
They were beginning to speak without waiting for an answer; no one took any
notice of anything except what was going on inside him, either in his mind or
stomach; voices grew louder, gestures more animated, eyes brighter.
It was a bachelors’ dinner of confirmed old bachelors. They had instituted
this regular banquet twenty years before, christening it “The Celibate,” and at
the time there were fourteen of them, all fully determined never to marry.
Now there were only four of them left; three were dead and the other seven
were married.
These four stuck firmly to it, and, as far as lay in their power, they
scrupulously observed the rules which had been laid down at the beginning
of their curious association. They had sworn, hand-in-hand, to turn aside
every woman they could from the right path, and their friends’ wives for
choice, and more especially those of their most intimate friends. For this
reason, as soon as any of them left the society, in order to set up in domestic
life for himself, he took care to quarrel definitely with all his former
companions.
Besides this, they were pledged at every dinner to relate most minutely
their last adventures, which had given rise to this familiar phrase amongst
them:
“To lie like an old bachelor.”
They professed, moreover, the most profound contempt for woman whom
they talked of as an animal made solely for their pleasure. Every moment they
quoted Schopenhauer, who was their god, and his well-known essay “On
Women;” they wished that harems and towers might be reintroduced, and had
the ancient maxim: “Mulier, perpetuus infans,” woven into their table-linen,
and below it, the line of Alfred de Vigny’s:
La femme, enfant malade et douze fois impure.
So that by dint of despising women they lived only for them, while all
their efforts and all their desires were directed towards them.
 Those of them who had married called them old fops, made fun of them,
and — feared them.
When they began to feel the exhilarating effects of the champagne, this
was the moment that their old bachelor experiences began.
On the day in question, these old fellows, for they were old by this time,
and the older they got the more extraordinary good fortune in the way of love
affairs they had to relate, were quite inexhaustible. For the last month, to hear
them, each of them had played the gallant with at least one woman a day; and
what women! the youngest, the noblest, the richest, and the most beautiful!
After they had finished their tales, one of them, he who having spoken first
had been obliged to listen to all the others, rose and said:
“Now that we have finished drawing the long-bow, I should like to tell
you, not my last, but my first adventure, — I mean the first adventure of my
life, my first fall, — for it is a moral fall after all, in the arms of Venus. Oh! I
am not going to tell you my first — what shall I call it? — my first
appearance; certainly not. The leap over the first hedge (I am speaking
figuratively) has nothing interesting about it. It is generally rather a
disagreeable one, and one picks oneself up rather abashed, with one
charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and
sadness. That realization of love the first time one experiences it is rather
repugnant; we had dreamt of it as being so different, so delicate, so refined. It
leaves a physical and moral sense of disgust behind it, just like as when one
has happened to have put one’s hand into some clammy matter and feels in a
hurry to wash it off. You may rub it as hard as you like, but the moral feeling
remains.
“Yes! but one very soon gets quite used to it; there is no doubt about that.
For my part, however, I am very sorry it was not in my power to give the
Creator the benefit of my advice when He was arranging these little matters. I
wonder what I should have done? I am not quite sure, but I think with the
English savant, John Stuart Mill, I should have managed differently; I should
have found some more convenient and more poetical combination; yes —
more poetical.
“I really think that the Creator showed Himself to be too much of a
naturalist ... too ... what shall I say? His invention lacks poetry.
“However, what I am going to tell you is about my first woman of the
world, the first woman in society I ever made love to; — I beg your pardon, I
ought to say the first woman of the world that ever triumphed over me. For at
first it is we who allow ourselves to be taken, while, later on — well, then it
is quite another matter.
“She was a friend of my mother’s, a charming woman in every way. When
such women are chaste, it is generally from sheer stupidity, and when they
are in love they are furiously so. And then — we are accused of corrupting
them! Yes, yes, of course! With them it is always the rabbit that begins and
never the sportsman. I know all about it; they don’t seem to put their fingers
near us, but they do it all the same, and do what they like with us, without it
being noticed, and then they actually accuse us of having ruined them,
dishonored them, humiliated them, and all the rest of it.
“The woman in question certainly had a great desire to be humiliated by
me. She may have been about thirty-five, while I was scarcely two-and-
twenty. I no more thought of dishonoring her than I did of turning Trappist.
Well, one day when I was calling on her, and while I was looking at her
dress with considerable astonishment, for she had on a morning wrapper
which was open as wide as a church-door when the bells are ringing for
service, she took my hand and squeezed it — squeezed it, you know, like they
will do at such moments — and said, with a deep sigh, one of those sighs,
you know, which come from right down the bottom of the chest: ‘Oh! don’t
look at me like that, child!’ I got as red as a tomato, and felt more nervous
than usual, naturally. I was very much inclined to bolt, but she held my hand
tightly, and putting it onto her well-developed bust, she said: ‘Just feel how
my heart beats!’ Of course it was beating, and I began to understand what
was the matter, but I did not know what to do. I have changed considerably
since then.
“As I remained standing there, with one hand on the soft covering of her
heart, while I held my hat in the other, and continuing to look at her with a
confused, silly smile — a timid, frightened smile — she suddenly drew back,
and said in an irritated voice:
“‘Young man, what are you doing? You are indecent and badly brought
up.’
“You may be sure I took my hand away quickly, stopped smiling, and
stammering out some excuse, I got up and took my leave as if I had lost my
head.
“But I was caught, and dreamt of her. I thought her charming, adorable; I
fancied that I loved her, that I had always loved her, and I determined to see
her again.
 “When I saw her again she gave me a little smile like an actress might
behind the scenes. Oh, how that little smile upset me! And she shook hands
with a long, significant pressure.
“From that day it seems that I made love to her; at least, she declared
afterwards that I had ruined her, captured her, dishonored her, with rare
Machiavelism, with consummate cleverness, with the perseverance of a
mathematician, and the cunning of an Apaché Indian.
“But one thing troubled me strangely; where was my triumph to be
accomplished? I lived with my family, and on this point my family was most
particular. I was not bold enough to venture to go to an hotel in broad
daylight with a woman on my arm, and I did not know whom to ask for
advice.
“Now, my fair friend had often said in joke that every young man ought to
have a room for himself somewhere or other from home. We lived in Paris,
and this was a sort of inspiration. I took a room, and she came. She came one
day in November; I should have liked to put off her visit because I had no
fire, and I had no fire because the chimney smoked. The very evening before,
I had spoken to my landlord, a retired shopkeeper, about it, and he had
promised that he would send for the chimneysweep in a day or two to get it
all put to rights.
“As soon as she came in, I said:
“‘There is no fire because my chimney smokes.’
“She did not even appear to hear me, but stammered: ‘That does not
matter, I have ...;’ and when I looked surprised, she stopped short in
confusion, and then went on: ‘I don’t know what I am saying; I am mad.... I
have lost my head.... Oh! what am I doing? Why did I come? How unhappy I
am! What a disgrace, what a disgrace!’ And she threw herself sobbing into
my arms.
“I thought that she really felt remorse, and swore that I would respect her.
Then, however, she sank down at my knees, sighing: ‘But don’t you see that I
love you, that you have overcome me, that it seems as though you had thrown
a charm over me?’
“Then I thought it was about time to show myself a man. But she trembled,
got up, ran and hid behind a wardrobe, crying out: ‘Oh! don’t look at me; no!
no! If only you did not see me, if we were only in the dark! I am ashamed in
the light. Cannot you imagine it? What a dreadful dream! Oh! this light, this
light!’
 “I rushed to the window; I closed the outside shutters, drew the curtains,
and hung a coat over a ray of light that peeped in, and then, stretching out my
hands so as not to fall over the chairs, with my heart beating, and felt for her,
and found her.
“It was a fresh journey for the two of us then, groping our way, with our
hands united, towards the other corner where the sofa stood. I don’t suppose
we went straight, for first of all I knocked against the mantelpiece, and then
against a chest of drawers, before finding what we wanted. After we sat
down I forgot everything, and we almost went to sleep in each other’s arms.
“I was half dreaming; but in my dream I fancied that someone was calling
me and crying for help; then I received a violent blow, and opened my eyes.
“‘O — h!’ The setting sun, magnificent and red, shone full into the room
through the door, which was wide open, and seemed to look at us from the
verge of the horizon, illuminating us both, especially my companion, who
was screaming, struggling, and twisting, and trying with hands and feet to get
under the sofa, while in the middle of the room stood my landlord by the side
of the concierge and a chimneysweep, as black as the devil, who were
looking at us with stupid eyes.
“I stood up in rage, ready to jump at his throat, and shouted:
“‘What the deuce are you doing in my room?’
“The chimneysweep laughed so that he let his brush fall on the floor. The
porter looked as if he were going out of his mind, and the landlord
stammered:
“‘But, Monsieur, it was — it was — about the chimney — the chimney,
the chimney which— ‘
“‘Go to the devil!’ I roared. So he took off his hat, which he had kept on
in his confusion, and said, in a confused but very civil manner:
“‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur; if I had known, I should not have disturbed
you; I should not have come. The concierge told me you had gone out. Pray
excuse me.’ And they all went out.
“Ever since that time I never draw the curtains but am always very careful
to lock the door first.”
 WHAT WAS REALLY THE MATTER
WITH ANDREW

The lawyer’s house looked on to the Square. Behind it, there was a nice,
well-kept garden, with a back entrance into a narrow street which was
almost always deserted, and from which it was separated by a wall.
At the bottom of that garden Maitre Moreau’s wife had promised, for the
first time, to meet Captain Sommerive, who had been making love to her for
a long time.
Her husband had gone to Paris for a week, so she was quite free for the
time being. The Captain had begged so hard, and had used such loving
words, she was certain that he loved her so ardently, and she felt so isolated,
so misunderstood, so neglected amidst all the law business which seemed to
be her husband’s sole pleasure, that she had given away her heart without
even asking herself whether it would give her anything else at some future
time.
Then, after some months of platonic love, of pressing of hands, of kisses
rapidly stolen behind a door, the Captain had declared that he would ask
permission to exchange, and leave the town immediately, if she would not
grant him a meeting, a real meeting, during her husband’s absence; and so at
length she yielded to his importunity.
Just then she was waiting, close against the wall, with a beating heart,
trembling at the slightest sound, and when at length she heard somebody
climbing up the wall, she very nearly ran away.
Suppose it were not he, but a thief? But no; someone called out softly,
“Matilda!” and when she replied, “Etienne!” a man jumped on to the path
with a crash.
It was he, — and what a kiss!
For a long time they remained in each other’s arms, with united lips. But
suddenly a fine rain began to fall, and the drops from the leaves fell on to her
neck and made her start. Whereupon he said:
“Matilda, my adored one, my darling, my angel, let us go indoors. It is
twelve o’clock, we can have nothing to fear; please let us go to your room.”
 “No, dearest; I am too frightened.”
But he held her in his arms, and whispered in her ear:
“Your servants sleep on the third floor, looking on to the Square, and your
room, on the first, looks on to the garden, so nobody can hear us. I love you
so that I wish to love you entirely, from head to foot.” And he embraced her
vehemently.
She resisted still, frightened and even ashamed. But he put his arms round
her, lifted her up, and carried her off under the rain, which was by this time
descending in torrents.
The door was open; they groped their way upstairs; and when they were
in the room he bolted the door while she lit a match.
Then she fell, half fainting, into a chair, while he knelt down beside her.
At last, she said, panting:
“No! no! Etienne, please let me remain a virtuous woman; I should be too
angry with you afterwards; and after all, it is so horrid, so common. Cannot
we love each other with a spiritual love only?... Oh! Etienne!”
But he was inexorable, and then she tried to get up and escape from his
attacks.
In her fright she ran to the bed in order to hide herself behind the curtains;
but it was a dangerous place of refuge, and he followed her. But in haste he
took off his sword too quickly, and it fell on the floor with a crash.
And then — a prolonged, shrill child’s cry came from the next room, the
door of which had remained open.
“You have awakened the child,” she whispered, “and perhaps he will not
go to sleep again.”
He was only fifteen months old, and slept in a room opening out of hers,
so that she might be able to hear him.
The Captain exclaimed, ardently:
“What does it matter, Matilda? How I love you; you must come to me,
Matilda.”
But she struggled, and resisted in her fright.
“No! no! Just listen how he is crying; he will wake up the nurse, and what
should we do if she were to come? We should be lost. Just listen to me,
Etienne. When he screams at night his father always takes him into our bed,
and he is quiet immediately; it is the only means of keeping him still. Do let
me take him....”
 The child roared, uttered shrill screams, which pierced the thickest walls,
so as to be heard by passers-by in the streets.
In his consternation, the Captain got up, and Matilda jumped out and took
the child into her bed, when he was quiet at once.
Etienne sat astride on a chair, and made a cigarette, and in about five
minutes Andrew went to sleep again.
“I will take him back,” his mother said; and she took him back very
carefully to his bed.
When she returned, the Captain was waiting for her with open arms, and
put his arms round her in a transport of love, while she, embracing him more
closely, said, stammering:
“Oh! Etienne, my darling, if you only knew how I love you; how....”
Andrew began to cry again, and he, in a rage, exclaimed:
“Confound it all, won’t the little brute be quiet?”
No, the little brute would not be quiet, but howled all the louder, on the
contrary.
She thought she heard a noise downstairs; no doubt the nurse was coming,
so she jumped up, and took the child into bed, and he grew quiet directly.
Three times she put him back, and three times she had to fetch him again,
and an hour before daybreak the Captain had to go, swearing like the
proverbial trooper; and, to calm his impatience, Matilda promised to receive
him again the next night.
Of course he came, more impatient and ardent than ever, excited by the
delay.
He took care to put his sword carefully into a corner; he took off his boots
like a thief, and spoke so low that Matilda could hardly hear him. At last, he
was just going to be really happy when the floor, or some piece of furniture,
or perhaps the bed itself, creaked; it sounded as if something had broken; and
in a moment a cry, feeble at first, but which grew louder every moment, made
itself heard. Andrew was awake again.
He yapped like a fox, and there was not the slightest doubt that if he went
on like that the whole house would awake; so his mother, not knowing what
to do, got up and brought him. The Captain was more furious than ever, but
did not move, and very carefully he put out his hand, took a small piece of the
child’s skin between his two fingers, no matter where it was, the thighs or
elsewhere, and pinched it. The little one struggled and screamed in a
deafening manner, but his tormentor pinched everywhere furiously and more
vigorously. He took a morsel of flesh and twisted and turned it, and then let
go in order to take hold of another piece, and then another and another.
The child screamed like a chicken that is having its throat cut, or a dog
that is being mercilessly beaten. His mother caressed him, kissed him, and
tried to stifle his cries by her tenderness; but Andrew grew purple, as if he
were going into convulsions, and kicked and struggled with his little arms
and legs in an alarming manner.
The Captain said, softly:
“Try and take him back to his cradle; perhaps he will be quiet.”
And Matilda went into the other room with the child in her arms.
As soon as he was out of his mother’s bed he cried less loudly, and when
he was in his own he was quiet, with exception of a few broken sobs.
The rest of the night was tranquil.
The next night he came again. As he happened to speak rather loudly,
Andrew awoke again and began to scream. His mother went and fetched him
immediately, but the Captain pinched so hard and long that the child was
nearly suffocated by its cries, and its eyes turned in its head and it foamed at
the mouth; as soon as it was back in its cradle it was quiet, and in four days
Andrew did not cry any more to come into his mother’s bed.
On Saturday evening the lawyer returned, and took his place again at the
domestic hearth and in the conjugal chamber.
As he was tired with his journey he went to bed early; but he had not long
lain down when he said to his wife:
“Why, how is it that Andrew is not crying? Just go and fetch him, Matilda;
I like to feel that he is between us.”
She got up and brought the child, but as soon as he saw that he was in that
bed, in which he had been so fond of sleeping a few days previously, he
wriggled and screamed so violently in his fright that she had to take him back
to his cradle.
M. Moreau could not get over his surprise. “What a very funny thing!
What is the matter with him this evening? I suppose he is sleepy?”
“He has been like that all the time that you were away; I have never been
able to have him in bed with me once.”
In the morning the child woke up and began to laugh and play with his
toys.
The lawyer, who was an affectionate man, got up, kissed his offspring,
and took him into his arms to carry him to their bed. Andrew laughed, with
that vacant laugh of little creatures whose ideas are still vague. He suddenly
saw the bed and his mother in it, and his happy little face puckered up, till
suddenly he began to scream furiously, and struggled as if he were going to
be put to the torture.
In his astonishment his father said:
“There must be something the matter with the child,” and mechanically he
lifted up his little nightshirt.
He uttered a prolonged “O — o — h!” of astonishment. The child’s
calves, thighs, and buttocks were covered with blue spots as big as
halfpennies.
“Just look, Matilda!” the father exclaimed; “this is horrible!” And the
mother rushed forward in a fright. It was horrible; no doubt the beginning of
some sort of leprosy, of one of those strange affections of the skin which
doctors are often at a loss to account for.
The parents looked at one another in consternation.
“We must send for the doctor,” the father said.
But Matilda, pale as death, was looking at her child, who was spotted like
a leopard. Then suddenly uttering a violent cry, as if she had seen something
that filled her with horror, she exclaimed:
“Oh! the wretch!”
In his astonishment M. Moreau asked: “What are you talking about? What
wretch?”
She got red up to the roots of her hair, and stammered:
“Oh, nothing! but I think I can guess — it must be — we ought to send for
the doctor ... it must be that wretch of a nurse who has been pinching the poor
child to make him keep quiet when he cries.”
In his rage the lawyer sent for the nurse, and very nearly beat her. She
denied it most impudently, but was instantly dismissed, and the Municipality
having been informed of her conduct, she will find it a hard matter to get
another situation.
 GROWING OLD

The two friends had finished dinner. From the window of the café they
saw the Boulevard full of people. They felt the warm zephyrs which prevail
in Paris on sweet summer nights and make travelers raises their heads and
desire to go out, to go down, one knows not where, under the leaves, and
dream of rivers lighted by the moon, of glowworms, and of nightingales.
One of them, Henry Simon, sighed profoundly and said:
“Ah! I am getting old. It is sad. Formerly on evenings like this I felt the
devil in my body. Now, I feel only regrets. How quickly life goes!” He was
already a little stout and very bald; he was perhaps forty-five years old.
The other, Peter Carnier, was older, but thinner and more lively; he
replied:
“As for me, my friend, I have grown old without perceiving it the least in
the world. I was always gay, a jolly fellow, vigorous and all the rest. Now,
as one looks at himself each day in the mirror, he does not perceive the work
that age is accomplishing, because it is slow and regular, and modifies his
visage so gradually that the transition is unseen. Only for this we should die
of chagrin after but two or three years’ ravages. But we are not able to
appreciate them. In order to take a reckoning it would be necessary to go six
months without looking at ourselves; and then, what a blow!
“And the women, my dear, how I pity them, the poor beings. All their
happiness; all their power, all their life is in their beauty, which lasts but ten
years.
“I, then, grew old without suspecting it; I believed myself a young man,
although I was nearly fifty years old. Never having felt an infirmity of any
sort, I went along happy and tranquil.
“The revelation of my decadence came to me in a simple but terrible
fashion, which made me downcast for nearly six months. Since then I have
accepted the part.
“I have often been in love, like all men, but once in particular. I met her at
the seashore at Etretat, about twelve years ago, a little after the war. There is
nothing so pretty as this shore in the morning at the bathing hour. It is small,
rounded like a horseshoe, incased in those high, white cliffs, pierced with
those singular holes they call ports, one enormous one, extending into the sea
like a giant’s leg, the other opposite squat and round. A crowd of women
assembles here on the right side of the shuffleboard, which they cover like a
bright garden with their brilliant costumes — this box between the high
rocks.
The sun falls full upon the coast, upon umbrellas of all shades, upon the
sea of a greenish blue. And all is gay, charming, smiling to the eyes. You seat
yourself near the water to watch the bathers. They descend in a bathrobe of
flannel which they throw off with a pretty motion upon reaching the fringe of
the foam from the short waves; they go into the sea with a little rapid step
which is arrested sometimes by a delicious cold shiver, or a slight
suffocation.
“Few can stand this trial of the bath. It is there that one can judge them
from the calf to the throat. The going out especially reveals the weak,
although salt water may be a powerful help to flabby flesh.
“The first time that I saw this young woman thus, I was delighted,
ravished. She held good, she held firm. Then there are some faces whose
charm enters into us suddenly, invades us at a single blow. It seemed to me
that I had found the woman that I was born to love. I had that sensation and it
was like a shock.
“I had myself presented and was immediately captured as I never was
before. She ravaged my heart. It is a frightful and delicious thing, the
undergoing thus the domination of a woman. It is almost a punishment, and at
the same time, an unbelievable happiness. Her look, her smile, her hair at the
nape of the neck when the breeze moved it, all the little lines of her face, the
least movement of her features delighted me, and made me extremely fond of
her. She took possession of me through all my being, by her gestures, her
attitudes, even by the things she carried, which became bewitching to me. I
would wait to see her veil thrown upon some piece of furniture, her gloves
upon an armchair. Her costumes seemed to me inimitable. No one had hats
like hers.
“She was married and the husband came every Saturday to remain until
Monday. He seemed to me very indifferent. I was not at all jealous of him; I
know not why, but never a being seemed to have less importance in life, or
attract less of my attention than this man.
 “How I loved her! And how beautiful she was, and gracious and young!
She was youth, elegance, and freshness, even. Never before had I felt what a
pretty being a woman is, so distinguished and delicate, so full of charm and
grace! Never had I understood what a seducing beauty there is in the curve of
her cheek, in the movement of her lips, in the round folds of her little ear, in
the form of that simple organ which we call the nose.
“This lasted three months and then I departed for America, my heart
bruised and full of despair. But the thought of her remained in me persistent,
triumphant. She possessed me at a distance as she had when I was near her.
“Some years passed. I had not forgotten her. Her charming image
remained before my eyes and in my heart. My tenderness remained faithful to
her, a tranquil tenderness now, something like a much-loved memory of the
most beautiful, most attractive thing I had met in life.

“Twelve years are such a little thing in a man’s existence! One scarcely
feels them pass! They go one after another, these years, gently and quickly,
slowly or hurriedly, each long but so soon finished!
And they add so rapidly and leave so little trace behind them; they vanish
so completely that in looking back over the time passed one cannot perceive
anything, and cannot comprehend how it is that they have made him old. It
seemed to me truly, that only a few months separated me from that charming
season on the beach at Etretat.
“Last spring I went to dine at Maisons-Lafitte at the house of some
friends. Just as the train was starting, a large woman got into my car,
followed by four little girls. I scarcely glanced at this large, round mother,
with a face like a full moon incased in a be-ribboned hat.
“She breathed heavily, being out of breath from a quick walk. The
children began to babble. I opened my newspaper and began to read.
“We were just passing Asnières, when my neighbor said to me suddenly:
“‘Pardon me, sir, but are you not Mr. Carnier?’
“‘Yes, Madame.’
“Then she began to laugh, the laugh of a contented, brave woman, but a
little sad, nevertheless.
“‘You do not recognize me?’ said she.
“I hesitated. I fully believed that I had somewhere seen that face; but
where? and when? I answered:
 “‘Yes — and no — I certainly do recognize you, but cannot recall your
name.’
“She blushed a little as she said: ‘Mrs. Julie Lefevre.’
“Never have I received such a blow. For a second it seemed to me that all
was finished for me, I felt that a veil had been torn away from before my eyes
and that I was about to discover something frightful and wounding.
“It was she! That great, gross, common woman, she? And she had borne
these four girls since I had seen her. And these four beings astonished me as
much as the mother herself. They had come from her; they were tall already,
had taken her place in life. She no longer counted, she, that marvel of
coquettish, refined grace. I had seen her yesterday, it seemed to me, and I
found her again like this! Was it possible? A violent grief attacked my heart,
and also a revolt against Nature, even, an unreasonable indignation against
her brutal work, so infamous and destructive.
“I looked at her aghast. Then I took her by the hand, and the tears mounted
to my eyes. I wept for her young, I wept for her dead. For I was not
acquainted with this large lady.
“She, also affected, stammered:
“‘I am much changed, am I not? What can we expect after so long? You
see I have become a mother, nothing but a mother, a good mother. Adieu to all
else, it is finished. Oh! I never thought that you would not recognize me if we
met! And you, too, are changed; it took me some time to be sure that I was not
deceived. You are quite gray. Think of it. Twelve years! twelve years! My
eldest daughter is already ten years old.’
“I looked at the child. I found in her something of the former charm of her
mother, but something still undecisive, not yet formed, but near at hand. And
life appeared as rapid to me as a train which passes.
“We arrived at Maisons-Lafitte. I kissed the hand of my old friend. I had
found nothing to say to her but the most frightful commonplaces. I was too
upset to talk, “That evening, all alone in my room, I looked at myself for a
long time in my glass. And I ended by recalling myself as I was, of looking
back in thought to my brown mustache and my black hair and the
physiognomy of my young face. Now I was old. Adieu!”
 MY LANDLADY

At that time (George Kervelen said) I was living in furnished lodgings in the
Rue des Saints-Pères.
When my father had made up his mind that I should go to Paris to continue
my law studies, there had been a long discussion about settling everything.
My allowance had been fixed at first at two thousand five hundred francs, but
my poor mother was so anxious, that she said to my father that if I spent my
money badly I might not take enough to eat, and then my health would suffer,
and so it was settled that a comfortable boarding-house should be found for
me, and that the amount should be paid to the proprietor himself, or herself,
every month.
Some of our neighbors told us of a certain Mme. Kergaran, a native of
Brittany, who took in boarders, and so my father arranged matters by letter
with this respectable person, at whose house I and my luggage arrived one
evening.
Mme. Kergaran was a woman of about forty. She was very stout, had a
voice like a drill-sergeant, and decided everything in a very abrupt manner.
Her house was narrow, with only one window opening on to the street on
each story, which rather gave it the appearance of a ladder of windows, or
better, perhaps, of a slice of a house sandwiched in between two others.
The landlady lived on the first floor with her servant, the kitchen and
dining-room were on the second, and four boarders from Brittany lived on
the third and fourth, and I had two rooms on the fifth.
A little dark corkscrew staircase led up to these attics. All day long Mme.
Kergaran was up and down these stairs like a captain on board ship. Ten
times a day she would go into each room, noisily superintending everything,
seeing that the beds were properly made, the clothes well brushed, if the
attendance were all that it should be; in a word, she looked after her
boarders like a mother, and better than a mother.
I soon made the acquaintance of my four fellow-countrymen. Two were
medical and two were law students, but all impartially endured the
landlady’s despotic yoke. They were as frightened of her as a boy robbing an
orchard would be of a rural policeman.
I, however, immediately felt that I wished to be independent; it is my
nature to rebel. I declared at once that I meant to come in at whatever time I
liked, for Mme. Kergaran had fixed twelve o’clock at night as the limit. On
hearing this she looked at me for a few moments, and then said:
“It is quite impossible; I cannot have Annette awakened at any hour of the
night. You can have nothing to do out-of-doors at such a time.”
I replied firmly that, according to the law, she was obliged to open the
door for me at any time.
“If you refuse,” I said, “I shall get a policeman to witness the fact, and go
and get a bed at some hotel, at your expense, in which I shall be fully
justified. You will, therefore, be obliged either to open the door for me or to
get rid of me. Do which you please.”
I laughed in her face as I told her my conditions. She could not speak for a
moment for surprise, then she tried to negotiate, but I was firm, and she was
obliged to yield; and so it was agreed that I should have a latchkey, on my
solemn undertaking that no one else should know it.
My energy made such a wholesome impression on her that from that time
she treated me with marked favor; she was most attentive, and even showed
me a sort of rough tenderness which was not at all unpleasing. Sometimes
when I was in a jovial mood I would kiss her by surprise, if only for the sake
of getting the box on the ears which she gave me immediately afterwards.
When I managed to duck my head quickly enough, her hand would pass over
me as swiftly as a ball, and I would run away laughing, while she would call
after me:
“Oh! you wretch, I will pay you out for that.”
However, we soon became real friends.
It was not long before I made the acquaintance of a girl who was
employed in a shop, and whom I constantly met. You know what such sort of
love affairs are in Paris. One fine day, going to a lecture, you meet a work-
girl going to work arm-in-arm with a friend. You look at her and feel that
pleasant little shock which the eye of some women gives you. The next day at
the same time, going through the same street, you meet her again, and the next,
and the succeeding days. At last you speak, and the love affair follows its
course just like an illness.
 Well, by the end of three weeks I was on that footing with Emma which
precedes a fall. The fall would indeed have taken place much sooner had I
known where to bring it about. The girl lived at home, and utterly refused to
go to an hotel. I did not know how to manage, but at last I took the desperate
resolve to take her to my room some night at about eleven o’clock, under the
pretense of giving her a cup of tea. Mme. Kergaran always went to bed at ten,
so that we could get in by means of my latchkey without exciting any
attention, and go down again in an hour or two in the same way.
After a good deal of entreaty on my part, Emma accepted my invitation.
I did not spend a very pleasant day, for I was by no means easy in my
mind. I was afraid of complications, of a catastrophe, of some scandal. At
night I went into a café, and drank two cups of coffee, and three or four
glasses of cognac, to give me courage, and when I heard the clock strike half-
past ten, I went slowly to the place of meeting, where she was already
waiting for me. She took my arm in a coaxing manner, and we set off slowly
towards my lodgings. The nearer we got to the door the more nervous I got,
and I thought to myself— “If only Mme. Kergaran is in bed already.”
I said to Emma two or three times:
“Above all things, don’t make any noise on the stairs,” to which she
replied, laughing:
“Are you afraid of being heard?”
“No,” I said, “but I am afraid of waking the man who sleeps in the room
next to me, who is not at all well.”
When I got near the house I felt as frightened as a man does who is going
to the dentist’s. All the windows were dark, so no doubt everybody was
asleep, and I breathed again. I opened the door as carefully as a thief, let my
fair companion in, shut it behind me, and went upstairs on tiptoe, holding my
breath, and striking wax-matches lest the girl should make a false step.
As we passed the landlady’s door I felt my heart beating very quickly, but
we reached the second floor, then the third, and at last the fifth, and got into
my room. Victory!
However, I only dared to speak in a whisper, and took off my boots so as
not to make any noise. The tea, which I made over a spirit-lamp, was soon
drunk, and then I became pressing, till little by little, as if in play, I, one by
one, took off my companion’s clothes, who yielded while resisting, blushing,
confused.
 She had absolutely nothing more on except a short white petticoat when
my door suddenly opened, and Mme. Kergaran appeared with a candle in her
hand, in exactly the same costume as Emma.
I jumped away from her and remained standing up, looking at the two
women, who were looking at each other. What was going to happen?
My landlady said, in a lofty tone of voice which I had never heard from
her before:
“Monsieur Kervelen, I will not have prostitutes in my house.”
“But, Madame Kergaran,” I stammered, “the young lady is a friend of
mine. She just came in to have a cup of tea.”
“People don’t take tea in their chemise. You will please make this person
go directly.”
Emma, in a natural state of consternation, began to cry, and hid her face in
her petticoat, and I lost my head, not knowing what to do or say. My landlady
added, with irresistible authority:
“Help her to dress, and take her out at once.”
It was certainly the only thing I could do, so I picked up her dress from the
floor, put it over her head, and began to fasten it as best I could. She helped
me, crying all the time, hurrying and making all sorts of mistakes and unable
to find either buttonholes or laces, while Mme. Kergaran stood by
motionless, with the candle in her hand, looking at us with the severity of a
judge.
As soon as Emma was dressed, without even stopping to button her boots,
she rushed past the landlady and ran down stairs. I followed her in my
slippers and half undressed, and kept repeating: “Mademoiselle!
Mademoiselle!”
I felt that I ought to say something to her, but I could not find anything. I
overtook her just by the street-door, and tried to take her into my arms, but
she pushed me violently away, saying in a low, nervous voice:
“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” and so ran out into the street, closing
the door behind her.
When I went upstairs again I found that Mme. Kergaran was waiting on
the first landing, and I went up slowly, expecting, and ready for, anything.
Her door was open, and she called me in, saying in a severe voice:
“I want to speak to you, M. Kervelen.”
I went in, with my head bent. She put her candle on the mantelpiece, and
then, folding her arms over her expansive bosom, which a fine white
dressing-jacket hardly covered, she said:
“So, Monsieur Kervelen, you think my house is a house of ill-fame?”
I was not at all proud. I murmured:
“Oh, dear, no! But, Mme. Kergaran, you must not be angry; you know what
young men are.”
“I know,” was her answer, “that I will not have such creatures here, so
you will understand that. I expect to have my house respected, and I will not
have it lose its reputation, you understand me? I know....”
She went on thus for at least twenty minutes, overwhelming me with the
good name of her house, with reasons for her indignation, and loading me
with severe reproofs. I went to bed crestfallen, and resolved never again to
try such an experiment, so long, at least, as I continued to be a lodger of
Mme. Kergaran.
 LOVE.
THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN’S
BOOK

I have just read among the General News in one of the papers, a drama of
passion. He killed her and then he killed himself, so he must have loved her.
What matter He or She? Their love alone matters to me; and it does not
interest me because it moves me or astonishes me, or because it softens me
or makes me think, but because it recalls to my mind a remembrance of my
youth, a strange recollection of a hunting adventure where Love appeared to
me, as the Cross appeared to the early Christians, in the midst of the heavens.
I was born with all the instincts and the senses of primitive man, tempered
by the arguments and the feelings of a civilized being. I am passionately fond
of shooting, and the sight of the bleeding animal, with the blood on its
feathers and on my hands, affect my heart so, as almost to make it stop.
That year the cold weather set in suddenly towards the end of autumn, and
I was invited by one of my cousins, Karl de Rauville, to go with him and
shoot ducks on the marshes, at daybreak.
My cousin, who was a jolly fellow of forty, with red hair, very stout and
bearded, a country gentleman, an amiable semi-brute, of a happy disposition
and endowed with that Gallic wit which makes even mediocrity agreeable,
lived in a house, half farmhouse, half château, situated in a broad valley
through which a river ran. The hills right and left were covered with woods,
old seignorial woods where magnificent trees still remained, and where the
rarest feathered game in that part of France was to be found. Eagles were
shot there occasionally, and birds of passage, those which rarely come into
our over-populated part of the country, almost infallibly stopped amid these
branches, which were centuries old, as if they knew or recognized a little
corner of a forest of ancient times which had remained there to serve them as
a shelter during their short nocturnal halting place.
In the valley there were large meadows watered by trenches and
separated by hedges; then, further on the river, which up to that point had
been canalized, expanded into a vast marsh. That marsh, which was the best
shooting ground which I ever saw, was my cousin’s chief care, who kept it
like a park. Among the number of rushes that covered it, and made it living,
rustling and rough, narrow passages had been made, through which the flat-
bottomed boats, which were impelled and steered by poles, passed along
silently over the dead water, brushed up against the reeds and made the swift
fish take refuge among the weeds, and the wild fowl dive, whose pointed,
black heads disappeared suddenly.
I am passionately fond of the water; the sea, although it is too vast, too full
of movement, impossible to hold, the rivers, which are so beautiful, but
which pass on, flee away and go, and above all the marshes, where the
whole unknown existence of aquatic animals palpitates. The marsh is an
entire world to itself on earth, a different world which has its own life, its
settled inhabitants and its passing travelers, its voices, its noises, and above
all its mystery. Nothing is more disturbing, nothing, more disquieting, more
terrifying occasionally, than a fen. Why should this terror hang over these
low plains covered with water? Is it the vague rustling of the rushes, the
strange Will-o’-the-wisps, the profound silence which envelops them on
calm nights, or is it the strange mists, which hang over the rushes like a
shroud; or else it is the imperceptible splashing, so slight and so gentle, and
sometimes more terrifying than the cannons of men or the thunders of skies,
which make these marshes resemble countries which none has dreamed of,
terrible countries concealing an unknown and dangerous secret.
No, something else belongs to it, another mystery, more profound and
graver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation
itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of
moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life vibrated and
expanded to the day?

I arrived at my cousin’s in the evening. It was freezing hard enough to split

stones.
During dinner, in the large room whose sideboards, walls and ceilings
were covered with stuffed birds, with extended wings or perched on
branches to which they were nailed, hawks, herons, owls, nightjars,
buzzards, tiercels, vultures, falcons, my cousin, who himself resembled some
strange animal from a cold country, dressed in a sealskin jacket, told me what
preparations he had made for that same night.
 We were to start at half past three in the morning, so as to arrive at the
place which he had chosen for our watching place at about half past four. On
that spot a hut had been built of lumps of ice, so as to shelter us somewhat
from the terrible wind which precedes daybreak, that wind which is so cold
that it tears the flesh as if with a saw, cuts it like the blade of a knife and
pricks it like a poisoned sting, twists it like a pair of pincers, and burns it
like fire.
My cousin rubbed his hands: “I have never known such a frost,” he said;
“it is already twelve degrees below zero at six o’clock in the evening.”
I threw myself onto my bed immediately after we had finished our meal,
and I went to sleep by the light of a bright fire burning in the grate.
At three o’clock he woke me. In my turn, I put on a sheepskin, and I found
my cousin Karl covered with a bearskin. After having each of us swallowed
two cups of scalding coffee, followed by glasses of liqueur brandy, we
started, accompanied by a gamekeeper and our dogs, Plongeon and Pierrot.
From the first moment that I got outside, I felt chilled to the very marrow.
It was one of those nights on which the earth seems dead with cold. The
frozen air becomes resisting and palpable, such pain does it cause; no breath
of wind moves it, it is fixed and motionless; it bites, pierces through you,
dries, kills the trees, the plants, the insects, the small birds themselves that
fall from the branches onto the hard ground, and become hard themselves
under the grip of the cold.
The moon, which was in her last quarter and was inclining all to one side,
seemed fainting in the midst of space, and so weak that she did not seem able
to take her departure, and so she remained up yonder, also seized and
paralyzed by the severity of the weather. She shed a cold, mournful light over
the world, that dying and wan light which she gives us every month, at the
end of her resurrection.
Karl and I went side by side, our backs bent, our hands in our pockets and
our guns under our arms. Our boots, which were wrapped in wool, so that
we might be able to walk without slipping on the frozen river, made no
sound, and I looked at the white vapor which our dogs’ breath made.
We were soon on the edge of the marsh, and we went into one of these
lanes of dry rushes which ran through this low forest.
Our elbows, which touched the long, ribbonlike leaves, left a slight noise
behind us, and I was seized, as I had never been before, by the powerful
singular emotion which marshes cause in me. This one was dead, dead from
cold, since we were walking on it, in the middle of its population of dried
rushes.
Suddenly, at the turn of one of the lanes, I perceived the ice-hut which had
been constructed to shelter us. I went in, and as we had nearly an hour to wait
before the wandering birds would awake, I rolled myself up in my rug in
order to try and get warm.
Then, lying on my back, I began to look at the misshapen moon, which had
four horns, through the vaguely transparent walls of this polar house.
But the frost of the frozen marshes, the cold of these walls, the cold from
the firmament penetrated me so terribly, that I began to cough.
My cousin Karl became uneasy. “So much the worse if we do not kill
much to-day,” he said, “I do not want you to catch cold; we will light a fire.”
And he told the gamekeeper to cut some rushes.
We made a pile in the middle of our hut, which had a hole in the middle of
the roof to let out the smoke, and when the red flames rose up to the clear,
crystal cloisons they began to melt, gently, imperceptibly, as if these stones of
ice had sweated. Karl, who had remained outside, called out to me: “Come
and look here!” I went out of the hut and remained, struck with astonishment.
Our hut, in the shape of a cone, looked like an enormous diamond with a
heart of fire, which had been suddenly planted there in the midst of the frozen
water of the marsh. And inside we saw two fantastic forms, those of our
dogs, who were warming themselves at the fire.
But a peculiar cry, a lost, a wandering cry, passed over our heads, and the
light from our hearth showed us the wild birds. Nothing moves one so much
as the first clamor of life which one does not see, and which is passing
through the somber air so quickly and so far off, before the first streak of the
winter’s day appears on the horizon. It seems to me at this glacial hour of
dawn, as if that passing cry which is carried away by the wings of a bird, is
the sigh of a soul from the world!
“Put out the fire,” Karl said. “It is getting daylight.”
The sky was, in fact, beginning to grow pale, and the flights of ducks made
long, rapid spots, which were soon obliterated, on the sky.
A stream of light burst out into the night; Karl had fired, and the two dogs
ran forward.
And then, nearly every minute, now he, now I, aimed rapidly as soon as
the shadow of a flying flock appeared above the rushes. And Pierrot and
Plongeon, out of breath but happy, retrieved the bleeding birds for us, whose
eyes still, occasionally, looked at us.
The sun had risen, and it was a bright day with a blue sky, and we were
thinking of taking our departure, when two birds with extended necks and
outstretched wings, glided rapidly over our heads. I fired, and one of them
fell almost at my feet. It was a teal, with a silver breast, and then, in the blue
space above me, I heard a voice, the voice of a bird. It was a short, repeated,
heartrending lament; and the bird, the little animal that had been spared began
to turn round in the blue sky, over our heads, looking at its dead companion
which I was holding in my hand.
Karl was on his knees, his gun to his shoulder watching it eagerly, until it
should be within shot. “You have killed the duck,” he said, “and the drake
will not fly away.”
He certainly did not fly away; he turned round over our heads continually,
and continued his cries. Never have any groans of suffering pained me so
much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this poor bird
which was lost in space.
Occasionally he took a flight under the menace of the gun which followed
his flight, and seemed ready to continue his flight alone, but as he could not
make up his mind to this, he soon returned to find his mate.
“Leave her on the ground,” Karl said to me, “he will come within shot by
and by.” And he did indeed come near us, careless of danger, infatuated by
his animals’ love, by his affection for that other animal which I had just
killed.
Karl fired, and it was as if somebody had cut the string which held the
bird suspended. I saw something black descend, and I heard the noise of a
fall among the rushes. And Pierrot brought it to me.
I put them — they were already cold — into the same bag, and I returned
to Paris the same evening.
 SAVED

The little Marquise de Rennedon came rushing in like a ball smashing a

window, and she began to laugh before she spoke, to laugh until she cried,
like she had done a month previously, when she had told her friend that she
had betrayed the marquis in order to have her revenge, and only once,
because he was really too stupid and too jealous.
The little Baroness de Grangerie had thrown the book which she was
reading on the sofa, and looked at Annette curiously. She was already
laughing herself, and at last she asked:
“What have you been doing now?” “Oh! ... my dear!... my dear! it is too
funny ... too funny.... Just fancy ... I am saved!... saved!... saved!”... “How do
you mean, saved!” “Yes, saved!” “From what?” “From my husband, my dear,
saved! Delivered! free! free! free!” “How free? in what?” “In what?
Divorce! Yes, a divorce! I have my divorce!” “You are divorced?” “No, not
yet; how stupid you are! One does not get divorced in three hours! But I have
my proofs that he has deceived me ... caught in the very act ... just think!... in
the very act.... I have got him tight....” “Oh! do tell me all about it! So he
deceived you?” “Yes, that is to say no ... yes and no ... I do not know. At any
rate, I have proofs, and that is the chief thing.” “How did you manage it?”
“How did I manage it?... This is how! I have been energetic, very
energetic. For the last three months he has been odious, altogether odious,
brutal, coarse, a despot, in one word, vile. So I said to myself: This cannot
last, I must have a divorce! But how? for it is not very easy? I tried to make
him beat me, but he would not. He put me out from morning till night, made
me go out when I did not wish to, and to remain at home when I wanted to
dine out; he made my life unbearable for me from one week’s end to the
other, but he never struck me.
“Then I tried to find out whether he had a mistress. Yes, he had one, but he
took a thousand precautions in going to see her, and they could never be
caught together. Guess what I did then?” “I cannot guess.” “Oh! you could
never guess. I asked my brother to procure me a photograph of the creature.”
“Of your husband’s mistress?” “Yes. It cost Jacques fifteen louis, the price of
an evening, from seven o’clock until midnight, including a dinner, at three
louis an hour, and he obtained the photograph into the bargain.” “It appears to
me that he might have obtained it anyhow by means of some artifice and
without ... without ... without being obliged to take the original at the same
time.” “Oh! she is pretty, and Jacques did not mind the least. And then, I
wanted some details about her, physical details about her figure, her breast,
her complexion, a thousand things, in fact.”
“I do not understand you.” “You shall see. When I had learned all that I
wanted to know, I went to a ... how shall I put it ... to a man of business ...
you know ... one of those men who transact business of all sorts ... agents of
... of ... of publicity and complicity ... one of those men ... well, you
understand what I mean.” “Pretty nearly, I think. And what did you say to
him?” “I said to him, showing the photograph of Clarisse (her name is
Clarisse): ‘Monsieur, I want a lady’s maid who resembles this photograph. I
require one who is pretty, elegant, neat and sharp. I will pay her whatever is
necessary, and if it costs me ten thousand francs so much the worse. I shall
not require her for more than three months.’
“The man looked extremely astonished, and said: ‘Do you require a maid
of an irreproachable character, Madame?’ I blushed, and stammered. ‘Yes, of
course, for honesty.’ He continued: ... ‘And ... then ... as regards morals....’ I
did not venture to reply, so I only made a sign with my head, which signified:
no. Then suddenly, I comprehended that he had a horrible suspicion and
losing my presence of mind, I exclaimed: ‘Oh, Monsieur, ... it is for my
husband, in order that I may surprise him....’
“Then the man began to laugh, and from his looks I gathered that I had
regained his esteem. He even thought I was brave, and I would willingly
have made a bet that at that moment he was longing to shake hands with me.
However, he said to me: ‘In a week, Madame, I shall have what you require;
I will answer for my success, and you shall not pay me until I have
succeeded. So this is a photograph of your husband’s mistress?’ ‘Yes,
Monsieur,’ ‘A handsome woman, and not too stout. And what scent?’
“I did not understand, and repeated: ‘What scent?’ He smiled: ‘Yes,
Madame, the perfume is essential to seduce a man, for it unconsciously
brings to his mind certain reminiscences which dispose him to action; the
perfume creates an obscure confusion in his mind, and disturbs and enervates
him by recalling his pleasures to him. You must also try to find out what your
husband is in the habit of eating when he dines with his lady, and you might
give him the same dishes the day you catch him. Oh! we have got him,
Madame, we have got him.’
“I went away delighted, for here I had lighted on a very intelligent man.
“Three days later, I saw a tall, dark girl arrive at my house; she was very
handsome and her looks were modest and bold at the same time, the peculiar
look of a female rake. She behaved very properly towards me, and as I did
not exactly know what she was, I called her Mademoiselle, but she said
immediately: ‘Oh! pray, Madame, only call me Rose.’ And she began to talk.
“‘Well, Rose, you know why you have come here?’ ‘I can guess it,
Madame.’ ‘Very good, my girl ... and that will not ... be too much bother for
you?’ ‘Oh! madame, this will be the eighth divorce that I shall have caused; I
am used to it.’ ‘Why, that is capital. Will it take you long to succeed?’ ‘Oh!
Madame, that depends entirely on Monsieur’s temperament. When I have
seen Monsieur for five minutes alone I shall be able to tell you exactly.’ ‘You
will see him soon, my child, but I must tell you that he is not handsome.’
‘That does not matter to me, Madame. I have already separated some very
ugly ones. But I must ask you, Madame, whether you have discovered his
favorite perfume?’ ‘Yes, Rose, — verbena.’ ‘So much the better, Madame,
for I am also very fond of that scent! Can you also tell me, Madame, whether
Monsieur’s mistress wears silk underclothing and nightdresses?’ ‘No, my
child, cambric and lace.’ ‘Oh! then she is altogether of superior station, for
silk underclothing is getting quite common.’ ‘What you say is quite true!’
‘Well, Madame, I will enter your service.’ And so, as a matter of fact, she
did immediately, and as if she had done nothing else all her life.
“An hour later my husband came home. Rose did not even raise her eyes
to him, but he raised his eyes to her. She already smelt strongly of verbena,
and in five minutes she left the room, and he immediately asked me: ‘Who is
that girl?’ ‘Why ... my new lady’s maid.’ ‘Where did you pick her up?’
‘Baroness de Grangerie got her for me with the best references.’ ‘Ah! she is
rather pretty!’ ‘Do you think so?’ ‘Why, yes ... for a lady’s maid.’
“I was delighted, for I felt that he was already biting, and that same
evening Rose said to me: ‘I can now promise you that it will not take more
than a fortnight. Monsieur is very easily caught!’ ‘Ah! you have tried
already?’ ‘No, Madame, he only asked what my name was ... so that he might
hear what my voice was like.’ ‘Very well, my dear Rose. Get on as quick as
you can.’ ‘Do not be alarmed, Madame; I shall only resist long enough not to
make myself depreciated.’
 “At the end of a week my husband scarcely ever went out; I saw him
roaming about the house the whole afternoon, and what was most significant
in the matter was, that he no longer prevented me from going out. And I, I
was out of doors nearly the whole day long, ... in order ... in order to leave
him at liberty.
“On the ninth day, while Rose was undressing me, she said to me with a
timid air: ‘It happened this morning, Madame.’ I was rather surprised, or
rather overcome even, not at the part itself, but at the way in which she told
me, and I stammered out: ‘And ... and ... it went off well?’ ‘Oh! yes, very
well, Madame. For the last three days he has been pressing me, but I did not
wish matters to proceed too quickly. You will tell me when you want us to be
caught, Madame.’ ‘Yes, certainly. Here!... let us say Thursday.’ ‘Very well,
Madame, I shall grant nothing more until then, so as to keep Monsieur on the
alert.’ ‘You are sure not to fail?’ ‘Oh! quite sure, Madame. I will excite him,
so as to make him be there at the very moment which you may appoint.’ ‘Let
us say five o’clock, then.’ ‘Very well, Madame, and where?’ ‘Well ... in my
bedroom.’ ‘Very good, Madame, in your bedroom.’
“You will understand what I did then, my dear. I went and fetched Mamma
and Papa first of all, and then my uncle d’Orvelin, the President, and
Monsieur Raplet, the Judge, my husband’s friend. I had not told them what I
was going to show them, but I made them all go on tiptoe as far as the door of
my room. I waited until five o’clock exactly, and oh! how my heart beat! I
had made the porter come upstairs as well, so as to have an additional
witness! And then ... and then at the moment when the clock began to strike, I
opened the door wide.... Ah! ah! ah! Here he was evidently, ... it was quite
evident, my dear.... Oh! what a face!... if you had only seen his face!... And he
turned round, the idiot! Oh! how funny he looked.... I laughed, I laughed....
And papa was angry and wanted to give my husband a beating.... And the
porter, a good servant, helped him to dress himself ... before us ... before
us.... He buttoned his braces for him ... what a joke it was!... As for Rose, she
was perfect, absolutely perfect.... She cried ... oh! she cried very well. She is
an invaluable girl.... If you ever want her, don’t forget!
“And here I am.... I came immediately to tell you of the affair ... directly. I
am free. Long live divorce!”
And she began to dance in the middle of the drawing-room, while the little
baroness, who was thoughtful and vexed, said:
“Why did you not invite me to see it?”
 THE SIGNAL

The little Marchioness de Rennedon was still asleep in her closed and
perfumed bedroom, in her soft, low bed, between her sheets of delicate
cambric, fine as lace and caressing as a kiss; she was sleeping alone and
tranquil, the happy and profound sleep of divorced women.
She was awakened by loud voices in the little blue drawing-room, and
she recognized her dear friend, the little Baroness de Grangerie, who was
disputing with the lady’s maid, because the latter would not allow her to go
into her mistress’ room. So the little Marchioness got up, opened the door,
drew back the door-hangings and showed her head, nothing but her fair head,
hidden under a cloud of hair.
“What is the matter with you, that you have come so early?” she asked. “It
is not nine o’clock yet.”
The little baroness who was very pale, nervous and feverish, replied: “I
must speak to you. Something horrible has happened to me.” “Come in, my
dear.”
She went in, they kissed each other, and the little Marchioness got back
into her bed while the lady’s maid opened the windows to let in light and air,
and then when she had left the room, Madame de Rennedon went on: “Well,
tell me what it is.”
Madame de Grangerie began to cry, shedding those pretty, bright tears
which make woman more charming, and she stammered without wiping her
eyes, so as not to make them red: “Oh! my dear, what has happened to me is
abominable, abominable. I have not slept all night, not a minute; do you hear,
not a minute. Here, just feel my heart, how it is beating.”
And, taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm, round
covering of women’s hearts which often suffices men, and prevents them
from seeking beneath. But her breast was really beating violently.
She continued: “It happened to me yesterday during the day, at about four
o’clock ... or half-past four; I cannot say exactly. You know my apartments,
and you know that my little drawing-room, where I always sit, looks onto the
Rue Saint-Lazare, and that I have a mania for sitting at the window to look at
the people passing. The neighborhood of the railway station is very gay; so
full of motion and lively.... Well, that is just what I like! So, yesterday, I was
sitting in the low chair which I have placed in my window recess; the
window was open and I was not thinking of anything; I was breathing the
fresh air. You remember how fine it was yesterday!
“Suddenly, I remarked that there was also a woman sitting at the window,
a woman in red; I was in mauve, you know, my pretty mauve costume. I did
not know the woman, a new lodger, who had been there a month, and as it
had been raining for a month, I had not yet seen her, but I saw immediately
that she was a bad girl. At first I was very much shocked and disgusted that
she should be at the window like I was; and then, by degrees, it amused me to
examine her. She was resting her elbows on the window ledge, and looking
at the men, and the men looked at her also, all or nearly all. One might have
said that they were apprised beforehand by some means as they got near the
house, which they scented as dogs scent game, for they suddenly raised their
heads, and exchanged a swift look with her, a freemason’s look. Hers said:
‘Will you?’
“Theirs replied: ‘I have no time,’ or else: ‘another day;’ or else: ‘I have
not got a half penny;’ or else: ‘Will you hide yourself, you wretch!’
“You cannot imagine how funny it was to see her carrying on such a piece
of work, though, after all, it is her regular business.
“Sometimes she shut the window suddenly, and I saw a gentleman go in.
She had caught him like a fisherman hooks a gudgeon. Then I looked at my
watch, and I found that they stopped from twelve to twenty minutes, never
longer. In the end she really infatuated me, the spider! And then the creature
is so ugly.
“I asked myself: How does she manage to make herself understood so
quickly, so well and so completely? Does she add a sign of the head or a
motion of the hands to her looks? And I took my opera-glasses to watch her
proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then a smile,
then a slight sign with the head, which meant: ‘Are you coming up?’ But it
was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a great deal of knack to
succeed as she did. And I asked myself: ‘I wonder if I could do that little
movement, from below upwards, which was at the same time bold and pretty,
as well as she does,’ for her gesture was very pretty.
“I went and tried it before the looking-glass, and, my dear, I did it better
than she, a great deal better! I was enchanted, and resumed my place at the
window.
“She caught nobody more then, poor girl, nobody. She certainly had no
luck. It must really be very terrible to earn one’s bread in that way, terrible
and amusing occasionally, for really some of these men one meets in the
street are rather nice.
“After that they all came on my side of the road and none on hers; the sun
had turned. They came one after the other, young, old, dark, fair, gray, white. I
saw some who looked very nice, really very nice, my dear, far better than my
husband or than yours, I mean than your late husband, as you have got a
divorce. Now you can choose.
“I said to myself! If I give them the sign, will they understand me, who am
a respectable woman? And I was seized with a mad longing to make that sign
to them. I had a longing, the longing of a pregnant woman ... a terrible
longing; you know, one of those longings which one cannot resist! I have
some like that occasionally. How stupid such things are, don’t you think so? I
believe that we woman have the souls of monkeys. I have been told (and it
was a physician who told me) that the brain of a monkey was very like ours.
Of course we must imitate some one or other. We imitate our husbands, when
we love them, during the first months after our marriage, and then our lovers,
our female friends, our confessors, when they are nice. We assume their ways
of thought, their manners of speech, their words, their gestures, everything. It
is very stupid.
“However, as for me, when I am too much tempted to do a thing I always
do it, and so I said to myself: ‘I will try it once, on one man only, just to see.
What can happen to me? Nothing whatever! We shall exchange a smile and
that will be all, and I shall deny it, most certainly.’
“So I began to make my choice. I wanted someone nice, very nice, and
suddenly I saw a tall, fair, very good-looking fellow coming along. I like fair
men, as you know. I looked at him, he looked at me; I smiled, he smiled; I
made the movement; oh! but scarcely; he replied yes with his head, and there
he was, my dear! He came in at the large door of the house.
“You cannot imagine what passed through my mind then! I thought I should
go mad. Oh! how frightened I was. Just think, he will speak to the servants!
To Joseph, who is devoted to my husband! Joseph would certainly think that I
had known that gentleman for a long time.
“What could I do, just tell me? And he would ring in a moment. What
could I do, tell me? I thought I would go and meet him, and tell him he had
made a mistake, and beg him to go away. He would have pity on a woman, on
a poor woman: So I rushed to the door and opened it, just at the moment
when he was going to ring the bell, and I stammered out, quite stupidly: ‘Go
away, Monsieur, go away; you have made a mistake, a terrible mistake; I took
you for one of my friends whom you are very like. Have pity on me,
Monsieur.’
“But he only began to laugh, my dear, and replied: ‘Good morning, my
dear, I know all about your little story, you may be sure. You are married, and
so you want forty francs instead of twenty, and you shall have them, so just
show the way.’
“And he pushed me in, closed the door, and as I remained standing before
him, horror-struck, he kissed me, put his arm round my waist and made me go
back into the drawing-room, which had remained open. Then he began to
look at everything, like an auctioneer, and continued: ‘By Jove, it is very nice
in your rooms, very well. You must be very down on your luck just now, to
do the window business!’
“Then I began to beg him again: ‘Oh! Monsieur, go away, please go away!
My husband will be coming in soon, it is just his time. I swear that you have
made a mistake!’ But he answered quite coolly: ‘Come, my beauty, I have
had enough of this nonsense, and if your husband comes in, I will give him
five francs to go and have a drink at the café opposite.’ And then, seeing
Raoul’s photograph on the chimney-piece, he asked me: ‘Is that your ... your
husband?’ ‘Yes, that is he.’ ‘He looks a nice, disagreeable sort of fellow.
And who is this? One of your friends?’
“It was your photograph, my dear, you know, the one in ball dress. I did
not know any longer what I was saying, and I stammered: ‘Yes, it is one of
my friends.’ ‘She is very nice; you shall introduce me to her.’
“Just then the clock struck five, and Raoul comes home every day at half
past! Suppose he were to come home before the other had gone, just fancy
what would have happened! Then ... then ... I completely lost my head ...
altogether.... I thought ... I thought ... that ... that ... the best thing would be ...
to get rid ... of ... of this man ... as quickly as possible.... The sooner it was
over ... you understand ... and ... and there ... as it must be done ... and I was
obliged, my dear ... he would not have gone away without it.... Well I ... I
locked the drawing-room door.... There!”
 The little Marchioness de Rennedon had begun to laugh, to laugh madly,
with her head buried in her pillow, so that the whole bed shook, and when
she was a little calmer she asked: “And ... and ... was he good-looking?”
“Yes.” “And yet you complain?” “But ... but ... don’t you see, my dear, he
said ... he said ... he should come again to-morrow ... at the same time ... and
I ... I am terribly frightened.... You have no idea how tenacious he is and
obstinate.... What can I do ... tell me ... what can I do?”
The little Marchioness sat up in bed to reflect, and then she suddenly said:
“Have him arrested!”
The little Baroness looked stupefied, and stammered out: “What do you
say? What are you thinking of? Have him arrested? Under what pretext?”
“That is very simple. Go to the Commissary of Police and say that a
gentleman has been following you about for three months; that he had the
insolence to go up to your apartments yesterday; that he has threatened you
with another visit to-morrow, and that you demand the protection of the law,
and they will give you two police officers, who will arrest him.”
“But, my dear, suppose he tells....” “They will not believe him, you silly
thing, if you have told your tale cleverly to the commissary, but they will
believe you, who are an irreproachable woman, and in society.” “Oh! I shall
never dare to do it.” “You must dare, my dear, or you are lost.” “But think
that he will ... he will insult me if he is arrested.” “Very well, you will have
witnesses, and he will be sentenced.” “Sentenced to what?” “To pay
damages. In such cases, one must be pitiless!” “Ah! speaking of damages....
There is one thing that worries me very much ... very much indeed.... He left
me two twenty franc pieces on the mantelpiece.” “Two twenty franc pieces?”
“Yes.” “No more?” “No.” “That is very little. It would have humiliated me.
Well?” “Well! What am I to do with that money?”
The little Marchioness hesitated for a few seconds, and then she replied in
a serious voice:
“My dear ... you must make ... you must make your husband a little present
with it.... That will be only fair!”
 UGLY

Certainly, at this blessed epoch of Equality of mediocrity, of rectangular

abomination, as Edgar Poe says, at this delightful period, when everybody
dreams of resembling everybody else, so that it has become impossible to
tell the President of the Republic from a waiter; in these days, which are the
forerunners of that promising, blissful day, when everything in this world
will be of a dully, neuter uniformity, certainly at such an epoch, one has the
right, or rather it is one’s duty, to be ugly.
He, however, assuredly, exercised that right with the most cruel vigor, and
he fulfilled that duty with the fiercest heroism, and to make matters worse,
the mysterious irony of fate had caused him to be born with the name of
Lebeau, while an ingenious godfather, the unconscious accomplice of the
pranks of destiny, had given him the Christian name of Antinous.
Even among our contemporaries, who were already on the high road to the
coming ideal of universal ugliness, Antinous Lebeau was remarkable for his
ugliness, and one might have said that he positively threw zeal, too much
zeal, into the matter, though he was not hideous like Mirabeau, who made the
people exclaim: “Oh! the beautiful monster!”
Alas! No. He was without any beauty, even without the beauty of ugliness.
He was ugly, that was all; nothing more nor less; in short, he was uglily ugly.
He was not humpbacked, nor knock-kneed, nor pot-bellied; his legs were not
like a pair of tongs, and his arms were neither too long nor too short, and yet,
there was an utter lack of uniformity about him, not only in painters’ eyes, but
also in everybody’s, for nobody could meet him in the street without turning
to look after him, and thinking: “Good heavens! What an object.”
His hair was of no particular color; a light chestnut, mixed with yellow.
There was not much of it, but still, he was not absolutely bald, but quite bald
enough to allow his butter-colored pate to show. Butter-colored? Hardly!
The color of margarine would be more applicable, and such pale margarine.
His face was also like margarine, but of adulterated margarine, certainly.
By the side of it, his cranium, the color of unadulterated margarine, looked
almost like butter, by comparison.
 There was very little to say about his mouth! Less than little; the sum total
was — nothing. It was a chimerical mouth.
But take it, that I have said nothing about him, and let us replace this vain
description by the useful formula: Impossible to describe him. But you must
not forget that Antinous Lebeau was ugly, that the fact impressed everybody
as soon as they saw him, and that nobody remembered ever having seen an
uglier person; and let us add, that as the climax of his misfortune, he thought
so himself.
From this you will see that he was not a fool, but, then, he was not ill-
natured, either; but, of course, he was unhappy. An unhappy man thinks only
of his wretchedness, and people take his night cap for a fool’s cap, while, on
the other hand, goodness is only esteemed when it is cheerful. Consequently,
Antinous Lebeau passed for a fool, and an ill-tempered fool, and he was not
even pitied because he was so ugly.
He had only one pleasure in life, and that was to go and roam about the
darkest streets on dark nights, and to hear the street-walkers say:
“Come home with me, you handsome, dark man!”
It was, alas! a furtive pleasure, and he knew that it was not true. For,
occasionally, when the woman was old or drunk and he profited by the
invitation, as soon as the candle was lighted in the garret, they no longer
murmured the fallacious: handsome, dark man; and when they saw him, the
old women grew still older, and the drunken women got sober. And more
than one, although hardened against disgust, and ready for all risks, said to
him, and in spite of his liberal payment:
“My little man, you are most confoundedly ugly, I must say.”
At last, however, he renounced even that lamentable pleasure, when he
heard the still more lamentable words which a wretched woman could not
help uttering when he went home with her:
“Well, he must have been very hungry!”
Alas! He was hungry, unhappy man; hungry for love, for something that
should resemble love, were it ever so little; he longed not to live like a
pariah any more, not to be exiled and proscribed in his ugliness. And the
ugliest, the most repugnant woman would have appeared beautiful to him, if
she would only have not consented to think him ugly, or, at any rate, not to tell
him so, and not to let him see that she felt horror at him on that account.
The consequence was, that, when he one day met a poor, blear-eyed
creature, with her face covered with scabs, and bearing evident signs of
alcoholism, with a driveling mouth, and ragged and filthy petticoats, to whom
he gave liberal alms, for which she kissed his hand, he took her home with
him, had her clean dressed and taken care of, made her his servant, and then
his housekeeper. Next he raised her to the rank of his mistress, and, finally, of
course, he married her.
She was almost as ugly as he was! She really was; but only, almost.
Almost, but certainly not quite; for she was hideous, and her hideousness had
its charm and its beauty, no doubt; that something by which a woman can
attract a man. And she had proved that by deceiving him, and she let him see
it better still, by seducing another man.
That other was actually uglier than he was.
He was certainly uglier, that collection of every physical and moral
ugliness, that companion of beggars whom she had picked up among her
former vagrant associates, that jailbird, that dealer in little girls, that
vagabond covered with filth, with legs like a toad’s, with a mouth like a
lamprey, and a death’s head, in which the nose had been replaced by two
holes.
“And you have wronged me with a wretch like that,” the poor cuckold
said. “And in my own house! and in such a manner that I might catch you in
the very act! And why, why, you wretch? Why, seeing that he is uglier than I
am?”
“Oh! no,” she exclaimed. “You may say what you like, but do not say that
he is uglier than you are.”
And the unhappy man stood there, vanquished and overcome by her last
words, which she uttered without understanding all the horror which he
would feel at them.
“Because, you see, he has his own particular ugliness, while you are
merely ugly like everybody else is.”
 WOMAN’S WILES

“Women?”
“Well, what do you say about women?”
“Well, there are no conjurors more subtle in taking us in at every
available opportunity with or without reason, often for the sole pleasure of
playing tricks on us. And they play these tricks with incredible simplicity,
astonishing audacity, unparalleled ingenuity. They play tricks from morning
till night, and they all do it — the most virtuous, the most upright, the most
sensible of them. You may add that sometimes they are to some extent driven
to do these things. Man has always idiotic fits of obstinacy and tyrannical
desires. A husband is continually giving ridiculous orders in his own house.
He is full of caprices; his wife plays on them even while she makes use of
them for the purpose of deception. She persuades him that a thing costs so
much because he would kick up a row if its price were higher. And she
always extricates herself from the difficulty cunningly by a means so simple
and so sly that we gape with amazement when by chance we discover them.
We say to ourselves in a stupefied state of mind ‘How is it we did not see
this till now?’”

The man who uttered the words was an ex-Minister of the Empire, the
Comte de L —— , a thorough profligate, it was said, and a very
accomplished gentleman. A group of young men were listening to him.
He went on:
“I was outwitted by an ordinary uneducated woman in a comic and
thorough-going fashion. I will tell you about it for your instruction.
“I was at the time Minister for Foreign Affairs, and I was in the habit of
taking a long walk every morning in the Champs Elysees. It was the month of
May; I walked along, sniffing in eagerly that sweet odor of budding leaves.
“Ere long, I noticed, that I used to meet every day a charming little
woman, one of those marvelous, graceful creatures, who bear the trade-mark
of Paris. Pretty? Well, yes and no. Well-made? No, better than that: her waist
was too slight, her shoulders too narrow, her breast too full, no doubt; but I
prefer those exquisite human dolls to that great statuesque corpse, the Venus
of Milo.
“And then this sort of woman trots along in an incomparable fashion, and
the very rustle of her skirt fills the marrow of your bones with desire. She
seemed to give me a side-glance as she passed me. But these women give
you all sorts of looks — you never can tell....
“One morning, I saw her sitting on a bench with an open book between her
hands. I came across, and sat down beside her. Five minutes later, we were
friends. Then, each day, after the smiling salutation ‘Good day, Madame,’
‘Good day, Monsieur,’ we began to chat. She told me that she was the wife of
a Government clerk, that her life was a sad one, that in it pleasures were few
and cares numerous, and a thousand other things.
“I told her who I was, partly through thoughtlessness, and partly perhaps
through vanity. She pretended to be much astonished.
“Next day, she called at the Ministry to see me; and she came again there
so often that the ushers, having their attention drawn to her appearance, used
to whisper to one another, as soon as they saw her, the name with which they
had christened her ‘Madame Leon’ that is my Christian name.
“For three months I saw her every morning without growing tired of her
for a second, so well was she able incessantly to give variety and piquancy
to her physical attractiveness. But one day I saw that her eyes were
bloodshot and glowing with suppressed tears, that she could scarcely speak,
so much was she preoccupied with secret troubles.
“I begged of her, I implored of her, to tell me what was the cause of her
agitation.
“She faltered out at length with a shudder: ‘I am — I am pregnant!’
“And she burst out sobbing. Oh! I made a dreadful grimace, and I have no
doubt I turned pale, as men generally do at hearing such a piece of news. You
cannot conceive what an unpleasant stab you feel in your breast at the
announcement of an unexpected paternity of this kind. But you are sure to
know it sooner or later. So, in my turn, I gasped: ‘But — but — you are
married, are you not?’
“She answered: ‘Yes, but my husband has been away in Italy for the last
two months, and he will not be back for some time.’
“I was determined at any cost to get out of my responsibility.
“I said: ‘You must go and join him immediately.’
 “She reddened to her very temples, and with downcast eyes, murmured:
‘Yes — but— ‘ She either dared not or would not finish the sentence.
“I understood, and I prudently enclosed her in an envelope the expenses of
the journey.

“Eight days later, she sent me a letter from Genoa. The following week, I
received one from Florence. Then letters reached me from Leghorn, Rome,
and Naples.
“She said to me: ‘I am in good health, my dear love, but I am looking
frightful. I would not care to have you see me till it is all over; you would not
love me. My husband suspects nothing. As his business in this country will
require him to stay there much longer, I will not return to France till after my
confinement.’
“And, at the end of about eight months, I received from Venice these few
words: ‘It is a boy.’
“Some time after, she suddenly entered my study one morning, fresher and
prettier than ever, and flung herself into my arms.
“And our former connection was renewed.
“I left the Ministry, and she came to live in my house in the Rue de
Grenelle. She often spoke to me about the child, but I scarcely listened to
what she said about it; it did not concern me. Now and then I placed a rather
large sum of money in her hand, saying: ‘Put that by for him.’
“Two more years glided by; and she was more eager to tell me some news
about the youngster— ‘about Leon.’
“Sometimes she would say in the midst of tears: ‘You don’t care about
him; you don’t even wish to see him. If you know what grief you cause me!’
“At last I was so much harassed by her that I promised, one day, to go,
next morning, to the Champs Elysees, when she took the child there for an
airing.
“But at the moment when I was leaving the house, I was stopped by a
sudden apprehension. Man is weak and foolish. What if I were to get fond of
this tiny being of whom I was the father — my son?
“I had my hat on my head, my gloves in my hands. I flung down the gloves
on my desk, and my hat on a chair:
“No. Decidedly I will not go; it is wiser not to go.’
“My door flew open. My brother entered the room. He handed me an
anonymous letter he had received that morning:
 “‘Warn the Comte de L —— , your brother, that the little woman of the
Rue Casette is impudently laughing at him. Let him make some inquiries
about her.’
“I had never told anybody about this intrigue, and I now told my brother
the history of it from the beginning to the end. I added:
“For my part, I don’t want to trouble myself any further about the matter;
but will you, like a good fellow, go and find out what you can about her?
“When my brother had left me, I said to myself: ‘In what way can she have
deceived me? She has other lovers? What does it matter to me? She is young,
fresh, and pretty; I ask nothing more from her. She seems to love me, and as a
matter of fact, she does not cost me much. Really, I don’t understand this
business.’
“My brother speedily returned. He had learned from the police all that
was to be known about her husband: ‘A clerk in the Home Department, of
regular habits and good repute, and, moreover, a thinking man, but married to
a very pretty woman, whose expenses seemed somewhat extravagant for her
modest position.’ That was all.
“Now, my brother having sought for her at her residence, and finding that
she was gone out, succeeded, with the assistance of a little gold, in making
the doorkeeper chatter: ‘Madame D —— , a very worthy woman, and her
husband a very worthy man, not proud, not rich, but generous.’
“My brother asked for the sake of saying something:
“‘How old is her little boy now?’
“‘Why, she has not got any little boy, monsieur.’
“‘What? Little Leon?’
“‘No, monsieur, you are making a mistake.’
“‘I mean the child she had while she was in Italy, two years ago?’
“‘She has never been in Italy, monsieur; she has not quitted the house she
is living in for the last five years.’
“My brother, in astonishment, questioned the doorkeeper anew, and then
he pushed his investigation of the matter further. No child, no journey.
“I was prodigiously astonished, but without clearly understanding the final
meaning of this comedy.
“‘I want,’ said I to him, ‘to have my mind perfectly clear about the affair. I
will ask her to come here to-morrow. You shall receive her instead of me. If
she has deceived me, you will hand her these ten thousand francs, and I will
never see her again. In fact, I am beginning to find I have had enough of her.’
 “Would you believe it? I had been grieved the night before because I had a
child by this woman; and I was now irritated, ashamed, wounded at having
no more of her. I found myself free, released from all responsibility, from all
anxiety, and yet I felt myself raging at the position in which I was placed.
“Next morning my brother awaited her in my study. She came in as quickly
as usual, rushing towards him with outstretched arms, but when she saw who
it was she at once drew back.
“He bowed, and excused himself.
“‘I beg your pardon, madame, for being here instead of my brother, but he
has authorized me to ask you for some explanations which he would find it
painful to seek from you himself.’
“Then, fixing on her face a searching glance, he said abruptly:
“‘We know you have not a child by him.’
“After the first moment of stupor, she regained her composure, took a seat,
and gazed with a smile at this man who was sitting in judgment on her.
“She answered simply:
“‘No; I have no child.’
“‘We know also that you have never been in Italy.’
“This time she burst out laughing in earnest.
“‘No, I have never been in Italy.’
“My brother, quite stunned, went on:
“‘The Comte has requested me to give you this money, and tell you that it
is all broken off.’
“She became serious again, calmly putting the money into her pocket, and,
in an ingenuous tone asked:
“‘And I am not, then, to see the Comte any more?’
“‘No, madame.’
“She appeared to be annoyed, and in a passionless voice she said:
“‘So much the worse; I was very fond of him.’
“Seeing that she had made up her mind on the subject so resolutely, my
brother, smiling in his turn, said to her:
“‘Look here, now, tell me why you invented all this tricky yarn,
complicating it by bringing in the sham journey to Italy and the child?’”
She gazed at my brother in amazement, as if he had asked her a stupid
question, and replied:
“‘I say! How spiteful you are! Do you believe a poor little woman of the
people such as I am — nothing at all — could have for three years kept on
my hands the Comte de L —— , Minister, a great personage, a man of
fashion, wealthy and seductive, if she had not taken a little trouble about it?
Now it is all over. So much the worse. It couldn’t last for ever. None the less
I succeeded in doing it for three years. You will say many things to him on my
behalf.’
“She rose up. My brother continued questioning her:
“‘But — the child? You had one to show him?’
“‘Certainly — my sister’s child. She lent it to me. I’d bet it was she gave
you the information.’
“‘Good! And all those letters from Italy?’
“She sat down again so as to laugh at her ease.
“‘Oh! those letters — well, they were a bit of poetry. The Comte was not
a Minister of Foreign Affairs for nothing.’
“‘But — another thing?’
“Oh! the other thing is my secret. I don’t want to compromise anyone.’
“And bowing to him with a rather mocking smile, she left the room
without any emotion, an actress who had played her part to the end.”
And the Comte de L —— added by way of moral:
“So take care about putting your trust in that sort of turtle dove!”
 FLY

RECOLLECTIONS OF A BOATMAN
He said to us: “I saw some very funny things and some funny girls when I
was a boatman, and I have often been tempted to write a little book to be
called On the Seine, telling all about that careless and vigorous, that merry
and poor life, a life of robust and noisy enjoyment, which I led from the time
I was twenty until I was thirty.
“I was a mere understrapper without a half-penny, and now I am a man
who has made his money, who has spent large sums on a momentary caprice.
In my heart, I had a thousand modest and unrealizable desires which gilded
my existence with imaginary hopes, though now, I really do not know that any
fancy would make me get out of my armchair where I am dozing. How simple
and nice and good it is to live like this, between my office in Paris, and the
river at Argenteuil. For ten years, the Seine was my only, my absorbing
passion. Ah! that beautiful, calm, diversified and stinking river, full of mirage
and filth. I think I loved it so much because it seemed to give me a sense of
life. Oh! what walks I had along the grassy banks, where my friends the frogs
were dreaming on the leaf of a nenuphar, and where the coquettish and
delicate water lilies suddenly opened to me, behind a willow, a leaf of a
Japanese album, and when the kingfisher flashed past me like a blue flame!
How I loved it all, with the instinctive love of eyes which seemed to be all
over my body, and with a natural and profound joy.
“Just as other men keep the recollection of sweet and tender nights, so I
remember sunrises in the morning mist, floating, wandering vapors, which
were as pale as death, before the sun rose, and then as its first rays glided
over the meadows, lighted up with a rosy tint, which delighted the heart. And
then again, I have recollections of the moon silvering the running, trembling
water, with a brightness which made dreams flourish. And all this, the
symbol of eternal illusions, rose up in me on that turbid water, which was
carrying all the filth of Paris towards the sea.
“And then, what a merry life it was, with my companions. There were five
of us, a band of grave men we are now; and as we were all poor, we had
founded an inexpressible colony in a horrible eating house at Argenteuil, and
which possessed only one bedroom, where I have certainly spent some of the
maddest nights of my life. We cared for nothing except for amusing ourselves
and rowing, for we all worshiped the oar, with one exception. I remember
such singular adventures, such unlikely tricks invented by those five rascals,
that no one would believe them at present. People do not live like that any
longer, even on the Seine, for our mad fancies which we kept up, have died
out now.
“We five only possessed one boat, which we had bought with great
difficulty, and on which we laughed, as we shall never laugh again. It was a
large yawl, called The Leaf Turned Upside Down, rather heavy, but spacious
and comfortable. I shall not describe my companions to you. There was one
little fellow, called Petit Bleu, who was very sharp; a tall man, with a
savage look, gray eyes and black hair, who was nick-named Tomahawk, the
only one who never touched an oar, as he said he should upset the boat; a
slender, elegant man, who was very careful about his person, and whom we
called Only-One-Eye, in remembrance of a recent story about Cladel, and
because he wore a single eyeglass, and, lastly, I, who had been baptized
Joseph Prunier. We lived together in perfect harmony, and our only regret
was that we had no boatwoman, for a woman’s presence is almost
indispensable on a boat, because it keeps the men’s wits and hearts on the
alert, because it animates them, and wakes them up and she looks well
walking on the green banks with a red parasol. But we did not want an
ordinary boatwoman for us five, for we were not very like the rest of the
world. We wanted something unexpected, funny, ready for everything,
something, in short, which it would be almost impossible to find. We had
tried many without success, girls who had held the tiller, imbecile
boatwomen who always preferred wine that intoxicates to water which flows
and carries the yawls. We kept them for one Sunday, and then got rid of them
in disgust.
“Well, one Saturday afternoon, Only-One-Eye brought us a little thin,
lively, jumping, chattering girl, full of drollery, of that drollery which is the
substitute for wit among the youthful male and female workpeople who have
developed in the streets of Paris. She was nice looking without being pretty,
the outline of a woman who had some of everything, one of those silhouettes
which draftsmen draw in three strokes on the table in a café after dinner,
between a glass of brandy and a cigarette. Nature is like that, sometimes.
 “The first evening she surprised us, amused us, and we could not form any
opinion about her, so unexpectedly had she come among us; but having fallen
into this nest of men, who were all ready for any folly, she was soon mistress
of the situation, and the very next day she made a conquest of each one of us.
She was quite cracked, into the bargain, and must have been born with a
glass of absinthe in her stomach, which her mother drank at the moment she
was being delivered, and she never got sober since, for her wet nurse, so she
said, recruited her strength with draughts of rum, and she never called the
bottles which were standing in a line at the back of the wine merchant’s shop
anything but ‘My holy family.’
“I do not know which of us gave her the name of Fly, nor why it was
given her, but it suited her very well, and stuck to her, and our yawl every
week carried five merry, strong young fellows on the Seine between
Asnières and Maison Lafitte, who were ruled from under a parasol of
colored paper, by a lively and madcap young person, who treated us like
slaves whose business it was to row her about, and whom we were all very
fond of.
“We were all very fond of her, for a thousand reasons first of all, but for
only one, afterwards. In the stern of our boat, she was a kind of small word
mill, chattering to the wind which blew on the water. She chattered
ceaselessly, with that slight, continuous noise of those pieces of winged
mechanism which turn in the breeze, and she thoughtlessly said the most
unexpected, the funniest, the most astonishing things. In that mind, all the
parts of which seemed dissimilar, like rags of all kinds and of every color,
not sewn, but merely tacked together, there appeared to be as much
imagination as in a fairy tale, a good deal of coarseness, indecency,
impudence and of the unexpected, and as much breeziness and landscapes as
in a balloon voyage.
“We put questions to her, in order to call forth answers which she had
found, no one could tell where, and the one with which we teased her most
frequently was: ‘Why are you called Fly?’ And she gave us such unlikely
reasons that we left off rowing, in order to laugh. But she pleased us also as
a woman; and La Toque, who never rowed, and who sat by her side at the
tiller the whole day long, once replied to the usual question: ‘Why are you
called Fly?’ ‘Because she is a little Spanish fly.’
“Yes, a little buzzing, exciting fly, not the classical, poisonous, brilliant
and mantled Spanish fly, but a little Spanish fly with red wings, which began
to disturb the whole crew of The Leaf Turned Upside Down. And what
stupid jokes were also made about this leaf where this fly had alighted!
“Since the arrival of Fly on our boat, Only-One-Eye had taken a leading,
superior part among us, the part of a gentleman who has a wife, towards four
others who have not got one, and he abused that privilege so far as to kiss Fly
in our presence, when he put her on his knee after meals, and by other
prerogatives, which were as humiliating as they were irritating.
“They had been isolated in the sleeping-room by means of a curtain, but I
soon perceived that my companions and I had the same arguments in our
minds, in our solitude: ‘Why, and in virtue of what law of exception, or of
what unacceptable principle, should Fly, who does not appear troubled by
any prejudices, remain faithful to her lover, while wives in the best are not
faithful to their husbands.’
“Our reflections were quite right, and we were soon convinced of it, and
we ought only to have made them sooner, so as not to have needed to regret
any lost time, for Fly deceived Only-One-Eye, with all the others of the crew
of the Leaf Turned Upside Down, and she deceived him without making any
difficulties, without any resistance, the first time any of us asked her.
“Of course, modest people will be terribly shocked! But why? What
courtesan who happens to be in the fashion, but has a dozen lovers, and
which of those lovers is stupid enough not to know it? Is it not the correct
thing to have an evening at the house of a celebrated and marked courtesan,
just as one has an evening at the Opéra, the Théâtre Français or the Odeon?
Ten men subscribe together to keep a mistress just as they do to possess a
race horse, which only one jockey mounts, and this is a correct picture of the
favored lover who does not pay anything.
“From delicacy they left Fly to Only-One-Eye from Saturday night to
Monday morning, and we only deceived him during the week, in Paris, from
the Seine, which, for boatmen like us, was hardly deceiving him at all. The
situation had this peculiarity, that the four freebooters of Fly’s favors were
quite aware of this partition of her among themselves, and that they spoke of
it to each other, and even then, with allusions that made her laugh very much.
Only-One-Eye alone seemed to know nothing, and that peculiar position gave
rise to some embarrassment between him and us, and seemed to separate him
from us, to isolate him, to raise a barrier across our former confidence and
our former intimacy. That gave him a difficult and a rather ridiculous part to
play towards us, the part of a deceived lover, almost a husband’s part.
 “As he was very clever and gifted with the special faculty of not showing
what he felt, we sometimes asked each other whether he did not guess
anything, and he took care to let us know, in a manner that was painful for us.
We were going to breakfast at Bougival, and we were rowing vigorously,
when La Toque, who had, that morning, the triumphant look of a man who
was satisfied, and who, sitting by the steers-woman, seemed to squeeze
himself rather too close to her, in our estimation, stopped the rowing by
calling out: ‘Stop!’
“The four oars were drawn out of the water, and then, turning to his
neighbor, he said to her: ‘Why were you called Fly?’ But before she could
reply, the voice of Only-One-Eye, who was sitting in the bows, said dryly:
‘Because she settles on all the carrion.’
“There was a dead silence, and an embarrassed pause, which was
followed by an inclination to laugh, while Fly herself looked very much
confused, and La Toque gave the order: ‘Row on, all;’ and the boat started
again. The incident was closed, and light let in upon the subject, and that
little adventure made no difference in our habits, but it only re-established
cordiality between Only-One-Eye and us. He once more became the honored
proprietor of the Fly from Saturday night until Monday morning, as his
superiority over all of us had been thoroughly established by that definition,
which, moreover, closed one of the questions about the word Fly. For the
future we were satisfied with playing the secondary part of grateful and
polite friends who profited discreetly by the week days, without any
contention of any kind among ourselves.
“That answered very well for about three months, but then suddenly Fly
assumed a strange attitude towards us. She was less merry, nervous, uneasy,
and almost irritable, and we frequently asked her: ‘What is the matter with
you?’ And she replied: ‘Nothing; leave me alone.’
“Only-One-Eye told us what was the matter with her, one Saturday
evening. We had just sat down to table in the little dining-room which our
eating house keeper, Barbichon, reserved for us at his inn, and, the soup
being finished, we were waiting for the fried fish, when our friend, who also
appeared thoughtful, took Fly’s hand and said: ‘My dear comrades, I have a
very grave communication to make to you, and one that may, perhaps, give
rise to a prolonged discussion, but we shall have to argue between the
courses. Poor Fly has announced a piece of disastrous news to me, and at the
same time has asked me to tell it to you: She is pregnant, and I will only add
two words. This is not the moment to abandon her, and it is forbidden to try
and find out who is the father.’
“At first we were stupefied, and felt as if some disaster had befallen us,
and we looked at each other with the longing to accuse some one, but whom?
Oh! Which of us? I have never felt as I did at that moment, the perfidy of that
cruel joke of nature, which never allows a man to know for certainty whether
he is the father of his child. Then, however, by degrees a sort of feeling of
consolation came over us and gave us comfort, which sprung from a confused
idea of joint responsibility.
“Tomahawk, who spoke but little, formulated a beginning of reassurance
by these words: ‘Well, so much the worse, by Jove: Union is Strength,
however.’ At that moment a scullion brought in the fried gudgeons, but they
did not fall to on them like they generally did, for they all had the same
trouble on their mind, and Only-One-Eye continued: ‘Under these
circumstances she has had the delicacy to confess everything to me. My
friends, we are all equally guilty, so let us shake hands and adopt the child.’
“That was decided upon unanimously; they raised their hands to the dish
of fried fish and swore: ‘We will adopt it.’ Then, when she was thus
suddenly saved, and delivered from the weight of the terrible anxiety that had
been tormenting her for a month, this pretty, crazy, poor child of love, Fly,
exclaimed: ‘Oh! my friends! my friends! You have kind, good hearts ... good
hearts.... Thank you, all of you!’ And she shed tears for the first time before
us all.
“From that time we spoke in the boat about the child, as if it were already
born, and each of us took an exaggerated interest, because of our share in the
matter, in the slow and regular development of our mistress’s waist, and we
stopped rowing in order to say: ‘Fly?’ ‘Here I am,’ she replied. ‘Boy or
girl?’ ‘Boy.’ ‘What will he be when he grows up?’
“Then she indulged in the most fantastic flights of fancy. They were
interminable stories, astounding inventions, from the day of his birth until his
final triumph. In the unsophisticated, passionate and moving fancy of this
extraordinary little creature, who now lived chastely in the midst of us five,
whom she called ‘her five papas.’ She saw him as a sailor, and told us that
he would discover another America; as a general, restoring Alsace and
Lorraine to France, then as an emperor, founding a dynasty of wise and
generous rulers who would bestow settled welfare on our country; then as a
learned man and natural philosopher, revealing, first of all, the secret of the
manufacture of gold, then that of living forever; then as an aeronaut, who
invented the means of soaring up to the stars, and of making the skies an
immense promenade for men; the realization of the most unforeseen and
magnificent dreams.
“How nice and how amusing she was, poor little girl, until the end of the
summer, but the twentieth of September dissipated her dream. We had come
back from breakfasting at the Maison Lafitte and were passing Saint-
Germain, when she felt thirsty and asked us to stop at Pecq.
“For some time past, she had been getting very heavy, and that
inconvenienced her very much. She could not run about as she used to do, nor
jump from the boat to the shore, as she had formerly done. She would try, in
spite of our warnings and efforts to stop her, and she would have fallen a
dozen times, had it not been that our restraining arms kept her back. On that
day, she was imprudent enough to wish to land before the boat had stopped; it
was one of those pieces of bravado by which athletes, who are ill or tired,
sometimes kill themselves, and at the very moment when we were going to
come alongside, she got up, took a spring and tried to jump onto the landing-
stage. She was not strong enough, however, and only just touched the stones
with her foot, struck the sharp angle with her stomach, uttered a cry and
disappeared into the water.
“We all five plunged in at the same moment, and pulled out the poor,
fainting woman, who was as pale as death, and was already suffering terrible
pain, and we carried her as quickly as possible to the nearest inn, and sent
for a medical man. For the six hours that her miscarriage lasted, she suffered
the most terrible pain with the courage of a heroine, while we were grieving
round her, feverish with anxiety and fear. Then she was delivered of a dead
child, and for some days we were in the greatest fear for her life; at last,
however, the doctor said to us one morning: ‘I think her life is saved. That
girl is made of steel,’ and we all of us went into her room, with radiant
hearts, and Only-One-Eye, as spokesman for us all, said to her: ‘The danger
is all over, little Fly, and we are all happy again.’
“Then, for the second time, she wept in our presence, and, with her eyes
full of tears, she said, hesitatingly:
“‘Oh! If you only knew, if you only knew ... what a grief it is ... what a
grief it is to me ... I shall never get over it.’ ‘Over what, little Fly?’ ‘Over
having killed it, for I did kill it! Oh! Without intending to! Oh! how grieved I
am!...’
 “She was sobbing, and we stood round, deeply touched, but without
knowing what to say, and she went on: ‘Have you seen it?’ And we replied
with one voice: ‘Yes.’ ‘It was a boy, was it not?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Beautiful, was it
not?’ We hesitated a good deal, but Petit-Bleu, who was less scrupulous than
the rest of us, made up his mind to affirm it, and said: ‘Very beautiful.’
“He committed a mistake, however, for she began to sob, and almost to
scream with grief, and Only-One-Eye, who perhaps loved her more than the
rest of us did, had a happy thought. Kissing her eyes, that were dimmed with
tears, he said: ‘Console yourself, little Fly, console yourself; we will make
another for you.’
“Her innate sense of the ridiculous was suddenly excited, and half-
convinced, and half-joking, still tearful and her heart sore with grief, she
said, looking at us all: ‘Do you really mean it?’ And we replied all at once:
“‘We really mean it.’”
 THE MAD WOMAN

“I can tell you a terrible story about the Franco-Prussian war,” Monsieur
d’Endolin said to some friends assembled in the smoking-room of Baron de
Ravot’s château. “You know my house in the Faubourg de Cormeil. I was
living there when the Prussians came, and I had for a neighbor a kind of a
mad woman, who had lost her senses in consequence of a series of
misfortunes, as at the age of seven and twenty she had lost her father, her
husband and her newly born child, all in the space of a month.
“When death has once entered into a house, it almost invariably returns
immediately, as if it knew the way, and the young woman, overwhelmed with
grief, took to her bed and was delirious for six weeks. Then, a species of
calm lassitude succeeded that violent crisis, and she remained motionless,
eating next to nothing, and only moving her eyes. Every time they tried to
make her get up, she screamed as if they were about to kill her, and so they
ended by leaving her continually in bed, and only taking her out to wash her,
to change her linen and to turn her mattress.
“An old servant remained with her, who gave her something to drink, or a
little cold meat, from time to time. What passed in that despairing mind? No
one ever knew, for she did not speak at all now. Was she thinking of the
dead? Was she dreaming sadly, without any precise recollection of anything
that had happened? Or was her memory as stagnant as water without any
current? But however this may have been, for fifteen years she remained thus
inert and secluded.
“The war broke out, and in the beginning of December the Germans came
to Cormeil. I can remember it as if it were but yesterday. It was freezing hard
enough to split the stones, and I, myself, was lying back in an armchair, being
unable to move on account of the gout, when I heard their heavy and regular
tread; I could see them pass, from my window.
“They defiled past interminably, with that peculiar motion of a puppet on
wires, which belongs to them. Then the officers billeted their men on the
inhabitants, and I had seventeen of them. My neighbor, the crazy woman, had
a dozen, one of whom was the Commandant, a regular violent, surly
swashbuckler.
“During the first few days everything went on as usual. The officers next
door had been told that the lady was ill, and they did not trouble themselves
about that in the least, but soon, that woman whom they never saw, irritated
them. They asked what her illness was, and were told that she had been in
bed for fifteen years, in consequence of terrible grief. No doubt they did not
believe it, and thought that the poor mad creature would not leave her bed out
of pride, so that she might not come near the Prussians, not speak to them, nor
even see them.
“He insisted upon her receiving him, and he was shown into the room, and
said to her roughly: ‘I must beg you to get up, Madame, and to come
downstairs so that we may all see you,’ but she merely turned her vague eyes
on him, without replying, and so he continued: ‘I do not intend to tolerate any
insolence, and if you do not get up of your own accord, I can easily find
means to make you walk without any assistance.’
“But she did not give any signs of having heard him, and remained quite
motionless, and then he got furious, as he took that calm silence for a mark of
supreme contempt, and so he added: ‘If you do not come downstairs to-
morrow....’ And then he left the room.”

“The next day the terrified old servant wished to dress her, but the mad
woman began to scream violently, and resisted with all her might. The officer
ran upstairs quickly, and the servant threw herself at his feet and cried: ‘She
will not come down, Monsieur, she will not. Forgive her, for she is so
unhappy.’
“The soldier was embarrassed, as in spite of his anger, he did not venture
to order his soldiers to drag her out, but suddenly he began to laugh, and gave
some orders in German, and soon a party of soldiers was seen coming out
supporting a mattress as if they were carrying a wounded man. On that bed,
which had not been unmade, the mad woman, who was still silent, was lying
quite quietly, for she was quite indifferent to anything that went on, as long as
they let her lie. Behind her, a soldier was carrying a parcel of feminine attire,
and the officer said, rubbing his hands: ‘We will just see whether you cannot
dress yourself alone, and take a little walk.’
“And then the procession went off in the direction of the forest of
Imauville; in two hours the soldiers came back alone, and nothing more was
seen of the mad woman. What had they done with her? Where had they taken
her to? No one knew.
“The snow was falling day and night, and enveloped the plain and the
woods in a shroud of frozen foam, and the wolves came and howled at our
very doors.
“The thought of that poor lost woman haunted me, and I made several
applications to the Prussian authorities in order to obtain some information,
and was nearly shot for doing so. When spring returned, the army of
occupation withdrew, but my neighbor’s house remained closed; the grass
grew thick in the garden walks. The old servant had died during the winter,
and nobody troubled himself any longer about the occurrence; I alone thought
about it constantly. What had they done with the woman? Had she escaped
through the forest? Had somebody found her, and taken her to a hospital,
without being able to obtain any information from her? Nothing happened to
relieve my doubts; but, by degrees, time assuaged my fears.
“Well, in the following autumn the woodcock were very plentiful, and as
my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as the forest. I had
already killed four or five of the long-billed birds, when I knocked over one,
which fell into a ditch full of branches, and I was obliged to get into it, in
order to pick it up, and I found that it had fallen close to a dead human body,
and immediately the recollection of the mad woman struck me, like a blow in
the chest. Many other people had perhaps died in the wood during that
disastrous year, but I do not know why, yet I was sure, sure, I tell you, that I
should see the head of that wretched maniac.
“And suddenly I understood, I guessed everything. They had abandoned
her on that mattress in the cold, deserted wood; and, faithful to her fixed idea,
she had allowed herself to perish under that thick and light counterpane of
snow, without moving either arms or legs.
“Then the wolves had devoured her, and the birds had built their nests
with the wool from her torn bed, and I took charge of her remains, and I only
pray that our sons may never see any wars again.”
 THE WOODEN SHOES

The old priest was sputtering out the last words of his sermon over the white
caps of the peasant women, and the rough or pomatumed heads of the men.
The large baskets of the farmer’s wives who had come from a distance to
attend mass, were on the ground beside them, and the heavy heat of a July day
caused them all to exhale a smell like that of cattle, or of a flock of sheep,
and the cocks could be heard crowing through the large west door, which
was wide open, as well as the lowing of the cows in a neighboring field....
“As God wishes. Amen!” the priest said. Then he ceased, opened a book,
and, as he did every week, he began to give notice of all the small parish
events for the following week. He was an old man with white hair who had
been in the parish for over forty years, and from the pulpit he was in the habit
of discoursing familiarly to them all, and so he went on: “I recommend
Désiré Vallin, who is very ill, to your prayers, and also la Paumelle, who is
not recovering from her confinement satisfactorily.”
He had forgotten the rest, and so he looked for the slips of paper which
were put away in a breviary, and at last he found two and continued: “I will
not have the lads and the girls come into the churchyard in the evening, as
they do; otherwise I shall inform the rural policeman. Monsieur Césaire
Omont would like to find a respectable girl servant.” He reflected for a few
moments, and then added: “That is all, my brethren, and I wish that all of you
may find the Divine mercy.”
And he came down from the pulpit, to finish mass.
When the Malandains had returned to their cottage, which was the last in
the village of La Sablière, on the road to Fourville, the father, a thin,
wrinkled old peasant, sat down at the table, while his wife took the saucepan
off the fire, and Adelaide, the daughter, took the glasses and plates out of the
sideboard, and he said: “I think that place at Maître Omont’s ought to be a
good one, as he is a widower and his daughter-in-law does not like him. He
is all alone and has money. I think it would be a good thing to send Adelaide
there.”
 His wife put the black saucepan onto the table, took the lid off, and while
the steam, which smelt strongly of cabbage, rose into the air she reflected,
and he presently continued: “He has got some money, that is certain, but any
one going there ought to be very sharp, and Adelaide is not that at all.” And
his wife replied: “I might go and see, all the same,” and turning to her
daughter, a strapping, silly looking girl with yellow hair and fat red cheeks
like apples, she said: “Do you hear, you great silly? You are to go to Maître
Omont’s and offer yourself as his servant, and you will do whatever he tells
you.”
The girl began to laugh in a foolish manner, without replying, and then all
the three began their dinner. In ten minutes, the father continued: “Listen to
me, girl, and try not to make a mistake about what I am going to say to you ...”
And slowly and minutely he laid down for her her line of conduct,
anticipating the minutest details, and preparing her for the conquest of an old
widower who was on unfriendly terms with his family. The mother ceased
eating to listen to him, and she sat there, with her fork in her hand, looking at
her husband and her daughter by turns, and following every word with
concentrated and silent attention, while Adelaide remained listless, docile
and stupid, with vague and wandering eyes.
As soon as their meal was over, her mother made her put her cap on, and
they both started off to see Monsieur Césaire Omont. He lived in a small
brick house adjoining his tenants’ cottages, for he had retired, and was living
by subdividing and letting his land.
He was about fifty-five years old, and was stout, jovial and rough
mannered, as rich men often are. He laughed and shouted loud enough to
make the walls fall down, drank brandy and cider by the glassful, and was
still said to be of an amorous disposition, in spite of his age. He liked to
walk about his fields with his hands behind his back, digging his wooden
shoes into the fat soil, looking at the sprouting corn or the flowering colza
with the eye of an amateur at his ease, who likes to see it, but does not
trouble himself about it too much any longer, and they used to say of him:
“There is a Mr. Merry-man, who does not get up in a good temper every
day.”
He received the two women, with his fat stomach against the table, as he
was finishing his coffee, and turning round he said: “What do you want?”
The mother was spokeswoman. “This is our girl Adelaide, and I have
come to ask you to take her as servant, as Monsieur le curé told us you
wanted one.” Maître Omont looked at the girl, and then he said roughly:
“How old is the great she-goat?” “Twenty last Michaelmas-Day, Monsieur
Omont.” “That is settled, she will have fifteen francs a month and her food. I
shall expect her to-morrow, to make my soup in the morning.” And he
dismissed the two women.
The next day Adelaide entered upon her duties, and began to work hard,
without saying a word, as she was in the habit of doing at home, and at about
nine o’clock, as she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, Monsieur Omont called
her: “Adelaide!” She came immediately, saying: “Here I am, master.” As
soon as she was opposite him, with her red and neglected hands, and her
troubled looks, he said: “Now just listen to me, so that there may be no
mistake between us. You are my servant, but nothing else; you understand
what I mean. We shall keep our shoes apart.” “Yes, master.” “Each in our
own place, my girl, you in your kitchen; I in my dining room, and with that
exception, everything will be for you just as it is for me. Is that settled?”
“Yes, master.” “Very well; that is all right, and now go to your work.”
And she went out to attend to her duties and at midday she served up her
master’s dinner in the little drawing-room with the flowered paper on the
walls, and then, when the soup was on the table, she went to tell him.
“Dinner is ready, master.”
He went in, and sat down, looked round, unfolded his table napkin,
hesitated for a moment and then in a voice of thunder he shouted:
“Adelaide!” She rushed in terribly frightened, for he had shouted as if he
meant to murder her. “Well, in heaven’s name, where is your place?” “But, ...
master ...” “I do not like to eat alone,” he roared; “you will sit there, or go to
the devil, if you don’t choose to do so. Go and get your plate and glass.”
She brought them in, feeling very frightened, and stammered: “Here I am,
master,” and then sat down opposite to him, and he grew jovial; clinked
glasses with her, rapped the table, and told her stories to which she listened
with downcast eyes, without daring to say a word, and from time to time she
got up to fetch some bread, cider or plates. When she brought in the coffee
she only put one cup before him, and then he grew angry again, and growled:
“Well, what about yourself?” “I never take any, master.” “Why not?”
“Because I do not like it.”
Then he burst out afresh: “I am not fond of having my coffee by myself,
confound it! If you will not take it here, you can go to the devil. Go and get a
cup, and make haste about it.”
 So she went and fetched a cup, sat down again, tasted the black liquor and
made faces over it, but swallowed it to the last drop, under her master’s
furious looks. Then he made her also drink her first glass of brandy as an
extra drop, the second as a livener and the third as a kick behind, and then he
told her to go and wash up her plates and dishes, adding, that she was “a
good sort of a girl.”
It was the same at dinner, and then she had to play dominoes with him,
after which he sent her to bed, saying that he should come upstairs soon. And
she went to her room, a garret under the roof, and after saying her prayers,
she undressed and got into bed, but very soon she sprung up in a fright, for a
furious shout had shaken the house. “Adelaide!” She opened her door, and
replied from her attic: “Here I am, master.” “Where are you?” “In bed, of
course, master.” Then he roared out: “Will you come downstairs, in heaven’s
name? I do not like to sleep alone, and by G —— and if you object, you can
just go at once.”
Then in her terror, she replied from upstairs: “I will come, master,” as she
looked for her candle, and he heard her small clogs pattering down the stairs,
and when she had got to the bottom steps, he seized her by the arm, and as
soon as she had left her light wooden shoes by the side of her master’s heavy
boots, he pushed her into his room, growling out: “Quicker than that,
confound it!”
And she repeated continually, without knowing what she was saying:
“Here I am, here I am, master.”

Six months later, when she went to see her parents one Sunday, her father
looked at her curiously, and then said: “Are you not in the family way?” She
remained thunderstruck, and looked at her waist, and then said: “No, I do not
think so.”
Then he asked her, for he wanted to know everything: “Just tell me, didn’t
you mix your clogs together, one night?” “Yes, I mixed them the first night,
and then every other night.” “Well, then you are full, you great tub!”
On hearing that, she began to sob, and stammered: “How could I know?
How was I to know?” Old Malandain looked at her knowingly, and appeared
very pleased, and then he asked: “What did you not know?” And amid tears
she replied: “How was I to know that children were made in that way?” And
when her mother came back, the man said, without any anger: “There, she is
in the family way, now.”
 But the woman was furious, her woman’s instinct revolted, and she called
her daughter, who was in tears, every name she could think of, “a trollop”
and “a strumpet.” Then, however, the old man made her hold her tongue, and
as he took up his cap to go and talk the matter over with Master Césaire
Omont, he remarked: “She is actually more stupid than I thought she was; she
did not even know what he was doing, the fool!”
On the next Sunday, after the sermon, the old Curé published the banns
between Monsieur Onufre-Césaire Omont and Celesté-Adelaide Malandain.
 A COCK CROWED

Madame Berthe d’Avancelles had up till that time resisted all the prayers of
her despairing adorer, Baron Joseph de Croissard. He had pursued her
ardently in Paris during the winter, and now he was giving fêtes and shooting
parties in her honor at his Château at Carville, in Normandy.
Monsieur d’Avancelles, her husband, saw nothing and knew nothing, as
usual. It was said that he lived apart from his wife on account of physical
weakness, for which Madame d’Avancelles would not pardon him. He was a
short, stout, bald man, with short arms, legs, neck, nose and everything else,
while Madame d’Avancelles, on the contrary, was a tall, dark and
determined young woman, who laughed in her husband’s face with sonorous
laughter, while he called her openly Mrs. Housewife, who looked at the
broad shoulders, strong build and fair moustaches of her titled admirer,
Baron Joseph de Croissard, with a certain amount of tenderness.
She had not, however, granted him anything as yet. The baron was ruining
himself for her, and there was a constant round of fêting, hunting parties and
new pleasures, to which he invited the neighboring nobility. All day long the
hounds gave tongue in the woods, as they followed the fox or the wild boar,
and every night dazzling fireworks mingled their burning plumes with the
boars, while the illuminated windows of the drawing-room cast long rays of
light onto the wide lawns, where shadows were moving to and fro.
It was autumn, the russet-colored season of the year, and the leaves were
whirling about on the grass like flights of birds. One noticed the smell of
damp earth in the air, of the naked earth, like one smells the odor of the bare
skin, when a woman’s dress falls off her, after a ball.
One evening, in the previous spring, during an entertainment, Madame
d’Avancelles had said to Monsieur de Croissard, who was worrying her by
his importunities: “If I do succumb to you, my friend, it will not be before the
fall of the leaf. I have too many things to do this summer to have any time for
it.” He had not forgotten that bold and amusing speech, and every day he
became more pressing, every day he pushed his approaches nearer — to use
a military phrase — and gained a step in the heart of the fair, audacious
woman, who seemed only to be resisting for form’s sake.
It was the day before a large wild-boar hunt, and in the evening Madame
Berthe said to the baron with a laugh: “Baron, if you kill the brute, I shall
have something to say to you.” And so, at dawn he was up and out, to try and
discover where the solitary animal had its lair. He accompanied his
huntsmen, settled the places for the relays, and organized everything
personally to insure his triumph, and when the horns gave the signal for
setting out, he appeared in a closely fitting coat of scarlet and gold, with his
waist drawn in tight, his chest expanded, his eyes radiant, and as fresh and
strong as if he had just got out of bed. They set off, and the wild boar set off
through the underwood as soon as he was dislodged, followed by the hounds
in full cry, while the horses set off at a gallop through the narrow sides cut in
the forest, while the carriage which followed the chase at a distance, drove
noiselessly along the soft roads.
From mischief, Madame d’Avancelles kept the baron by her side, and
lagging behind at a walk in an interminably long and straight drive, over
which four rows of oaks hung, so as to form almost an arch, while he,
trembling with love and anxiety, listened with one ear to the young woman’s
bantering chatter, while with the other he listened to the blast of the horns and
to the cry of the hounds as they receded in the distance.
“So you do not love me any longer?” she observed. “How can you say
such things?” he replied. And she continued: “But you seem to be paying
more attention to the sport than to me.” He groaned, and said: “Did you not
order me to kill the animal myself?” And she replied gravely: “Of course I
reckon upon it. You must kill it under my eyes.”
Then he trembled in his saddle, spurred his horse until it reared, and,
losing all patience, exclaimed: “But, by Jove, Madame, that is impossible if
we remain here.” Then she spoke tenderly to him, laying her hand on his arm,
or stroking his horse’s mane, as if from abstraction, and said with a laugh:
“But you must do it ... or else ... so much the worse for you.”
Just then they turned to the right, into a narrow path which was overhung
by trees, and suddenly, to avoid a branch which barred their way, she leaned
towards him so closely, that he felt her hair tickling his neck, and he suddenly
threw his arms brutally round her, and putting his thick moustache onto her
forehead, he gave her a furious kiss.
 At first she did not move, and remained motionless under that mad caress;
then she turned her head with a jerk, and either by accident or design her
little lips met his, under their wealth of light hair, and a moment afterwards,
either from confusion or remorse, she struck her horse with her riding-whip,
and went off at full gallop, and they rode on like that for some time, without
exchanging a look.
The noise of the hunt came nearer, the thickets seemed to tremble, and
suddenly the wild boar broke through the bushes, covered with blood, and
trying to shake off the hounds who had fastened onto him, and the baron,
uttering a shout of triumph, exclaimed: “Let him who loves me, follow me!”
And he disappeared in the copse, as if the wood had swallowed him up.
When she reached an open glade a few minutes later, he was just getting
up, covered with mud, his coat torn, and his hands bloody, while the brute
was lying stretched out at full length, with the baron’s hunting knife driven
into its shoulder up to the hilt.
The quarry was cut at night by torchlight. It was a warm and dull evening,
and the wan moon threw a yellow light onto the torches which made the night
misty with their resinous smoke. The hounds devoured the wild boar’s
stinking entrails, and snarled and fought for them, while the prickers and the
gentlemen, standing in a circle round the spoil, blew their horns as loud as
they could. The flourish of the hunting-horns resounded beyond the woods on
that still night and was repeated by the echoes of the distant valleys, awaking
the timid stags, rousing the yelping foxes, and disturbing the little rabbits in
their gambols at the edge of the rides.
The frightened night-birds flew over the eager pack of hounds, while the
women, who were moved by all these gentle and violent things, leaned rather
heavily on the men’s arms; and turned aside into the forest rides, before the
hounds had finished their meal, and Madame d’Avancelles, feeling languid
after that day of fatigue and tenderness, said to the baron: “Will you take a
turn in the park, my friend?” And without replying, but trembling and
nervous, he went with her, and immediately they kissed each other. They
walked slowly under the almost leafless trees through which the moonbeams
filtered, and their love, their desires, their longing for a closer embrace
became so vehement, that they nearly yielded to it at the foot of a tree.
The horns were not sounding any longer, and the tired hounds were
sleeping in the kennels. “Let us return,” the young woman said, and they went
back.
 When they got to the château and before they went in, she said in a weak
voice: “I am so tired that I shall go to bed, my friend.” And as he opened his
arms for a last kiss, she ran away, saying as a last good-bye: “No.... I am
going to sleep.... Let him who loves me follow me!”
An hour later, when the whole silent château seemed dead; the baron crept
stealthily out of his room, and went and scratched at her door, and as she did
not reply, he tried to open it, and found that it was not locked.
She was in a reverie, resting her arms against the window ledge, and he
threw himself at her knees, which he kissed madly, through the nightdress.
She said nothing, but buried her delicate fingers caressingly in his hair, and
suddenly, as if she had formed some great resolution, she whispered with her
daring look: “I shall come back, wait for me.” And stretching out her hand,
she pointed with her finger to an indistinct white spot at the end of the room;
it was her bed.
Then, with trembling hands and scarcely knowing what he was doing, he
quickly undressed, got into the cool sheets, and stretching himself out
comfortably, he almost forgot his love in the pleasure he found, tired out as
he was, in the contact of the linen. She did not return, however, no doubt
finding amusement in making him languish. He closed his eyes with a feeling
of exquisite comfort, and reflected peaceably while waiting for what he so
ardently longed for. But by degrees his limbs grew languid and his thoughts
became indistinct and fleeting, until his fatigue gained the upper hand and he
fell asleep.
He slept that unconquerable, heavy sleep of the worn-out hunter, and he
slept until daylight; and then, as the window had remained half open, the
crowing of a cock suddenly woke him, and the baron opened his eyes, and
feeling a woman’s body against his, finding himself, much to his surprise, in
a strange bed, and remembering nothing for a moment, he stammered:
“What? Where am I? What is the matter?”
Then she, who had not been asleep at all, looking at this unkempt man,
with red eyes and swollen lips, replied in the haughty tone of voice in which
she occasionally spoke to her husband:
“It is nothing; it is only a cock crowing. Go and sleep again, Monsieur, it
has nothing to do with you.”
 JULOT’S OPINION

The Duchess Huguette de Lionzac was very much infatuated with herself, but
then she had a perfect right to be, and who, in her place, would not have
shown a spice of conceit? There was no success which she had wished for,
that she had not attained. She had received a medal for sculpture at the Salon,
and at the Exhibition of Excessives she had shown a water-color which
looked eccentric, even there.
She had published a collection of poems which was crowned by the
French Academy, and a small volume of Rhythmic Prose of which the Revue
de lemain said, “That it showed the most subtle and evanescent performance
of those fugitive pieces which was sure to descend to posterity,” and when
she acted in private theatricals, some exclaimed:
“It is better than the Comedié Française,” while others, who were more
refined, went so far as to utter the supreme praise: “Better than the Théâtre
Libre.”
At one time, there had been a report, which had been propagated by the
newspapers, that she was going to come out at the Opéra Comique, in a part
that had been written especially for her extraordinary voice, for it appeared
that Massenet would not hear of anybody else for the part.
She was the circus-rider, Miss Edith, who, under that assumed name gave
that unique and never-to-be-forgotten exhibition of horsemanship, and you
remember what cheers there were, and what quantities of flowers covered
the arena! And you must not forget that this was before a paying public!
Then, it was notorious that she had carried off the lovers of several
celebrated courtesans, which was not one of the smallest of her triumphs, for
she had chosen as her rivals some of those terrible and hitherto unconquered
women, of whom it was said:
“Oh! When she has got hold of a man, she does not let him go again. She
has some secrets that attach them to her.”
There was, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact that the Duchess
Huguette should have been so proud of so many victories, and in such
various sports; but now, for the first time, a doubt had entered her mind. In
turning over the Notules Psychologiques of her favorite novel-writer, she
had just read these two sentences which disturbed her:
“If anyone wishes to excel in an art, he must have gained a living by it.”
“What pleases us in a woman of the world who gives herself up to
debauchery, is the contrast between what she is, and what she would like to
be.”
And she asked herself whether she could really have lived by those arts in
which she excelled, and whether the successes that she had obtained, did not
chiefly depend on her charm of a woman of the world, who wished to be
what she was not. The last whether, especially, made her anxious. For was
not it precisely that special charm which had given her an advantage over
courtesans who employed secrets?
Would she have been victorious if she had been deprived of that weapon?
How could she find out?
“And yet,” she said to herself, “I must know, for everything depends on
this point. If I can win the game without playing that card, I am sure of all my
other triumphs; my mind will be easy then, whatever it may cost.”
She consulted her old god-father, Viscount Hugues de Pierras, on the
subject, and, after a few complimentary words, as she had begged him to be
sincere, he said:
“Good heavens! my dear child, I must confess that your psychologist is not
altogether wrong, nor your apprehensions either. I have, before now, left
many learned mistresses for women who were not in the least learned, and
who pleased me all the better on that account. But that did not prevent the
mistresses I had sacrificed from being women of incomprehensible talents, in
spite of their defeat. But what does that matter? It ought to be enough for you,
that you conquer, without troubling yourself about the means by which you
obtain your victory. I do not suppose that you have any pretensions to being a
virtuosa in ...”
“In everything, yes. Excuse me, god-father, I have such pretensions. And
what I ask of you, is the means of obtaining absolute proof that my
pretensions are justified.”
“Hum! Hum!” the viscount said, in some embarrassment, “I do not know
of any means, my dear child, unless we get together a jury....”
“Please do not joke about it!” Huguette exclaimed. “I am perfectly
serious.”
“I am very serious also, I assure you, I think that a jury...”
 “Composed of whom? Of men of the world, I suppose?”
“And what does this Julot do?”
“Oh! really, Duchess, you force me to speak of persons and things, which
...”
“Yes, yes, I force you to; we understand that. But tell me! Bluntly, without
mincing matters, if necessary. You know that I have no objection to that sort
of thing, so go on. Do not keep me in suspense like this. I am burning with
curiosity. What does Julot do?”
“Very well, little volunteer, if you insist on knowing, I will tell you. Julot,
generally called Fine-Gueule, is a trier of women.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I will explain it to you. There are a few of us old amateurs in Paris, who
are too old and impatient to hunt for truffles, but who want them of such and
such a flavor, exactly to our taste. Now, Julot knows our tastes, our various
fancies, and he undertakes ...”
“Capital! Capital!”
 MADEMOISELLE

He had been registered under the names of Jean Marie Mathieu Valot, but he
was never called anything but Mademoiselle. He was the idiot of the district,
but not one of those wretched, ragged idiots who live on public charity. He
lived comfortably on a small income which his mother had left him, and
which his guardian paid him regularly, and so he was rather envied than
pitied. And then, he was not one of those idiots with wild looks, and the
manners of an animal, for he was by no means an unpleasing object, with his
half-open lips and smiling eyes, and especially in his constant make-up in
female dress. For he dressed like a girl, and showed by that, how little he
objected to being called Mademoiselle.
And why should he not like the nickname which his mother had given him
affectionately, when he was a mere child, and so delicate and weak, with
such a fair complexion, a poor little diminutive lad, that he was not as tall as
many girls of the same age? It was in pure love that, in his earlier years, his
mother whispered that tender Mademoiselle to him, while his old
grandmother used to say jokingly:
“The fact is, that as for the tip-cat he has got, it is really not worth
mentioning in a Christian. No offense to God in saying so.” And his
grandfather who was equally fond of a joke, used to add: “I only hope he
will not lose it, as he grows bigger, like tadpoles do their tails!”
And they treated him as if he had really been a girl and coddled him, the
more so as they were very prosperous, and did not require a man to keep
things together.
When his mother and grandparents were dead, Mademoiselle was almost
as happy with his paternal uncle, an unmarried man, who had carefully
attended the idiot, and who had grown more and more attached to him by dint
of looking after him; and the worthy man continued to call Jean Marie
Mathieu Valot, Mademoiselle.
He was called so in all the country round as well, not with the slightest
intention of hurting his feelings, but, on the contrary, because all thought they
would please the poor gentle creature who harmed nobody.
 The very street boys meant no harm by it, accustomed as they were to call
the tall idiot in a frock and cap, so; but it would have struck them as very
extraordinary, and would have led them to in rude fun, if they had seen him
dressed like a boy.
Mademoiselle, however, took care of that, for his dress was as dear to
him as his nickname. He delighted in wearing it, and, in fact, cared for
nothing else, and what gave it a particular zest was, that he knew that he was
not a girl, and that he was living in disguise. And this was evident, by the
exaggerated feminine bearing and walk he put on, as if to show that it was not
natural to him. His enormous, carefully frilled cap was adorned with large
variegated ribbons. His petticoat, with numerous flounces, was distended
behind by many hoops. He walked with short steps, and with exaggerated
swaying of the hips, while his folded arms and crossed hands were distorted
into pretensions of comical coquetry.
On such occasions, if anybody wished to make friends with him, it was
necessary to say:
“Ah! Mademoiselle, what a nice girl you make.”
That put him into a good humor, and he used to reply, much pleased:
“Don’t I? But people can see I only do it for a joke.”
But, nevertheless, when they were dancing at village festivals in the
neighborhood, he would always be invited to dance as Mademoiselle, and
would never ask any of the girls to dance with him; and one evening when
somebody asked him the reason for this, he opened his eyes wide, laughed as
if the man had said something very stupid, and replied:
“I cannot ask the girls because I am not dressed like a lad. Just look at my
dress, you fool!”
As his interrogator was a judicious man, he said to him:
“Then dress like one, Mademoiselle.”
He thought for a moment, and then said with a cunning look:
“But if I dress like a lad, I shall no longer be a girl; but then, I am a girl;”
and he shrugged his shoulders as he said it.
But the remark seemed to make him think.
For some time afterwards, when he met the same person, he asked him
abruptly:
“If I dress like a lad, will you still call me Mademoiselle?”
“Of course, I shall,” the other replied. “You will always be called so.”
 The idiot appeared delighted, for there was no doubt that he thought more
of his nickname than he did of his dress, and the next day he made his
appearance in the village square without his petticoats and dressed as a man.
He had taken a pair of trousers, a coat and a hat, from his guardian’s clothes-
press, and this created quite a revolution in the neighborhood, for the people,
who had been in the habit of smiling at him kindly when he was dressed as a
woman, looked at him in astonishment and almost in fear, while the indulgent
could not help laughing, and visibly making fun of him.
The involuntary hostility of some, and the too evident ridicule of others,
the disagreeable surprise of all, were too palpable for him not to see it, and
to be hurt by it, and it was still worse when a street urchin said to him in a
jeering voice, as he danced round him:
“Oh! oh! Mademoiselle, you wear trousers! Oh! oh! Mademoiselle!”
And it grew worse and worse, when a whole band of these vagabonds
were on his heels, hooting and yelling after him, as if he had been somebody
in a masquerading dress, during the carnival.
It was quite certain that the unfortunate creature looked much more as if he
were in a disguise now than he had done formerly. By dint of living like a
girl, and by even exaggerating the feminine walk and manners, he had totally
lost all masculine looks and ways. His smooth face, his long flax like hair,
required a cap with ribbons, and became a caricature under the high
chimney-pot hat of the old doctor, his grandson.
Mademoiselle’s shoulders, and especially her swelling stern danced about
wildly in this old fashioned coat and wide trousers. And nothing was as
funny as the contrast between his quiet dress and slow trotting pace, the
winning way he combed his head, and the conceited movements of his hands,
with which he fanned himself, like a silly girl.
Soon the older lads and the girls, the old women, men of ripe age and
even the Judicial Councilor joined the little brats, and hooted Mademoiselle,
while the astonished idiot ran away, and rushed into the house with terror.
There he took his poor head between both hands, and tried to comprehend the
matter. Why were they angry with him? For it was quite evident that they
were angry with him. What wrong had he done, and whom had he injured, by
dressing as a boy? Was he not a boy, after all? For the first time in his life, he
felt a horror for his nickname, for had he not been insulted through it? But
immediately he was seized with a horrible doubt.
“Suppose that, after all, I was a girl?”
 He would have liked to ask his guardian about it but he did not want to,
for he somehow felt, although only obscurely, that he, worthy man, might not
tell him the truth, out of kindness. And, besides, he preferred to find out for
himself, without asking anyone.
All his idiot’s cunning, which had been lying latent up till then, because he
never had any occasion to make use of it, now came out and urged him to a
solitary and dark action.
The next day he dressed himself as a girl again, and made his appearance
as if he had perfectly forgotten his escapade of the day before, but the people,
especially the street boys, had not forgotten it. They looked at him sideways,
and, even the best of them, could not help smiling, while the little
blackguards ran after him and said:
“Oh! oh! Mademoiselle, you had on a pair of breeches!”
But he pretended to hear, moreover, to guess to whom they were alluding.
He seemed as happy, and glad to look about him as he usually did, with half
open lips and smiling eyes. As usual, he wore an enormous cap with
variegated ribbons, and large petticoats as usual, he walked with short,
mincing steps, swaying and wriggling his hips and crupper, and he
gesticulated like a coquette, and licked his lips, when they called him
Mademoiselle, while in his head, he would have liked too have jumped at
the throat of those who called him so.
Days and months passed, and by degrees these about him forgot all about
his strange escapade, but he had never left off thinking about it, nor trying to
find out, for which he was ever on the alert — how he could find out what
were his qualities as a boy, and how could he assert them victoriously.
Really innocent, he had reached the age of twenty without knowing anything
about it, or without ever having any natural impulse to discover it, but being
tenacious of purpose, curious and dissembling, he asked no questions, but
observed all that was said and done.
Often at their village dances, he had heard young fellows boasting about
girls whom they had seduced, and praising such and such a young fellow, and
often, also, after a dance, he saw the couples go away together, with their
arms round each other’s waists. They had no suspicions of him, and he
listened and watched, until, at last, he discovered what was going on.
And, then, one night, when dancing was over, and the couples were going
away with their arms round each other’s waists, a terrible screaming was
heard at the corner of the woods through which those going to the next
village, had to pass. It was Josephine, pretty Josephine, for she was brave as
well, and when her screams were heard, they ran to her assistance, and they
arrived only just in time to rescue her, half strangled from Mademoiselle’s
clutches.
The idiot had watched her, and had thrown himself upon her in order to
treat her as the other young fellows did the girls, but she resisted him so
stoutly that he took her by the throat and squeezed with all his might until she
could not breathe, and was nearly dead.
In rescuing Josephine from him, they had thrown him on the ground, but he
jumped up again immediately, foaming at the mouth and slobbering, and
exclaimed:
“I am not a girl any longer, I am a young man, I am a young man, I tell
you.”
And he proudly essayed to convince them that it was so, but the evidence
that he could adduce was very slight.
 THE MOUNTEBANKS

Compardin, the clever manage of the Eden Réunis Théâtre, as the theater
critics invariably called him, was reckoning on a great success, and he had
invested his last franc in the affair, without thinking of the morrow, or of the
bad luck which had been pursuing him so inexorably for months past. For a
whole week, the walls, the kiosks, shopfronts, and even the trees, had been
placarded with flaming posters, and from one end of Paris to the other
carriages were to be seen which were covered with fancy sketches of Chéret,
that represented two strong, well-built men who looked like ancient athletes.
The younger of them, who was standing with his arms folded, had the vacant
smile of an itinerant mountebank on his face, and the other, who was dressed
in what was supposed to be the costume of a Mexican trapper, held a
revolver in his hand. There were large type advertisements in all the papers,
that the Montefiores would appear without fail at the Eden Réunis, the next
Monday.
Nothing else was talked about, for the puff and humbug attracted people.
The Montefiores, like fashionable knicknacks, succeeded that whimsical
jade, Rose Péché, who had gone off the preceding autumn, between the third
and fourth acts of the burlesque, Ousca Iscar, in order to make a study of
love in company of a young fellow of seventeen, who had just entered the
university. The novelty and difficulty of their performance, revived and
agitated the curiosity of the public, for there seemed to be an implied threat
of death, or, at any rate, of wounds and of blood in it, and it seemed as if they
defied danger with absolute indifference. And that always pleased women; it
holds them and masters them, and they grow pale with emotion and cruel
enjoyment. Consequently, all the seats in the large theater were let almost
immediately, and were soon taken for several days in advance. And stout
Compardin losing his glass of absinthe over a game of dominoes, was in high
spirits, and saw the future through rosy glasses, and exclaimed in a loud
voice: “I think I have turned up trumps, by George!”
 The Countess Regina de Villégby was lying on the sofa in her boudoir,
languidly fanning herself. She had only received three or four intimate friends
that day, Saint Mars Montalvin, Tom Sheffield, and his cousin, Madame de
Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings. It was growing
dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the Avenue of the Champs-
Elysées sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There was a delicate perfume
of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in yet, and chatting and laughing
filled the room with a confused noise.
“Would you pour out the tea?” the Countess said, suddenly, touching Saint
Mars’ fingers, who was beginning an amorous conversation in a low voice,
with her fan. And while he slowly filled the little china cup, he continued:
“Are the Montefiores as good as the lying newspapers make out?”
Then Tom Sheffield and the others all joined in.
They had never seen anything like it, they declared; it was most exciting,
and made one shiver unpleasantly, like when the espada comes to close
quarters with the infuriated brute at a bull fight.
Countess Regina listened in silence, and nibbled the petals of a tea rose.
“How I should like to see them!” giddy Madame de Rhouel exclaimed.
“Unfortunately, cousin,” the Countess said, in the solemn tones of a
preacher, “a respectable woman dare not let herself be seen in improper
places.”
They all agreeing with her, nevertheless, Madame de Villégby was
present at the Montefiores’ performance two days later, dressed all in black,
and wearing a thick veil, at the back of a stage box.
And that woman was as cold as a steel buckler, and had married as soon
as she left the convent in which she had been to school, without any affection
or even liking for her husband, whom the most skeptical respected as a saint,
and who had a look of virgin purity on her calm face as she went down the
steps of the Madeleine on Sundays, after high mass.
Countess Regina stretched herself nervously, grew pale, and trembled like
the strings of a violin, on which an artist had been playing some wild
symphony, and inhaled the nasty smell of the sawdust, as if it had been the
perfume of a bouquet of unknown flowers, and clenched her hands, and gazed
eagerly at the two mountebanks, whom the public applauded rapturously at
every feat. And contemptuously and haughtily she compared those two men,
who were as vigorous as wild animals that have grown up in the open air,
with the rickety limbs, which look so awkward in the dress of an English
groom, that had tried to inflame her heart.

Count de Villégby had gone back to the country, to prepare for his election
as Councilor-General, and the very evening that he started, Regina again took
the stage box at the Eden Réunis. Consumed by sensual ardor as if by some
love philter, she scribbled a few words on a piece of paper — the eternal
formula that women write on such occasions:
“A carriage will be waiting for you at the stage door after the
performance — An unknown woman who adores you.”
And then she gave it to a box opener, who handed it to the Montefiore who
was the champion pistol shot.
Oh! that interminable waiting in a malodorous cab, the overwhelming
emotion, and the nausea of disgust, the fear, the desire of waking the
coachman who was nodding on the box, of giving him her address, and
telling him to drive her home. But she remained with her face against the
window, mechanically looking at the dark passage, that was illuminated by a
gas lamp, at the “actors’ entrance,” through which men were continually
hurrying, who talked in a loud voice, and chewed the end of a cigar which
had gone out. She remained as if she were glued to the cushions, and tapped
impatiently on the bottom of the cab with her heels.
When the actor who thought it was a joke, made his appearance, she could
hardly utter a word, for evil pleasure is as intoxicating as adulterated liquor,
so face to face with this immediate surrender, and this unconstrained
immodesty, he at first thought that he had to do with a street walker.
Regina felt various sensations, and a morbid pleasure throughout her
whole person. She pressed close to him, and raised her veil to show how
young, beautiful, and desirable she was. They did not speak a word, like
wrestlers before a combat. She was eager to be locked up with him, to give
herself to him, and, at last, to know that moral uncleanness, of which, she
was, of course, ignorant, as a chaste wife; and when they left the room in the
hotel together, where they had spent hours like amorous deer, the man
dragged himself along, and almost groped his way like a blind man, while
Regina was smiling, though nevertheless, she retained her serene candor of
an unsullied virgin, like she did almost always on Sundays, after mass.
Then she took the second. He was very sentimental, and his head was full
of romance. He thought the unknown woman, who merely used him as her
plaything, really loved him, and he was not satisfied with furtive meetings.
He questioned her, besought her, and the Countess made fun of him. Then she
chose the two Mountebanks in turn. They did not know it, for she had
forbidden them ever to talk about her to each other, under the penalty of never
seeing her again, and one night the younger of them said with humble
tenderness, as he knelt at her feet:
“How kind you are, to love and to want me! I thought that such happiness
only existed in novels, and that ladies of rank only made fun of poor strolling
Mountebanks, like us!”
Regina knitted her golden brows.
“Do not be angry,” he continued, “because I followed you and found out
where you lived, and your real name, and that you are a countess, and rich,
very rich.”
“You fool!” she exclaimed, trembling with anger. “People would make
you believe things, as easily as they would a child!”
She had had enough of him; he knew her name, and might compromise her.
The Count might possibly come back from the country before the elections,
and then, the Mountebank began to love her. She no longer had any feeling,
any desire for those two lovers, whom a fillip from her rosy fingers could
bend to her will. It was time to go on to the next chapter, and to seek for fresh
pleasures elsewhere.
“Listen to me,” she said to the champion shot, the next night. “I would
rather not hide anything from you. I like your comrade; I have given myself to
him, and I do not want to have anything more to do with you.”
“My comrade!” he repeated.
“Well, what then? The change amuses me!”
He uttered a furious cry, and rushed at Regina with clenched fists. She
thought he was going to kill her, and closed her eyes, but he had not the
courage to hurt that delicate body, which he had so often covered with
caresses, and in despair, and hanging his head, he said hoarsely:
“Very well, we shall not meet again, since it is your wish.”
The house at the Eden Réunis was as full as an over-filled basket The
violins were playing a soft and delightful waltz of Gungl’s, which the reports
of a revolver accentuated.
The Montefiores were standing opposite to one another, like in Chéret’s
picture, and about a dozen yards apart, and an electric light was thrown on to
the youngest, who was leaning against a large white target, and very slowly
the other traced his living outline with bullet after bullet. He aimed with
prodigious skill, and the black dots showed on the cardboard, and marked the
shape of his body. The applause drowned the orchestra, and increased
continually, when suddenly a shrill cry of horror resounded from one end of
the hall to the other. The women fainted, the violins stopped, and the
spectators jostled each other. At the ninth ball, the younger brother had fallen
to the ground, an inert mass, with a gaping wound in his forehead. His
brother did not move, and there was a look of madness on his face, while the
Countess de Villégby leaned on the ledge of her box, and fanned herself
calmly, as implacable as any cruel goddess of ancient mythology.
The next day, between four and five, when she was surrounded by her
usual friends in her little, warm, Japanese drawing room, it was strange to
hear in what a languid and indifferent voice she exclaimed:
“They say that an accident happened to one of those famous clowns, the
Monta ... the Monti ... what is his name, Tom?”
“The Montefiores, Madame!”
And then they began to talk about the sale at Angéle Velours, who was
going to buy the former follies, at the hotel Drouot, before marrying Prince
Storbeck.
 THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE

Certainly, although he had been engaged in the most extraordinary, most

unlikely, most extravagant and funniest cases, and had won legal games
without a trump in his hand, although he had worked out the obscure law of
divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold mine Maitre Garrulier the
celebrated, the only Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise, nor a
disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile when the Countess de
Baudémont explained her affairs to him for the first time.
He had just opened his correspondence, and his long hands, on which he
bestowed the greatest attention, buried themselves in a heap of female letters,
and one might have thought oneself in the confessional of a fashionable
preacher, so impregnated was the atmosphere with delicate perfumes.
Immediately, even before she had said a word, with the sharp glance of a
practiced man of the world, that look which made beautiful Madame de
Serpenoise say: “He strips your heart bare!” The lawyer had classed her in
the third category. Those who suffer came into his first category, those who
love, into the second, and those who are bored, into the third, and she
belonged to the latter.
She was a pretty windmill, whose sails turned and flew round, and fretted
the blue sky with a delicious shiver of joy, as it were. The brain of a bird, in
which four correct and healthy ideas could not exist side by side, and in
which all dreams and every kind of folly are engulfed, like a great crevice.
Incapable of hurting a fly, emotional, charitable, with a feeling of
tenderness for the street girl who sold bunches of violets for a penny, for a
cab horse, which a driver was ill using, for a melancholy pauper’s funeral,
when the body, without friends or relations to follow it, was being conveyed
to the common grave, doing anything that might afford five minutes’
amusement, not caring if she made men miserable for the rest of their days,
and taking pleasure in kindling passions which consumed men’s whole being,
looking upon life as too short to be anything else than one uninterrupted round
of gaiety and enjoyment, she thought that people might find plenty of time for
being serious and reasonable in the evening of life, when they are at the
bottom of the hill, and their looking glass showed them a wrinkled face,
surrounded with white hair.
A thoroughbred Parisian, whom one would follow to the end of the world
like a poodle; a woman whom one adores with the head, the heart and the
senses until one is nearly driven mad, as soon as one has inhaled the delicate
perfume that emanates from her dress and hair, or touched her skin, and heard
her laugh; a woman for whom one would fight a duel and risk one’s life
without a thought; for whom a man would remove mountains, and sell his
soul to the devil several times over, if the devil were still in the habit of
frequenting the places of bad repute on this earth.
She had perhaps come to see this Garrulier, whom she had so often heard
mentioned at five o’clock tea, near, so as to be able to describe him to her
female friends subsequently in droll phrases, to imitate his gestures and the
unctuous inflections of his voice, perhaps, in order to experience some new
sensation, or, perhaps, for the sake of dressing like a woman who was going
to try for a divorce; and, certainly, the whole effect was perfect. She wore a
splendid cloak embroidered with jet, which gave an almost serious effect to
her golden hair, to her small slightly turned up nose, with its quivering
nostrils, and to her long eyes, full of enigmas and fun; and a dark stuff dress,
which was fastened at the neck by a sapphire and a diamond pin.
The barrister did not interrupt her, but allowed her to get excited and to
chatter, to enumerate her causes for complaint against poor Count de
Baudémont, who certainly had no suspicion of his wife’s escapade, who
would have been very much surprised if any one had told him of it at that
moment, when he was taking his fencing lesson at the club.
When she had quite finished, he said coolly, as if he were throwing a pail
of water on some burning straw.
“But, Madame, there is not the slightest pretext for a divorce in anything
that you have told me, here...the judges would ask me whether I took the Law
Courts for a theater, and intended to make fun of them.”
And seeing how disheartened she was, and that she looked like a child
whose favorite toy had been broken, and, also, because she was so pretty,
that he would have liked to kiss her hands in his devotion, and as she seemed
to be witty, and very amusing, and as, moreover, he had no objection to such
visits being prolonged, when papers had to be looked over, while sitting
close together, Maitre Garrulier appeared to be considering, and, taking his
chin in his hand, he said:
 “However, I will think it over...there is sure to be some dark spot that can
be made out worse.... Write to me, and come and see me again...”
In the course of her visits, that black spot had increased so much, and
Madame de Baudémont had followed her lawyer’s advice so punctually, and
had played on the various cords so skillfully, a few months later, that after a
lawsuit, which is still spoken of in the Courts of Justice, and during the
course of which, the President had to take off his spectacles, and to use his
pocket-handkerchief noisily, the divorce was pronounced in favor of the
Countess Marie Anne Nicole Bournet de Baudémont, née de Tanchart de
Peothus.
The Count, who was nonplussed at such an adventure, which was turning
out so seriously, first of all, flew into a terrible rage, and nearly rushed off to
the lawyer’s office, and threatened to cut off his knavish ears for him, but
when his access of fury was over, and thinking better of it, he shrugged his
shoulders and said:
“All the better for her, if it amuses her!”
Then he bought Baron Silberstein’s yacht, and with some friends, got up a
cruise, to Ceylon and India.
Marie-Anne began by triumphing, and felt as happy as a schoolgirl going
home for the holidays, who feels the bridle on her neck, committed every
possible folly, and soon, tired, satiated, and disgusted, she began to yawn,
cried and found out that she had sacrificed her happiness, like a millionaire
who had gone mad, and who threw his banknotes and shares into the river,
and that she was nothing more than a disabled waif and stray. Consequently,
she now married again, as the solitude of her home made her morose from
morning till night; and then, besides, a woman requires a mansion when she
goes into society, to race meetings, or to the theater.
And so, while she became a marchioness, and pronounced her second
“Yes,” before a very few friends, at the office of the mayor of the English
urban district, and malicious ones in the Faurbourg were making fun of the
whole affair, and affirming this and that, whether rightly or wrongly, and
compromising the present husband to the former one, even declaring that he
had partially been the cause of the former divorce, Monsieur de Baudémont
was wandering over the four quarters of the globe trying to overcome his
homesickness, and to deaden his longing for love, which had taken
possession of his heart and of his body, like a slow poison.
 He traveled through the most out of the way places, and the most lovely
countries, and spent months and months at sea, and plunged into every kind of
dissipation and debauchery. But neither the supple backs nor the luxurious
gestures of the bayaderés, nor the large, passive eyes of the Creoles, nor
flirtations with English missives with hair the color of new cider, nor nights
of waking dreams, when he saw new constellations in the sky, nor dangers
during which a man thinks it is all over with him, and mutters a few words of
prayer in spite of himself, when the waves are so high, and the sky so black,
nothing was able to make him forget that little Parisian woman who smelled
so delicious that she might have been taken for a bouquet of rare flowers;
who was so coaxing, so curious, so funny; who never had the same caprice,
the same smile, or the same look twice, and who, at bottom, was worth more
than many others, than the saints and the sinless.
He thought of her constantly, during long hours of sleeplessness. He
carried her portrait about with him in the pocket of his pea-jacket; a charming
portrait in which she was smiling, and showing her white teeth between her
half-open lips, and while her gentle eyes, with their magnetic look, had a
happy, frank expression, and in which, from the mere reflection of her hair,
one could see that she was fair among the fair.
And he used to kiss that portrait of the woman who had been his wife as if
he wished to efface it, and would look at it for hours, and then throw himself
down on the netting, and sob like a child as he looked at the infinite expanse
before him, and seemed to see in their lost happiness the joys of their
perished affections, and the divine remembrance of their love in the
monotonous waste of green waters. And he tried to accuse himself for all that
had occurred, and not to be angry with her, to think that his grievances were
imaginary, and to adore her in spite of everything and always.
And that he roamed about the world, tossed to and fro, suffering, and
hoping, he knew not what. He ventured into the greatest dangers, and sought
for death just as a man seeks for his mistress, and death passed close to him
without touching him, and was perhaps amused at his grief and misery.
For he was as wretched as a stone-breaker, as one of those poor devils
who work and nearly break their backs over the hard flints the whole day
long, under the scorching sun or the cold rain, and Marie-Anne herself was
not happy, for she was pining for the past, and remembered their former love.
At last, however, he returned to France, changed, tamed by exposure, sun,
and rain, and transformed as if by some witch’s filter.
 Nobody would have recognized the elegant and effeminate clubman in this
species of corsair, with broad shoulders, a skin the color of blister, with very
red lips, and who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his
black dress-coat, but who still retained his distinguished manners, the
bearing of a nobleman of the last century, who, when he was ruined, fitted out
a privateer, and fell upon the English wherever he met them, from St. Malo to
Calcutta. And wherever he showed himself his friends exclaimed:
“Why! Is that you? I should never have known you again!”
He was very nearly starting off again immediately. He even telegraphed
orders to Havre to get the steam-yacht ready for sea again directly, when he
heard that Marie-Anne had married again.
He saw her in the distance, at the Théâtre Français one Tuesday, and
when he noticed how pretty, how fair, how desirable she was, and looking so
melancholy, with all the appearance of an unhappy soul that regrets
something, his determination grew weaker, and he delayed his departure from
week to week, and waited, without knowing why, until, at last, worn out with
the struggle, watching her wherever she went, more in love with her than he
had ever been before, he wrote her long, mad, ardent letters in which his
passion overflowed like a stream of lava.
He altered his handwriting, as he remembered her restless brain and her
many whims. He sent her the flowers which he knew she liked best, and told
her that she was his life, that he was dying of waiting for her, of longing for
her, for her, his idol.
At last, very much puzzled and surprised, guessing — who knows? —
from the instinctive beating of her heart, and her general emotion, that it must
be he this time, he whose soul she had tortured with such cold cruelty, and
knowing that she could make amends for the past and bring back their former
love, she replied to him, and granted him the meeting that he asked for. She
fell into his arms, and they both sobbed with joy and ecstasy. Their kisses
were those which lips only give when they have lost each other and found
each other again at last, when they meet and exhaust themselves in each
other’s looks, thirsting for tenderness, love and enjoyment.

Last week Count de Baudémont carried off Marie-Anne quietly and

coolly, just like one resumes possession of one’s house on returning from a
journey, and drives out the intruders. And when Maitre Garrulier was told of
this unheard-of scandal, he rubbed his hands — his long, delicate hands of a
sensual prelate — and exclaimed:
“That is absolutely logical, and I should like to be in their place.”
 THE MAN WITH THE DOGS

His wife, even when talking to him, always called him Monsieur Bistaud, but
in all the country round, within a radius of ten leagues in France and
Belgium, he was known as cet homme aux chiens. It was not a very valuable
reputation, however, and “That man with the dogs” became a sort of pariah.
In Thierache they are not very fond of the custom-house officers, for
everybody, high or low, profits by smuggling; thanks to which many articles,
and especially coffee, gunpowder and tobacco are to be had cheap. It may
here be stated that on that wooded, broken country, where the meadows are
surrounded by brushwood, and the lanes are dark and narrow, smuggling is
chiefly carried on by means of sporting dogs, who are broken in to become
smuggling dogs. Scarcely an evening passes without some of them being
seen, loaded with contraband, trotting silently along, pushing their noses
through a hole in a hedge, with furtive and uneasy looks, and sniffing the air
to scent the custom-house officers and their dogs. These dogs also are
specially trained, and are very ferocious, and easily rip up their unfortunate
congeners, who become the game instead of hunting for it.
Now, nobody was capable of imparting this unnatural education to them
so well as “the man with his dogs,” whose business consisted in breaking in
dogs for the custom-house authorities, and everybody looked upon it as a
dirty business, a business which could only be performed by a man without
any proper feeling.
“He is a men’s robber,” the women said, “to take honest dogs into nurse,
and to make a lot of Judas’s out of them.”
While the boys shouted insulting verses behind his back, the men and the
women abused him, but no one ventured to do it to his face, for he was not
very patient, and was always accompanied by one of his huge dogs, and that
served to make him respected.
Certainly, without that bodyguard, he would have had a bad time of it,
especially at the hands of the smugglers, who had a deadly hatred for him. By
himself, and in spite of his quarrelsome looks, he did not appear very
formidable, for he was short and thin, his back was round, his legs were
bandy, and his arms were as long and as thin as spiders’ legs, and he could
easily have been knocked down by a back-handed blow or a kick. But then,
he had those confounded dogs which interfered with the bravest smugglers.
How could they risk even a thrust when he had those huge brutes, with their
fierce and bloodshot eyes, and their square heads, whose jaws were like a
vise, with enormous white teeth, that were as sharp as daggers, and whose
huge molars crunched up beef-bones to a pulp with them? They were
wonderfully broken in, were always by him, obeyed him by signs, and were
taught, not only to worry the smugglers’ dogs, but also to fly at the throats of
the smugglers themselves.
The consequence was that both he and his dogs were left alone, and
people were satisfied in calling them names and sending them all to
Coventry. No peasant ever set foot in his cottage, although Bistaud’s wife
kept a small shop and was a handsome woman, and the only persons who
went there were the custom-house officers. The others took their revenge on
them all by saying that the man with the dogs sold his wife to the custom-
house officers, like he did his dogs.
“He keeps her for them, as well as his dogs,” they said jeeringly. “You
can see that he is a born cuckold with his yellow beard and eyebrows, which
stick up like a pair of horns.”
His hair was certainly red, or rather yellow, his thick eyebrows were
turned up in two points on his temples, and he used to twirl them
mechanically as if they had been a pair of moustaches. And certainly, with
his hair like that, and with his long beard and shaggy eyebrows, with his
sallow face, blinking eyes, and dull looks, with his dogged mouth, thin lips,
and his miserable, deformed body, he was not a pleasing object.
But he assuredly was not a complaisant cuckold, and those who have said
that of him had never seen him at home. On the contrary, he was always
jealous, and kept as sharp a lookout on his wife as he did on his dogs, and if
he had broken her in at all, it was to be as faithful to him as they were.
She was a handsome, and what they call in the country, a fine body of a
woman; tall, well-built, with a full bust and broad breech, and she certainly
made more than one excise man squint at her, but it was no use for them to
come and sniff round her too closely, or else there would have been blows.
At least, that is what the custom-house officers said when anybody joked
with them and said to them: “That does not matter, no doubt, you and she
have hunted for your fleas together.”
 It was no use for them to defend Madame Bistaud’s fierce virtue; nobody
believed them, and the only answer they got was: “You are hiding your game,
and are ashamed of going to seduce a woman who belongs to such a
wretched creature.”
And, certainly, nobody would have believed that such a buxom woman,
who looked as if her crupper were as warm as her looks, and who assuredly
must have liked to be well attended to, could be satisfied with such a puny
husband; with such an ugly, weak, red-headed fellow, who smelled of his
own hair and of the mustiness of the carrion which he gave to his hounds.
But they did not know that “the man with the dogs” had some years before
given her, once for all, a lesson in fidelity, and that for a mere trifle, and that
for a venial sin! He had surprised her for allowing herself to be kissed by
some gallant; that was all! He had not taken any notice, but when the man was
gone he brought two of his hounds into the room, and said:
“If you do not want them to tear your inside out as they would a rabbit’s,
go down on your knees so that I may thrash you!”
She obeyed in terror, and “the man with the dogs” had beaten her with a
whip until his arm dropped with fatigue. And she did not venture to scream,
although she was bleeding under the blows of the thong, which tore her dress,
and cut into the flesh; all she dared to do was to utter low, hoarse groans; for
while beating her, he kept on saying:
“Don’t make a noise, by —— ; don’t make a noise, or I will let the dogs
fly at your stern.”
From that time she had been faithful to Bistaud, though she had naturally
not told anyone the reason for it, nor for her hatred either, not even Bistaud
himself, who thought that she was subdued for all time, and who always
found her very submissive and respectful. But for six years she had nourished
her hatred in her heart, feeding it on silent hopes and promises of revenge.
And it was that flame of hope and that longing for revenge which made her so
coquettish with the custom-house officers, for she hoped to find a possible
avenger among her inflammable admirers.
At last she came across the right man. He was a splendid sub-officer of
the customs, built like a Hercules, with fists like a butcher’s, and who had
long leased four of his ferocious dogs from her husband.
As soon as they had grown accustomed to their new master, and
especially after they had tasted flesh of the smugglers’ dogs, they had, by
degrees, become detached from their former master, who had reared them.
No doubt they still recognized him a little, and would not have sprung at his
throat as if he had been a perfect stranger, but still, they did not hesitate
between his voice and that of their new master, and they obeyed the latter
only.
Although the woman had often noticed this, she had not hitherto been able
to make much use of the circumstance. A custom-house officer, as a rule, only
keeps one dog, and this fellow always had half-a-dozen, at least, in training,
without reckoning a personal guard which he kept for himself and which was
the fiercest of all. Consequently, any duel between some lover assisted by
only one dog, and the dog-breaker defended by his pack, was impossible.
But on that occasion, the chances were more equal. Just then he had only
five dogs in the kennel, and two of them were quite young, though certainly
old Bourreau counted for several, but after all, they could risk a battle
against him and the other three, with the two couples of the custom-house
officer, and they must profit by the occasion.
And one fine evening, as the brigadier of the custom-house officers was
alone in the shop with Bistaud’s wife and was squeezing her waist, she said
to him abruptly:
“Do you really want to have something to do with me, Môssieu Fernand?”
He kissed her on the lips as he replied: “Do I really want to? I would give
my stripes for it; so you see....”
“Very well,” she replied, “do as I tell you, and upon my word, as an
honest woman, I will be your commodity to do what you like with.”
And laying a stress on that word commodity, which in that part of the
country means mistress, she whispered hotly into his ear:
“A commodity who knows her business, I can tell you, for my beast of a
husband has trained me up in such a way that I am now absolutely disgusted
with him.”
Fernand, who was much excited, promised her everything that she wished,
and feverishly, malignantly, she told him how shamefully her husband had
treated her a short time before, how her fair skin had been cut, told him her
hatred and thirst for revenge; and the brigadier acquiesced, and that same
evening he came to the cottage accompanied by his four hounds, with their
spiked collars on.
“What are you going to do with them?” “the man with the dogs” asked.
“I have come to see whether you did not rob me when you sold them to
me,” the brigadier replied.
 “What do you mean by ‘robbed you’?”
“Well, robbed! I have been told that they could not tackle a dog like your
Bourreau, and that many smugglers have dogs who are as good as he is.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, in case any of them should have one, I should like to see how the
dogs that you sold me could tackle them.”
The woman laughed an evil laugh, and her husband grew suspicious, when
he saw that the brigadier replied to it by a wink. But his suspicions came too
late. The breaker had no time to go to the kennel to let out his pack, for
Bourreau had been seized by the custom-house officer’s four dogs. At the
same time the woman locked the door, and already her husband was lying
motionless on the floor, while Bourreau could not go to his assistance, as he
had enough to do to defend himself against the furious attack of the other
dogs, who were almost tearing him to pieces, in spite of his strength and
courage. Five minutes later two of the attacking hounds were totally disabled
with the bowels protruding, but Bourreau himself was dying, with his throat
gaping.
Then the woman and the custom-house officer kissed each other before the
breaker whom they bound firmly, while the two dogs of the custom-house
officer, that were still on their legs, were panting for breath, and the other
three were wallowing in their own blood, and while the amorous couple
were carrying on all sorts of capers, who were still further excited by the
rage of the dog-breaker, who was forced to look at them, and who shouted in
his despair:
“You wretches! You shall pay for this!” And the woman’s only reply was,
to say: “Cuckold! Cuckold! Cuckold!”
When she was tired of larking, her hatred was not yet satisfied, and she
said to the brigadier:
“Fernand, go to the kennels and shoot the five other brutes; otherwise he
will make them kill me to-morrow. Off you go, old fellow!”
The brigadier obeyed, and immediately five shots were heard in the
darkness. It did not take long, but that short time had been enough for “the
man with the dogs” to show what he could do. While he was tied, the two
dogs of the custom-house officer had gradually recognized him, and came and
fondled him, and as soon as he was alone with his wife, as she was insulting
him, he said, in his usual voice of command to the dogs:
 “At her, Flanbard! At her, Garou!” And the two dogs sprang at the
wretched woman, and one seized her by the throat, while the other caught her
by the side.
When the brigadier came back, she was dying on the ground in a pool of
blood, and “the man with the dogs” said with a laugh: “There, you see, that is
the way I break in my dogs!”
The custom-house officer rushed out in horror, followed by his hounds
who licked his hands as they ran, and made them quite red.
The next morning “the man with the dogs” was found still bound, but
chuckling, in his hovel that was turned into a slaughter-house.
They were both arrested and tried, when “the man with the dogs” was
acquitted, and the brigadier sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The matter
gave much food for talk in the district, and is, indeed, still talked about, for
“the man with the dogs” returned there, and is more celebrated than ever
under his nickname, but his celebrity is not of a bad kind, for he is now just
as much respected and liked as he was despised and hated formerly. He is
still, as a matter of fact, “the man with the dogs,” as he is rightly called, for
he has not his equal as a dog-breaker for leagues around, but now he no
longer breaks in mastiffs, as he has given up teaching honest dogs to “act the
part of Judas,” as he says, for those dirty custom-house officers, and now he
only devotes himself to dogs to be used for smuggling, and he is worth
listening to when he says:
“You may depend upon it, that I know how to punish such commodities as
she was, where they have sinned!”
 THE CLOWN

The hawkers’ cottage stood at the end of the Esplanade, on the little
promontory where the jetty is, where all the winds, all the rain, and all the
spray met. The hut, both walls and roof, was built of old planks, more or less
covered with tar, whose chinks were stopped with oakum, and dry wreckage
was heaped up against it. In the middle of the room an iron pot stood on two
bricks, and served as a stove, when they had any coal, but as there was no
chimney, it filled the room, which was ventilated only by a low door, with
smoke, and there the whole crew lived, eighteen men and one woman. Some
had undergone various terms of imprisonment, and nobody knew what the
others were, but though they were all, more or less, suffering from some
physical defect and were nearly old men, they were still all strong enough for
hauling. For the “Chamber of Commerce” tolerated them there, and allowed
them that hovel to live in, on condition that they should be ready to haul, by
day and by night.
For every vessel they hauled, each got a penny by day and two-pence by
night, but that was not certain, on account of the competition of retired
sailors, fishermen’s wives, laborers who had nothing to do, but who were all
stronger than those half-starved wretches in the hut.
And yet they lived there, those eighteen men and one woman. Were they
happy? Certainly not. Hopeless? Not that, either; for they occasionally got a
little besides their scanty pay, and then they stole occasionally, fish, lumps of
coal, things without any value to those who lost them, but of great value to the
poor, beggarly thieves.
The eighteen kept the woman, and there was no jealousy on her account.
She had no special favorite among them.
She was a fat woman of about forty, chubby faced and puffy, and of whom
Daddy La Bretagne, who was one of the eighteen, used to say: “She does us
honor.”
If she had had a favorite among them, Daddy La Bretagne would certainly
have had the greatest right to that privilege, for although he was one of the
most crippled among them, as he was partially paralyzed in his legs, he
showed himself skillful and strong-armed as any of them, and in spite of his
infirmities, he always managed to secure a good place in the row of haulers.
None of them knew as well as he did how to inspire visitors with pity during
the season, and to make them put their hands into the pockets, and he was a
past master at cadging, so that among those empty stomachs and penniless
rascals he had windfalls of victuals and coppers more frequently than fell to
his share. But he did not make use of them in order to monopolize their
common mistress.
“I am just,” he used to say. “Let each of us have his spoonful in turn, and
no more, when we are all eating out of the same dish.”
With the coal he picked up, he used to make a good fire for the whole
band under the iron pot, in which he cooked whatever he brought home with
him, without any complaining about it, for he used to say:
“It gives you a good fire in which to warm yourselves, for nothing, and the
smell of my stew into the bargain.”
As for his money, he spent in drink with the trollop, and afterwards, what
was left of it, with the other eighteen.
“You see,” he used to say, “I am just, and more than just. I give her up to
you, because it is your right.”
The consequence was that they all liked Daddy La Bretagne, so that he
gloried in it, and said proudly:
“What a pity that we are living under the Republic! These fellows would
think nothing of making me king.”
And one day, when he said this, his trollop replied: “The king is here, old
fellow!” And at the same time she presented a new comrade to them, who
was no less ragged or wretched looking than the eighteen, but quite young by
the size of him. He was a tall, thin fellow of about forty, and without a white
streak in his long hair. He was dressed only in a pair of trousers and a shirt,
which he wore outside them, like a blouse, and the trollop said:
“Here, Daddy La Bretagne, you have two knitted vests on, so just give him
one.”
“Why should I?” the hauler asked.
“Because I choose you to,” the woman replied. “I have been living with
you set of old men for a long time, so now I want to have a young one; there
he is, so you must give him a vest, and keep him here, or I shall throw you up.
You may take it or leave it, as you like. Do you understand me?”
 The eighteen looked at each other open-mouthed, and good Daddy La
Bretagne scratched his head, and then said:
“What she asks is quite right, and we must give way,” he replied.
Then they explained themselves, and came to an understanding. The poor
devil did not come like a conqueror, for he was a wretched clown who had
just been released from prison, where he had undergone three years’ hard
labor for an attempted outrage on a girl, but, with one exception, the best
fellow in the world, so the people declared.
“And something nice for me,” the trollop added, “for I can assure you that
I mean him to reward me for anything I may do for him.”
From that time the household of eighteen persons consisted of nineteen,
and at first all went well. The clown was very humble, and tried not to be
burdensome to them. Fed, clothed and supplied with tobacco, he tried not to
be too exacting in the other matter, and if needful, he would have hauled like
the others, but the woman would not allow it.
“You shall not fatigue yourself, my little man,” she said. “You must
reserve yourself entirely for me.”
And he did as she wished.
And soon, the eighteen, who had never been jealous of each other, grew
jealous of the favored lover. Some tried to pick a quarrel with him. He
resisted. The best fellow in the world, no doubt, but he was not going to be
taken for a mussel shut up in its shell, for all that. Let them call him as lazy as
a priest if they liked; he did not mind that, but when they put hairs into his
coffee, armsful of rushes among his wreckage, and filth into his soup, they
had better look out!
“None of that, all the lot of you, or you will see what I can do,” he used to
say.
They repeated the practical jokes, however, and he thrashed them. He did
not try to find out who the culprits were, but attacked the first one he met, so
much the worse for him. With a kick from his wooden clog (it was his
specialty) he smashed their noses into a pulp, and having thus acquired the
knowledge of his strength, and urged on by his trollop, he soon became a
tyrant. The eighteen felt that they were slaves, and their former paradise
where concord and perfect equality had reigned, became a hell, and that state
of things could not last.
“Ah!” Daddy La Bretagne growled, “if only I were twenty years younger I
would nearly kill him! I have my Breton’s hot head still, but my confounded
legs are no good any longer.”
And he boldly challenged the clown to a duel, in which the latter was to
have his legs tied, and then both of them were to sit on the ground and hack at
each other with knives.
“Such a duel would be perfectly fair!” he replied, kicking him in the side
with one of his clogs, and the woman burst out laughing, and said:
“At any rate, you cannot compete with him on equal terms as regards
myself, so do not worry yourself about it.”
Daddy La Bretagne was lying in his corner and spitting blood, and none of
the rest spoke. What could the others do, when he, the blustering of them all,
had been served so? The jade had been right when she had brought in the
intruder, and said:
“The king is here, old fellow.”
Only, she ought to have remembered that, after all, she alone kept her
subjects in check, and as Daddy La Bretagne said, by a right object. With her
to console them, they would no doubt have borne anything, but she was
foolish enough to cut down their food, and not to fill their common dish as
full as it used to be. She wanted to keep everything for her lover, and that
raised the exasperation of the eighteen to its height, and so one night when
she and the clown were asleep, among all these fasting men, the eighteen
threw themselves upon them. They wrapped the despot’s arms and legs up in
tarpaulin, and in the presence of the woman, who was firmly bound, they
flogged him till he was black and blue.
“Yes,” old Bretagne said to me, himself, “yes, Monsieur, that was our
revenge. The king was guillotined in 1793, and so we guillotined our king
also.”
And he concluded with a sneer, and said: “Ah! We wished to be just, and
as it was not his head that had made him our king, so, by Jove, we settled
him.”
 BABETTE

I was not very fond of going to inspect that asylum for old, infirm men,
officially, as I was obliged to go over it in company of the superintendent,
who was talkative, and a statistician. But then, the grandson of the foundress
accompanied us, who was evidently pleased at that minute inspection, and he
was a charming man, and the owner of a large forest, where he had given me
permission to shoot, and I was, of course, obliged to pretend to be interested
in his grandmother’s philanthropic work. So with a smile on my lips I
endured the superintendent’s interminable discourse, punctuating it here and
there, as best I could, by a:
“Ah! really! ... Very strange, indeed! ... I should never have believed it!
...”
I was absolutely ignorant of the matter to which I replied thus, for my
thoughts were lulled to repose by the constant humming of our loquacious
guide. I was only vaguely conscious that no doubt the persons and things
would have appeared worthy of attention to me if I had been there alone as
an idler, for in that case, I should certainly have asked the superintendent:
“Who is this Babette, whose name appears so constantly in the complaints
of so many of the inmates?”
Quite a dozen men and women had spoken to us about her, now to
complain of her, now to praise her; and especially the women, as soon as
they saw the superintendent, cried out:
“M’sieur, Babette has again been ...”
“There! that will do, that will do!” he interrupted them, his gentle voice
suddenly becoming harsh.
At other times he would amicably question some old man with a happy
countenance, and say:
“Well, my friend! I suppose you are very happy here?”
Many replied with fervent expressions of gratitude, with which Babette’s
name was frequently mingled, and when he heard them speak so, the
superintendent put on an ecstatic air; looking up to heaven with clasped
hands, he said, slowly shaking his head: “Ah! Babette is a very precious
woman, very precious!”
Yes, it would certainly interest one to know who that creature was, but not
under present circumstances, and so, rather than to undergo any more of this,
I made up my mind to remain in ignorance of who Babette was, for I could
pretty well guess what she would be like. I pictured her to myself as a flower
that had sprung up in a corner of these dull courtyards, like a ray of sun
shining through the sepulchral gloom of these dismal passages.
I pictured her so clearly to myself that I did not even feel any wish to
know her, but yet she was dear to me, because of the happy expression which
they all put on when they spoke of her, and I was angry with the old women
who spoke against her. One thing certainly puzzled me, and that was, that the
superintendent was among those who went into ecstasies over her, and this
made me strongly disinclined to question him about her, though I had no other
reason for this feeling.
But all this passed through my mind in rather a confused manner, and
without my taking the trouble to fix or to formulate any ideas and sensations,
for I continued to dream, rather than to think effectively, and it is very
probable that, when my visit was over, I should not have remembered much
about it, not even with regard to Babette, if I had not been suddenly
awakened by the sight of her in the person, and been quite upset by the
difference that there was between my fancy and the reality.
We had just crossed a small back yard, and had gone into a very dark
passage, when a door suddenly opened at the other end of it, and an
unexpected apparition appeared through another door, and we could
indistinctly see that it was the figure of a woman. At the same moment, the
superintendent called out in a furious voice:
“Babette! Babette!”
He had mechanically quickened his pace, and almost ran, and we
followed him, and he quickly opened the door through which the apparition
had vanished, and which led on to a staircase, and he again called out, and a
burst of stifled laughter was the only reply. I looked over the balusters, and
saw a woman down below, who was looking at us fixedly.
She was an old woman; there could be no doubt of that, from her wrinkled
face and her few straggling gray locks which appeared under her cap. But
one did not think of that when one saw her eyes, which were wonderfully
youthful, for then, one saw nothing but them. They were profound eyes, of a
deep, almost violet blue; the eyes of a child.
Suddenly the superintendent called out to her: “You have been with la
Friezê again!”
The old woman did not reply, but shook with laughter, as she had done
just before, and then she ran off, giving the superintendent a look, which said
as plainly as words could have done: “Do you think I care a fig for you?”
Those insulting words were clearly written in her face, and at the same
time I noticed that the old woman’s eyes had utterly changed, for during that
short moment of bravado the childish eyes had become the eyes of a monkey,
of some ferocious, obstinate baboon.
That time, in spite of any dislike to question him further, I could not help
saying to him: “That is Babette, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he replied, growing rather red, as if he guessed that I understood
the old woman’s insulting looks.
“Is she the woman who is so precious?” I added, with a touch of irony,
which made him grow altogether crimson.
“That is she,” he said, walking on quickly, so as to escape my further
questions.
But I was egged on by curiosity, and I made a direct appeal to our host’s
complaisance. “I should like to see this Friezê,” I said. “Who is Friezê?”
He turned round and said: “Oh! nothing, nothing, he is not at all
interesting. What is the good of seeing him? It is not worth while.”
And he ran downstairs, two at a time. He who was usually so delicate,
and so very careful to explain everything, was now in a hurry to get finished,
and our visit was cut short.
The next day I had to leave that part of the country, without hearing
anything more about Babette, but I came back about four months later, when
the shooting season began. I had not forgotten her during that time, for nobody
could ever forget her eyes, and so I was very glad to have as my traveling
companion on my three hours’ diligence journey from the station to my
friend’s house, a man who talked to me about her all the time.
He was a young magistrate whom I had already met, and who had much
interested me by his wit and his close manner of observing things, and by his
singularly refined casuistry, and, above all, by the contrast between his
professional severity, and his tolerant philosophy.
 But he never appeared so attractive to me as he did on that day, when he
told me the history of that mysterious Babette.
He had inquired into it, and had applied all his faculties as an examining
magistrate to it, for, like me, his visit to the asylum had roused his curiosity.
This is what he had learned and what he told me.
When she was ten years old, Babette had been violated by her own father,
and at thirteen she had been sent to the house of correction for vagabondage
and debauchery. From the time she was twenty until she was forty she had
been a servant in the neighborhood, frequently changing her situation, and
being nearly everywhere her employer’s mistress, and she had ruined several
families without getting any money herself, or without gaining any definite
position. A shopkeeper had committed suicide on her account, and a
respectable young fellow had turned thief and incendiary, and had finished at
the hulks.
She had been married twice, and had twice been left a widow, and for ten
years, until she was fifty, she had been the only commodity in the district, for
pleasure, to which five villages came to amuse themselves on holidays.
“She was very pretty, I suppose?”
“No; she never was that. It seems she was short, thin, with no bust or hips,
at her best, I am told, and nobody can remember that she was pretty, even
when she was young.”
“Then how can you explain ...?”
“How?” the magistrate exclaimed. “Well! what about the eyes? You could
not have looked at them?”
“Yes, yes, you are right,” I replied. “Those eyes explain many things,
certainly. They are the eyes of an innocent child.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed again, enthusiastically, “Cleopatra, Diana of Poiters,
Ninon de L’Enclos, all the queens of love who were adored when they were
growing old, must have had eyes like hers. A woman who has such eyes can
never grow old. But if Babette lives to be a hundred, she will always be
loved as she has been, and as she is.”
“As she is! Bah! By whom, pray?”
“By all the old men in the asylum, by all those who have preserved a fiber
that can be touched, a corner of their heart that can be inflamed, or the least
spark of desire left.”
“Do you think so?”
 “I am sure of it. And the superintendent loves her more than any of them
do.”
“Impossible!”
“I would stake my head on it.”
“Well, after all, it is possible, and even probable; it is even certain. I now
remember ...”
And again I saw the insulting, ferocious, familiar look which she had
given the superintendent.
“And who is la Friezê?” I asked the magistrate “I suppose you know that
also?”
“He is a retired butcher, who had both his legs frozen in the war of 1870,
and whom she is very fond of. No doubt he is a cripple, with two wooden
legs, but still a vigorous man enough, in spite of his fifty-three years. The
loins of a Hercules and the face of a satyr. The superintendent is quite jealous
of him!”
I thought the matter over again, and it seemed very probable to me. “Does
she love la Friezê?”
“Yes; he is the chosen lover.”
When we arrived at the host’s house a short time afterwards, we were
surprised to find everybody in a terrible state of excitement. A crime had
been committed in the asylum; the gendarmes were there and our host was
with them, so we instantly joined them. La Friezê had murdered the
superintendent, and they gave us the details, which were horrible. The former
butcher had hidden behind a door, and catching hold of the other, had rolled
onto the ground with him and bitten him in the throat, tearing out his carotid,
from which the blood spurted into the murderer’s face.
I saw him, la Friezê. His fat face, which had been badly washed, was still
blood-stained; he had a low forehead, square jaws, pointed ears, sticking out
from his head, and flat nostrils, like the muzzle of some wild animal; but
above all, I saw Babette.
She was smiling, and at that moment, her eyes had not their monkey-like
and ferocious expression, but they were pleading and tender, with all of their
sweetest childlike candor.
“You know,” my host said to me in a low voice, “that the poor woman has
fallen into senile imbecility, and that is the cause of her looks, which are so
strange, considering the terrible sight she has seen.
 “Do you think so?” the magistrate said. “You must remember that she is
not yet sixty, and I do not think that it is a case of senile imbecility, but that
she is quite conscious of the crime that has been committed.”
“Then why should she smile?”
“Because she is pleased at what she has done.”
“Oh! no; you are really too subtle!”
The magistrate suddenly turned to Babette, and, looking at her steadily, he
said:
“I suppose you know what has happened, and why this crime was
committed?”
She left off smiling, and her pretty, childlike eyes became her abominable
monkey’s eyes again, and then the answer was, suddenly to pull up her
petticoats and to show us the lower part of her person. Yes, the magistrate
had been quite right. That old woman had been a Cleopatra, a Diana, a Ninon
de L’Enclos, and the rest of her body had remained like a child’s, even more
than her eyes. We were thunderstruck at the sight.
“Pigs! Pigs!” la Friezê shouted to us. “You also wanted to have something
to do with her!”
And I saw that actually the magistrate’s face was pale and contracted, and
that his hands and lips trembled like those of a man caught in the act of doing
wrong.
 SYMPATHY

He was going up the Rue des Martyrs in a melancholy frame of mind, and in
a melancholy frame of mind she also was going up the Rue des Martyrs. He
was already old, nearly sixty, with a bald head under his seedy, tall hat, a
gray beard, half buried in a high shirt collar, with dull eyes, an unpleasant
mouth and yellow teeth.
She was past forty, with thin hair over her pads, and with a false plait; her
linen was doubtful in color, and she had evidently bought her unfashionable
dress at a reach-me-down shop. He was thin, while she was chubby. He had
been handsome, proud, ardent, full of self-confidence, certain of his future,
and seeming to hold in his hands all the trumps with which to win the game
on the green table of Parisian life, while she had been pretty, sought after,
fast, and in a fair way to have horses and carriages, and to win the first prize
on the turf of gallantry, among the favorites of fortune.
At times, in his dark moments, he remembered the time when he had come
to Paris from the country, with a volume of poetry and plays in his
portmanteau, feeling a supreme contempt for all the writers who were then in
vogue, and sure of supplanting them. She often, when she awoke in the
morning to another day’s unhappiness, remembered that happy time when she
had been launched onto the world, when she already saw that she was more
sought after than Marie G. or Sophie N. or any other woman of that class,
who had been her companions in vice, and whose lovers she had stolen from
them.
He had had a splendid start. Not, indeed, as a poet and dramatist, as he
had hoped at first, but thanks to a series of scandalous stories which had
made a sensation on the boulevards, so that after an action for damages and
several duels, he had become our witty and brilliant colleague who, etc.,
etc.
She had had her moments of extraordinary good luck, though she certainly
did not eclipse Marie P. or Camille L., whom men compared to Zenobia or
Ninon de l’Enclos, but still enough to cause her to be talked about in the
newspapers, and to cause a resolution at certain tables-d’hòtes at
Montmarte. But one fine day, the newspaper in which our brilliant and witty
colleague who ... used to write, became defunct, having been killed by a
much more cynical rival, thanks to the much more venomous pen of a much
more brilliant and witty colleague who .... Then, the insults of the latter
having become pure and simple mud-pelting, his style soon became worn out,
to the disgust of the public, and the celebrated Mr. What’s his name had great
difficulty in getting onto some obscure paper, where he was transformed into
the obscure penny-a-liner Machin.
Now, one evening the quasi-rival of Marie X. and Camille L. had fallen
ill, and consequently into pecuniary difficulties, and the prostitute No-
matter-who was now on the lookout for a dinner, and would have been only
too happy to get it at some table-d’hòte at Montmarte. Machin had had a
return of ambition with regard to his poetry and his dramas, but then, his
verses of former days had lost their freshness, and his youthful dramas
appeared to him to be childish. He would have to write others, and, by Jove!
he felt himself capably of doing it, for he had plenty of ideas and plans in his
head, and he could easily demolish many successful writers if he chose to
try! But then, the difficulty was, how to set about it, and to find the necessary
leisure and time for thought. He had his daily bread to gain, and something
besides: his coffee, his game of cards and other little requirements; and the
incessant writing article upon article barely sufficed for that, and so days and
years went by, and Machin was Machin still.
She also longed for former years, and surely it could not be so very hard
to find a lover to start her on her career once more, for many of her female
friends, who were not nearly so nice as she was, had unearthed one, so why
should not she be equally fortunate? But there, her youth had gone and she
had lost all her chances; other women had their fancy men, and she had to
take them on, every day at reduced prices, so that she was reduced from
taking up with any man she met, and so day after day and months and years
passed, and the prostitute No-matter-who had remained the prostitute No-
matter-who.
Often, in a fit of despondency, he used to say to himself, thinking of some
one who had succeeded in life: “But, after all, I am cleverer than that
fellow.” And she always said to herself, when she got up to her miserable,
daily round, when she thought of such and such a woman, who was now
settled in life: “In what respect is that woman better than I am?”
 And Machin, who was nearly sixty, and whose head was bald under his
shabby tall hat, and whose gray beard was half-buried in a high shirt collar,
who had dull eyes, an unpleasant mouth and yellow teeth, was mad with his
fellow men, while the prostitute No-matter-who, with thin hair over her
pads, and with a false plait, with her linen of a doubtful color, and with her
unfashionable dress, which she had evidently bought at a reach-me-down
shop, was enraged with society.
Ah! Those miserable, dark hours, and the wretched awakenings! And that
evening he was more than usually wretched, as he had just lost all his pay for
the next month, that miserable screw which he earned so hardly by almost
editing the newspaper, for three hundred francs a month, in a brothel.
And that evening she was in a state of semi-stupidity, as she had had too
many glasses of beer which a charitable female friend had given her, and was
almost afraid to go back to her room, as her landlord had told her in the
morning that unless she paid the fortnight’s back rent that she owed at the rate
of a franc a day, he would turn her out of doors and keep her things.
And this was the reason why they were both going up the Rue des Martyrs
in a melancholy frame of mind. There was scarcely a soul in the muddy
streets; it was getting dark, and beginning to rain, and the drains smelled
horribly.
He passed her, and in a mechanical voice she said: “Will you not come
home with me, you handsome dark man?” “I have no money,” he replied. But
she ran after him, and catching hold of his arm, she said: “Only a franc; that
is having it for nothing.” And he turned round, looked at her, and seeing that
she must have been pretty, and that she was still stout (and he was fond of fat
women), he said: “Where do you live? Near here?” “In the Rue Lepic.”
“Why! So do I.” “Then that is all right, eh? Come along, old fellow.”
He felt in his pockets and pulled out all the money he found there, which
amounted to thirteen sous, and said: “That is all I have, upon my honor!” “All
right,” she said; “come along.”
And they continued their melancholy walk along the Rue des Martyrs,
side by side now, but without speaking, and without guessing that their two
existences harmonized and corresponded with each other, and that by
huddling up together, they would be merely accomplishing the acme of their
twin destinies.
 THE DEBT

“Pst! Pst! Come with me, you handsome, dark fellow. I am very nice, as you
will see. Do come up. At any rate you will be able to warm yourself, for I
have a capital fire at home.”
But nothing enticed the foot-passengers, neither being called a handsome,
dark fellow, which she applied quite impartially to old or fat men also, nor
the promise of pleasure which was emphasized by a caressing ogle and
smile, nor even the promise of a good fire, which was so attractive in the
bitter December wind. And tall Fanny continued her useless walk, and the
night advanced and foot-passengers grew scarcer. In another hour the streets
would be absolutely deserted, and unless she could manage to pick up some
belated drunken man, she would be obliged to return home alone.
And yet, tall Fanny was a beautiful woman! With her head like a
Bacchante, and her body like a goddess, in all the full splendor of her
twenty-three years, she deserved something better than this miserable
pavement, where she could not even pick up the five francs which she
wanted for the requirements of the next day. But there! In this infernal Paris,
in this swarming crowd of competitors who all jostled each other,
courtesans, like artists, did not attain to eminence until their later years. In
that they resembled precious stones, as the most valuable of them are those
that have been set the oftenest.
And that was why tall Fanny, who was later to become one of the richest
and most brilliant stars of Parisian gallantry, was walking about the streets
on this bitter December night, without a half-penny in her pocket, in spite of
her head like a Bacchante, and her body like a goddess, and in all the full
splendor of her twenty-three years.
However, it was too late now to hope to meet anybody; there was not a
single foot passenger about; the street was decidedly empty, dull and lifeless.
Nothing was to be heard, except the whistling of sudden gusts of wind, and
nothing was to be seen, except the flickering gas lights, which looked like
dying butterflies. Well! The only thing was to return home alone.
 But suddenly, tall Fanny saw a human form standing on the pavement at the
next crossing, and whoever it was, seemed to be hesitating and uncertain
which way to go. The figure, which was very small and slight, was wrapped
in a long cloak, which reached almost to the ground.
“Perhaps he is a hunchback,” the girl said to herself. “They like tall
women!” And she walked quickly towards him, from habit, already saying:
“Pst! Pst! Come home with me, you handsome, dark fellow!” What luck! The
man did not go away, but came towards Fanny, although somewhat timidly,
while she went to meet him, repeating her wheedling words, so as to
reassure him. She went all the quicker, as she saw that he was staggering
with the zig-zag walk of a drunken man, and she thought to herself: “When
once they sit down, there is no possibility of getting these beggars up again,
and they want to go to sleep just where they are. I only hope I shall get to him
before he tumbles down.”
Luckily she reached him, just in time to catch him in her arms, but as soon
as she had done so, she almost let him fall, in her astonishment. It was neither
a drunken man nor a hunchback, but a child of twelve or thirteen in an
overcoat, who was crying, and who said in a weak voice: “I beg your
pardon, madame, I beg your pardon. If you only knew how hungry and cold I
am! I beg your pardon! Oh! I am so cold.”
“Poor child!” she said, putting her arms around him and kissing him. And
she carried him off, with a full, but happy heart, and while he continued to
sob, she said to him mechanically: “Don’t be frightened, my little man. You
will see how nice I can be! And then, you can warm yourself; I have a capital
fire.” But the fire was out; the room, however, was warm, and the child said,
as soon as they got in: “Oh! How comfortable it is here! It is a great deal
better than in the streets, I can tell you! And I have been living in the streets
for six days.” He began to cry again, and added: “I beg your pardon,
madame. I have eaten nothing for two days.”
Tall Fanny opened her cupboard, which had glass doors. The middle shelf
held all her linen, and on the upper one there was a box of Albert biscuits, a
drop of brandy at the bottom of a bottle, and a few small lumps of sugar in a
cup. With that, and some water out of the bottle, she concocted a sort of
broth, which he swallowed ravenously, and when he had done, he wished to
tell his story, which he did, yawning all the time.
His grandfather, (the only one of his relations whom he had ever known,)
who had been painter and decorator at Soisson, had died about a month
before; but before his death he had said to him: “When I am gone, little man,
you will find a letter to my brother, who is in business in Paris, among my
papers. You must take it to him, and he will be certain to take care of you.
However, in any case you must go to Paris, for you have an aptitude for
painting, and only there can you hope to become an artist.”
When the old man was dead (he died in the hospital), the child started,
dressed in an old coat of his grandfather’s and with thirty francs, which was
all that the old man had left behind him in his pocket. But when he got to
Paris, there was nobody of the name at the address mentioned on the letter.
The dead man’s brother had left there six months before, and nobody knew
where he had gone to, and so the child was alone, and for a few days he
managed to exist on what he had over, after paying for his journey. After he
had spent his last franc, he had wandered about the streets, as he had no
money with which to pay for a bed, buying his bread by the half-penny-
worth, until for the last forty-eight hours, he had been without anything,
absolutely without anything.
He told her all this while he was half asleep, amidst sobs and yawns, so
that the girl did not venture to ask him any more questions, in spite of her
curiosity, but, on the contrary, cut him short, and undressed him while she
listened, and only interrupted him to kiss him, and to say to him: “There,
there, my poor child! You shall tell me the rest to-morrow. You cannot go on
now, so go to bed and have a good sleep.” And as soon as he had finished,
she put him to bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep. Then
she undressed herself quickly, got into bed by his side, so she might keep him
warm, and went to sleep, crying to herself, without exactly knowing why.
The next day they breakfasted and dined together at a common eating
house, on money that she had borrowed, and when it was dark, she said to the
child: “Wait for me here; I will come for you at closing time.” She came back
sooner, however about ten o’clock. She had twelve francs, which she gave
him, telling him that she had earned them, and she continued, with a laugh: “I
feel that I shall make some more. I am in luck this evening, and you have
brought it me. Do not be impatient, but have some milk-posset while you are
waiting for me.”
She kissed him before she went, and the kind girl felt real maternal
happiness as she went out. An hour later, however, she was run in by the
police for having been found in a prohibited place, and off she went, game
for St. Lazare.
 And the child, who was turned out by the proprietor at closing time, and
then driven from the furnished lodgings the next morning, where they told him
that Tall Fanny was in quod, began his wretched vagabond life in the streets
again, with only the twelve francs to depend on.

Fifteen years afterwards the newspapers announced one morning that the
famous Fanny Clairet, the celebrated horizontal, whose caprices had caused
a revolution in high life, that queen of frail beauties for whom three men had
committed suicide, and so many others had ruined themselves, that
incomparable living statue, who had attracted all Paris to the theater where
she impersonated Venus in her transparent skin tights, made of woven air and
knitted nothing had been shut up in a lunatic asylum. She had been seized
suddenly; it was an attack of general paralysis, and as her debts were
enormous, when her estate had been liquidated, she would have to end her
days at La Salpêtrière.
“No, certainly not!” François Guerland, the painter, said to himself, when
he read the notice of it in the papers. “No, the great Fanny shall certainly not
end like that.” For it was certainly she; there could be no doubt about it. For
a long time after she had shown him that act of charity, which he could never
forget, the child had tried to see his benefactress again. But Paris is a very
mysterious place, and he himself had had many adventures before he grew up
to be a man, and, eventually, almost somebody! But he only found her in the
distance; he had recognized her at the theater, on the stage, or as she was
getting into her carriage, which was fit for a princess. And how could he
approach her then? Could he remind her of the time when her price was five
francs? No, assuredly not; and so he had followed her, thanked her, and
blessed her, from a distance.
But now the time had come for him to pay his debt, and he paid it.
Although tolerably well known as a painter with a future in store for him, he
was not rich. But what did that matter? He mortgaged that future which
people prophesied for him, and gave himself over, bound hand and foot, to a
picture dealer. Then he had the poor woman taken to an excellent asylum,
where she could have not only every care, but every necessary comfort and
even luxury. Alas! however, general paralysis never forgives. Sometimes it
releases its prey, like the cruel cat releases the mouse, for a brief moment,
only to lay hold of it again later, more fiercely than ever. Fanny had that
period of abatement in her symptoms, and one morning the physician was
able to say to the young man: “You are anxious to remove her? Very well! But
you will soon have to bring her back, for the cure is only apparent, and her
present state will only endure for a month, at most, and then, only if the
patient is kept free from every excitement and excess!”
“And without that precaution?” Guerland asked him. “Then,” the doctor
replied; “the final crisis will be all the nearer; that is all. But whether it
would be nearer or more remote, it will not be the less fatal.” “You are sure
of that?” “Absolutely sure.”
François Guerland took tall Fanny out of the asylum, installed her in
splendid apartments, and went to live with her there. She had grown old,
bloated, with white hair, and sometimes wandered in her mind, and she did
not recognize in him the poor little lad on whom she had taken pity in the
days gone by, nor did he remind her of the circumstance. He allowed her to
believe that she was adored by a rich young man, who was passionately
devoted to her. He was young, ardent, and caressing. Never had a mistress
such a lover, and for three weeks, before she relapsed into the horrors of
madness, which were happily soon terminated by her death, she intoxicated
herself with the ecstasy of his kisses, and thus bade farewell to conscient life
in an apotheosis of love.
The other day, at dessert, after an artists’ dinner, they were speaking of
François Guerland, whose last picture at the Salon had been so deservedly
praised. “Ah! yes,” one of them said, with a contemptuous voice and look.
“That handsome fellow Guerland!” And another, accentuating the insinuation,
added boldly: “Yes, that is exactly it! That handsome, too handsome fellow
Guerland, the man who allows himself to be kept by women.”
 AN ARTIST

“Bah! Monsieur,” the old mountebank said to me; “it is a matter of exercise
and habit, that is all! Of course, one requires to be a little gifted that way, and
not to be butter-fingered, but what is chiefly necessary is patience and daily
practice for long, long years.”
His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all those performers
who are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the most
wonderfully clever one that I had ever met. Certainly, I had frequently seen
him, and everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or even in
traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of putting a man or a
woman with extended arms against a wooden target, and in throwing knives
between their fingers and round their head, from a distance. There is nothing
very extraordinary in it, after all, when one knows the tricks of the trade,
and that the knives are not the least sharp, and stick into the wood at some
distance from the flesh. It is the rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the
blades, the curve which the handles make towards their living aim, which
give an air of danger to an exhibition that has become common-place, and
only requires very middling skill.
But here there was no trick and no deception, and no dust thrown into the
eyes. It was done in good earnest and in all sincerity. The knives were as
sharp as razors, and the old mountebank planted them close to the flesh,
exactly in the angle between the fingers, and surrounded the head with a
perfect halo of knives, and the neck with a collar, from which nobody could
have extricated himself without cutting his carotid artery, while to increase
the difficulty, the old fellow went through the performance without seeing, his
whole face being covered with a close mask of thick oil-cloth.
Naturally, like other great artists, he was not understood by the crowd,
who confounded him with vulgar tricksters, and his mask only appeared to
them a trick the more, and a very common trick into the bargain. “He must
think us very stupid,” they said. “How could he possibly aim without having
his eyes open?” And they thought there must be imperceptible holes in the
oil-cloth, a sort of lattice work concealed in the material. It was useless for
him to allow the public to examine the mask for themselves before the
exhibition began. It was all very well that they could not discover any trick,
but they were only all the more convinced that they were being tricked. Did
not the people know that they ought to be tricked?
I had recognized a great artist in the old mountebank, and I was quite sure
that he was altogether incapable of any trickery, and I told him so, while
expressing my admiration to him; and he had been touched, both by my
admiration, and above all by the justice I had done him. Thus we became
good friends, and he explained to me, very modestly, the real trick which the
crowd cannot understand, the eternal trick compromised in these simple
words: “To be gifted by nature, and to practice every day for long, long
years.”
He had been especially struck by the certainty which expressed, that any
trickery must become impossible to him. “Yes,” he said to me; “quite
impossible! Impossible to a degree which you cannot imagine. If I were to
tell you! But where would be the use?”
His face clouded over, and his eyes filled with tears, but I did not venture
to force myself into his confidence. My looks, however, were no doubt not so
discreet as my silence, and begged him to speak, and so he responded to their
mute appeal. “After all,” he said: “why should I not tell you about it? You
will understand me.” And he added, with a look of sudden ferocity: “She
understood it at any rate!” “Who?” I asked. “My unfaithful wife,” he replied.
“Ah! Monsieur, what an abominable creature she was, if you only knew! Yes,
she understood it too well, too well, and that is why I hate her so; even more
on that account, than for having deceived me. For that is a natural fault, is it
not, and may be pardoned? But the other thing was a crime, a horrible
crime.”
The woman who stood against the wooden target every night with her
arms stretched out and her fingers extended, and whom the old mountebank
fitted with gloves and with a halo formed of his knives which were as sharp
as razors, and which he planted close to her, was his wife. She might have
been a woman of forty, and must have been fairly pretty, but with perverse
prettiness, an impudent mouth, a mouth that was at the same time sensual and
bad, with the lower lip too thick for the thin, dry upper lip.
I had several times noticed that every time he planted a knife in the board,
she uttered a laugh, so low as scarcely to be heard, but which was very
significant when one heard it, for it was a hard and very mocking laugh, but I
had always attributed that sort of reply to an artifice which the occasion
required. It was intended, I thought, to accentuate the danger she incurred and
the contempt that she felt for it, thanks to the sureness of the thrower’s hands,
and so I was very surprised when the mountebank said to me:
“Have you observed her laugh, I say? Her evil laugh which makes fun of
me, and her cowardly laugh, which defies me? Yes, cowardly, because she
knows nothing can happen to her, nothing, in spite of all she deserves, in
spite of all that I ought to do to her, in spite of all that I want to do to her.”
“What do you want to do?” “Confound it! Cannot you guess? I want ... to kill
her,” “To kill her, because she has ...” “Because she has deceived me? No,
no, not that, I tell you again. I have forgiven her for that, a long time ago, and
I am too much accustomed to it! But the worst of it is, that the first time I
forgave her, when I told her that all the same, I might some day have my
revenge by cutting her throat, if I chose, without seeming to do it on purpose,
as if it were an accident, mere awkwardness.” “Oh! So you said that to her?”
“Of course I did, and I meant it. I thought I might be able to do it, for you see
I had the perfect right to do so. It was so simple, so easy, so tempting! Just
think! A mistake of less than half an inch, and her skin would be cut at the
neck where the jugular vein is, and the jugular would be severed. My knives
cut very well! And when once the jugular is cut ... good-by. The blood would
spurt out, and one, two, three red jets, and all would be over; she would be
dead, and I should have had my revenge!”
“That is true, certainly, horribly true!” “And without any risk to me, eh?
An accident, that is all; bad luck, one of those mistakes which happen every
day in our business. What could they accuse me of? Whoever would think of
accusing me, even? Homicide through imprudence, that would be all! They
would even pity me, rather than accuse me. ‘My wife! My poor wife!’ I
should say, sobbing. ‘My wife, who is so necessary to me, who is half the
bread-winner, who takes part in my performance!’ You must acknowledge
that I should be pitied!”
“Certainly; there is not the least doubt about that.” “And you must allow
that such a revenge would be a very nice revenge, the best possible revenge,
which I could have with assured impunity?” “Evidently that is so.” “Very
well! But when I told her so, just as I have told you, and better still;
threatening her, as I was mad with rage, and ready to do the deed that I had
dreamt of, on the spot; what do you think she said?” “That you were a good
fellow, and would certainly not have the atrocious courage to ...”
 “Tut! tut! tut! I am not such a good fellow as you think. I am not frightened
of blood, and that I have proved already, though it would be useless to tell
you how and where. But I had no necessity to prove it to her, for she knows
that I am capable of a good many things; even of crime; especially of a
crime.” “And she was not frightened?” “No. She merely replied that I could
not do what I said; you understand.” “That I could not do it!” “Why not?”
“Ah! Monsieur, so you do not understand? Why do you not? Have I not
explained to you by what constant, long, daily practice I have learnt to plant
my knives without seeing what I am doing?” “Yes, well, what then?” “Well!
Cannot you understand what she has understood with such terrible results,
that now my hand would no longer obey me, if I wished to make a mistake as
I threw?” “Is it possible?” “Nothing is truer, I am sorry to say. For I really
have wished to have my revenge, which I have dreamt of, and which I thought
so easy. Exasperated by that bad woman’s insolence and confidence in her
own safety, I have several times made up my mind to kill her, and have
exerted all my energy and all my skill, to make my knives fly aside when I
threw them to make a border round her neck. I tried with all my might to
make them deviate half an inch, just enough to cut her throat. I wanted to, and
I have never succeeded, never. And always the horrible laugh makes fun of
me, always, always.”
And with a deluge of tears, with something like a roar of unsatiated and
muzzled rage, he ground his teeth as he wound up: “She knows me, the jade;
she is in the secret of my work, of my patience, of my trick, routine, whatever
you may call it! She lives in my innermost being, and sees into it more
closely than you do, or than I do myself. She knows what a faultless machine
I have become, the machine of which she makes fun, the machine which is too
well wound up, the machine which cannot get out of order, and she knows
that I cannot make a mistake.”
 MAMMA STIRLING

Tall, slim, looking almost naked under her transparent dress of gauze, which
fell in straight folds as far as the gold bracelets on her slender wrists, with
languor in her rich voice, and something undulating and feline in the
rhythmical swing of her wrist and hips. Tatia Caroly was singing one of those
sweet Creole songs which call up some far distant fairy-like country, and
unknown caresses, for which the lips remain always thirsting.
Footit, the clown, was leaning against the piano with a blackened face,
and with his mouth that looked like a red gash from a saber cut, and his wide
open eyes, he expressed feelings of the most extravagant emotion, while
some niggers squatted on the ground, and accompanied the orchestra by
strumming on some yellow, empty gourds.
But what made the woman and the children in the pantomime of the “New
Circus” laugh most, was the incessant quarrel between an enormous Danish
hound and a poor old supernumerary, who was blackened like a negro
minstrel, and dressed like a Mulatto woman. The dog was always annoying
him, followed him, snapped at his legs, and at his old wig, with his sharp
teeth, and tore his coat and his silk pocket-handkerchief, whenever he could
get hold of it, to pieces. And the man used positively to allow himself to be
molested and bitten, played his part with dull resignation, with mechanical
unconsciousness of a man who has come down in the world, and who gains
his livelihood as best he can, and who has already endured worse things than
that.
And when half turning round to the two club men, with whom she had just
been dining at the Café Anglais, as she used her large fan of black feathers,
in a pretty, supple pose, with the light falling on to the nape of her fair neck,
Noele de Fréjus exclaimed: “Wherever did they unearth that horrible,
grotesque figure?”
Lord Shelley, who was a pillar of the circuses, and who knew the
performances, the length of time the acrobats had been performing, and the
private history of all of them, whether clowns or circus riders, replied: “Do
not you recognize him, my dear?” “That lump of soot?... Are you having a
joke with me?”
“He certainly has very much changed, poor fellow, and not to his
advantage...Nevertheless James Stirling was a model of manly beauty and
elegance, and he led such an extravagant life that all sorts of stories were rife
about him, and many people declared that he was some high-class
adventurer...At any rate he thought no more of danger than he did of smoking
a good cigar.
“Do you not remember him at the Hippodrome, when he stood on the bare
back of a horse, and drove five other tandem fashion at full gallop and
without making a mistake, but checking them, or urging them on with his thin,
muscular hands, just as he pleased. And he seemed to be riveted on to the
horse, and kept on it, as if he had been held on by invisible hands.”
“Yes, I remember him...James Stirling,” she said. “The circus rider, James
Stirling, on whose account that tall girl Caro, who was also a circus rider,
gave that old stager Blanche Taupin a cut right and left across the face with
her riding-whip, because she had tried to get him from her...But what can
have happened to him, to have brought him down to such a position?”
Horrible, hairy monkeys, grimacing under their red and blue masks, had
invaded the arena, and with their hair hanging down on to their bare
shoulders, looking very funny with their long tails, their gray skin tights and
their velvet breeches, these female dancers twisted, jumped, hopped and
drew their lascivious and voluptuous circle more closely round Chocolat,
who shook the red skirts of his coat, rolled his eyes, and showed his large,
white teeth in a foolish smile, as if he were the prey of irresistible desire,
and yet terribly afraid of what might happen, and Lord Shelley taking some
grapes out of a basket that Noele de Fréjus offered him, said: “It is not a very
cheerful story, but then true stories rarely are. At the time when he was still
unknown, and when he used to have to tighten his belt more frequently than he
got enough to eat and drink, James Stirling followed the destinies of a circus
which traveled with its vans from fair to fair and from place to place, and
fell in love with a gipsy columbine, who also formed part of this wandering,
half starved company.
“She was not twenty, and astonished the others by her rash boldness, her
absolute contempt for danger and obstacles, and her strange and adroit
strength. She charmed them also by a magic philter which came from her hair,
which was darker that a starless night, from her large, black, coaxing, velvety
eyes, that were concealed by the fringe of such long lashes that they curled
upwards, from her scented skin, that was as soft as rice paper, and every
touch of which was a suggestive and tempting caress, from her firm, full,
smiling, childlike mouth, which uttered nothing but laughter, jokes, and love
songs, and gave promise of kisses.
“She rode bare-backed horses, without bit or bridle, stretched herself out
on their backs, as if on a bed, and mingled her disheveled hair with their
manes, swaying her supple body to their most impetuous movements, and at
other times standing almost on their shoulders or on the crupper, while she
juggled with looking-glasses, brass balls, knives that flashed as they twirled
rapidly round in the smoky light of the paraffin lamps that were fastened to
the tent poles.
“Her name was Sacha, that pretty Slavonic name which has such a sweet
and strange sound, and she gave herself to him entirely, because he was
handsome, strong, and spoke to women very gently, like one talks to quite
little children, who are so easily frightened, and made to cry, and it was on
her account that in a quarrel in Holland he knocked down an Italian wild
beast tamer, by a blow between the two eyes.
“They adored each other so, that they never thought of their poverty, but
redoubled their caresses when they had nothing to eat, not even an unripe
apple stolen from an orchard, nor a lump of bread which they had begged on
the road, of some charitable soul. And they embraced each other more
ardently still, when they were obliged to stop for the night in the open
country, and shivered in the old, badly-closed vans, and had to be very
sparing with the wood, and could not illuminate the snow with those large
bivouac fires, whose smoke rises in such fantastic, spiral curls, and whose
flames look like a spot of blood, at a distance, seen through the mist.
“It was one of those Bohemian quasi-matrimonial arrangements, which
are often more enduring than ours, and in which a man and a woman do not
part for a mere caprice, a dream, or a piece of folly.
“But by-and-bye she was no longer good for anything, and had to give up
appearing on the program, for she was in the family way. James Stirling
worked for both, and thought that he should die of grief when she was
brought to bed, and after three days of intense suffering, died with her hand in
his.
“And now, all alone, crushed by grief, so ill that at times he thought his
heart had stopped, the circus rider lived for the child which the dead woman
had left him as a legacy. He bought a goat, so that it might have pure milk,
and brought it up with such infinite, deep, womanly tenderness, that the child
called him ‘Mamma,’ and in the circus they nick-named him: Mamma
Stirling.
“The boy was like his mother, and one might have said that he had brought
James luck, for he had made his mark, was receiving a good income, and
appeared in every performance. Well-made and agile, and profiting by the
lessons which he received at the circus, little Stirling was soon fit to appear
on the posters, and the night when he made his first appearance at Franconi’s,
old Tom Pears, the clown, who understood such matters better than most,
exclaimed: ‘My boy, you will make your way, if you don’t break your neck
first!’ ‘I will take care of that, Monsieur Pears,’ the lad replied, with a
careless shrug of the shoulder.
“He was extremely daring, and when he threw himself from one trapeze to
the other, in a bold flight through the air, one might almost have fancied in the
silvery electric light, that he was some fabulous bird with folded wings, and
he executed all his feats with unequalled, natural grace, without seeming to
make an effort, but he unbraced his limbs of steel, and condensed all his
strength in one supreme, mad leap. His chest, under its pearl-gray tights,
hardly rose, and there was not a drop of perspiration on his forehead, among
the light curls which framed it, like a golden halo.
“He had an almost disdainful manner of smiling at the public, as if he had
been working like an artist, who loves his profession, and who is amused at
danger, rather than like an acrobat who is paid to amuse people after dinner;
and during his most difficult feats he often uttered a shrill cry, like that of
some wild beast which defies the sportsman, as it falls on its prey. But that
sportsman is always on the alert, and he is the Invisible, which closes the
brightest eyes, and the most youthful lips for ever.
“And in spite of oneself, one was excited by it, and could have wished,
from a superstitious instinct, that he would not continually have that defiant
cry, which seemed to give him pleasure, on his lips. James Stirling watched
over him like the mother of an actress does, who knows that she is in some
corner, and fears dangerous connections, in which the strongest are entangled
and ruined, and they lived together in a boarding-house near the Arc de
Triumph.
“It was a very simple apartment, with immense posters of every color and
in every language pinned to the wall, on which the name of Stirling appeared
in large, striking letters; photographs with inscriptions, and tinsel wreaths,
though there were two of real laurel, that were covered with dust, and were
gradually falling to pieces.
“One night, the young fellow for the first time did not come home, and
only returned in time for rehearsal, tired, with blue rims under his eyes, his
lips cracked with feverish heat, and with pale cheeks, but with such a look of
happiness, and such a peculiar light in his eyes, that Mamma Stirling felt as
if he had been stabbed, and had not the strength to find fault with him; and
emboldened, radiant, longing to give vent to the mad joy which filled his
whole being, to express his sensations, and recount his happiness, like a lad
talking to his elder brother, he told James Stirling his love intrigue from
beginning to end, and how much in love he was with the light-haired girl who
had clasped him in her arms, and initiated him into the pleasures of the flesh.
“It had been coming for some time, he said. She went to every
performance, and always occupied the same box. She used to send him
letters by the boxopener, letters which smelt like bunches of violets, and
always smiled at him when he came into the ring to bow to the public, amidst
the applause and recalls, and it was that smile, those red, half-open lips,
which seemed to promise so many caresses and delicious words, that had
attracted him like some strange, fragrant fruit. Sometimes she came with
gentlemen in evening dress, and with gardenias in their button-holes, who
seemed to bore her terribly, if not to disgust her. And he was happy, although
he had never yet spoken to her, that she had not that smile for them which she
had for him, and that she appeared dull and sad, like somebody who is
homesick, or who has got a great longing for something.
“On other evenings, she used to be quite alone, with black pearls in the
lobes of her small ears, that were like pink shells, and got up and left her box
as soon as he had finished his performance on the trapeze ... while the
evening before she carried him off almost forcibly in her carriage, without
even giving him time to get rid of his tights, and the india-rubber armlets that
he wore on his wrists. Oh! that return to the cold, in the semi-obscurity,
through which the trembling light of the street lamps shone, that warm,
exciting clasp of her arms round him, which imprisoned him, and by degrees
drew him close to that warm body, whose slightest throb and shiver he felt,
as if she had been clothed in impalpable gauze, and whose odor mounted to
his head like fumes of whisky, an odor in which there was something of
everything, of the animal, of the woman, of spices, of flowers, and something
that he did not yet know.
“And they were despotic, imperious, divine kisses, when she put her lips
to his and kept them there, as if to make him dream of an eternity of bliss,
sucking in his breath, hurting his lips, intoxicating, overwhelming him with
delight, exhausting him, while she held his head in both her hands, as if in a
vice. And the carriage rolled on at a quick trot, through the silence of the
snow, and they did not even hear the noise of the wheels, which buried
themselves in that white carpet, as if it had been cotton-wool. Suddenly,
however, tired and exhausted she leant against him with closed eyes and
moist lips, and then they talked at random, like people who are not quite
themselves, and who have uncorked too many bottles of champagne on a
benefit night.
“She questioned him, and laughed at his theatrical slang, wrapped her
otter-skin rug round his legs, and murmured: ‘Come close to me, darling; at
any rate, you are not cold, I hope?’ When they reached her pretty little house,
with old tapestry and delicate colored plush hangings, they found supper
waiting for them, and she amused herself by attending to him herself, with the
manners of a saucy waitress... And then there were kisses, constant,
insatiable, maddening kisses, and the lad exclaimed, with glistening eyes, at
the thoughts of future meetings: ‘If you only knew how pretty she is! And
then, it is nicer than anything else in the world to obey her, to do whatever
she wants, and to allow oneself to be loved as she wishes!’
“Mamma Stirling was very uneasy, but resigned himself to the inevitable,
and seeing how infatuated the boy was, he took care not to be too sharp with
him, or to keep too tight a hand upon the reins. The woman who had
debauched the lad was a fast woman, and nothing else, and after all, the old
stager preferred that to one of those excitable women who are as dangerous
for a man as the plague, whereas a girl of that sort can be taken and left
again, and one does not risk one’s heart at the same time as one does one’s
skin, for a man knows what they are worth. He was mistaken, however. Nelly
d’Argine, she is married to a Yankee, now, and has gone to New York with
him, was one of those vicious women whom a man can only wish his worst
enemy to have, and she had merely taken a fancy to the young fellow because
she was bored to death, and because her senses were roused like the embers
which break out again, when a fire is nearly out.
 “Unfortunately, he had taken the matter seriously, and was very jealous,
and as suspicious as a deer, and had never imagined that this love affair
could come to an end, and proud, with his hot gipsy blood, he wished to be
the only lover, the only master who paid, and who could not be shown the
door, like a troublesome and importunate parasite.
“Stirling had saved some money, by dint of a hard struggle, and had
invested it in the Funds against a rainy day, when he should be too old to
work, and to gain a livelihood, and when he saw how madly in love his son
was, and how obstinate in his lamentable folly, he gave him all his savings
and deprived himself of his stout and gin, so that the boy might have money to
give to his mistress, and might continue to be happy, and not have any cares,
and so between them, they kept Nelly.
“Stirling’s debts accumulated, and he mortgaged his salary for years in
advance to the usurers who haunt circuses as if they were gambling hells,
who are on the watch for passions, poverty and disappointments, who keep
plenty of ready stamped bill paper in their pockets, as well as money, which
they haggle over, coin by coin. But in spite of all this, the lad sang, made a
show, and amused himself, and used to say to him, as he kissed him on both
cheeks: ‘How kind you are, in spite of everything!’
“In a month’s time, as he was becoming too exacting, he followed her,
questioned her and worried her with perpetual scenes, Nelly found that she
had had enough of her gymnast; he was a toy which she had done with and
worn out, and which was now only in her way, and only worth throwing into
the gutter. She was satiated with him, and became once more the tranquil
woman whom nothing can move, and who baits her ground quite calmly, in
order to find a husband and to make a fresh start. And so she turned the young
fellow out of doors, as if he had been some beggar soliciting alms. He did
not complain, however, and did not say anything to Mamma Stirling, but
worked as he had done in the past, and mastered himself with superhuman
energy, so as to hide the grief that was gnawing at his heart and killing him,
and the disenchantment with everything that was making him sick of life.
“Some time afterwards, when there was to be a special display for the
officers, seeing Nelly d’Argine there in a box surrounded by her usual
admirers, appearing indifferent to everything that was going on, and not even
apparently noticing that he was performing, and was being heartily
applauded, he threw his trapeze forward as far as he could, at the end of his
performance, and exerting all his strength, and certain that he should fall
beyond the protecting net, he flung himself furiously into space.
“A cry of horror resounded from one end of the house to the other, when
he was picked up disfigured, and with nearly every bone in his body broken.
The unfortunate young fellow was no longer breathing, his chest was crushed
in, and blood-stained froth was issuing from his lips, and Nelly d’Argine
made haste to leave the house with her friends, saying in a very vexed voice:
“‘It is very disgusting to come in the hopes of being amused, and to
witness an accident!’
“And Mamma Stirling, who was ruined and in utter despair, and who
cared for nothing more in this world, after that took to drinking, used to get
constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to
bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to
undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken
himself, and to allow himself to be bitten.
“Ah! What a wretched thing life is for those who are kind, and who have
too much heart!”
 LILIE LALA

“When I saw her for the first time,” Louis d’Arandel said, with the look of a
man who was dreaming and trying to recollect something, “I thought of some
slow and yet passionate music that I once heard, though I do not remember
who was the composer, where there was a fair-haired woman, whose hair
was so silky, so golden, and so vibrating, that her lover had it cut off after her
death, and had the strings of the magic bow of a violin made out of it, which
afterwards emitted such superhuman complaints and love melodies that they
made its hearers love until death.
“In her eyes there lay the mystery of deep waters, and one was lost in
them, drowned in them like in fathomless depths, and at the corners of her
mouth there lurked that despotic and merciless smile of those women who do
not fear that they may be conquered, who rule over men like cruel queens,
whose hearts remain as virgin as those of the strictest Carmelite nuns, amidst
a flood of lewdness.
“I have seen her angelic head, the bands of her hair, that looked like plates
of gold, her tall, graceful figure, her white, slender, childish hands, in stained
glass windows in churches. She suggested pictures of the Annunciation,
where the Archangel Gabriel descends with ultra-marine colored wings, and
Mary is sitting at her spinning-wheel and spinning, while uttering pious
prayers, and looks like the tall sister of the white lilies that are growing
beside her and the roses.
“When she went through the acacia alley, she appeared on some First
Night in the stage box at one of the theaters, nearly always alone, and
apparently feeling life a great burden, and angry because she could not
change the eternal, dull round of human enjoyment, nobody would have
believed that she went in for a fast life, and that in the annals of gallantry she
was catalogued under the strange name of Lilie Lala, and that no man could
rub against her without being irretrievably caught, and spending his last half-
penny on her.
“But with all that, Lilie had the voice of a schoolgirl, of some little
innocent creature who still uses a skipping-rope and wears short dresses, and
had that clear, innocent laugh which reminds people of wedding bells.
Sometimes, for fun, I would kneel down before her, like before the statue of a
saint, and clasping my hands as if in prayer, I used to say: ‘Sancta Lilie, ora
pro nobis!’
“One evening, at Biarritz, when the sky had the dull glare of intense heat
and the sea was of a sinister, inky black, and was swelling and rolling
enormous phosphorescent waves onto the beach at Port-Vieux, Lilie, who
was listless and strange, and was making holes in the sand with the heels of
her boots, suddenly exclaimed in one of those longings for confidence which
women sometimes feel, and for which they are sorry as soon as their story is
done:
“‘Ah! My dear fellow, I do not deserve to be canonized, and my life is
rather a subject for a drama than a chapter from the Gospels or the Golden
Legend. As long as I can remember anything, I can remember seeing myself
wrapped in lace, being carried by a woman, and continually being made a
fuss with, like children are who have been waited for for a long time, and
who are spoiled more than others.
“‘Those kisses were so nice, that I still seem to feel their sweetness, and I
preserve the remembrance of them in a little place in my heart, like one
preserves some lucky talisman in a reliquary. I still seem to remember an
indistinct landscape lost in the mist, outlines of trees which frightened me as
they creaked and groaned in the wind, and ponds on which swans were
sailing. And when I look in the glass for a long time, merely for the sake of
seeing myself, it seems to me as if I recognized the woman who formerly
used to kiss me most frequently, and speak to me in a more loving voice than
anyone else did. But what happened afterwards?
“‘Was I carried off, or sold to some strolling circus owner by a dishonest
servant? I do not know; I have never been able to find out; but I remember
that my whole childhood was spent in a circus which traveled from fair to
fair, and from place to place, with files of vans, processions of animals, and
noisy music.
“‘I was as tiny as an insect, and they taught me difficult tricks, to dance on
the tight-rope and to perform on the slack-rope.... I was beaten as if I had
been a bit of plaster, and I more frequently had a piece of dry bread to gnaw,
than a slice of meat. But I remember that one day I slipped under one of the
vans, and stole a basin of soup as my share, which one of the clowns was
carefully making for his three learned dogs.
 “‘I had neither friends nor relations; I was employed on the dirtiest jobs,
like the lowest stable-help, and I was tattooed with bruises and scars. Of the
whole company, however, the one who beat me the most, who was the least
sparing of his thumps, and who continually made me suffer, as if it gave him
pleasure, was the manager and proprietor, a kind of old, vicious brute, whom
everybody feared like the plague, a miser who was continually complaining
of the receipts, who hid away the crown pieces in his mattress, invested his
money in the funds, and cut down the salary of everybody, as far as he could.
“‘His name was Rapha Ginestous. Any other child, but myself, would
have succumbed to such constant martyrdom, but I grew up, and the more I
grew, the prettier and more desirable I became, so that when I was fifteen,
men were already beginning to write love letters to me, and to throw
bouquets to me in the arena. I felt also that all the men in the company were
watching me, and were coveting me as their prey; that their lustful looks
rested on my pink tights, and followed the graceful outlines of my body when
I was posing on the rope that stretched from one end of the circus to the other,
or jumped through the paper hoops at full gallop.
“‘They were no longer the same, and spoke to me in a totally different
tone of voice.... They tried to come into my dressing-room when I was
changing my dress, and Rapha Ginestous seemed to have lost his head, and
his heart throbbed audibly when he came near me. Yes, he had the audacity to
propose bargains to me which covered my cheeks and forehead with blushes,
and which filled me with disgust, and as I felt a fierce hatred for him, and
detested him with all my soul and all my strength, as I wished to make him
suffer the tortures which he had inflicted upon me, a hundred fold, I used him
as the target at which I was constantly aiming.
“‘Instinctively, I employed every cunning perfidy, every artful coquetry,
every lie, every artifice which upsets the strongest and most skeptical, and
places them at our mercy, like submissive animals. He loved me, he really
loved me, that lascivious goat, who had never seen anything in a woman
except a soft palliasse, and an instrument of convenience and of
forgetfulness. He loved me like old men do love, with frenzy, with degrading
transports, and with the prostration of his will and of his strength.... I held
him like in a leash, and did whatever I liked with him.
“‘I was much more manageress than he was manager, and the poor wretch
wasted away in vain hopes and in useless transports; he had not even touched
the tips of my fingers, and was reduced to bestowing his caresses on my
columbine shoes, my tights, and my wigs. And I care not that for it, you
understand! Not the slightest familiarity, and he began to grow thin over it,
fell ill, and almost became idiotic. And while he implored me, and promised
to marry me, with his eyes full of tears, I shouted with laughter; I reminded
him of how he had beaten, abused, and humiliated me, and had often made me
wish for death. And as soon as he left me, he emptied bottles of gin and
whisky, and got so abominably drunk that he rolled under the table, in order
to drown his sorrow and forget his desire.
“‘He covered me with jewels, and tried everything he could to tempt me
to become his wife, and in spite of my inexperience in life, he consulted me
with regard to everything he undertook, and one evening, after I had stroked
his face with my hand, I persuaded him without any difficulty, to make his
will, by which he left me all his savings, and the circus and everything
belonging to it.
“‘It was in the middle of winter, near Moscow; it snowed continually, and
one almost burned oneself at the stoves in trying to keep warm. Rapha
Ginestous had had supper brought into the largest van, which was his, after
the performance, and for hours we ate and drank. I was very nice towards
him, and filled his glass every moment; I even sat on his knee and kissed him.
And all his love, and the fumes of the alcohol of the wine mounted to his
head, and gradually made him so helplessly intoxicated, that he fell from his
chair inert, and as if he had been struck by lightning, without opening his eyes
or saying a word.
“‘The rest of the troupe were asleep, and the lights were out in all the
little windows, and not a sound was to be heard, while the snow continued to
fall in large flakes. So having put out the petroleum lamp, I opened the door,
and taking the drunkard by the feet, as if he had been a bale of goods, I threw
him out into that white shroud.
“‘The next morning the stiff and convulsed body of Rapha Ginestous was
picked up, and as everybody knew his inveterate drinking habits, no one
thought of instituting an inquiry, or of accusing me of a crime, and thus I was
avenged, and had a yearly income of nearly fifteen thousand francs. What,
after all, is the good of being honest, and of pardoning our enemies, as the
Gospel bids us?’
“And now,” Louis d’Arandal said in conclusion, “suppose we go and
have a cocktail or two at the Casino, for I do not think that I have ever talked
so much in my life before.”
 THE BANDMASTER’S SISTER

“What a joke!” the bandmaster said, twirling his moustache with the foolish
smile of a good-looking man, who dangles after women’s petticoats, in order
that he may get on all the quicker.
His comrades’ equivocal allusions puzzled him, though they flattered him
like applause, and he stealthily looked in the large mirrors at the new lyres
embroidered in gold on the collar of his tunic. They fascinated him by their
glitter, and half intoxicated by the doubtful champagne that he had drunk
during dinner, and by the glasses of chartreuse and of Bavarian beer which he
had imbibed afterwards, and excited by the songs, he was indulging in his
usual dreams of success.
He saw himself on the platform of a public garden, standing before his
musicians in a flood of light, and he fancied already that he could hear the
whispers of women, and feel the caress of their look upon him.
He would be invited even into the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint
Germain, which was so difficult of access. With his handsome, pale face,
and his wonderful manner of playing Chopin’s music, he would penetrate
every where, and perhaps some romantic heiress would fall in love with him,
and consent to forget that he was only a poor musician, the son of small
shopkeepers, who were still in trade at Bayeux.
Lieutenant Varache, who was stirring the punch, shrugged his shoulders,
and continued in a bantering voice:
“Yes, Monsieur Parisel, they are sure to ask you whether you have just
joined the regiment, or whether you have a mistress ...”
“What do I know?”
“But they say that you have, and that her eyes grow so bright when she
speaks to you, that a man would forfeit three months’ pay for a glance of
them, by Jove!”
Another traced her likeness in a few words, and described her as if she
had been some knick-knack for sale at an auction. Her hair came low on her
forehead like a golden net, her skin was dazzlingly white, while her bright
eyes threw out glances that were like those flashes of summer lightning which
dart across the sky on a calm night in June.
Her delicate figure, and she did not look very strong, recalled a plant that
has grown too rapidly. She was a droll creature, on the whole, who at times
looked as if she had made a mistake in the door, who buried herself in the
shade, hid herself, and did not surrender either her heart or her body, and
only left the impression of a statue on the bed in which she slept, who
appeared delighted with the ignoble business she carried on, and who allured
men, and surpassed the common streetwalkers in shamelessness.
Parisel, however, was not listening to them any longer.
He was terribly vexed at meeting with such a common-place adventure at
the first start, and to come across that girl on his road, who would make him
loose, and soil him with unclean love. She would lower him, and bring him
down to the level of rollicking troopers, who are welcome guests in houses
of bad character.
“Well,” one of them said suddenly, “suppose we go and finish the night at
that establishment; it will be far jollier, and the chief will not be obliged to
cudgel his brains to remember the name of the girl he loves!”

The officers pushed open the door of the saloon, where a servant was
lighting the chandelier, and Marchessy called out in a loud voice, and amidst
bursts of laughter:
“Here, Lucie! We have brought your sweetheart to you!”
She came in first, slowly, and wrapped in a transparent muslin dressing-
gown, and stopped, as if the beating of her heart were choking her. The
bandmaster did not move or say a word; he resembled a duellist, who sees
his adversary advancing towards him and taking aim at him, and who is
waiting for death.
Great drops of perspiration rolled down his face, and all the blood had
left it, while the woman looked at him, and did not appear to recognize him,
although her eyes wore a look of triumphant pleasure, and when he started
back, and turned his head away, she said to him, in a mocking voice:
“What, my dear, are you not going to kiss me, after a whole year? ... I must
have altered very much, very much indeed ... Do not my mouth, and this mark
by the side of my ear, bring something to your mind?”
And Varache, who had just lit a cigar, muttered: “Are you going to act a
play until to-morrow?”
 Then Lucie threw herself on to a sofa, and with her chin in her hands, and
in the posture of a chimera on the look out for the pleasures she wishes,
continued gravely:
“We lived at the end of a quiet street behind the cathedral, a street in
which pots of carnations stood on the window ledges, through which the
seminarists went twice a day, as if it had been a procession, and where I was
bored to death. Our parents’ shop was cold and dark; my mother thought of
nothing but of going to all the services, and of attending the novenas, while
my father bent over the counter. There was nobody to pet me, to advise me,
or to teach me what life really was, and besides that, I had the instinctive
feeling that they cared for nobody in this world but my brother.
“The first kiss that touched my lips nearly sent me mad, and I had not the
force to resist or to say no. I did not even ask the man who seduced me to
marry me, to promise me what men do promise girls. We met in a booth at the
fair, and I used to go to meet him every evening in a meadow bordered by
poplar trees. He had a situation as clerk or collector, I believe, and when he
was sent to another town, I was already three months in the family way. My
people soon found it out, and forced me to acknowledge everything, and they
locked me up like a prisoner who wished to escape from jail.
“My brother was home for his holidays — do you remember now,
Monsieur Parisel? He had just been appointed second head clerk, was
reckoning on still further speedy advancement, and was bursting with pride.
He was harder and more inexorable than the two old people towards me,
poor forsaken girl as I was, although they had never left their home. He spoke
about his future, which would be compromised, of the disgrace which would
fall on all the family, went into a rage, arid pitied neither my tears nor my
prayers, and treated me with the cruelty of a hangman.
“And they sent me a long way off, like a servant who has committed a
theft, and condemned me to be confined at a farm in a village, where the
peasants treated me harshly. The child died, but the mother lived through
everything.
“One does not have good luck very frequently, confound it, and the only
thing that I could do was to return evil, to strike at the coward whom I hated,
to dishonor and to lower his name, to stick to the fellow who strutted about in
his uniform, and who had won the game, from garrison to garrison, as if I had
been vermin. That is why I, of my own accord, came to this house, where one
belongs to everybody, and have become almost more vicious than any of the
other girls, and why I have told you this unentertaining story.
“I say, you fellows, who will pay ten francs for the bandmaster’s sister?
Upon my honor, you will not regret your money!”
His comrades got Parisel out of the house. He resisted for a week, but
then sold everything he had, borrowed the money to pay Lucie’s debts, and
tried in vain to free himself from that weight, and to get her expelled from the
town, but she always returned. She was as implacable towards him as a
gerfalcon that is devouring its prey, and as the adventure had got wind, and
was even talked about at the soldiers’ mess, and as the scandal increased
every day, the colonel forced the bandmaster to resign.
When Lucie heard the news, she looked vexed, and, said spitefully:
“I had hoped that he would have blown his brains out!”
 FALSE ALARM

“I have a perfect horror of pianos,” Frémecourt said, “of those hateful boxes
that fill up a drawing-room, and which have not even the soft sound and the
queer shape of the mahogany or veneered spinets, to which our grandmothers
sighed out exquisite, long-forgotten ballads, and allowed their fingers to run
over the keys, while around them there floated a delicate odor of powder and
muslin, and some little Abbé or other turned over the leaves, and was
continually making mistakes, as he was looking at the patches close to the
lips on the white skin of the player instead of at the music.
“I wish there were a tax upon them, or that some evening, during a riot, the
people would make huge bonfires of them, which would illuminate the whole
town. They simply exasperate me, and affect my nerves, and make me think
of the tortures those poor girls must suffer, who are condemned not to stir for
hours, but to keep on constantly strumming away at the chromatic scales and
monotonous arpeggios, and to have no other object in life except to win a
prize at the Conservatoire.
“Their incoherent music suggests to me the sufferings of those who are ill,
abandoned, wounded, as it proceeds from every floor of every house, and
irritates you, nearly drives you mad, and makes you break out into ironical
fits of laughter.
“And yet when that madcap Lâlie Spring honored me with her love, as I
never can refuse anything to a woman who smells of fresh scent, and who has
a large store of promises in her looks, and who puts out her red, smiling lips
immediately, as if she were going to offer you handsel money, I bought a
piano, so that she might strum upon it to her heart’s content. I got it, however,
on the hire-purchase system, and paid so much a month, like grisettes do for
their furniture.
“At that time, I had the apartments I had so long dreamed of: warm,
elegant, light, well-arranged, with two entrances, and an incomparable
porter’s wife; she had been canteen-keeper in a Zouave regiment, and knew
everything and understood everything at a wink.
 “It was the kind of apartment from which a woman has not the courage to
escape, so as to avoid temptation, but becomes weak, and rolls herself up on
the soft, eider down cushions like a cat, and so is appeased, and in spite of
herself, thinks of sin at the sight of the low, wide couch, which is so suitable
for caresses, of the heavy curtains, which quite deaden the sound of voices
and of laughter, and of the flowers that scent the air, and whose smell lingers
on the folds of the hangings.
“They were rooms in which a woman forgets time, where she begins by
accepting a cup of tea and nibbling a sweet cake, and abandons her fingers
timidly and with regret to other fingers which tremble, and are hot, and so by
degrees she loses her head and succumbs.
“I do not know whether the piano brought us ill luck, but Lâlie had not
even time to learn four songs before she disappeared like the wind, just as
she had come, flick-flack, good-night, good-bye; perhaps from spite, because
she had found letters from other women on my table, perhaps to renew her
advertisement, as she was not one of those to hang onto one man and become
a fixture.
“I had not been in love with her, certainly, but yet it always has some
effect on a man; it breaks a spring when a woman leaves you, and you think
that you must start again, risk it, and go in for forbidden sport in which one is
exposed to knocks, common sport that one has been through a hundred times
before, and which provides you with nothing to show for it.
“Nothing is more unpleasant than to lend your apartments to a friend, to
have to say to yourself that someone is going to disturb the mysterious
intimacy which really exists between the actual owner and his furniture, the
soul of those past kisses which floats in the air; that the room whose tints you
connect with some recollection, some dream, some sweet vision, and whose
colors you have tried to make harmonize with certain fair-haired, pink-
skinned girls, is going to become a common-place lodging, like the rooms in
an ordinary lodging house, which are suitable to hidden crime and to
evanescent love affairs.
“However, poor Stanis had begged me so urgently to do him that service;
he was so very much in love with Madame de Fréjus, and among the
characters in the play there was a brute of a husband who was terribly
jealous and suspicious; one of those Othellos who have always a flea in their
ear, and come back unexpectedly from shooting or the club, who pick up
pieces of torn paper, listen at doors, smell out meetings with the nose of a
detective, and seem to have been sent into the world only to be cuckolds, but
who know better than most how to lay a snare, and to play a nasty trick —
that when I went to Venice, I consented to let him have my room.
“I will leave you to guess whether they made up for lost time, although,
after all, it is no business of yours. My journey, however, which was only to
have lasted a few weeks — just long enough to benefit by the change of air,
to rid my brain of the image of my last mistress, and perhaps to find another
among that strange mixture of society which one meets there, a medley of
American, Slav, Viennese and Italian women, who instill a little artificial life
into that old city, which is asleep amidst the melancholy silence of the
lagoons — was prolonged, and Stanis was as much at home in my rooms as
he was in his own.
“Madame Piquignolles, the retired canteen-keeper, took great interest in
this adventure, watched over their little love affair, and, as she used to say,
she was on guard as soon as they arrived one after the other, the marchioness
covered with a thick veil, and slipping in as quickly as possible, always
uneasy, and afraid that Monsieur de Fréjus might be following her, and Stanis
with the assured and satisfied look of an amorous husband, who is going to
meet his little wife after having been away from home for a few days.
“Well, one day during one of those calm moments when his beloved one,
fresh from her bath, and impregnated with the coolness of the water, was
pressing close to her lover, reclining in his arms, and smiling at him with half
closed eyes, at one of those moments when people do not speak, but continue
their dream, the sentinel, without even asking leave, suddenly burst into the
room, for worthy Madame Piquignolles was in a terrible fright.
“A few minutes before, a well-dressed gentleman, followed by two others
of seedy appearance, but who looked very strong, and fit to knock anybody
down, had questioned her in a rough manner, and cross-questioned her, and
tried to turn her inside out, as she said, asking her whether Monsieur de
Fréjus lived on the first floor, without giving her any explanation, and when
she declared that there was nobody occupying the apartments then, as her
lodger was not in France, Monsieur de Fréjus — for it could certainly be
nobody but he — had burst out into an evil laugh, and said: ‘Very well; I
shall go and fetch the Police Commissary of the district, and he will make
you let us in!’
“And as quickly as possible, while she was telling her story, now in a
low, and then in a shrill voice, the woman picked up the marchioness’ dress,
cloak, lace-edged drawers, silk petticoat, and little varnished shoes, pulled
her out of bed, without giving her time to let her know what she was doing,
or to moan, or to have a fit of hysterics, and carried her off, as if she had
been a doll, with all her pretty toggery, to a large, empty cupboard in the
dining room, that was concealed by Flemish tapestry. ‘You are a man... Try to
get out of the mess,’ she said to Stanis as she shut the door; ‘I will be
answerable for Madame.’ And the enormous woman, who was out of breath
by hurrying upstairs as she had done, and whose kind, large red face was
dripping with perspiration, while her ample bosom shook beneath her loose
jacket, took Madame de Fréjus onto her knees as if she had been a baby,
whose nurse was trying to quiet her.
“She felt the poor little culprit’s heart beating as if it were going to burst,
while shivers ran over her skin, which was so soft and delicate that the
porter’s wife was afraid that she would hurt it with her coarse hands. She
was struck with wonder at the cambric chemise, which a gust of wind would
have carried off as if it had been a pigeon’s feather, and by the delicate odor
of that scarce flower which filled the narrow cupboard, and which rose up in
the darkness from that supple body, that was impregnated with the warmth of
the bed.
“She would have liked to be there, in that profaned room, and to tell them
in a loud voice — with her hands upon her lips like at the time when she
used to serve brandy to her comrades at Daddy l’Arb’s — that they had no
common sense, that they were none of them good for much, neither the Police
Commissary, the husband nor the subordinates, to come and torment a pretty
young thing, who was having a little bit of fun, like that. It was a nice job, to
get over the wall in that way, to be absent from the second call of names,
especially when they were all of the same sort, and were glad of five francs
an hour! She had certainly done quite right to get out sometimes and to have a
sweetheart, and she was a charming little thing, and that she would say, if she
were called before the Court as a witness!
“And she took Madame de Fréjus in her arms to quiet her, and repeated
the same thing a dozen times, whispered pretty things to her, and interrupted
her occasionally to listen whether they were not searching all the nooks and
corners of the apartment. ‘Come, come,’ she said, 4 do not distress yourself.
Be calm, my dear...It hurts me to hear you cry like that.... There will be no
mischief done, I will vouch for it.’
 “The marchioness, who was nearly fainting, and who was prostrate with
terror, could only sob out: ‘Good heavens! Good heavens!’
“She scarcely seemed to be conscious of anything; her head seemed
vacant, her ears buzzed, and she felt benumbed, like one does when one goes
to sleep in the snow.
“Oh! Only to forget everything, as her love dream was over, to go out
quickly, like those little rose-colored tapers at Nice, on Shrove Tuesday
evening.
“Oh! Not to awake any more, as the to-morrow would come in, black and
sad, because a whole array of barristers, ushers, solicitors and judges would
be against her, and disturb her usual quietude, would torment her, cover her
with mud, as her delicious, amorous adventure — her first — which had
been so carefully enveloped in mystery, and had been kept so secret behind
closed shutters and thick veils, would become an everyday episode of
adultery, which would get wind, and be discussed from door to door; the
lilac had faded, and she was obliged to bid farewell to happiness, as if to an
old friend who was going far, very far away, never to return!
“Suddenly, however, she started and sat up, with her neck stretched out
and her eyes fixed, while the excanteen-keeper, who was trembling with
emotion, put her hands to her left ear, which was her best, like a speaking
trumpet, and tried to hear the cries which succeeded each other from room to
room, amidst a noise of opening and shutting of doors.
“‘Ah! upon my word, I am not blind....It is Monsieur de Tavernay who is
applying again, and making all that noise....Don’t you hear, Mame
Piquignolles, Mame Piquignolles! Saved, saved!’ And she dashed out of the
cupboard like an unwieldy mass, with her cap all on one side, an anxious
look and heavy legs.
“Tavernay was still quite pale, and in a panting voice he cried out to
them: ‘Nothing serious, only that fool Frémecourt, who lent me the rooms,
has forgotten to pay for his piano for the last five months, a hundred francs a
month....You understand ...they came to claim it, and as we did not reply
...why, they fetched the Police Commissary, and so, in the name of the law....
“‘A nice fright to give one!’ Madame Piquignolles said, throwing herself
onto a chair. ‘Confound the nasty piano!’
“It may be useless to add, that the marchioness has quite renounced trifles,
as our forefathers used to say, and would deserve a prize for virtue, if the
Academy would only show itself rather more gallant towards pretty women,
who take crossroads in order to become virtuous.
“Emotions like that cure people of running risks of that kind!”
 WIFE AND MISTRESS

It was not only her long, silky curls, which covered her small, fairy-like
head, like a golden halo, nor her beautiful complexion, nor her mouth, which
was like some delicate shell, nor was it her supreme innocence, which was
shown by her sudden blushes, and by her somewhat awkward movements,
nor was it her ingenious questions which had assailed and conquered George
d’Harderme’s heart. He had a peculiar temper, and any appearance of a yoke
frightened him and put him to flight immediately, and his unstable heart was
ready to yield to any temptation, and he was incapable of any lasting
attachment, while a succession of women had left no more traces on it than
on the seashore, which is constantly being swept by the waves.
It was not the dream of a life of affection, of peace, the want of loving and
of being loved, which a fast man so often feels between thirty and forty. His
insurmountable lassitude of that circle of pleasure in which he has turned,
like a horse in a circus, the voids in his existence which the marriage of his
bachelor friends cause, and which in his selfishness he looks upon as
desertion, and whom he, nevertheless, envies, which had at last induced him
to listen to the prayers and advice of his old mother, and to marry
Mademoiselle Suzanne de Gouvres; but the vision that he had had when he
saw her playing with quite little children, covering them with kisses, and
looking at them with ecstacy in her limpid eyes, and in hearing her talk of the
pleasures and the anguish that they must feel who are mothers in the fullest
sense of the word-the vision of a happy home where a man feels that he is
living again in others of that house, which is full of laughter and of song, and
seems as if it were full of birds.
As a matter of fact, he loved children, like some men love animals, and he
was interested in them, as in some delightful spectacle, and they attracted
him.
He was very gentle, kind and thoughtful with them, invented games for
them, took them on his knees, was never tired of listening to their chatter, or
of watching the development of their instincts, of their intellect, and of their
little, delicate souls.
 He used to go and sit in the Parc Monceau, and in the squares, to watch
them playing and romping and prattling round him, and one day, as a joke,
somebody, a jealous mistress, or some friends in joke, had sent him a
splendid wet nurse’s cap, with long, pink ribbons.
At first, he was under the influence of the charm that springs from the
beginning of an intimacy, from the first kisses, and devoted himself altogether
to that amorous education which revealed a new life to him, as it were, and
enchanted him.
He thought of nothing except of increasing the ardent love that his wife
bestowed on him, and lived in a state of perpetual adoration. Suzanne’s
feelings, the metamorphosis of that virginal heart, which was beginning to
glow with love, and which vibrated, her passion, her modesty, her
sensations, were all delicious surprises to him.
He felt that feverish pleasure of a traveler who has discovered some
marvelous Eden, and loses his head over it, and, at times, with a long
affectionate and proud look at her, which grew even warmer on looking into
Suzanne’s limpid, blue eyes, he would put his arms round her waist, and
pressing her to him so strongly that it hurt the young woman, he exclaimed:
“Oh! I am quite sure that nowhere on earth are there two people who love
each other as we do, and who are as happy as you and I are, my darling!”
Months of uninterrupted possession and enchantment succeeded each other
without George altering, and without any lassitude mingling with the ardor of
their love, or the fire of their affection dying out.
Then, however, suddenly he ceased to be happy, and, in spite of all his
efforts to hide his invincible lowness of spirits, he became another man,
restless, being irritated at nothing, morose, and bored at everything and
everywhere; whimsical, and never knowing what he wanted.
But there was certainly something that was now poisoning that affection
which had formerly been his delight, which was coming more and more
between him and his wife every day, and which was giving him a distaste for
home.
By degrees, that vague suffering assumed a definite shape in his heart, got
implanted and fixed there, like a nail. He had not attained his object, and he
felt the weight of chains, understood that he could never get used to such an
existence, that he could not love a woman who seemed incapable of
becoming a mother, who lowered herself to the part of a lawful mistress, and
who was not faithful to him.
 Alas! To awake from such a dream, to say to himself that he was reduced
to envying the good fortune of others, that he should never cover a little,
curly, smiling head with kisses, where some striking likeness, some
undecided gleams of growing intellect fill a man with joy, but that he would
be obliged to take the remainder of his journey in solitude, heart-broken, with
nothing but old age around him; that no branch would again spring from the
family tree, and that on his death-bed he should not have that last consolation
of pressing his dear ones, for whom he struggled and made so many
sacrifices, in his failing arms, and who were sobbing with grief, but that soon
he should be the prey of indifferent and greedy heirs, who were discounting
his approaching death like some valuable security!
George had not told Suzanne the feelings which were tormenting him, and
took care that she should not see his state of unhappiness, and he did not
worry her with trying questions, that only end in some violent and distressing
scene.
But she was too much of a woman, and she loved her husband too much,
not to guess what was making him so gloomy, and was imperiling their love.
And every month there came a fresh disappointment, and hope was again
deferred. She, however, persisted in believing that their wish would be
granted, and grew ill with this painful waiting, and refused to believe that she
should never be a mother.
She would have looked upon it as a humiliation either to consult a
medical man, or to make a pilgrimage to some shrine, like so many women
did, in their despair, and her proud, loyal and loving nature at last rebelled
against that hostility, which showed itself in the angry outbursts, the painful
silence, and the haughty coldness of the man who could, however, have done
anything he liked with her, by a little kindness.
With death in her soul, she had a presentiment of the way of the cross,
which is an end of love, of all the bitterness, which sooner or later would
end in terrible quarrels, and in words which would put an impassable barrier
between them.
At last, one evening, when George d’Hardermes had lost his temper, had
wounded her by equivocal words and bad jokes, Suzanne, who was very
pale, and who was clutching the arms of her easy chair convulsively,
interrupted him with the accents of farewell in her melancholy face:
“As you do not love me any more, why not tell me so, at once, instead of
wounding me like this by small, traitorous blows, and, above all, why
continue to live together?...You want your liberty, and I will give it to you;
you have your fortune, and I have mine. Let us separate without a scandal and
without a lawsuit, so that, at least, a little friendship may survive our love...I
shall leave Paris and go and live in the country with my mother.... God is my
witness, however, that I still love you, my poor George, as much as ever, and
that I shall remain your wife, whether I am with you, or separated from you!”
George hesitated for a few moments before replying, with an uneasy, sad
look on his face, and then said, turning away his head:
“Yes, perhaps it will be best for both of us!”
They voluntarily broke their marriage contract, as she had heroically
volunteered to do. She kept her resolution, exiled herself, buried herself in
obscurity, accepted the trial with calm fortitude, and was as resigned as only
faithful and devoted souls can be.
They wrote to each other, and she deluded herself, pursued the chimera
that George would return to her, would call her back to his side, would
escape from his former associates, would understand of what deep love he
had voluntarily deprived himself, and would love her again as he had
formerly loved her; and she resisted all the entreaties and the advice of her
friends, to cut such a false position short, and to institute a suit for divorce
against her husband, as the issue would be certain.
He, at the end of a few months of solitude, of evanescent love affairs,
when to beguile his loneliness, a man passes from the arms of one woman to
those of another, had set up a new home, and had tied himself to a woman
whom he had accidentally met at a party of friends, and who had managed to
please him and to amuse him.
His deserted wife was naturally not left in ignorance of the fact, and,
stifling her jealousy and her grief, she put on a smile, and thought that it
would be the same with this one as it had been with all his other ephemeral
mistresses, whom her husband had successively got rid of.
Was not that, after all, the best thing to bring about the issue which she
longed and hoped for? Would not that doubtful passion, that close intimacy
certainly make Monsieur d’Hardermes compare the woman he possessed
with the woman he had formerly had, and cause him to invoke that lost
paradise and that heart full of forgiveness, of love and of goodness, which
had not forgotten him, but which would respond to his first appeal?
And that confidence of hers in a happier future, which neither all the
proofs of that connection, in which Monsieur d’Hardermes was becoming
more and more involved, and which her friends so kindly furnished her with,
nor the disdainful silence with which he treated all her gentle, indulgent
letters could shake, had something touching, angelic in it, and reminded those
who knew her well, of certain passages in the Lives of the Saints.
At length, however, the sympathy of those who had so often tried to save
the young woman, to cure her, and to open her eyes, became exhausted, and,
left to herself, Suzanne proudly continued her dream, and absorbed herself in
it.
Two interminable years had passed since she had lived with Monsieur
d’Hardermes, and since he had put that hateful mistress in her place. She had
lost all trace of them, knew nothing about him, and, in spite of everything, did
not despair of seeing him again, and regaining her hold over him, who could
tell when, or by what miracle, but surely before those eyes which he had so
loved were tired of shedding tears, and her fair hair, which he had so often
covered with kisses, had grown white.
And the arrival of the postman every morning and evening, made her start
and shiver with nervousness.
One day, however, when she was going to Paris, Madame d’Hardermes
found herself alone in the ladies’ carriage, into which she had got in a hurry,
with a peasant woman in her Sunday best, who had a child with pretty pink
cheeks and rosy lips, and which was like the dimpled cherubs that one sees
in pictures of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, on her lap.
The nurse said affectionate words to the child in a coaxing voice,
wrapped it up in the folds of her large cloak, sometimes gave it a noisy,
hearty kiss, and it beat the air with little hands, and crowed and laughed with
those pretty, attractive babyish movements, that Suzanne could not help
exclaiming: “Oh! the pretty little thing!” and taking it into her arms.
At first the child was surprised at the strange face, and for a moment,
seemed as if it were going to cry; but it became reassured immediately,
smiled at the stranger who looked at it so kindly, inhaled the delicate scent of
the iris in the bodice of her dress, with dilated nostrils, and cuddled up
against her.
The two women began to talk, and, without knowing why, Madame
d’Hardermes questioned the nurse, asked her where she came from, and
where she was taking the little thing to.
The other, rather flattered that Suzanne admired the child and took an
interest in it, replied, somewhat vaingloriously, that she lived at Bois-le-Roy,
and that her husband was a wagoner.
The child had been entrusted to their care by some people in Paris, who
appeared very happy, and extremely well off. And the nurse added in a
drawling voice:
“Perhaps, Madame, you know my master and mistress, Monsieur and
Madame d’Hardermes?”
Suzanne started with surprise and grief, and grew as pale as if all her
blood were streaming from some wound, and thinking that she had not heard
correctly, with a fixed look and trembling lips, she said, slowly, as if every
word hurt her throat:
“You said, Monsieur and Madame d’Hardermes?”
“Yes; do you know them?”
“I, yes...formerly...but it is a long time ago.”
She could scarcely speak, and was as pale as death; she hardly knew what
she was saying, with her eyes on this pretty child, which George must be so
fond of.
She saw him, as if in a window which had suddenly been lifted up, where
everything had been dark before, with their arms round each other, and
radiant with happiness, with that fair head, that divine dawn, the living,
smiling proof of their love, between them.
They would never leave each other; they were already almost as good as
married, and were robbing her of the name which she had defended and
guarded as a sacred deposit.
She would never succeed in breaking such bonds. It was a shipwreck
where nothing could survive, and where the waves did not even drift some
shapeless waif and stray ashore.
And great tears rolled down her cheeks, one by one, and wet her veil.
The train stopped at the station, and the nurse scarcely liked to ask
Suzanne for the child, who was holding it against her heaving bosom, and
kissing it as if she intended to smother it, and she said:
“I suppose the baby reminds you of one you have lost, my poor, dear lady,
but the loss can be repaired at your age, surely; a second is as good as a first,
and if one does not do oneself justice...”
Madame d’Hardermes gave her back the child, and hurried out straight
ahead of her, like a hunted animal, and threw herself into the first cab that she
saw...
She sued for a divorce, and obtained it.
 MAD

PART I

For days and days, nights and nights, I had dreamt of that first kiss, which
was to consecrate our engagement, and I knew not on what spot I should put
my lips, that were madly thirsting for her beauty and her youth. Not on her
forehead, that was accustomed to family caresses, nor on her light hair,
which mercenary hands had dressed, nor on her eyes, whose turned up lashes
looked like little wings, because that would have made me think of the
farewell caress which closes the eyelids of some dead woman whom one has
adored, nor her lovely mouth, which I will not, which I must not possess until
that divine moment when Elaine will at last belong to me altogether and for
always, but on that delicious little dimple which comes in one of her cheeks
when she is happy, when she smiles, and which excited me as much as her
voice did with languorous softness, on that evening when our flirtation began,
at the Souverette’s.
Our parents had gone away, and were walking slowly under the chestnut
trees in the garden, and had left us alone together for a few minutes. I went up
to her and took both her hands into mine, which were trembling, and gently
drawing her close to me, I whispered:
“How happy I am, Elaine, and how I love you!” and I kissed her almost
timidly, on the dimple. She trembled, as if from the pain of a burn, blushed
deeply and with an affectionate look, she said: “I love you also, Jacques, and
I am very happy!”
That embarrassment, that sudden emotion which revealed the perfect
spotlessness of a pure mind, the instinctive recoil of virginity, that childlike
innocence, that blush of modesty, delighted me above everything as a presage
of happiness. It seemed to me as if I were unworthy of her; I was almost
ashamed of bringing her, and of putting into her small, saint-like hands the
remains of a damaged heart, that had been polluted by debauchery, that
miserable thing which had served as a toy for unworthy mistresses, which
was intoxicated with lies, and felt as if it would die of bitterness and
disgust....

PART II

How quickly she has become accustomed to me, how suddenly she has turned
into a woman and become metamorphosed; already she no longer is at all
like the artless girl, the sensitive child, to whom I did not know what to say,
and whose sudden questions disconcerted me!
She is coquettish, and there is seduction in her attitudes, in her gestures, in
her laugh and in her touch. One might think that she was trying her power
over me, and that she guesses that I no longer have any will of my own. She
does with me whatever she likes, and I am quite incapable of resisting the
beautiful charm that emanates from her, and I feel carried away by her
caressing hands, and so happy that I am at times frightened at the excess of
my own felicity.
My life now passes amidst the most delicious of punishments, those
afternoons and evenings that we spend together, those unconstrained moments
when, sitting on the sofa together, she rests her head on my shoulder, holds
my hands and half shuts her beautiful eyes while we settle what our future
life shall be, when I cover her with kisses and inhale the odor of all those
little hairs that are as fine as silk and are like a halo round her imperial
brow, excite me, unsettle me, kill me, and yet I feel inclined to shed tears,
when the time comes for us to part, and I really only exist when I am with
Elaine.
I can scarcely sleep; I see her rise up in the darkness, delicate, fair and
pink, so supple, so elegant with her small waist and tiny hands and feet, her
graceful head and that look of mockery and of coaxing which lies in her
smile, that brightness of dawn which illuminates her looks, that when I think
that she is going to become my wife, I feel inclined to sing, and to shout out
my amorous folly into the silence of the night.
Elaine also seems to be at the end of her strength, has grown languid and
nervous; she would like to wipe out the fortnight that we still have to wait,
and so little does she hide her longing, that one of her uncles, Colonel
d’Orthez, said after dinner the other evening: “By Jove, my children, one
would take you for two soldiers who are looking forward to their furlough!”
 PART III

I do not know what I felt, or whence those fears came which so suddenly
assailed me, and took possession of my whole being like a flight of poisoned
arrows. The nearer the day approached that I am so ardently longing for, on
which Elaine would take my name and belong to me, the more anxious,
nervous and tormented by the uncertainty of the morrow, I feel.
I love, and I am passionately loved, and few couples start on the unknown
journey of a totally new life and enter into matrimony with such hopes, and
the same assurance of happiness, as we two.
I have such faith in the girl I am going to marry, and have made her such
vows of love, that I should certainly kill myself without a moment’s
hesitation if anything were to happen to separate us, to force us to a correct
but irremediable rupture, or if Elaine were seized by some illness which
carried her off quickly; and yet I hesitate, I am afraid, for I know that many
others have made shipwreck, lost their love on the way, disenchanted their
wives and have themselves been disenchanted in those first essays of
possession, during that first night of tenderness and of intimacy.
What does Elaine expect in her vague innocence, which has been lessened
by the half confidences of married friends, by semi-avowals, by all the kisses
of this sort of apprenticeship which is a court of love; what does she possess,
what does she hope for? Will her refined, delicate, vibrating nature bend to
the painful submission of the initial embrace; will she not rebel against that
ardent attack that wounds and pains? Oh! to have to say to oneself that it must
come to that, to lower the most ideal of affections, to think that one is risking
one’s whole future happiness at such a hazardous game, that the merest trifle
might make a woman completely ridiculous or hopeful, and make an idolized
woman laugh or cry!
I do not know a more desirable, prettier or more attractive being in the
whole world than Elaine; I am worn out by feverish love, I thirst for her lips
and I wish every particle of her being to belong to me; I love her ardently, but
I would willingly give half that I possess to have got through this ordeal, to
be a week older, and still happy!...

PART IV
My mother-in-law took me aside yesterday, while they were dancing, and
with tears in her eyes, she said in a tremulous voice:
“You are going to possess the most precious object that we possess here,
and what we love best.... I beg you to always spare the slightest unhappiness,
and to be kind and gentle towards her.... I count on your uprightness and
affection to guide her and protect her in this dangerous life in Paris.”... And
then, giving way to her feelings more and more, she added: “I do not think
that you suppose that I have tried to instruct her in her new duties or to
disturb her charming innocence, which has been my work; when two persons
worship each other like you two do, a girl learns what she is ignorant of, so
quickly and so well!”
I very nearly burst out laughing in her face, for such a theatrical phrase
appeared to me both ridiculous and doubtful. So that respectable woman had
always been a passive, pliable, inert object, who never had one moment of
vibration, of tender emotion in her husband’s arms, and I understood why, as
I wasted at the clubs, he escaped from her as soon as possible and made
other connections which cost him dear, but in which he found at least some
appearance of love.
Oh! to call that supreme bliss of possession, which makes human beings
divine and which transports them far from everything, that despotic pain of
virginity, which guesses, which waits, which longs for those mysterious,
unknown, brief sufferings that contain the germs of future pleasure, the only
happiness of which one never tires, a duty!
And that piece of advice, at the last moment, which was as common-place
and natural, and which I ought to have expected, enervated me, and, in spite
of myself, plunged me into a state of perplexity, from which I could not
extricate myself. I remembered those absurd stories which we hear among
friends, after a good dinner. What would be that last trial of our love for her
and for me, and could that love which then was my whole life, come out of
the ordeal lessened or increased tenfold? And when I looked at the couch on
which Elaine, my adored Elaine, was sitting, with her head half-hidden
behind the feathers of her fan, she whispered in a rather vexed voice:
“How cross you look, my dear Jacques? Is the fact of your getting married
the cause of it? And you have such a mocking look on your face. If the thought
of it terrifies you too much, there is still time to say no!”
And delighted, bewitched by her caressing looks, I said in a low voice,
almost into her small ear:
 “I adore you; and these last moments that still separate us from each other,
seem centuries to me, my dear Elaine!”

PART V

There were tiresome ceremonies yesterday, and to-day, which I went through
almost mechanically.
First, there is the yes before the mayor at the civil ceremony, like some
everyday response in church, which one is in a hurry to get over, and which
has almost the suggestion of an imperious law, to which one is bound to
submit, and of a state of bondage, which will, perhaps, be very irksome,
since the whole of existence is made up of chances.
And then the service in church, with the decorated altar, the voices of the
choir, the solemn music of the organ, the unctuous address of the old priest
who marks his periods, who seemed quite proud of having prepared Elaine
for confirmation, and then the procession to the vestry, the shaking hands, and
the greetings of people whom you scarcely see, and whom you do, or do not
recognize.
Under the long tulle veil, which almost covered her, with the symbolical
orange flowers on her bright, light hair, in her white dress, with her downcast
eyes and her graceful figure, Elaine looked to me like a Psyche, whose
innocent heart was vowed to love. I felt how vain and artificial all this form
was, how little this show counted before this Kiss, the triumphant, revealing,
maddening Kiss, which rivets the flesh of the wife to the lips and all the flesh
of the husband, which turns the Immaculate youth of the virgin into a woman,
and consecrates it to tender caresses, to dreams and to future ecstacies,
through the sufferings of a rape.

PART VI

Elaine loves me, as much as I adore her.

She left her parental abode, as if she was going to some festivity, without
turning round toward all that she had left behind her in the way of affection
and recollection, and without even a farewell tear, which the first kiss
effaces, on her long turned-up lashes.
She looked like a bird which had escaped from its cage, and does not
know where to settle, which beats its wings in the intoxication of the light,
and which warbles incessantly. She repeated the same words, as if she had
been rather intoxicated, and her laugh sounded like the cooing of a pigeon,
and looking into my eyes, with her eyes full of languor, and her arms round
my neck like a bracelet, and with her burning cheek against mine, she
suddenly exclaimed:
“I say, my darling, would you not give ten years of your life to have
already got to the end of the journey?”
And that passionate question so disconcerted me, that I did not know what
to reply, and my brain reeled, as if I had been at the edge of a precipice. Did
she already know what her mother had not told her? Had she already learned
what she ought to have been ignorant of? And had that heart, which I used to
compare to the Vessel of Election, of which the litanies of Our Lady speak,
already been damaged?
Oh! white veils, that hide the blushes, the half-closed eyes and the
trembling lips of some Psyche, oh! little hands which you raised in an
attitude of prayer toward the lighted and decorated altar, oh! innocent and
charming questions, which delighted me to the depths of my being, and which
seemed to me to be an absolute promise of happiness, were you nothing but a
lie, and a wonderfully well acted piece of trickery?
But was I not wrong, and an idiot, to allow such thoughts to take
possession of me, and to poison my deep, absorbing love, which was now
my only law and my only object, by odious and foolish suggestions? What an
abject and miserable nature I must have, for such a simple, affectionate,
natural question to disturb me so, when I ought immediately to have replied
to Elaine’s question, with all my heart that belonged to hear:
“Yes, ten or twenty years, because you are my happiness, my desire, my
love!”
PART VII

I did not choose to wait until she woke up, I sprang from the bed, where
Elaine was still sleeping, with her disheveled hair lying on the lace-edged
pillows. Her complexion was almost transparent, her lips were half open, as
if she were dreaming, and she seemed so overcome with sleep, that I felt
much emotion when I looked at her.
I drank four glasses of mild champagne, one after the other, as quickly as I
could, but it did not quench my thirst. I was feverish and would have given
anything in the world for something to interest me suddenly and have
absorbed me and lifted me out of that slough in which my heart and my brain
were being engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not venture to avow to myself
what was making me so dejected, what was torturing me and driving me mad
with grief, or to scrutinize the muddy bottom of my present thoughts sincerely
and courageously, to question myself and to pull myself together.
It would have been so odious, so infamous, to harbor such suspicions
unjustly, to accuse that adorable creature who was not yet twenty, whom I
loved, and who seemed to love me, without having certain proofs, that I felt
that I was blushing at the idea that I had any doubt of her innocence. Ah! Why
did I marry?
I had a sufficient income to enable me to live as I liked, to pay beautiful
women who pleased me, whom I chanced to meet, and who amused me, and
who sometimes gave me unexpected proofs of affection, but I had never
allowed myself to be caught altogether, and in order to keep my heart warm, I
had some romantic and sentimental friendships with women in society, some
of those delightful flirtations which have an appearance of love, which fill up
the idleness of a useless life with a number of unexpected sensations, with
small duties and vague subtle pleasures!
And was I now going to be like one of those ships which an unskillful turn
of the helm runs ashore as it is leaving the harbor? What terrible trials were
awaiting me, what sorrows and what struggles?
A chaffing friend said to me one night in joke at the club, when I had just
broken one of those banks, which form an epoch in a player’s life:
“If I were in your place, Jacques, I should distrust such runs of luck as
that, for one always has to pay for them sooner or later!”
Sooner or later!
I half opened the bedroom door gently. Elaine was in one of those heavy
sleeps that follow intoxication. Who could tell whether, when she opened her
eyes and called me, surprised at not finding herself in my arms, her whole
being would not become languid, and suddenly sink into a state of
prostration? I wanted to reason with myself, and bring myself face to face
with those cursed suggestions, as one does with a skittish horse before some
object that frightens it, and to evoke the recollection of every hour, every
minute of that first night of love, and to extract the secret from her....
Elaine’s looks and radiant smile were overflowing with happiness, and
she had the air of a conqueror who is proud of his triumph, for she was now
a woman already, and we had at least been alone in this modernized country
house, which had been redecorated and smartened up to serve as the frame
for our affection! She hardly seemed to know what she was saying or doing,
and ran from room to room in her light morning dress of mauve crape,
without exactly knowing where to sit, and almost dazzled by the light of the
lamps that had large shades in the shape of rose leaves over them.
There was no embarrassment, no hesitation, no shamefaced looks, no
recoiling from the arms that were stretched out to her, or from the lips that
begged; none of those delightful little pieces of awkwardness which show a
virgin soul free from all perversion, in her manner of sitting on my knees, or
putting her bare arms round my neck, and of offering me the back of her neck
and her lips to kiss, but she laughed nervously, and her supple form trembled
when I kissed her passionately on various places, and she said things to me
that were suitable for being whispered on the pillows, while a strange
languor overshadowed her eyes, and dilated her nostrils.
And suddenly with a mocking gesture, which seemed to bid defiance to
the supper that was laid on a small table, cold meat of various kinds, plates
of fruit and of cakes, the ice pail, from which the neck of a bottle of
champagne protruded, she said merrily:
“I am not at all hungry, dear; let us have supper later! what do you say?”
She half turned round to the large bed, which seemed to be quite ready for
us, and which looked white in the shadow of the recess in which it stood,
with its two white, untouched, almost solemn pillows. She was not smiling
any more; there was a bluish gleam in her eyes, like that of burning alcohol,
and I lost my head. Elaine did not try to escape, and did not utter a complaint.
Oh! that night of torture and delight, that night which ought never to have
ended!
I determined that I would be as patient as a policeman who is trying to
discover the traces of a crime, that I would investigate the past of this girl,
about which I knew nothing, as I should be sure to discover some proof,
some important reminiscence, some servant who had been her accomplice.
And yet I adored her, my pretty, my divine Elaine, and I would consent no
matter to what if only she were what I dreamt her, what I wished her to be, if
only this nightmare would go and no longer rise up between her and me.
When she woke up, she spoke to me in her coaxing voice.... Oh! her
kisses, again her kisses, always her kisses, in spite of everything!
Oh! to have believed blindly, to have believed on my knees that she was
not lying, that she was not making a mockery of my tenderness, and that she
had never belonged, and never would belong, to any one but me!
 PART VIII

I wished that I could have transformed myself into one of those crafty,
unctuous priests, to whom women confess their most secret faults, to whom
they entrust their souls and frequently ask for advice, and that Elaine would
have come and knelt at the grating of the confessional, where I should press
her closely with questions, and gradually extract sincere confidences from
her.
As soon as I am by the side of a young or old woman now, I try to give our
conversation a ticklish turn; I forget all reserve and I try to make her talk of
those jokes which nettle, those words of double meaning which excite, and to
lead her up to the only subject that interests and holds me, to find out what
she feels in her body as well as in her heart, on that night, when for the first
time, she has to undergo the nuptial ordeal. Some do not appear to understand
me, blush, leave me as if I were some unpleasant, ill-mannered person, and
had offended them; as if I had tried to force open the precious casket in
which they keep their sweetest recollections.
Others, on the other hand, understand me only too well, scent something
equivocal and ridiculous, though they do not exactly know what, make me go
on, and finally get out of the difficulty by some subtle piece of impertinence,
and a burst of chaffing laughter.
Two or three at most, and they were those pretty little upstarts who talk at
random, and brag about their vice, and whom one could soon not leave a leg
to stand upon, were one to take the trouble, have related their impressions to
me with ironical complaisance, and I found nothing in what they told me that
reassured me, nor could I discover anything serious, true or moving in it.
That supreme initiation amused them as much as if it had been a scene
from a comedy; the small amount of affection that they felt for the man with
whom their existence had been associated grew less and evaporated
altogether — and they remembered nothing about it except its ridiculous and
hateful side, and described it as a sort of pantomime in which they played a
bad part. But these did not love and were not adored like Elaine was. They
married either from interest, or that they might not remain old maids, that they
might have more liberty and escape from troublesome guardianship.
Foolish dolls, without either heart or head, they had neither that almost
diseased nervosity, nor that requirement for affection, nor that instinct of love
which I discovered in my wife’s nature, and which attracted me, at the same
time that it terrified me.
Besides, who could convince me of my errors? Who could dissipate that
darkness in which I was lost? What miracle could restore all my belief in her
again?

PART IX

Elaine felt that I was hiding something from her, that I was unhappy, that, as it
were, some threatening obstacle had risen up between her and me, that some
insupportable suspicion was oppressing me, torturing me and keeping me
from her arms, was poisoning and disturbing that affection in which I had
hoped to find fresh youth, absolute happiness, my dream of dreams.
She never spoke to me about it, however, but seemed to recoil from a
definite explanation, which might make shipwreck of her love. She
surrounded me with endearing attentions, and appeared to be trying to make
my life so pleasant to me, that nothing in the world could draw me from it!
And she would certainly cure me, if this madness of mine, were not, alas!
like those wounds which are constantly reopening, and which no balm can
heal.
But, at times, I lived again, I imagined that her caresses had exorcised me,
that I was saved, that doubt was no longer gnawing at my heart, that I was
going to adore her again, like I used to adore her. I used to throw myself at
her knees and put my lips on her little hands which she abandoned to me, I
looked at her lovely, limpid eyes as if they had been a piece of a blue sky that
appeared amidst black storm clouds, and I whispered, with something like a
sob in my throat:
“You love me, do you not, with all your heart; you love me as much as I
love you; tell me so again, my dear love; tell me that, and nothing but that!”
And she used to reply eagerly, with a smile of joy on her lips:
“Do you not know it? Do you not see every moment that I love you, that
you have taken entire possession of me, and that I only live for you and by
you?”
And her kisses gave me new life, and intoxicated me, like when one
returns from a long journey and had been in peril and is despaired of ever
seeing some beloved object again, and one meets with a sort of frenzied
embrace, and forgets everything in that divine feeling that one is going to die
of happiness....

PART X

But these were only ephemeral clear spots in our sky, and the cries which
accompanied them only grew more bitter and terrible. I knew that Elaine was
growing more and more uneasy at the apparent strangeness of my character,
that she suffered from it and that it affected her nerves, that the existence to
which I was condemning her in spite of myself, that all this immoderate love
of mine, followed by fits of inexplicable coldness and of low spirits,
disconcerted her, so that she was no longer the same, and kept away from me.
She could not hide her grief, and was continually worrying me with questions
of affectionate pity. She repeated the same things over and over again, with
hateful persistence. She had vexed me, without knowing it! Was I already
tired of my married life, and did I regret my lost liberty? Had I any private
troubles which I had not told her of; heavy debts which I did not know how
to pay; was it family matters or some former connection with a woman that I
had broken off suddenly, and that now threatened to create a scandal? Was I
being worried by anonymous letters? What was it, in a word; what was it?
My denials only exasperated her, so that she sulked in silence, while her
brain worked and her heart grew hard towards me; but could I, as a matter of
fact, tell her of my suspicions which were filling my life with gloom and
annihilating me? Would it not be odious and vile to accuse her of such a fall,
without any proofs or any clue, and would she ever forget such an insult?
I almost envied those unfortunate wretches who had the right to be
jealous, who had to fight against a woman’s coquettes and light behavior, and
who had to defend their honor that was threatened by some poacher on the
preserves of love. They had a target to aim at; they knew their enemies and
knew what they were doing, while I was wounding in a land of terrible
mirages, was struggling in the midst of vague suppositions, and was causing
my own troubles and was enraged with her past, which was, I felt sure, as
white and pure as any bridal veil.
Ah! It would be better to blow my brains out, I thought to myself, than to
prolong such a situation! I had had enough of it. I scarcely lived, and I
wished to know all that Elaine had done before we became engaged. I
wanted to know whether I was the first or the second, and I determined to
know it, even if I had to sacrifice years of my life in inquiry, and to lower
myself to compromising words and acts, and to every species of artifice and
to spend everything that I possessed!
She might believe whatever she liked, for after all, I should only laugh at
it. We might have been so happy, and there were so many who envied me,
and who would gladly have consented to take my place!

PART XI

I no longer knew where I was going, but was like a train going at full speed
through a dense fog, and which in vain disturbs the perfect silence of the
sleeping country with its puffing and shrill whistles; when the driver cannot
distinguish the changing lights of the discs, nor the signals, and when soon
some terrible crash will send the train off the rails, and the carriages will
become a heap of ruins.
I was afraid of going mad, and at times I asked myself whether any of my
family had shown any signs of mental aberration, and had been locked up in a
lunatic asylum, and whether the life of constant fast pleasures, of turning night
into day and of frequent violent emotions, that I had led for years, had not at
last affected my brain. If I had believed in anything, and in the science of the
occult, which haunts so many restless brains, I should have imagined that
some enemy was bewitching me and laying invisible snares for me, that he
was suggesting those actions which were quite unworthy of the frank, upright
and well-bred man that I was, and was trying to destroy the happiness of
which she and I had dreamt.
For a whole week I devoted myself to that hateful business of playing the
spy, and to those inquiries which were killing me. I had succeeded in
discovering the lady’s maid who had been in Elaine’s service before we
were married, and whom she loved as if she had been her foster sister, who
used to accompany her whenever she went out, when she went to visit the
poor and when she went for a walk, who used to wake her every morning, do
her hair and dress her. She was young and rather pretty, and one saw that
Paris had improved her and given her a polish, and that she knew her
difficult business from end to end.
I had found out, however, that her virtue was only apparent, especially
since she had changed employers; that she was fond of going to the public
balls, and that she divided her favors between a man who came from her part
of the country, and who was a sergeant in a dragoon regiment, and a footman,
and that she spent all her money on horse races and on dress. I felt sure that I
should be able to make her talk and get the truth out of her, either by money or
cunning, and so I asked her to meet me early one morning in a quiet square.
She listened to me first of all in astonishment, without replying yes or no,
as if she did not understand what I was aiming at, or with what object I was
asking her all these questions about her former mistress; but when I offered
her a few hundred francs to loosen her tongue, as I was impatient to get the
matter over and pretended to know that she had managed interviews for
Elaine with her lovers, that they were known and being followed, that she
was in the habit of frequenting quiet bachelors’ quarters, from which she
returned late, the sly little wench frowned angrily, shrugged her shoulders
and exclaimed:
“What pigs some men are to have such ideas, and cause such an excellent
person as Mademoiselle Elaine any unhappiness. Look here, you disgust me
with your banknotes and your dirty stories, and I don’t choose to say what
you ought to wear on your head!”
She turned her back on me and hurried off, and her insolence, that
indignant reply which she had given me, rejoiced me to the depths of my
heart, like soothing balm that lulls the pain.
I should have liked to have called her back, and told her that it was all a
joke, that I was devotedly in love with my wife, that I was always on the
watch to hear her praised, but she was already out of sight, and I felt that I
was ridiculous and mean, that I had lowered myself by what I had done, and I
swore that I would profit by such a humiliating lesson, and for the future
show myself to Elaine as the trusting and ardent husband that she deserved,
and I thought myself cured, altogether cured....
And yet, I was again the prey to the same bad thoughts, to the same doubts,
and persuaded that that girl had lied to me just like all other women lie when
they are on the defensive, that she made fun of me, that perhaps some one had
foreseen this scene and had told her what to say and made sure of her silence,
just as her complicity had been gained. Thus I shall always knock up against
some barrier, and struggle in this wretched darkness, and this mire from
which I cannot extricate myself!

PART XII
Nobody knew anything. Neither the Superior of the Convent where she had
been brought up until she was sixteen, nor the servants who had waited on
her, nor the governesses who had finished her education, could remember
that Elaine had been difficult to check or teach, or that she had had any other
ideas than those of her age. She had certainly shown no precocious coquetry
and disquieting instincts; she had had no equivocal cousinly relationships,
when if the bridle is left on their neck at all, and one of them has learned at
school what love is, the two big children yield to the fatal law of sex, and
begin the inevitable eclogue of Daphne and Chole over again.
However, Oh! I felt it too much for it to be nothing but a chimera and a
mirage, it was no virgin who threw her arms round my neck so lovingly, and
who returned my first kisses so deliciously, who was attracted by my society,
who gave no signs of surprise and uttered no complaint, who appeared to
forget everything when in my society. No, no, a thousand times no, that could
not have been a pure woman.
I ought to have cast off that intoxication which was bewitching me, and to
have rushed out of the room where such a lie was being consummated; I
ought to have profited by her moments of amiable weakness, while she was
incapable of collecting her thoughts, when she would with tears have
confessed an old fault, for which the unhappy girl had not, perhaps, been
altogether responsible. Perhaps by my entreaties, or even perhaps by
violence, in terror at my furious looks, when my features would have been
distorted by rage, and my hands clenched in spite of myself in a gesture of
menace and of murder, I might have forced her to open her heart, to show me
its defilement, and to tell me this sad love episode.
How do I know whether her disconsolateness might not have moved me to
pity, whether I should not have wept with her at the heavy cross that we both
of us had to bear, whether I should not have forgiven her and opened my arms
wide, so that she might have thrown herself into them like into a peaceful
refuge?
Would not any man, or vicious collegian on the lookout for innocent girls,
have perceived her nervousness, her vice? Would he not have hypnotized her,
as it were, by amorous touches, by skillful caresses and reduced her to the
absolute passiveness of an animal, who had been taken unawares, without
any care for the morrow, or what the consequences of such a fault might be?
Or was I completely her dupe and the dupe of a villain? Had she loved,
and did she still love the man who had first possessed her, who had been her
first lover? Who could tell me, or come to my aid? Who could give me the
proofs, the real, undeniable proofs, either that I was an infamous wretch to
suspect Elaine, whom I ought to have worshiped with my eyes shut, or that
she was guilty, that she had lied, and that I had the right to cast her out of my
life and to treat her like a worthless woman!

PART XIII

If I had married when I was quite young, before I had wallowed in the mire
of Paris, from which one can never afterwards free oneself, for heart and
body both retain indelible marks of it, if I had not been the plaything of a
score of mistresses, who disgusted me with belief in any woman, if I had not
been weaned from supreme illusions, and surfeited with everything to the
marrow, should I have these abominable ideas?
I waited almost until I was beginning to decline in life, before I took the
right path and sought refuge in port; before going to what is pure and
virtuous, and before listening to the continual advice of those who love me, I
passed too suddenly from those lies, from those ephemeral enjoyments, from
that satiety which depraves us, from vice in which one tries to acquire
renewed strength and vigor, and to discover some new and unknown
sensation, to the pure sentimentalities of an engagement, to the unspeakable
delights of a life that was common to two, to that kind of amorous first
communion which ought to constitute married life.
If, instead of getting involved in an engagement and forming any resolution
so quickly, as I had been afraid that somebody else would be beforehand
with me and to rob me of Elaine’s heart, or of relapsing into my former
habits, if instead of lacking moral strength and character enough, in case I
might have had to wait, if I had backed out without entering into any
engagement and without having bound my life to that of the adorable girl
whom chance had thrown in my way, it would surely have been far better if I
had waited, prepared myself, questioned myself, and accustomed myself to
that metamorphosis; if I had purified myself and forgotten the past, like in
those retreats which precede the solemn ceremony, when pious souls
pronounce their indissoluble vows?
The reaction had been too sudden and violent for such a convalescent as I
was. I worked myself up, and pictured to myself something so white, so
virginal, so paradisical, such complete ignorance, such unconquerable
modesty and such delicious awkwardness, that Elaine’s gayety, her
unconstraint, her fearlessness, and her passionate kisses bewildered me,
roused my suspicions and filled me with anguish.
And yet I know how all, or nearly all, girls are educated in these days,
and that the ignorant, simple ones only exist on the stage, and I know also that
they hear and learn too many things both at home and in society, not to have
the intuition of the results of love.
Elaine loves me with all her heart, for she has told me so time after time,
and she repeats it to me more ardently than ever when I take her into my arms
and appear happy. She must have seen that her beauty had, in a manner,
converted me; that in order to possess her I had renounced many seductions
and a long life of enjoyment; and, perhaps, she would no longer please me if
she was too much of the little girl, and that she would appear ridiculous to
me if she showed her fears by any entreaty, and gesture, or any sigh.
As the people in the South say, she would have acted the brave woman,
and boasted, so that no complaint might betray her, and have imparted the
wild tenderness of a jealous heart to her kisses, and have attempted a
struggle, which would certainly have been useless, against those
recollections of mine, with which she thought I must be filled, in spite of
myself.
I accused myself, so that I might no longer accuse her. I studied my
malady; I knew quite well that I was wrong, and I wished to be wrong, I
measured the stupidity and the disgrace of such suspicions, and, nevertheless,
in spite of everything, they assailed me again, watched me traitorously and I
was carried away and devoured by them.
Ah! Was there in the whole world, even among the most wretched beggars
that were dying of starvation, whom nature squeezes in a vice, as it were, or
among the victims of love, anybody who could say that he was more
wretched than I?

PART XIV

This morning Count de Saulnac, who was lunching here, told us a terrible
story of a rape, for which a man is to be tried in a few days.
A charming girl of eighteen grew languid, and became so pale and
morose, her cheeks were so wax-like, her eyes so sunken and she had
altogether such a look of anemia, that her parents grew uneasy and took her to
a doctor who lived near them. He examined her carefully, said vaguely what
was the matter with her, spoke of an illness that required assiduous care and
attention, and advised the worthy couple to bring the poor girl to him every
day for a month.
As they were not well off enough to keep a servant, and each had their
work to attend to, the husband as an employee in a public office and his wife
as cashier in a milliner’s shop, and did not dream of any evil, and were
further reassured by the charitable, unctuous and austere looks of the doctor,
they allowed their daughter to go and consult him by herself.
The old man made much of her, tried to make her get over her shyness,
adroitly made her tell him all about her usual life, took a long time in
sounding her chest, helped her to dress and undress, in a very paternal way,
gave her a potion and was so thoughtful and caressing, that the poor girl
blushed and felt quite uncomfortable at it all. He soon saw that he should
obtain nothing from her innocence, but that she would resist his slightest
attempts at improper familiarity, and as he was extremely taken with the
delicate and amusing girl, and with her charming person, the wretch sent her
to sleep with a few magnetic passes, and outraged her.
She awoke without being conscious of what had happened, and only felt
rather more listless than usual, like she used to do when there was thunder in
the air. From that time, the doctor put longer intervals between her visits, and
soon, after having prescribed insignificant remedies for her, he told her that
she was quite cured, and that there was no occasion for her to come and see
him any more. Two months passed, and the girl, who at first had seemed
much better and more lively, relapsed into a state of prostration which had so
alarmed them, dragged herself about more than she walked, and seemed to be
succumbing under some heavy burden.
As they had not paid the old doctor’s bill, and as they were afraid that he
would ask them for it if they went to see him again, her father took the girl to
Beaujon, and they thought that he should have gone mad with despair and
shame when one of the house-surgeons, without mincing his words, told them
in a chaffing manner, that she was in the family way.
In the family way! What did he mean by that? And by whom?
They were small, thoroughly respectable and upright shopkeepers, and
this made them cruel. They tormented the poor girl, to make her acknowledge
her fault and tell them the name of her seducer. It was of no use for her to
bemoan herself, to throw herself at their feet, to tear her hair in desperation,
and to swear that no man in the world had ever touched her lips; in vain, did
she exclaim indignantly that it was impossible that such a dreadful thing
could be; that the man had made a mistake or was joking with them. In vain,
did she try to calm them, and to soften them by her entreaties; they turned
away their heads, and had only one reply to make:
“His name, his name!”
When she saw that her figure was altering, she was at length undeceived,
and became like an imprisoned animal, did not speak and cowered
motionless in the darkest corners, and did not even rebel at the blows, which
marked her pale, passive face. She carefully thought over every minute in the
past few months, and did her utmost to fill up the voids in her memory, and at
last she guessed who the guilty person was.
Then, in despair, she scribbled on a scrap of paper:
“I swear to you, my dear parents, that I have nothing to reproach myself
with. The old doctor treated me so strangely, that I often felt inclined to run
out of the consulting room. One day he put me to sleep, and perhaps it was he
who....”
And not having the courage to finish the lamentable sentence, she went and
drowned herself, and the parents had the doctor, who had forgotten all about
that old story, arrested, and in his examination he confessed the crime....
With an evil look on her face, such as I have never seen before, and with
vibrating nostrils, Elaine exclaimed in a hard voice:
“To think that such a monster was not sent to the guillotine!”
Can she also have suffered the same thing?

PART XV

But unless Elaine was a monster of wickedness, unless she had no heart and
knew how to lie and to deceive as well as a girl whose only pleasure
consists in making all those who are captivated by her beauty, play the
laughable part of dupes, unless that mask of youth concealed a most polluted
soul, if there had been any unhappy episode in her life, if she had endured the
horrors of violation, and gone through all the horrors of desolation, fear and
shame, would not something visible, something disgusting, attacks of low
spirits, and of gloom, and disgust with everything have remained, which
would have shown the progress of some mysterious malady, the gradual
weakening of the brain and the enlargement of an incurable wound?
 She would have cried occasionally, would have been lost in thought and
become confused when spoken to, she would scarcely have taken any interest
in anything that happened, either at home or elsewhere. Kisses would have
become torture to her, and would have only excited a fever of revolt in her
inanimate being.
I fancy that I can see such a victim of inexorable Destiny, as if she were a
consumptive woman whose days are numbered, and who knows it. She
smiles feebly when any one tries to get her out of her torpor, to amuse her and
to instill a little hope into her soul. She does not speak, but remains sitting
silently at a window for whole days together, and one might think that her
large, dreamy eyes are looking at strange sights in the depths of the sky, and
see a long, attractive road there. But Elaine, on the contrary, thought of
nothing but of amusing herself, of enjoying life and of laughing, and added all
the tricks of a girl who has just left school, to her seductive grace of a young
woman. She carried men away with her; she was most seductive, and loving
seemed to be her creation. She thought of nothing but of little coquettish acts
that made her more adorable, and of tender innuendos that triumph over
everything, that bring men to their knees and tempt them.
It was thus that I formerly dreamt of the woman who was to be my wife,
and this was the manner in which I looked on life in common; and now this
perpetual joy irritates me like a challenge, like some piece of insolent
boasting, and those lips that seek mine, and which offer themselves so
alluringly and coaxingly to me, make me sad and torture me, as if they
breathed nothing but a Lie.
Ah! If she had been the lover of another man before marriage, if she had
belonged to some one else besides me, it could only have been from love,
without altogether knowing what she wanted or what she was doing! And,
now, because she had acquired a name by marriage, because she had
accidentally extricated herself from that false step and thought she had won
the game, now that she fancied that I had not perceived anything, that I adored
her and possessed her absolutely!
How wretched I was! Should I never be able to escape from that night
which was growing darker and darker, which was imprisoning me, driving
me mad and raising an increasing and impenetrable barrier between Elaine
and me. Would not she, in the end, be the stronger, she whom I loved so
dearly, would not she envelope me in so much love, that at last I should again
find the happiness that I had lost, as if it were a calm, sunlit haven, and thus
forget this horrible nightmare when I fell on my knees before her beauty, with
a contrite heart and pricked by remorse, and happy to give myself to her for
ever, altogether and more passionately than at the divine period of our
betrothal.

PART XVI

Even the sight of our bedroom became painful to me. I was frightened of it; I
was uncomfortable there, and felt a kind of repulsion in going there. It
seemed to me as if Elaine were repeating a part that someone else had taught
her, and I almost hoped that in a moment of forgetfulness she would allow her
secret to escape her, and pronounce some name that was not mine, and I used
to keep awake, with my ears on the alert, in the hope that she might betray
herself in her sleep and murmur some revealing word, as she recalled the
past, and my temples throbbed and my whole body trembled with excitement.
But when this was over and I saw her sleeping peacefully as a little girl
who was tired with playing, with parted lips and disheveled hair, and
measured the full extent of the stupidity of my hatred and the sacrilegious
madness of my jealousy, my heart softened and I fell into such a state of
profound and absolute distress that I thought I should have died of it, and
large drops of cold perspiration ran down my cheeks and tears fell from my
eyes, and I got up, so that my sobs might not disturb her rest and wake her.
As this could not continue, however, I told her one day that I felt so
exhausted and ill that I should prefer to sleep in my own room. She appeared
to believe me and merely said:
“As you please, my dear!” but her blue eyes suddenly assumed such an
anxious, such a grieved look, that I turned my head aside, so as not to see
them....

PART XVII

I was again in the old house, and without her, in the old house where Elaine
used to spend all her holidays, in the room whose shutters had not been
opened since our departure, seven months ago.
Why did I go there, where the calm of the country, the silence of the
solitude and my recollections, irritated me and recalled my trouble, where I
suffered even more than I did in Paris, and where I thought of Elaine every
moment I seemed to see her and to hear her, in a species of hallucination.
 What did her letters that I had taken out of her writing table, which she
had used as a girl, what did her ball cards which were stuck round her
looking glass, in which she used to admire herself formerly, what did her
dresses, her dressing gowns, and the dusty furniture whose repose my
trembling hands violated, tell me? Nothing, and always nothing.
At table, I used to speak with the worthy couple who had never left the
mansion and who appeared to look upon themselves as its second masters,
with the apparent good nature of a man who was in love with his wife and
who wished only to speak about her, who took an interest in the smallest
detail of her childhood and youth, with all the jovial familiarity which
encourages peasants to talk, and when a few glasses of white wine had
loosened their tongues they would talk about her, whom they loved as if she
had been their child, and at other times I used to question the farmers, when
they came to settle their accounts.
Had Elaine the bridle on her neck like so many girls had; did she like the
country, were the peasants fond of her, and did she show any preference for
one or the other? Were many people invited for the shooting, and did she visit
much with the other ladies in the neighborhood?
And they drank with their elbows resting on the table in front of me,
uttered her praises in a voice as monotonous as a spinning wheel, lost
themselves in endless, senseless chatter which made me yawn in spite of
myself, and told me her girlish tricks which certainly did not disclose what
was haunting me, the traces of that first love, that perilous flirtation, that
foolish escapade in which Elaine might have been seduced.
Old and young men and women, spoke of her with something like
devotion, and all said how kind and charitable she was, and as merry as a
bird on a bright day; they said she pitied their wretchedness and their
troubles, and was still the young girl in spite of her long dresses, and fearing
nothing, while even the animals loved her.
She was almost always alone, and was never troubled with any
companions; she seemed to shun the house, hide herself in the park when the
bell announced some unexpected visits, and when one of her aunts, Madame
de Pleissac, said to her one day:
“Do you think that you will ever find a husband with your stand-offish
manners?”
She replied with a burst of laughter:
“Oh! Very well, then, Auntie, I shall do without one!”
 She had never given a hand to spiteful chatter or to slander, and had not
flirted with the best looking young man in the neighborhood, any more than
she had with the officers who stayed at the château during the maneuver, or
the neighbors, who came to see her parents. And some of them even old men,
whom years of work had bent like vine-stalks and had tanned like the leather
bottles which are used by caravans in the East, used to say with tears in their
dim eyes:
“Ah! When you married our young lady, we all said that there would not
be a happier man in the whole world than you!”
Ought I to have believed them? Were they not simple, frank souls, who
were ignorant of wiles and of lies, who had no interest in deceiving me, who
had lived near Elaine while she was growing up and becoming a woman, and
who had been familiar with her?
Could I be the only one who doubted Elaine, the only one who accused
her and suspected her, I who loved her so madly, I, whose only hope, only
desire, only happiness she was? May heaven guide me on this bad road on
which I have lost my way, where I am calling for help and where my misery
is increasing every day, and grant me the infinite pleasure of being able to
enjoy her caresses without any ill feeling, and to be able to love her, as she
loves me. And if I must expiate my old faults, and this infamous doubt which
I am ashamed of not being immediately able to cast from me, if I must pay for
my unmerited happiness with usury, I hope that I may be given to death as a
prey, only provided that I might belong to her, idolize her, believe in her
kisses, believe in her beauty and in her love, for one hour, for even a few
moments!

PART XVIII

To-day I suddenly remembered a funny evening which I spent when I was a

bachelor, at Madame d’Ecoussens, where all of us, some with secret and
insurmountable agony, and others with absolute indifference, went into one of
the small rooms where a female professor of palmistry, who was then in
vogue, and whose name I have forgotten, had installed herself.
When it came to my turn to sit opposite to her, as if I had been going to
make my confession, she took my hands into her long, slender fingers, felt
them, squeezed them and triturated them, as if they had been a lump of wax,
which she was about to model into shape.
 Severely dressed in black, with a pensive face, thin lips and almost
copper-colored eyes and neither young nor old, this woman had something
commanding, imperious, disturbing about her, and I must confess that my
heart beat more violently than usual while she looked at the lines in my left
hand through a strong magnifying glass, where the mysterious characters of
some satanic conjuring look appear, and form a capital M.
She was interesting, occasionally discovered fragments of my past and
gave mysterious hints, as if her looks were following the strange roads of
Destiny in those unequal, confused curves. She told me in brief words that I
should have and had had some opportunities, that I was wasting my physical,
more than my moral strength in all kinds of love affairs that did not last long,
and that the day when I really loved, or when, to use her expression, I was
fairly caught, would be to me the prelude of intense sufferings, a real way of
the Cross and of an illness of which I should never be cured. Then, as she
examined my line of life, that which surrounds the thick part of the thumb, the
lady in black suddenly grew gloomy, frowned and appeared to hesitate to go
on to the end and continue my horoscope, and said very quickly:
“Your line of life is magnificent, monsieur; you will live to be sixty at
least, but take care not to spend it too freely or to use it immoderately;
beware of strong emotions and of any passional crisis, for I remark a gap
there in the full vigor of your age, and that gap, that incurable malady which I
mentioned to you, in the line of your heart....”
I mastered myself, in order not to smile, and took my leave of her, but
everything that she foretold has been realized, and I dare not look at that
sinister gap which she saw in my line of life, for that gap can only mean
madness!
Madness, my poor, dear adored Elaine!

PART XIX

I became as bad and spiteful as if the spirit of hatred had possession of me,
and envied those whose life was too happy, and who had no cares to trouble
them. I could not conceal my pleasure when one of those domestic dramas
occurred, in which hearts bleed and are broken, in which odious treachery
and bitter sufferings are brought to light.
Divorce proceedings with their miserable episodes, with the wranglings
of the lawyers and all the unhappiness that they revealed and which exposed
the vanity of dreams, the tricks of women, the lowness of some minds, the
foul animal that sits and slumbers in most hearts, attracted me like a
delightful play, a piece which rivets one from the first to the last act. I
listened greedily to passionate letters, those mad prayers whose secrets some
lawyer violates and which he reads aloud in a mocking tone, and which he
gives pell-mell to the bench and to the public, who have come to be amused
or excited and to stare at the victims of love.
I followed those romances of adultery which were unfolded chapter by
chapter, in their brutal reality, of things that had actually occurred, and for the
first time I forgot my own unhappiness in them. Sometimes the husband and
wife were there, as if they wished to defy each other, to meet in some last
encounter, and pale and feverish they watched each other, devoured each
other with their eyes, hiding their grief and their misery. Sometimes again, the
lover or the mistress were there and tore their gloves in their rage, wishing to
rush at the bar to defend their love, to bring forward accusations in their turn,
and would tell the advocate that he was lying, and would threaten him and
revile him with all their indignant nature. Friends, however, would restrain
them, would whisper something to them in a low voice, press their hands like
after a funeral, and try to appease them.
It seemed to me, as if I were looking at a heap of ruins, or breathing in the
odor of an ambulance, in which dying men were groaning, and that those
unhappy people were assuaging my trouble somewhat, and taking their share
of it.
I used to read the advertisements in the Agony Columns in the
newspapers, where the same exalted phrases used to recur, where I read the
same despairing adieux, earnest requests for a meeting, echoes of past
affection, and vain vows; and all this relieved me, vaguely appeased me, and
made me think less about myself, that hateful, incurable I which I longed to
destroy!

PART XX

As the heat was very oppressive, and there was not a breath of wind, after
dinner she wanted to go for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and we drove in
the victoria towards the bridge at Suresne.
It was getting late, and the dark drives looked like deserted labyrinths,
and cool retreats where one would have liked to have stopped late, where
the very rustle of the leaves seems to whisper amorous temptations, and there
was seduction in the softness of the air and in the infinite music of the
silence.
Occasionally, lights were to be seen among the trees, and the crescent of
the new moon shone like a half-opened gold bracelet in the serene sky, and
the green sward, the copses and the small lakes, which gave an uncertain
reflection of the surrounding objects, came into sight suddenly, out of the
shade, and the intoxicating smell of the hay and of the flower beds rose from
the earth as if from a sachet.
We did not speak, but the jolts of the carriage occasionally brought us
quite close together, and as if I were being attracted by some irresistible
force, I turned to Elaine and saw that her eyes were filled with tears, and that
she was very pale, and my whole body trembled when I looked at her.
Suddenly, as if she could not bear this state of affairs any longer, she threw
her arms round my neck, and with her lips almost touching mine, she said:
“Why do you not love me any longer? Why do you make me so unhappy?
What have I done to you, Jacques?”
She was at my mercy, she was undergoing the influence of the charm of
one of those moonlight nights which unbrace women’s nerves, make them
languid, and leave them without a will and without strength, and I thought that
she was going to tell me everything and to confess everything to me, and I
had to master myself, not to kiss her on her sweet coaxing lips, but I only
replied coldly:
“Do you not know, Elaine?... Did you not think that sooner or later I
should discover everything that you have been trying to hide from me?”
She sat up in terror, and repeated as if she were in a profound stupor:
“What have I been trying to hide from you?”
I had said too much, and was bound to go on to the end and to finish, even
though I repented of it ever afterwards, and amidst the noise of the carriage I
said in a hoarse voice:
“Is it not your fault if I have become estranged from you, shall not I be the
only one to be unhappy, I who loved you so dearly, who believed in you, and
whom you have deceived, and condemned to take another man’s mistress?”
Elaine closed my mouth with my fingers, and panting, with dilated eyes
and with such a pale face that I thought she was going to faint, she said
hoarsely:
 “Be quiet, be quiet, you are frightening me,... frightening me as if you
were a madman....”
Those words froze me, and I shivered as if some phantoms were
appearing among the trees and showing me the place that had been marked
out for me by Destiny, and I felt inclined to jump from the carriage and to run
to the river, which was calling to me yonder in a maternal voice, and inviting
me to an eternal sleep, eternal repose, but Elaine called out to the coachman:
“We will go home, Firmin; drive as fast as you can!”
We did not exchange another word, and during the whole drive Elaine
sobbed convulsively, though she tried to hide the sound with her pocket
handkerchief, and I understood that it was all finished and that I had killed
our love....

PART XXI

Yes, all was finished and stupidly finished, without the decisive explanation,
in which I should find strength to escape from a hateful yoke, and to repudiate
the woman who had allured me with false caresses, and who no longer ought
to bear my name.
It was either that, or else, who knows, the happiness, the peace, the love
which was not troubled by any evil afterthoughts, that absolute love that I
dreamt of between Elaine and myself when I asked for her hand, and which I
was still continually dreaming of with the despair of a condemned soul far
from Paradise, and from which I was suffering, and which would kill me.
She prevented me from speaking; with her trembling hand she checked that
flow of frenzied words which were about to come from my pained heart,
those terrible accusations which an imperious, resistless force incited me to
utter, and those terrified words which escaped from her pale lips, froze me
again, and penetrated to my marrow as if they had been some piercing wind.
In spite of it all, I was in full possession of my reason, I was not in a
passion, and I could not have looked like a fool.
What could she have seen unusual in my eyes that frightened her, what
inflections were there in my voice for such an idea suddenly to arise in her
brain? Suppose she had not make a mistake, suppose I no longer knew what I
was saying nor what I was doing, and really had that terrible malady that she
had mentioned, and which I cannot repeat!
 It seems to me now as if I could see myself in a mirror of anguish,
altogether changed, as if my head were a complete void at times and became
something sonorous, and then was struck violent, prolonged blows from a
heavy clapper, as if it had been a bell, which fills it with tumultuous
deafening vibrations, from a kind of loud tocsin and from monotonous peals,
that were succeeded by the silence of the grave.
And the voice of recollection, a voice which tells me Elaine’s mysterious
history, which speaks to me only of her, which recalls that initial night, that
strange night of happiness and of grief, when I doubted her fidelity, when I
doubted her heart as well as I did herself, passes slowly through this silence
all at once, like the voice of distant music.
Alas! Suppose she had not made a mistake!

PART XXII

I must be an object of hatred to her, and I left home without writing her a line,
without trying to see her, without wishing her good-bye. She may pity me or
she may hate me, but she certainly does not love me any longer, and I have
myself buried that love, for which I would formerly have given my whole
life. As she is young and pretty, however, Elaine will soon console herself
for these passing troubles with some soul that is the shadow of her own, and
will replace me, if she has not done that already, and will seek happiness in
adultery.
What are she and her lover plotting? What will they try to do to prevent
me from interfering with them? What snares will they set for me so that I may
go and end my miserable life in some dungeon, from which there is no
release?
But that is impossible; it can never be; Elaine belongs to me altogether
and forever; she is my property, my chattel, my happiness. I adore her, I want
her all to myself, even though she be guilty, and I will never leave her again
for a moment, I will still stick to her petticoats, I will roll at her feet, and ask
her pardon, for I thirst for her kisses and her love.
To-night in a few hours, I shall be with her, I shall go into our room and
lie in our bed, and I will cover the cheeks of my fair-haired darling with
such kisses, that she will no longer think me mad, and if she cries out, if she
defends herself and spurns me, I shall kill her; I have made up my mind to
that.
 I know that I shall strike her with the Arab knife that is on one of the
console-tables, in our room among other knick-knacks. I see the spot where I
shall plunge in the sharp blade, into the nape of her neck, which is covered
with little soft pale golden curls, that are the same color as the hair of her
head. It attracted me so at one time, during the chaste period of our
engagement, that I used to wish to bite it, as if it had been some fruit. I shall
do it some day in the country, when she is bathed in a ray of sunlight, which
makes her look dazzling in her pink muslin dress, some day on a towing-path,
when the nightingales are singing, and the dragonflies, with their reflections
of blue and silver are flying about.
There, there, I shall skillfully plunge it in up to the hilt, like those who
know how to kill....

PART XXIII

And after I had killed her, what then?

As the judges would not be able to explain such an extraordinary crime to
themselves, they would of course say that I was mad, medical men would
examine me and would immediately agree that I ought at once to be kept
under supervision, taken care of and placed in a lunatic asylum.
And for years, perhaps, because I was strong, and because such a
vigorous animal would survive the calamity intact, although my intellect
might give way, I should remain a prey to these chimeras, carry that fixed
idea of her lies, her impurity and her shame about with me, that would be my
one recollection, and I should suffer unceasingly.
I am writing all this perfectly coolly and in full possession of my reason; I
have perfect prescience of what my resolve entails, and of this blind rush
towards death. I feel that my very minutes are numbered, and that I no longer
have anything in my skull, in which some fire, though I do not quite know
what it is, is burning, except a few particles of what used to be my brain.
Just as a short time ago, I should certainly have murdered Elaine, if she
had been with me, when invisible hands seemed to be pushing me towards
her, inaudible voices ordered me to commit that murder, it is surely most
probable that I shall have another crisis, and will there be any awakening
from that?
Ah! It will be a thousand times better, since Destiny has left me a half-
open door, to escape from life before it is too late, before the free, sane,
strong man that I am at present, becomes the most pitiable, the most
destructive, the most dangerous of human wrecks!
May all these notes of my misery fall into Elaine’s hands some day, may
she read them to the end, pity and absolve me, and for a long time mourn for
me!
(Here ends Jacques’ Journal.)
 AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS

During one of those sudden changes of the electric light, which at one time
throws rays of exquisite pale pink, at another a liquid gold, as if it had been
filtered through the light hair of a woman, and at another, rays of a bluish hue
with strange tints, such as the sky assumes at twilight, in which the women
with their bare shoulders looked like living flowers — it was on the night of
the first of January at Montonirail’s, the refined painter of great undulating
poses figures, of brilliant dresses, of Parisian prettiness — that tall
Pescarelle, whom some called Pussy, though I do not know why, suddenly
said in a low voice:
“Well, people were not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half wrong
when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She had
captivated my heart, just as a bird-catcher on a frosty morning catches an
imprudent wren on a limed twig, and she might have done whatever she liked
with me.
“I was under the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, where her
teeth had a cruel look between her red lips, and glistened as if they were
ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful, the most
voluptuous kiss, by pain.
“I loved everything in her, her feline suppleness, her slow looks, which
seemed to glide from her half-closed lids, full of promises and temptation,
her somewhat extreme elegance, and her hands, her long, delicate, white
hands, with blue veins, like the bloodless hands of a female saint in a stained
glass window, and her slender fingers, on which only the large drops of
blood of a ruby glittered.
“I would have given her all my remaining youth and vigor to have laid my
burning hands onto the nape of her cool round neck, and to feel that bright,
silky, golden mane enveloping me and caressing my skin. I was never tired of
hearing her disdainful, petulant voice, those vibrations which sounded as if
they proceeded from clear glass, and that music, which at times, became
hoarse, harsh and fierce, like the loud, sonorous calls of the Valkyries.
 “Oh! Good heavens! to be her lover, to be her chattel, to belong to her, to
devote one’s whole existence to her, to spend one’s last half-penny and to go
under in misery, only to have the glory, the happiness of possessing the
splendid beauty, the sweetness of her kisses, the pink, and the white of her
demon-like soul all to myself, were it only for a few months!
“It makes you laugh, I know, to think that I should have been caught like
that, I who give such good, prudent advice to my friends, who fear love as I
do those quicksands and shoals which appear at low tide and in which one is
swallowed up and disappears!
“But who can answer for himself, who can defend himself against such a
danger, against the magnetic attraction that comes from such a woman?
Nevertheless, I got cured, and perfectly cured, and that, quite accidentally,
and this is how the enchantment, which was apparently so infrangible, was
broken.
“On the first night of a play, I was sitting in the stalls close to Lucy, whose
mother had accompanied her, as usual, and they occupied the front of a box,
side by side. From some insurmountable attraction, I never ceased looking at
the woman whom I loved with all the force of my being. I feasted my eyes on
her beauty, I saw nobody except her in the theater, and did not listen to the
piece that was being performed on the stage.
“Suddenly, however, I felt as if I had received a blow from a dagger in my
heart, and I had an insane hallucination. Lucy had moved and her pretty head
was in profile, in the same attitude and with the same lines as her mother. I
do not know what shadow, or what play of light had hardened and altered the
color of her delicate features and destroyed their ideal prettiness, but the
more I looked at them both, the one who was young, and the one who was
old, the greater that distressing resemblance became.
“I saw Lucy growing older and older, striving against those accumulating
years which bring wrinkles in the face, produce a double chin and crow’s
feet, and spoil the mouth. They almost looked like twins.
“I suffered so that I almost thought I should have gone mad, and, in spite of
myself, instead of shaking off this feeling and make my escape out of the
theater, far away into the noise and life on the boulevards, I persisted in
looking at the other, at the old one, in scanning her over, in judging her, in
dissecting her with my eyes; I got excited over her flabby cheeks, over those
ridiculous dimples, that were half-filled up, over that treble chin, that hair
which must have been dyed, those eyes which had no more brightness in
them, and that nose which was a caricature of Lucy’s beautiful, attractive
little nose.
“I had the prescience of the future. I loved her, and I should love her more
and more every day, that little sorceress who had so despotically and so
quickly conquered me. I should not allow any participation or any intrigue
from the day she gave herself to me, and when once we had been so
intimately connected, who could tell whether, just as I was defending myself
against it most, the legitimate termination — marriage — might not come?
“Why not give one’s name to a woman whom one loves, and of whom one
is sure? The reason was, that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly creature
with whom I should not venture to be seen in public, as my friends would
leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in their hearts for the man
who was accompanying those remains.”

“And so, as soon as the curtain had fallen, without saying good-day or
good-evening, I had myself driven to the Moulin Rouge, and there I picked
up the first woman I came across, and remained in her company until late
next day.”
“Well,” Florise d’Anglet exclaimed, “I shall never take Mamma to the
theater with me again, for men are really getting too mad!”
 THE NEW SENSATION

That little Madame d’Ormonde certainly had the devil in her, but above all, a
fantastic, baffling brain, through which the most unheard of caprices passed,
in which ideas danced and jostled each other, like those pieces of different
colored glass in a kaleidoscope, which form such strange figures when they
have been shaken, in which Parisine was fermenting to such an extent — you
know, Parisine, the analysis of which Roqueplan lately gave — that the most
learned members of The Institute would have wasted his science and his
wisdom if he had tried to follow her slips and her subterfuges.
That was, very likely, the reason why she attracted, retained and
infatuated even those who had paid their debt to implacable love, who
thought that they were strong and free from those passions under the influence
of which men lose their heads, and that they were beyond the reach of
woman’s perfidious snares. Or, perhaps, it was her small, soft, delicate,
white hands, which always smelled of some subtle, delicious perfume, and
whose small fingers men kissed almost with devotion, almost with absolute
pleasure. Or, was it her silky, golden hair, her large, blue eyes, full of
enigmas, of curiosity, of desire, her changeable mouth, which was quite small
and infantine at one moment, when she was pouting, and smiling and as open
as a rose that is unfolding in the sun, when she opened it in a laugh, and
showed her pearly teeth, so that it became a target for kisses? Who will ever
be able to explain that kind of magic and sorcery which some Chosen Women
exercise over all men, that despotic authority, against which nobody would
think of rebelling?
Among the numerous men who had entreated her, who were anxiously
waiting for that wonderful moment when her heart would beat, when his
mocking companion would grow tired and abandon herself to the pleasure of
loving and of being loved, would become intoxicated with the honey of
caresses, and would no longer refuse her lips to kisses, like some restive
animal that fears the yoke, none had so made up his mind to win the game,
and to pursue this deceptive siege, as much as Xavier de Fontrailles. He
marched straight for his object with a patient energy and a strength of will
which no checks could weaken, and with the ardent fervor of a believer who
has started on a long pilgrimage, and who supports all the suffering of the
long journey with the fixed and consoling idea that one day he will be able to
throw himself on his knees at the shrine where he wishes to worship, and to
listen to the divine words which will be a Paradise to him.
He gave way to Madame d’Ormonde’s slightest whims, and did all he
could never to bore her, never to hurt her feelings, but really to become a
friend whom she could not do without, and of whom, in the end, a woman
grows more jealous than she does of her husband, and to whom she confesses
everything, her daily worries and her dreams of the future.
She would very likely have suffered and wept, and have felt a great void
in her existence if they had separated for ever, if he had disappeared, and she
would not have hesitated to defend him, even at the risk of compromising
herself, and of passing as his mistress, if any one had attacked him in her
presence, and sometimes she used to say with a sudden laughing sadness in
her voice:
“If I were really capable of loving for five minutes consecutively, I should
love you.”
And when they were walking in the Bois de Boulogne, while the Victoria
was waiting near Armenonville, during their afternoon talks when, as he used
to say, they were hanging over the abyss until they both grew giddy, and
spoke of love madly and ceaselessly — returning to the subject constantly,
and impregnating themselves with it — Madame d’Ormonde would
occasionally produce one of her favorite theories. Yes, she certainly
understood possession of the beloved object, that touch of madness which
seizes you from head to foot, which makes your blood hot, and which makes
you forget everything else in a man’s embraces, in that supreme pleasure
which overwhelms you, and which rivets two beings together for ever, by the
heart and by the brain. But only at some unexpected moment, in a strange
place, with a touch of something novel about it, which one would remember
all one’s life, something amusing and almost maddening, which one had been
in search of for a long time, and which imparted a flavor of curry, as it were,
into the common-place flavor of immorality.
And Xavier de Fontrailles did all he could to discover such a place, but
failed successively in a bachelor’s lodgings with silk tapestry, like a boudoir
of the seventeenth century, in a villa hidden like a nest among trees and rose
bushes, with a Japanese house furnished in an extraordinary fashion and very
expensively, with latticed windows from which one could see the sea, in an
old melancholy palace, from which one could see the Grand Canal, in rooms,
in hotels, in queer quarters, in private rooms, in restaurants, and in small
country houses in the recesses of woods.
Madame d’Ormonde went on her way without turning her head, but
Xavier, alas! became more and more amorous, as amorous as an overgrown
schoolboy who has never hitherto had any conversation with a woman, and
who is amorous enough to pick up the flowers that fall from her bodice, and
to be lost and unhappy as soon as he does not see her, or hear her soft, cooing
voice, and see her smile....
One evening, however, he had gone with her to the fair at Saint Cloud, and
went into three shows, deafened by the noise of the organs, the whistling of
the machinery of the round-abouts, and the hubbub of the crowd that came
and went among the booths that were illuminated by paraffin lamps. As they
were passing in front of a somnambulist’s van, Monsieur de Fontrailles
stopped and said to Madame d’Ormonde:
“Would you like to have our fortune told?”
It was a very fine specimen of its kind, and had, no doubt, been far and
wide. Placards and portraits, bordered by advertisements, hung above the
shaky steps, and the small windows with their closed shutters, were almost
hidden by boxes of sweet basil and mignonette, while an old, bald parrot,
with her feathers all ruffled, was asleep just outside.
The fortune teller was sitting on a chair, quietly knitting a stocking, and on
their approach she got up, went up to Madame d’Ormonde and said in an
unctuous voice:
“I reveal the present, the past and the future, and even the name of the
future husband or wife, and of deceased relations, as well as my client’s
present and future circumstances. I have performed before crowned heads.
The Emperor of Brazil came to me, with the illustrious poet, Victor Hugo....
My charge is five francs for telling your fortune from the cards or by your
hand, and twenty francs for the whole lot.... Would you like the lot,
Madame?”
Madame d’Ormonde gave vent to a burst of sonorous laughter, like a
street girl, who is amusing herself, but they went in and Monsieur de
Fontrailles opened the glass door which was covered by a heavy red curtain.
When they got in, the young woman uttered an exclamation of surprise. The
interior of the van was full of roses, arranged in the most charming manner as
if for a lovers’ meeting. On a table covered with a damask cloth, and which
was surrounded by piles of cushions, a supper was waiting for chance
comers, and at the other end, concealed by heavy hangings, one could see a
large, wide bed, one of those beds which give rise to sinister suggestions!
Xavier had shut the door again, and Madame d’Ormonde looked at him in
a strange manner, with rather flushed cheeks, palpitating nostrils, and a look
in her eyes, such as he had never seen in them before, and in a very low
voice, while his heart beat violently, and he whispered into her ear:
“Well, does the decoration please you this time?”
She replied by holding up her lips to him, and then filled two glasses with
extra dry champagne, which was as pale as the skin of a fair woman, and
said almost as if she had already been rather drunk:
“I am decidedly worth a big stake!”
It was in this fashion that Madame d’Ormonde, for the first and last time,
deceived her husband; and it was at the fair at Saint Cloud, in a
somnambulist’s van.
 THE VIATICUM

“After all,” Count d’Avorsy said, stirring his tea with the slow movements of
a prelate, “what truth was there in anything that was said at Court, almost
without any restraint, and did the Empress, whose beauty has been ruined by
some secret grief, who will no longer see anyone and who soothes her
continual mental weariness by some journeys without an object and without a
rest, in foggy and melancholy islands, and did she really forget Caesar’s wife
ought not even to be suspected, did she really give herself to that strange and
attractive corrupter, Ladislas Ferkoz?”
The bright night seemed to be scattering handfuls of stars into the placid
sea, which was as calm as a blue pond, slumbering in the depths of a forest.
Among the tall climbing roses, which hung a mantle of yellow flowers to the
fretted baluster of the terrace, there stood out in the distance the illuminated
fronts of the hotels and villas, and occasionally women’s laughter was heard
above the dull, monotonous sound of surf and the noise of the fog-horns.
Then Captain Sigmund Oroshaz, whose sad and pensive face of a soldier
who has seen too much slaughter and too many charnel houses, was marked
by a large scar, raised his head and said in a grave, haughty voice:
“Nobody has lied in accusing Maria-Gloriosa of adultery, and nobody has
calumniated the Empress and her minister, whom God has damned in the
other world. Ladislas Ferkoz was his sovereign’s lover until he died, and
made his august master ridiculous and almost odious, for the man, no matter
who he be, who allows himself to be flouted by a creature who is unworthy
of bearing his name and of sharing his bread; who puts up with such disgrace,
who does not crush the guilty couple with all the weight of his power, is not
worth pity, nor does he deserve to be spared the mockery. And if I affirm that
so harshly, my dear Count — although years and years have passed since the
sponge passed over that old story — the reason is that I saw the last chapter
of it, quite in spite of myself, however, for I was the officer who was on duty
at the palace, and obliged to obey orders, just as if I had been on the field of
battle — and on that day I was on duty near Maria-Gloriosa.”
 Madame de Laumières, who had begun an animated conversation on
crinolines, admist the fragrant odor of Russian cigarettes, and who was
making fun of the striking toilets, with which she had amused herself by
scanning through her opera glass a few hours previously at the races,
stopped, for even when she was talking most volubly she always kept her
ears open to hear what was being said around her, and as her curiosity was
aroused, she interrupted Sigmund Oroshaz.
“Ah! Monsieur,” she said, “you are not going to leave our curiosity
unsatisfied.... A story about the Empress puts all our scandals on the beach,
and all our questions of dress into the shade, and, I am sure,” she added with
a smile at the corners of her mouth, “that even our friend, Madame
d’Ormonde will leave off flirting with Monsieur Le Brassard to listen to
you.”
Captain Oroshaz continued, with his large blue eyes full of recollections:
“It was in the middle of a grand ball that the Emperor was giving on the
occasion of some family anniversary, though I forget exactly what, and where
Maria-Gloriosa, who was in great grief, as she had heard that her lover was
ill and his life almost despaired of, far from her, was going about with her
face as pale as that of Our Lady of Sorrows, seemed to be a soul in
affliction, appeared to be ashamed of her bare shoulders, as if she were
being made a parade of in the light, while he, the adored of her heart, was
lying on a bed of sickness, getting weaker every moment, longing for her and
perhaps calling for her in his distress. About midnight, when the violins were
striking up the quadrille, which the Emperor was to dance with the wife of
the French Ambassador, one of the ladies of honor, Countess Szegedin, went
up to the Empress, and whispered a few words to her, in a very low voice.
Maria-Gloriosa grew still paler, but mastered her emotion and waited until
the end of the last figure. Then, however, she could not restrain herself any
longer, and even without giving any pretext for running away in such a
manner, and leaning on the arm of her lady of honor, she made her way
through the crowd as if she were in a dream and went to her own apartments.
I told you that I was on duty that evening at the door of her rooms, and
according to etiquette, I was going to salute her respectfully, but she did not
give me time.
“‘Captain,’ she said excitedly and vehemently, ‘give orders for my own
private coachman, Hans Hildersheim, to get a carriage ready for me
immediately,’ but thinking better of it immediately she went on: ‘But no, we
should only lose time, and every minute is precious; give me a cloak quickly,
Madame, and a lace veil; we will go out of one of the small doors in the
park, and take the first conveyance we see.”
“She wrapped herself in her furs, hid her face in her mantilla, and I
accompanied her, without at first knowing what this mystery was, and where
we were going to, on this mad expedition. I hailed a cab that was dawdling
by the side of the pavement, and when the Empress gave me the address of
Ladislas Ferkoz, the Minister of State, in a low voice, in spite of my usual
phlegm, I felt a vague shiver of emotion, one of those movements of
hesitation and recoil, from which the bravest are not exempt at times. But
how could I get out of this unpleasant part of acting as her companion, and
how show want of politeness to a sovereign who had completely lost her
head? Accordingly, we started, but the Empress did not pay any more
attention to me than if I had not been sitting by her side in that narrow
conveyance, but stifled her sobs with her pocket handkerchief, muttered a
few incoherent words, and occasionally trembled from head to foot. Her
lover’s name rose to her lips as if it had been a response in a litany, and I
thought that she was praying to the Virgin that she might not arrive too late to
see Ladislas Ferkoz again in the possession of his faculties, and keep him
alive for a few hours. Suddenly, as if in reply to herself, she said: ‘I will not
cry any more; he must see me looking beautiful, so that he may remember me,
even in death!’
“When we arrived, I saw that we were expected, and that they had not
doubted that the Empress would come to close her lover’s eyes with a last
kiss. She left me there, and hurried to Ladislas Ferkoz’s room, without even
shutting the doors behind her, where his beautiful, sensual, gipsy head stood
out from the whiteness of the pillows; but his face was quite bloodless, and
there was no life left in it, except in his large, strange eyes, that were striated
with gold, like the eyes of an astrologer or of a bearded vulture.
“The cold numbness of the death struggle had already laid hold of his
robust body and paralyzed his lips and arms, and he could not reply even by
a sound of tenderness to Maria-Gloriosa’s wild lamentations and amorous
cries. Neither reply nor smile, alas! But his eyes dilated, and glistened like
the last flame that shoots up from an expiring fire, and filled them with a
world of dying thoughts, of divine recollections, of delirious love. They
appeared to envelope her in kisses, they spoke to her, they thanked her, they
followed her movements, and seemed delighted at her grief. And as if she
were replying to their mute supplications, as if she had understood them,
Maria-Gloriosa suddenly tore off her lace, threw aside her fur cloak, stood
erect beside the dying man, whose eyes were radiant, desirable in her
supreme beauty with her bare shoulders, her bust like marble and her fair
hair, in which diamonds glistened, surrounding her proud head, like that of
the Goddess Diana, the huntress, and with her arms stretched out towards him
in an attitude of love, of embrace and of blessing. He looked at her in
ecstacy, he feasted on her beauty, and seemed to be having a terrible struggle
with death, in order that he might gaze at her, that apparition of love, a little
longer, see her beyond eternal sleep and prolong this unexpected dream. And
when he felt that it was all over with him, and that even his eyes were
growing dim, two great tears rolled down his cheeks....
“When Maria-Gloriosa saw that he was dead, she piously and devoutly
kissed his lips and closed his eyes, like a priest who closes the gold
tabernacle after service, on an evening after benediction, and then, without
exchanging a word, we returned through the darkness to the palace where the
ball was still going on.”

There was a minute’s silence, and while Madame de Laumières, who was
very much touched by this story and whose nerves were rather highly strung,
was drying her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh and shrill
voices of the fast women who were returning from the Casino, by the strange
irony of fate, struck up an idiotic song which was then in vogue: “Oh! the
poor, oh! the poor, oh! the poor, dear girl!”
 THE RELICS

They had given him a grand public funeral, like they do victorious soldiers
who have added some dazzling pages to the glorious annals of their country,
who have restored courage to desponding heads and cast over other nations
the proud shadow of their country’s flag, like a yoke under which those went
who were no longer to have a country, or liberty.
During a whole bright and calm night, when falling stars made people
think of unknown metamorphoses and the transmigration of souls, who knows
whether tall cavalry soldiers in their cuirasses and sitting as motionless as
statues on their horses, had watched by the dead man’s coffin, which was
resting, covered with wreaths, under the porch of the heroes, every stone of
which is engraved with the name of a brave man, and of a battle.
The whole town was in mourning, as if it had lost the only object that had
possession of its heart, and which it loved. The crowd went silently and
thoughtfully down the avenue of the Champs Elysées, and they almost fought
for the commemorative medals and the common portraits which hawkers
were selling, or climbed upon the stands which street boys had erected here
and there, and whence they could see over the heads of the crowd. The Place
de la Concorde had something solemn about it, with its circle of statues hung
from head to foot with long crape coverings, which looked in the distance
like widows, weeping and praying.
According to his last wish, Jean Ramel had been conveyed to the
Pantheon in the wretched paupers’ hearse, which conveys them to the
common grave at the shambling trot of some thin and broken-winded horse.
That dreadful, black conveyance without any drapery, without plumes and
without flowers, which was followed by Ministers and deputies, by several
regiments with their bands, and their flags flying above the helmets and the
sabers, by children from the national schools, by delegates from the
provinces, and an innumerable crowd of men in blouses, of women, of shop-
keepers from every quarter, had a most theatrical effect, and while standing
on the steps of the Pantheon, at the foot of the massive columns of the portico,
the orators successively discanted on his apotheosis, tried to make their
voices predominate over the noise, emphasized their pompous periods, and
finished the performance by a poor third act, which makes people yawn and
gradually empties the theater, people remembered who that man had been, on
whom such posthumous honors were being bestowed, and who was having
such a funeral: it was Jean Ramel.
Those three sonorous syllables called up a lionine head, with white hair
thrown back in disorder, like a mane, with features that looked as if they had
been cut out with a bill-hook, but which were so powerful, and in which
there lay such a flame of life, that one forgot their vulgarity and ugliness; with
black eyes under bushy eyebrows, which dilated and flashed like lightning,
now were veiled as if in tears and then were filled with serene mildness,
with a voice which now growled so as almost to terrify its hearers, and
which would have filled the hall of some working men’s club, full of the
thick smoke from strong pipes without being affected by it, and then would be
soft, coaxing, persuasive and unctuous like that of a priest who is holding out
promises of Paradise, or giving absolution for our sins.
He had had the good luck to be persecuted, to be in the eyes of the people,
the incarnation of that lying formula which appears on every public edifice,
of those three words of the Golden Age, which make those who think, those
who suffer and those who govern, smile somewhat sadly, Liberty, Fraternity,
Equality. Luck had been kind to him, had sustained, had pushed him on by the
shoulders, and had set him up on his pedestal again when he had fallen down,
like all idols do.
He spoke and he wrote, and always in order to announce the good news to
all the multitudes who suffered — no matter to what grade of society they
might belong — to hold out his hand to them and to defend them, to attack the
abuses of the Code — that book of injustice and severity — to speak the truth
boldly, even when it lashed his enemies as if it had been a whip.
His books were like Gospels, which are read chapter by chapter, and
warmed the most despairing and the most sorrowing hearts, and brought
comfort, hope and dreams to each.
He had lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing;
and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque dialect.
That chaste philosopher, who had all his life long feared women’s snares
and wiles, who had looked upon love as a luxury made only for the rich and
idle, which unsettles the brain and interferes with acuteness of thought, had
allowed himself to be caught like an ordinary man, late in life, when his hair
was white and his forehead deeply wrinkled.
It was not, however, as happens in the visions of solitary ascetics, some
strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and witchery in her
voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp immodestly, to
light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white bouquet of her sweet-
smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous pleasures, whose
lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to listen to, without being
excited to the very depths of his being. Neither a princess out of some fairy
tale, nor a frail beauty who was an expert in the art of reviving the ardor of
old men, and of leading them astray, nor a woman who was disgusted with
her ideals, that always turned out to be alike, and who dreamt of awakening
the heart of one of those men who suffer, who have afforded so much
alleviation to human misery, who seemed to be surrounded by a halo, and
who never knew anything but the true, the beautiful and the good.
It was only a little girl of twenty, who was as pretty as a wild flower, who
had a ringing laugh, white teeth, and a mind that was as spotless as a new
mirror, in which no figure has been reflected as yet.
He was in exile at the time for having given public expression to what he
thought, and he was living in an Italian village which was buried in chestnut
trees and situated on the shores of a lake that was narrow and so transparent
that it might have been taken for some nobleman’s fish pond that was like an
emerald in a large park. The village consisted of about twenty red-tiled
houses. Several paths paved with flint led up the side of the hill among the
vines where the Madonna, full of grace and goodness extended her
indulgence.
For the first time in his life Ramel remarked that there were some lips that
were more desirable, more smiling than others, that there was hair in which
it must be delicious to bury the fingers like in fine silk, and which it must be
delightful to kiss, and that there were eyes which contained an infinitude of
caresses, and he had spelled right through the eclogue, which at length
revealed true happiness to him, and he had had a child, a son, by her.
This was the only secret that Ramel jealously concealed, and which no
more than two or three of his oldest friends knew anything about, and while
he hesitated about spending twopence on himself, and went to the Institute
and to the Chamber of Deputies outside an omnibus, Pepa led the happy life
of a millionaire who is not frightened of the to-morrow, and brought up her
son like a little prince, with a tutor and three servants, who had nothing to do
but to look after him.
All that Ramel made went into his mistress’s hands, and when he felt that
his last hour was approaching, and that there was no hope of his recovery —
in full possession of his faculties and joy in his dull eyes — he gave his name
to Pepa, and made her his lawful widow, in the presence of all his friends.
She inherited everything that her former lover left behind, a considerable
income from his share of the annual profits on his books, and also his
pension, which the State continued to pay to her.
Little Ramel throve wonderfully amidst all this luxury, and gave free
scope to his instincts and his caprices, without his mother ever having the
courage to reprove him in the least, and he did not bear the slightest
resemblance to Jean Ramel.
Full of pranks, effeminate, a superfine dandy, and precociously vicious, he
suggested the idea of those pages at the Court of Florence, whom we
frequently meet with in The Decameron, and who were the playthings for the
idle hands and tips of the patrician ladies.
He was very ignorant and lived at a great rate, bet on races, and played
cards for heavy stakes with seasoned gamblers, old enough to be his father.
And it was distressing to hear this lad joke about the memory of him whom
he called the old man, and persecute his mother because of the worship and
adoration which she felt for Jean Ramel, whom she spoke of as if he had
become a demigod when he died, like in Roman theogony.
He would have liked altogether to have altered the arrangement of that
kind of sanctuary, the drawing-room, where Pepa kept some of her husband’s
manuscripts, the furniture that he had most frequently used, the bed on which
he had died, his pens, his clothes and his weapons. And one evening, not
knowing how to dress himself up more originally than the rest for a masked
ball that stout Toinette Danicheff was going to give as her house-warming,
without saying a word to his mother, he took down the Academician’s dress,
the sword and cocked hat that had belonged to Jean Ramel, and put it on as if
it had been a disguise on Shrove Tuesday.
Slightly built and with thin arms and legs, the wide clothes hung on him,
and he was a comical sight with the embroidered skirt of his coat sweeping
the carpet, and his sword knocking against his heels. The elbows and the
collar were shiny and greasy from wear, for the Master had worn it until it
was threadbare, to avoid having to buy another, and had never thought of
replacing it.
He made a tremendous hit, and fair Liline Ablette laughed so at his
grimaces and his disguise, that that night she threw over Prince Noureddin
for him, although he had paid for her house, her horses and everything else,
and allowed her six thousand francs a month — £240 — for extras and
pocket money.
 A RUPTURE

“It is just as I tell you, my dear fellow, those two poor things whom we all of
us envied, who looked like a couple of pigeons when they are billing and
cooing, and were always spooning until they made themselves ridiculous,
now hate each other just as much as they used to adore each other. It is a
complete break, and one of those which cannot be mended like you can an
old plate! And all for a bit of nonsense, for something so funny that it ought to
have brought them closer together and have made them amuse themselves
together until they were ill. But how can a man explain himself when he is
dying of jealousy, and when he keeps repeating to his terrified mistress, ‘You
are lying! you are lying!’ When he shakes her, interrupts her while she is
speaking, and says such hard things to her that at last she flies into a rage, has
enough of it, becomes hard and mad, and thinks of nothing but of giving him
tit for tat and of paying him out in his own coin; does not care a straw about
destroying his happiness, sends everything to the devil, and talks a lot of
bosh which she certainly does not believe. And then, because there is nothing
so stupid and so obstinate in the whole world as lovers, neither he nor she
will take the first steps, and own to having been in the wrong, and regret
having gone too far; but both wait and watch and do not even write a few
lines about nothing, which would restore peace. No, they let day succeed
day, and there are feverish and sleepless nights when the bed seems so hard,
so cheerless and so large, and habits get weakened and the fire of love that
was still smoldering at the bottom of the heart evaporates in smoke. By
degrees both find some reason for what they wished to do, they think
themselves idiots to lose the time which will never return in that fashion, and
so good-bye, and there you are! That is how Josine Cadenette and that great
idiot Servance separated.”
Lalie Spring had lighted a cigarette, and the blue smoke played about her
fine, fair hair, and made one think of those last rays of the setting sun which
pierce through the clouds at sunset, and resting her elbows on her knees, and
with her chin in her hand in a dreamy attitude, she murmured:
“Sad, isn’t it?”
 “Bah!” I replied, “at their age people easily console themselves, and
everything begins over again, even love!”
“Well, Josine had already found somebody else....”
“And did she tell you her story?”
“Of course she did, and it is such a joke!... You must know that Servance
is one of those fellows like one would wish to have when one has time to
amuse oneself, and so self-possessed that he would be capable of ruining all
the older ones in a girls’ school, and given to trifling as much as most men,
so that Josine calls him ‘perpetual motion.’ He would have liked to have
gone on with his fun until the Day of Judgment, and seemed to fancy that beds
were not made to sleep in at all, but she could not get used to being deprived
of nearly all her rest, and it really made her ill. But as she wished to be as
conciliatory as possible, and to love and to be loved as ardently as in the
past, and also to sleep off the effects of her happiness peacefully, she rented
a small room in a distant quarter, in a quiet, shady street giving out that she
had just come from the country, and put hardly any furniture into it except a
good bed and a dressing table. Then she invented an old aunt for the
occasion, who was ill and always grumbling, and who suffered from heart
disease and lived in one of the suburbs, and so several times a week Josine
took refuge in her sleeping place, and used to sleep late there as if it had
been some delicious abode where one forgets the whole world. Sometimes
they forgot to call her at the proper time; she got back late, tired, with red and
swollen eyelids, involved herself in lies, contradicted herself and looked so
much as if she had just come from the confessional, feeling horribly ashamed
of herself, or, as if she had hurried home from some assignation, that at last
Servance worried himself about it, thought that he was being made a fool of
like so many of his comrades were, got into a rage and made up his mind to
set the matter straight, and so discover who this aunt of his mistress’s was,
who had so suddenly fallen from the skies.
“He necessarily applied to an obliging agency, where they excited his
jealousy, exasperated him day after day by making him believe that Josine
Cadenette was making an absolute fool of him, had no more a sick aunt than
she had any virtue, but that during the day she continued the little
debaucheries which she committed with him at night, and that she
shamelessly frequented some discreet bachelor’s lodgings, where more than
probably one of his own best friends was amusing himself at his expense,
and having his share of the cake. He was fool enough to believe these
fellows, instead of going and watching Josine himself, putting his nose into
the business and going and knocking at the door of her room. He wanted to
hear no more, and would not listen to her. For a trifle, in spite of her tears, he
would have turned the poor thing into the streets, as if she had been a bundle
of dirty linen. You may guess how she flew out at him and told him all sorts
of things to annoy him; she let him believe he was not mistaken, that she had
had enough of his affection, and that she was madly in love with another man.
He grew very pale when she said that, looked at her furiously, clenched his
teeth and said in a hoarse voice:
“‘Tell me his name, tell me his name!’
“‘Oh!’ she said, chaffingly, ‘you know him very well!’ and if I had not
happened to have gone in I think there would have been a tragedy.... How
stupid they are, and they were so happy and loved each other so.... And now
Josine is living with fat Schweinsshon, a low scoundrel who will live upon
her and Servance has taken up with Sophie Labisque, who might easily be his
mother; you know her, that bundle of red and yellow, who has been at that
kind of thing for eighteen years, and whom Laglandee has christened,
‘Saecula saeculorum!’”
“By Jove! I should rather think I did!”
 A USEFUL HOUSE

Royamount’s fat sides shook with laughter at the mere recollection of the
funny story that he had promised to his friends, and throwing himself back in
the great arm-chair, which he completely filled, that picker up of bits of
pinchbeck, as they called him at the club, at last said:
“It is perfectly true, Bordenave does not owe anyone a penny and can go
through any street he likes and publish those famous memoirs of sheriff’s
officers, which he has been writing for the last ten years, when he did not
dare to go out, and in which he carefully brought out the characters and
peculiarities of all those generous distributors of stamped paper with whom
he had had dealings, their tricks and wiles, their weaknesses, their jokes,
their manner of performing their duties, sometimes with brutal rudeness and
at others with cunning good nature, now embarrassed and almost ashamed of
their work, and again ironically jovial, as well the artifices of their clerks to
get a few crumbs from their employer’s cake. The book will soon be
published and Machin, the Vaudeville writer, has promised him a preface, so
that it will be a most amusing work. You are surprised, eh? Confess that you
are absolutely surprised, and I will lay you any bet you like that you will not
guess how our excellent friend, whose existence is an inexplicable problem,
has been able to settle with his creditors, and suddenly produce the requisite
amount.”
“Do get to the facts, confound it,” Captain Hardeur said, who was
growing tired of all this verbiage.
“All right, I will get to them as quickly as possible,” Royaumont replied,
throwing the stump of his cigar into the fire. “I will clear my throat and
begin. I suppose all of you know that two better friends than Bordenave and
Quillanet do not exist; neither of them could do without the other, and they
have ended by dressing alike, by having the same gestures, the same laugh,
the same walk and the same inflections of voice, so that one would think that
some close bond united them, and that they had been brought up together from
childhood. There is, however, this great difference between them, that
Bordenave is completely ruined and that all that he possesses are bundles of
mortgages, laughable parchments which attest his ancient race, and
chimerical hopes of inheriting money some day, though these expectations are
already heavily hypothecated. Consequently, he is always on the look-out for
some fresh expedients for raising money, though he is superbly indifferent
about everything, while Sebastien Quillanet, of the banking house of
Quillanet Brothers, must have an income of eight thousand francs a year, but
is descended from an obscure laborer who managed to secure some of the
national property, then he became an army contractor, speculated on defeat as
well as victory, and does not know now what to do with his money. But the
millionaire is timid, dull and always bored, the ruined spendthrift amuses
him by his impertinent ways, and his libertine jokes; he prompts him when he
is at a loss for an answer, extricates him out of his difficulties, serves as his
guide in the great forests of Paris which is strewn with so many pit-falls, and
helps him to avoid those vulgar adventures which socially ruins a man, no
matter how well ballasted he may be. Then he points out to him what women
would make suitable mistresses for him, who make a man noted, and have the
effect of some rare and beautiful flower pinned into his buttonhole. He is the
confidant of his intrigues, his guest when he gives small, special
entertainments, his daily familiar table companion, and the buffoon whose sly
humor one stimulates, and whose worst witticisms one tolerates.”
“Really, really,” the captain interrupted him, “you have been going on for
more than a quarter of an hour without saying anything.”
So Royaumont shrugged his shoulders and continued: “Oh you can be very
tiresome when you please, my dear fellow!... Last year, when he was at
daggers drawn with his people, who were deafening him with their
recriminations, were worrying him and threatening him with a lot of
annoyance, Quillanet got married. A marriage of reason, and which
apparently changed his habits and his tastes, more especially as the banker
was at that time keeping a perfect little marvel of a woman, a Parisian jewel
of unspeakable attractions and of bewitching delicacy, that adorable Suzette
Marly who is just like a pocket Venus, and who in some prior stage of her
existence must have been Phryne or Lesbia. Of course he did not get rid of
her, but as he was bound to take some judicious precautions, which are
necessary for a man who is deceiving his wife, he rented a furnished house
with a courtyard in front, and a garden at the back, which one might think had
been built to shelter some amorous folly. It was the nest that he had dreamt
of, warm, snug, elegant, the walls covered with silk hangings of subdued
tints, large pier-glasses, allegorical pictures, and filled with luxurious, low
furniture that seemed to invite caresses and embraces. Bordenave occupied
the ground floor, and the first floor served as a shrine for the banker and his
mistress. Well, just a week ago, in order to hide the situation better,
Bordenave asked Quillanet and some other friends to one of those luncheons
which he understands so well how to order, such a delicious luncheon, that
before it was quite over, every man had a woman on his knees already, and
was asking himself whether a kiss from coaxing and naughty lips, was not a
thousand times more intoxicating than the finest old brandy or the choicest
vintage wines, and was looking at the bedroom door wishing to escape to it,
although the Faculty altogether forbids that fashion of digesting a dainty
repast, when the butler came in with an embarrassed look, and whispered
something to him.
“Tell the gentleman that he has made a mistake, and ask him to leave me in
peace,” Bordenave replied to him in an angry voice. The servant went out
and returned immediately to say that the intruder was using threats, that he
refused to leave the house, and even spoke of having recourse to the
commissary of police. Bordenave frowned, threw his table napkin down,
upset two glasses and staggered out with a red face, swearing and
stammering out:
“This is rather too much, and the fellow shall find out what going out of
the window means, if he will not leave by the door.” But in the ante-room he
found himself face to face with a very cool, polite, impassive gentleman,
who said very quietly to him:
“You are Count Robert de Bordenave, I believe. Monsieur?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“And the lease that you signed at the lawyer’s, Monsieur Albin Calvert, in
the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, is in your name, I believe?”
“Certainly, Monsieur.”
“Then I regret extremely to have to tell you that if you are not in a position
to pay the various accounts which different people have intrusted to me for
collection here, I shall be obliged to seize all the furniture, pictures, plate,
clothes etc., which are here, in the presence of two witnesses who are
waiting for me downstairs in the street.”
“I suppose this is some joke, Monsieur?”
“It would be a very poor joke, Monsieur le Comte, and one which I
should certainly not allow myself towards you!”
 The situation was absolutely critical and ridiculous, the more so, that in
the dining-room the women who were slightly elevated, were tapping the
wine glasses with their spoons, and calling for him. What could he do except
to explain his misadventure to Quillanet, who became sobered immediately,
and rather than see his shrine of love violated, his secret sin disclosed and
his pictures, ornaments and furniture sold, gave a check in due form for the
claim there and then, though with a very wry face. And in spite of this, some
people will deny that men who are utterly cleared out, often have a stroke of
luck.
 THE ACCENT

It was a large, upholstered house, with long white terraces shaded by vines,
from which one could see the sea. Large pines stretched a dark dome over
the sacked facade, and there was a look of neglect, of want and wretchedness
about it all, such as irreparable losses, departures to other countries, and
death leave behind them.
The interior wore a strange look, with half unpacked boxes serving for
wardrobes, piles of band boxes, and for seats there was an array of worm-
eaten armchairs, into which bits of velvet and silk, which had been cut from
old dresses, had been festooned anyhow, and along the walls there were
rows of rusty nails which made one think of old portraits and of pictures full
of associations, which had one by one been bought for a low price by some
second-hand furniture broker.
The rooms were in disorder and furnished no matter how, while velvets
were hanging from the ceilings and in the corners, and seemed to show that
as the servants were no longer paid except by hopes, they no longer did more
than give them an accidental, careless touch with the broom occasionally.
The drawing-room, which was extremely large, was full of useless knick-
knacks, rubbish which is put up for sale at stalls at watering places, daubs,
they could not be called paintings of portraits and of flowers, and an old
piano with yellow keys.
Such is the home where she, who had been called the handsome Madame
de Maurillac, was spending her monotonous existence, like some unfortunate
doll which inconstant, childish hands have thrown into a corner in a loft, she
who, almost passed for a professional seductress, and whose coquetries, at
least so the Faithful ones of the Party said, had been able to excite a passing
and last spark of desire in the dull eyes of the Emperor.
Like so many others, she and her husband had waited for his return from
Elba, had discounted a fresh, immediate chance, had kept up boldly and spent
the remains of his fortune at that game of luxury.
On the day when the illusion vanished, and he was forced to awake from
his dream, Monsieur de Maurillac, without considering that he was leaving
his wife and daughter behind him almost penniless, but not being able to
make up his mind to come down in the world, to vegetate, to fight against his
creditors, to accept the derisive alms of some sinecure, poisoned himself,
like a shop girl who is forsaken by her lover.
Madame de Maurillac did not mourn for him, and as this lamentable
disaster had made her interesting, and as she was assisted and supported by
unexpected acts of kindness, and had a good adviser in one of those old
Parisian lawyers who would get anybody out of the most inextricable
difficulties, she managed to save something from the wreck, and to keep a
small income. Then reassured and emboldened, and resting her ultimate
illusions and her chimerical hopes on her daughter’s radiant beauty, and
preparing for that last game in which they would risk everything, and perhaps
also hoping that she might herself marry again, the ancient flirt arranged a
double existence.
For months and months she disappeared from the world, and as a pretext
for her isolation and for hiding herself in the country, she alleged her
daughter’s delicate health, and also the important interests she had to look
after in the South of France.
Her frivolous friends looked upon that as a great act of heroism, as
something almost super-human, and so courageous, that they tried to distract
her by their incessant letters, religiously kept her up in all the scandal, and
love adventures, in the falls, as well as in the apotheosis of the capital.
The difficult struggle which Madame de Maurillac had to keep up in order
to maintain her rank, was really as fine as any of those campaigns in the
twilight of glory, as those slow retreats where men only give way inch by
inch and fight until the last cartridge is expended, until at last fresh troops
arrive, reinforcement which bar the way to the enemy, and save the
threatened flag.
Broken in by the same discipline, and haunted by the same dream, mother
and daughter lived on almost nothing in the dull, dilapidated house which the
peasants called the château, and economized like poor people who only
have a few hundred francs a year to live on. But Fabienne de Maurillac
developed well in spite of everything, and grew up into a woman like some
rare flower which is preserved from all contact with the outer air and is
reared in a hot-house.
In order that she might not lose her Parisian accent by speaking too much
with the servants, who had remained peasants under their livery, Madame de
Maurillac, who had not been able to bring a lady’s maid with her, on account
of the extra cost which her traveling expenses and wages would have
entailed, and who, moreover, was afraid that some indiscretion might betray
her maneuvers and cover her with ridicule, made up her mind to wait on her
daughter herself. And Fabienne talked with nobody but her, saw nobody but
her, and was like a little novice in a convent. Nobody was allowed to speak
to her, or to interfere with her walks in the large garden, or on the white
terraces that were reflected in the blue water.
As soon as the season for the country and the seaside came, however, they
packed up their trunks, and locked the doors of their house of exile. As they
were not known, and taking those terrible trains which stop at every station,
and by which travelers arrive at their destination in the middle of the night,
with the certainty that nobody will be waiting for you, and see you get out of
the carriage, they traveled third class, so that they might have a few bank
notes the more, with which to make a show.
A fortnight in Paris in the family house at Auteuil, a fortnight in which to
try on dresses and bonnets and to show themselves, and then Trouville, Aix
or Biarritz, the whole show complete, with parties succeeding parties, money
was spent as if they did not know its value, balls at the Casinos, constant
flirtations, compromising intimacies, and those kind of admirers who
immediately surround two pretty women, one in the radiant beauty of her
eighteen years, and the other in the brightness of that maturity, which beautiful
September days bring with them.
Unfortunately, however, they had to do the same thing over again every
year, and as if bad luck were continuing to follow them implacably, Madame
de Maurillac and her daughter did not succeed in their endeavors, and did not
manage during her usual absence from home, to pick up some nice fellow
who fell in love immediately, who took them seriously, and asked for
Fabienne’s hand, consequently, they were very unhappy. Their energies
flagged, and their courage left them like water that escapes, drop by drop,
through a crack in a jug. They grew low-spirited and no longer dared to be
open towards each other and to exchange confidences and projects.
Fabienne, with her pale cheeks, her large eyes with blue circles round
them and her tight lips, looked like some captive princess who is tormented
by constant ennui, and troubled by evil suggestions; who dreams of flight, and
of escape from that prison where fate holds her captive.
 One night, when the sky was covered with heavy thunderclouds and the
heat was most oppressive, Madame de Maurillac called her daughter whose
room was next to hers. After calling her loudly for some time in vain, she
sprang out of bed in terror and almost broke open the door with her trembling
hands. The room was empty, and the pillows untouched.
Then, nearly mad and foreseeing some irreparable misfortune, the poor
woman ran all over the large house, and then rushed out into the garden,
where the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. She had the appearance of
some wild animal that is being pursued by a pack of hounds, tried to
penetrate the darkness with her anxious looks, and gasped as if some one
were holding her by the throat; but suddenly she staggered, uttered a painful
cry and fell down in a fit.
There before her, in the shadow of the myrtle trees, Fabienne was sitting
on the knees of a man — of the gardener — with both her arms round his
neck and kissing him ardently, and as if to defy her, and to show her how vain
all her precautions and her vigilance had been, the girl was telling her lover
in the country dialect, and in a cooing and delightful voice, how she adored
him and that she belonged to him....
Madame de Maurillac is in a lunatic asylum, and Fabienne has married
the gardener.
What could she have done better?
 GHOSTS

Just at the time when the Concordat was in its most flourishing condition, a
young man belonging to a wealthy and highly respected middle class family
went to the office of the head of the police at P —— , and begged for his
help and advice, which was immediately promised him.
“My father threatens to disinherit me,” the young man then began,
“although I have never offended against the laws of the State, of morality or
of his paternal authority, merely because I do not share his blind reverence
for the Catholic Church and her Ministers. On that account he looks upon me,
not merely as Latitudinarian, but as a perfect Atheist, and a faithful old
manservant of ours, who is much attached to me, and who accidentally saw
my father’s will, told me in confidence that he had left all his property to the
Jesuits. I think this is highly suspicious, and I fear that the priests have been
maligning me to my father. Until less than a year ago, we used to live very
quietly and happily together, but ever since he has had so much to do with the
clergy, our domestic peace and happiness are at an end.”
“What you have told me,” the official replied, “is as likely as it is
regrettable, but I fail to see how I can interfere in the matter. Your father is in
the full possession of all his mental faculties, and can dispose of all his
property exactly as he pleases. I also think that your protest is premature; you
must wait until his will can legally take effect, and then you can invoke the
aid of justice; I am sorry to say that I can do nothing for you.”
“I think you will be able to,” the young man replied; “for I believe that a
very clever piece of deceit is being carried on here.”
“How? Please explain yourself more clearly.”
“When I remonstrated with him, yesterday evening, he referred to my dead
mother, and at last assured me, in a voice of the deepest conviction, that she
had frequently appeared to him, and had threatened him with all the torments
of the damned, if he did not disinherit his son, who had fallen away from
God, and leave all his property to the Church. Now I do not believe in
ghosts.”
 “Neither do I,” the police director replied; “but I cannot well do anything
on this dangerous ground, if I had nothing but superstitions to go upon. You
know how the Church rules all our affairs since the Concordat with Rome,
and if I investigate this matter, and obtain no results, I am risking my post. It
would be very different if you could adduce any proofs for your suspicions. I
do not deny that I should like to see the clerical party, which will, I fear, be
the ruin of Austria, receive a staggering blow; try, therefore, to get to the
bottom of this business, and then we will talk it over again.”
About a month passed, without the young Latitudinarian being heard of;
but then he suddenly came one evening, evidently in a great state of
excitement, and told him that he was in a position to expose the priestly
deceit which he had mentioned, if the authorities would assist him. The
police director asked for further information.
“I have obtained a number of important clues,” the young man said. “In the
first place, my father confessed to me, that my mother did not appear to him
in our house, but in the churchyard where she is buried. My mother was
consumptive for many years, and a few weeks before her death she went to
the village of S —— , where she died and was buried. In addition to this, I
found out from our footman, that my father has already left the house twice,
late at night, in company of X —— , the Jesuit priest, and that on both
occasions he did not return till morning. Each time he was remarkably uneasy
and low-spirited after his return, and had three masses said for my dead
mother. He also told me just now, that he has to leave home this evening on
business, but immediately he told me that, our footman saw the Jesuit go out
of the house. We may, therefore, assume that he intends this evening to consult
the spirit of my dead mother again, and this would be an excellent
opportunity for getting on the track of the matter, if you do not object to
opposing the most powerful force in the Empire, for the sake of such an
insignificant individual as myself.”
“Every citizen has an equal right to the protection of the State,” the police
director replied; “and I think that I have shown often enough, that I am not
wanting in courage to perform my duty, no matter how serious the
consequences may be; but only very young men act without any prospects of
success, as they are carried away by their feelings. When you came to me the
first time, I was obliged to refuse your request for assistance, but to-day your
shares have risen in value. It is now eight o’clock, and I shall expect you in
two hours’ time, here in my office. At present, all you have to do is to hold
your tongue; everything else is my affair.”
As soon as it was dark, four men got into a closed carriage in the yard of
the police office, and were driven in the direction of the village of S —— ;
their carriage, however, did not enter the village, but stopped at the edge of a
small wood in the immediate neighborhood. Here they all four alighted; they
were the police director, accompanied by the young Latitudinarian, a police
sergeant and an ordinary policeman, who was, however, dressed in plain
clothes.
“The first thing for us to do is to examine the locality carefully,” the
police director said; “it is eleven o’clock and the exorcisers of ghosts will
not arrive before midnight, so we have time to look round us, and to take our
measure.”
The four men went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village,
near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to
be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found
the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that
stood in the middle of the churchyard.
“Where is your mother’s grave?” the police director asked; but as there
were only a few stars visible, it was not easy to find it, but at last they
managed it, and the police director looked about in the neighborhood of it.
“The position is not a very favorable one for us,” he said at last; “there is
nothing here, not even a shrub, behind which we could hide.”
But just then the policeman said that he had tried to get into the sexton’s
hut through the door or the window, and that at last he had succeeded in doing
so by breaking open a square in a window, which had been mended with
paper, and that he had opened it and obtained possession of the key, which he
brought to the police director.
His plans were very quickly settled. He had the chapel opened and went
in with the young Latitudinarian; then he told the police sergeant to lock the
door behind him and to put the key back where he had found it, and to shut the
window of the sexton’s cottage carefully. Lastly, he made arrangements as to
what they were to do, in case anything unforeseen should occur, whereupon
the sergeant and the constable left the churchyard, and lay down in a ditch at
some distance from the gate, but opposite to it.
Almost as soon as the clock struck half-past eleven, they heard steps near
the chapel, whereupon the police director and the young Latitudinarian went
to the window, in order to watch the beginning of the exorcism, and as the
chapel was in total darkness, they thought that they should be able to see,
without being seen; but matters turned out differently from what they
expected.
Suddenly, the key turned in the lock, and they barely had time to conceal
themselves behind the altar, before two men came in, one of whom was
carrying a dark lantern. One was the young man’s father, an elderly man of
the middle class, who seemed very unhappy and depressed, the other the
Jesuit father K —— , a tall, thin, big-boned man, with a thin, bilious face, in
which two large gray eyes shone restlessly under their bushy, black
eyebrows. He lit the tapers, which were standing on the altar, and then began
to say a Requiem Mass; while the old man knelt on the altar steps and served
him.
When it was over, the Jesuit took the book of the Gospels and the holy
water sprinkler, and went slowly out of the chapel, while the old man
followed him, with the holy water basin in one hand and a taper in the other.
Then the police director left his hiding place, and stooping down, so as not to
be seen, he crept to the chapel window, where he cowered down carefully,
and the young man followed his example. They were now looking straight on
his mother’s grave.
The Jesuit, followed by the superstitious old man, walked three times
round the grave; then he remained standing before it, and by the light of the
taper, he read a few passages from the Gospel; then he dipped the holy water
sprinkler three times into the holy water basin, and sprinkled the grave three
times; then both returned to the chapel, knelt down outside it with their faces
towards the grave, and began to pray aloud, until at last the Jesuit sprang up,
in a species of wild ecstasy, and cried out three times in a shrill voice:
“Exsurge! Exsurge! Exsurge!”
Scarcely had the last word of the exorcism died away, when thick, blue
smoke rose out of the grave, which rapidly grew into a cloud, and began to
assume the outlines of a human body, until at last a tall, white figure stood
behind the grave, and beckoned with its hand.
“Who art thou?” the Jesuit asked solemnly, while the old man began to
cry.
“When I was alive, I was called Anna Maria B —— ,” the ghost replied
in a hollow voice.
“Will you answer all my questions?” the priest continued.
 “As far as I can.”
“Have you not yet been delivered from purgatory by our prayers, and all
the masses for your soul, which we have said for you?”
“Not yet, but soon, soon I shall be.”
“When?”
“As soon as that blasphemer, my son, has been punished.”
“Has that not already happened? Has not your husband disinherited his
lost son, and made the Church his heir, in his place?”
“That is not enough.”
“What must he do besides?”
“He must deposit his will with the Judicial Authorities, as his last will
and testament, and drive the reprobate out of his house.”
“Consider well what you are saying. Must this really be?”
“It must, or otherwise I shall have to languish in purgatory much longer,”
the sepulchral voice replied with a deep sigh; but the next moment it yelled
out in terror:
“Oh! Good Lord!” and the ghost began to run away as fast as it could. A
shrill whistle was heard, and then another, and the police director laid his
hand on the shoulder of the exorcisor, accompanied with the remark:
“You are in custody.”
Meanwhile, the police sergeant and the policeman, who had come into the
churchyard, had caught the ghost, and dragged it forward. It was the sexton,
who had put on a flowing, white dress, and who wore a wax mask, which
bore striking resemblance to his mother, as the son declared.
When the case was heard, it was proved that the mask had been very
skillfully made from a portrait of the deceased woman. The Government gave
orders that the matter should be investigated as secretly as possible, and left
the punishment of Father K —— to the spiritual authorities, which was a
matter of course, at a time when priests were outside the jurisdiction of the
Civil Authorities; and it is needless to say that he was very comfortable
during his imprisonment, in a monastery in a part of the country which
abounded with game and trout.
The only valuable result of the amusing ghost story was, that it brought
about a reconciliation between father and son, and the former, as a matter of
fact, felt such deep respect for priests and their ghosts in consequence of the
apparition, that a short time after his wife had left purgatory for the last time,
in order to talk with him, he turned Protestant.
 CRASH

Love is stronger than death, and consequently also, than the greatest crash.
A young, and by no means bad-looking son of Palestine, and one of the
barons of the Almanac of the Ghetto, who had left the field covered with
wounds in the last general engagement on the Stock Exchange, used to go
very frequently to the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, in order to
divert his thoughts, and to console himself amidst the varied scenes, and the
numerous objects of attraction there. One day he met a newly married couple
in the Russian section, who had a very old coat of arms, but on the other
hand, a very modest income.
This latter circumstance had frequently emboldened the stockbroker to
make secret overtures to the delightful little lady; overtures which might have
fascinated certain Viennese actresses, but which were sure to insult a
respectable woman. The baroness, whose name appeared in the Almanack de
Gotha, therefore felt something very like hatred for the man from the Ghetto,
and for a long time her pretty little head had been full of various plans of
revenge.
The stockbroker, who was really, and even passionately in love with her,
got close to her in the Exhibition buildings, which he could do all the more
easily, since the little woman’s husband had taken to flight, foreseeing
mischief, as soon as she went up to the show-case of a Russian fur dealer,
before which she remained standing in rapture.
“Do look at that lovely fur,” the baroness said, while her dark eyes
expressed her pleasure; “I must have it.”
But she looked at the white ticket on which the price was marked.
“Four thousand roubles,” she said in despair; “that is about six thousand
florins.”
“Certainly,” he replied, “but what of that? It is a sum not worth mentioning
in the presence of such a charming lady.”
“But my husband is not in a position ...”
“Be less cruel than usual for once,” the man from the Ghetto said to the
young woman in a low voice, “and allow me to lay this sable skin at your
feet.”
“I presume that you are joking.”
“Not I ...”
“I think you must be joking, as I cannot think that you intend to insult me.”
“But, Baroness, I love you....”
“That is one reason more why you should not make me angry.”
“But ...”
“Oh! I am in such a rage,” the energetic little woman said; “I could flog
you like Venus in the Fur did her slave.”
“Let me be your slave,” the Stock Exchange baron replied ardently, “and I
will gladly put up with everything from you. Really, in this sable cloak, and
with a whip in your hand, you would make a most lovely picture of the
heroine of that story.”
The baroness looked at the man for a moment with a peculiar smile.
“Then if I were to listen to you favorably, you would let me flog you?” she
said after a pause.
“With pleasure.”
“Very well,” she replied quickly. “You will let me give you twenty-five
cuts with a whip, and I will be yours after the twenty-fifth blow.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Fully.”
The man from the Ghetto took her hand, and pressed it ardently to his lips.
“When may I come?”
“To-morrow evening at eight o’clock.”
“And I may bring the sable cloak and the whip with me?”
“No, I will see about that myself.”
The next evening the enamored stockbroker came to the house of the
charming little Baroness, and found her alone, lying on a couch, wrapped in a
dark fur, while she held a dog whip in her small hand, which the man from
the Ghetto kissed.
“You know our agreement,” she began.
“Of course I do,” the Stock Exchange baron replied. “I am to allow you to
give me twenty-five cuts with the whip, and after the twenty-fifth you will
listen to me.”
“Yes, but I am going to tie your hands first of all.”
The amorous baron quietly allowed this new Delila to tie his hands
behind him, and then at her bidding, he knelt down before her, and she raised
her whip and hit him hard.
“Oh! That hurts me most confoundedly,” he exclaimed.
“I mean it to hurt you,” she said with a mocking laugh, and went on
thrashing him without mercy. At last the poor fool groaned with pain, but he
consoled himself with the thought that each blow brought him nearer to his
happiness.
At the twenty-fourth cut, she threw the whip down.
“That only makes twenty-four,” the beaten would-be, Don Juan,
remarked.
“I will make you a present of the twenty-fifth,” she said with a laugh.
“And now you are mine, altogether mine,” he exclaimed ardently.
“What are you thinking of?”
“Have I not let you beat me?”
“Certainly; but I promised you to grant your wish after the twenty-fifth
blow, and you have only received twenty-four,” the cruel little bit of virtue
cried, “and I have witnesses to prove it.”
With these words, she drew back the curtains over the door, and her
husband, followed by two other gentlemen came out of the next room,
smiling. For a moment the stockbroker remained speechless on his knees
before the beautiful woman; then he gave a deep sigh, and sadly uttered that
one, most significant word:
“Crash!”
 AN HONEST IDEAL

Among my numerous friends in Vienna, there is one who is an author, and

who has always amused me by his childish idealism.
Not by his idealism from an abstract point of view, for in spite of my
Pessimism I am an absurd Idealist, and because I am perfectly well aware of
this, I as a rule never laugh at people’s Idealism, but his sort of Idealism was
really too funny.
He was a serious man of great capabilities who only just fell short of
being learned, with a clear, critical intellect; a man without any illusions
about Society, the State, Literature, or anything else, and especially not about
women; but yet he was the craziest Optimist as soon as he got upon the
subject of actresses, theatrical princesses and heroines; he was one of those
men, who, like Hackländer, cannot discover the Ideal of Virtue anywhere,
except in a ballet girl.
My friend was always in love with some actress or other; of course only
Platonically, and from preference with some girl of rising talent, whose
literary knight he constituted himself, until the time came when her admirers
laid something much more substantial than laurel wreaths at her feet; then he
withdrew and sought for fresh talent which would allow itself to be
patronized by him.
He was never without the photograph of his ideal in his breast pocket, and
when he was in a good temper he used to show me one or other of them,
whom I had never seen, with a knowing smile, and once, when we were
sitting in a café in the Prater, he took out a portrait without saying a word,
and laid it on the table before me.
It was the portrait of a beautiful woman, but what struck me in it first of
all was not the almost classic cut of her features, but her white eyes.
“If she had not the black hair of a living woman, I should take her for a
statue,” I said.
“Certainly,” my friend replied; “for a statue of Venus, perhaps for the
Venus of Milo, herself.”
“Who is she?”
 “A young actress.”
“That is a matter of course in your case; what I meant was, what is her
name?”
My friend told me, and it was a name which is at present one of the best
known on the German stage, with which a number of terrestrial adventures
are connected, as every Viennese knows, with which those of Venus herself
were only innocent toying, but which I then heard for the first time.
My idealist described her as a woman of the highest talent, which I
believed, and as an angel of purity, which I did not believe; on that particular
occasion, however, I at any rate did not believe the contrary.
A few days later, I was accidentally turning over the leaves of the portrait
album of another intimate friend of mine, who was a thoroughly careless,
somewhat dissolute Viennese, and I came across that strange female face
with the dead eyes again.
“How did you come by the picture of this Venus?” I asked him.
“Well, she certainly is a Venus,” he replied, “but one of that cheap kind
who are to be met with in the Graben, which is their ideal grove....”
“Impossible!”
“I give you my word of honor it is so.”
I could say nothing more after that. So my intellectual friend’s new ideal,
that woman of the highest dramatic talent, that wonderful woman with the
white eyes, was a street Venus!
But my friend was right in one respect. He had not deceived himself with
regard to her wonderful dramatic gifts, and she very soon made a career for
herself; far from being a mute character on a suburban stage, she rose in two
years to be the leading actress at one of the principal theaters.
My friend interested himself on her behalf with the manager of it, who
was not blinded by any prejudices. She acted in a rehearsal, and pleased
him; whereupon he sent her to star in the provinces, and my friend
accompanied her, and took care she was well puffed.
She went on the boards as Schiller’s Marie Stuart, and achieved the most
brilliant success, and before she had finished her starring tour, she obtained
an engagement at a large theater in a Northern town, where her appearance
was the signal for a triumphant success.
Her reputation, that is, her reputation as a most gifted actress, grew very
high in less than a year, and the manager of the Court theater invited her to
star at the Court theater.
 She was received with some suspicion at first, but she soon overcame all
prejudices and doubts; the applause grew more and more vehement at every
act, and at the close of the performance, her future was decided. She obtained
a splendid engagement, and soon afterwards became an actress at the Court
theater.
A well-known author wrote a racy novel, of which she was the heroine;
one of the leading bankers and financiers was at her feet; she was the most
popular personage, and the lioness of the capital; she had splendid
apartments, and all her surroundings were of the most luxurious character,
and she had reached that height in her career at which my idealistic friend,
who had constituted himself her literary knight, quietly took his leave of her,
and went in search of fresh talent.
But the beautiful woman with the dead eyes and the dead heart seemed to
be destined to be the scourge of the Idealists, quite against her will, for
scarcely had one unfolded his wings and flown away from her, than another
fell out of the nest into her net.
A very young student, who was neither handsome, nor of good family, and
certainly not rich or even well off, but who was enthusiastic, intellectual and
impressionable, saw her as Marie Stuart in The Maid of Orleans, The Lady
with the Camelias, and most of the plays of the best French play writers, for
the manager was making experiments with her, and she was doing the same
with her talents.
The poor student was enraptured with the celebrated actress, and at the
same time conceived a passion for the woman, which bordered on madness.
He saved up penny by penny, he nearly starved himself, only in order that
he might be able to pay for a seat in the gallery whenever she acted, and be
able to devour her with his eyes. He always got a seat in the front row, for he
was always outside three hours before the doors opened, so as to be one of
the first to gain his Olympus, the seat of the theatrical enthusiasts; he grew
pale, and his heart beat violently when she appeared; he laughed when she
laughed, shed tears when she wept, applauded her, as if he had been paid to
do it by the highest favors that a woman can bestow, and yet she did not know
him, and was ignorant of his very existence.
The regular frequenters of the Court theater noticed him at last, and spoke
about his infatuation for her, until at last she heard about him, but still did not
know him, and although he could not send her any costly jewelry, and not
even a bouquet, yet at last he succeeded in attracting her attention.
 When she had been acting and the theater had been empty for a long time,
and she left it, wrapped in valuable furs and got into the carriage of her
banker, which was waiting for her at the stage door, he always stood there,
often up to his ankles in snow, or in the pouring rain.
At first she did not notice him, but when her maid said something to her in
a whisper on one occasion, she looked round in surprise, and he got a look
from those large eyes, which were not dead then, but dark and bright; a look
which recompensed him for all his sufferings and filled him with proud
hopes, which constantly gained more power over the young Idealist, who
was usually so modest.
At last there was a thorough, silent understanding between the theatrical
princess and the dumb adorer. When she put her foot on the carriage step, she
looked round at him, and every time he stood there, devouring her with his
eyes; she saw it and got contentedly into her carriage, but she did not see
how he ran after the carriage, and how he reached her house, panting for
breath, when she did, nor how he lay down outside after the door had closed
behind her.
One stormy summer night, when the wind was howling in the chimneys,
and the rain was beating against the windows and on the pavement, the poor
student was again lying on the stone steps outside her house, when the front
door was opened very cautiously and quietly; for it was not the banker who
was leaving the house, but a wealthy young officer whom the girl was letting
out; he kissed the pretty little Cerebus as he put a gold coin into her hand, and
then accidentally trod on the Idealist, who was lying outside.
They all three simultaneously uttered a cry; the girl blew out the candle,
the officer instinctively half drew his sword, and the student ran away.
Ever since that night, the poor, crazy fellow went about with a dagger,
which he concealed in his belt, and it was his constant companion to the
theater, and the stage door, when the actress’s carriage used to wait for her,
and to her house, where he nightly kept his painful watch.
His first idea was to kill his fortunate rival, then himself, then the
theatrical princess, but at last, he lay down again outside her door, or stood
on the pavement and watched the shadows, that flitted hither and thither on
her window, turned by the magic spell of the lovely actress.
And then, the most incredible thing happened, something which he could
never have hoped for, and which he scarcely believed when it did occur.
 One evening, when she had been playing a very important part, she kept
the carriage waiting much longer than usual; but at last she appeared, and got
into it; she did not shut the door, however, but beckoned to the young Idealist
to follow her.
He was almost delirious with joy, just as a moment before he had been
almost mad from despair, and obeyed her immediately, and during the drive
he lay at her feet and covered her hands with kisses. She allowed it quietly
and even merrily, and when the carriage stopped at her door, she let him lift
her out of the carriage, and went upstairs leaning on his arm.
There, the lady’s maid showed him into a luxuriously furnished drawing-
room, while the actress changed her dress.
Presently she appeared in her dressing gown, sat down carelessly in an
easy chair, and asked him to sit down beside her.
“You take a great interest in me?” she said.
“You are my ideal!” the student cried enthusiastically.
The theatrical princess smiled, and said:
“Well, I will at any rate be an honest ideal; I will not deceive you, and
you shall not be able to say that I have misused your youthful enthusiasm. I
will give myself to you....”
“Oh! Heavens!” the poor Idealist exclaimed, throwing himself at her feet.
“Wait a moment! Wait a moment!” she said with a smile. “I have not
finished yet. I can only love a man who is in a position to provide me with
all those luxuries which an actress, or, if you like, which I cannot do without.
As far as I know, you are poor, but I will belong to you, only for to-night,
however, and in return you must promise me not to rave about me, or to
follow me, from to-night. Will you do this?”
The wretched Idealist was kneeling before her; he was having a terrible
mental struggle.
“Will you promise me to do this?” she said again.
“Yes,” he said, almost groaning.
The next morning a man, who had buried his Ideal, tottered downstairs.
He was pale enough; almost as pale as a corpse; but in spite of this, he is still
alive, and if he has any Ideal at all at present, it is certainly not a theatrical
princess.
 STABLE PERFUME

Three ladies belonging to that class of society which has nothing useful to do,
and therefore does not know how to employ its time sensibly, were sitting on
a bench in the shade of some pine trees at Ischl, and were talking incidentally
of their preference for all sorts of smells.
One of the ladies, Princess F —— , a slim, handsome brunette, declared
there was nothing like the smell of Russian leather; she wore dull brown
Russian leather boots, a Russian leather dress suspender, to keep her
petticoats out of the dirt and dust, a Russian leather belt which spanned her
wasp-like waist, carried a Russian leather purse, and even wore a brooch
and bracelet of gilt Russian leather; people declared that her bedroom was
papered with Russian leather, and that her lover was obliged to wear high
Russian leather boots and tight breeches, but that on the other hand, her
husband was excused from wearing anything at all in Russian leather.
Countess H —— , a very stout lady, who had formerly been very beautiful
and of a very loving nature, but loving after the fashion of her time à la
Parthenia and Griseldis, could not get over the vulgar taste of the young
Princess. All she cared for was the smell of hay, and she it was who brought
the scent New Mown Hay into fashion. Her ideal was a freshly mown field in
the moonlight, and when she rolled slowly along, she looked like a moving
haystack, and exhaled an odor of hay all about her.
The third lady’s taste was even more peculiar than Countess H — — ‘s,
and more vulgar than the Princess’s, for the small, delicate, light-haired
Countess W —— lived only for — the smell of stables. Her friends could
absolutely not understand this; the Princess raised her beautiful, full arm with
its broad bracelet to her Grecian nose and inhaled the sweet smell of the
Russian leather, while the sentimental hay-rick exclaimed over and over
again:
“How dreadful! What dost thou say to it, chaste moon?”
The delicate little Countess seemed very much embarrassed at the effect
that her confession had had, and tried to justify her taste.
 “Prince T —— told me that that smell had quite bewitched him once,” she
said; “it was in a Jewish town in Gallicia, where he was quartered once with
his hussar regiment, and a number of poor, ragged circus riders, with half-
starved horses came from Russia and put up a circus with a few poles and
some rags of canvas, and the Prince went to see them, and found a woman
among them, who was neither young nor beautiful, but bold and impudent;
and the impudent woman wore a faded, bright red jacket, trimmed with old,
shabby, imitation ermine, and that jacket stank of the stable, as the Prince
expressed it, and she bewitched him with that odor, so that every time that the
shameless wretch lay in his arms, and laughed impudently, and smelled
abominably of the stable, he felt as if he were magnetized.
“How disgusting!” both the other ladies said, and involuntarily held their
noses.
“What dost thou say to it, chaste moon?” the haystack said with a sigh, and
the little light-haired Countess was abashed and held her tongue.
At the beginning of the winter season the three friends were together again
in the gay, imperial city on the blue Danube. One morning the Princess
accidentally met the enthusiast for the hay at the house of the little light-
haired Countess, and the two ladies were obliged to go after her to her
private riding-school, where she was taking her daily lesson. As soon as she
saw them, she came up, and beckoned her riding-master to her to help her out
of the saddle. He was a young man of extremely good and athletic build,
which was set off by his tight breeches and his short velvet coat, and he ran
up and took his lovely burden into his arms with visible pleasure, to help her
off the quiet, perfectly broken horse.
When the ladies looked at the handsome, vigorous man, it was quite
enough to explain their little friend’s predilection for the smell of a stable,
but when the latter saw their looks, she blushed up to the roots of her hair,
and her only way out of the difficulty was to order the riding-master, in a
very authoritative manner, to take the horse back to the stable. He merely
bowed, with an indescribable smile, and obeyed her.
A few months afterwards, Viennese society was alarmed at the news that
Countess W —— had been divorced from her husband. The event was all the
more unexpected, as they had apparently always lived very happily together,
and nobody was able to mention any man on whom she had bestowed even
the most passing attention, beyond the requirements of politeness.
 Long afterwards, however, a strange report became current. A chattering
lady’s maid declared that the handsome riding-master had once so far
forgotten himself as to strike the Countess with his riding-whip; a groom had
told the Count of the occurrence, and when he was going to call the insolent
fellow to account for it, the Countess covered him with her own body, and
thus gave occasion for the divorce.
Years had passed since then and the Countess H —— had grow stouter
and more sentimental. Ischl and hayricks were not enough for her any longer;
she spent the winter on lovely Lago Maggoire, where she walked among
laurel bushes and cypress trees, and was rowed about on the luke warm,
moonlight nights.
One evening she was returning home in the company of an English lady
who was also a great lover of nature, from Isola Bella, when they met a
beautiful private boat in which a very unusual couple were sitting; a small,
delicate, light-haired woman, wrapped in a white burnoose, and a handsome,
athletic man, in tight, white breeches, a short, black velvet coat trimmed with
sable, a red fez on his head, and a riding whip in his hand.
Countess K —— involuntarily uttered a loud exclamation.
“What is the matter with you?” the English lady asked. “Do you know
those people?”
“Certainly! She is a Viennese lady,” Countess H —— whispered;
“Countess W —— .”
“Oh! Indeed you are quite mistaken; it is a Count Savelli and his wife.
They are a handsome couple, don’t you think so?”
When the boat came nearer, she saw that in spite of that, it was little
Countess W —— and that the handsome man was her former riding-master,
whom she had married, and for whom she had bought a title from the Pope;
and as the two boats passed each other, the short sable cloak, which was
thrown carelessly over his shoulders, exhaled, like the old cat’s skin jacket
of that impudent female circus rider, a strong stable perfume.
 THE ILL-OMENED GROOM

An impudent theft, to a very large amount, had been committed in the Capital.
Jewels, a valuable watch set with diamonds, his wife’s miniature in a frame
enchased with brilliants, and a considerable sum in money, the whole
amounting in value to a hundred and fifteen thousand florins, had been stolen.
The banker himself went to the Director of Police to give notice of the
robberies, but at the same time he begged as a special favor that the
investigation might be carried on as quietly and considerately as possible, as
he declared that he had not the slightest ground for suspecting anybody in
particular, and did not wish any innocent person to be accused.
“First of all, give me the names of all the persons who regularly go into
your bedroom,” the police director said.
“Nobody, except my wife, my children, and Joseph, my valet, a man for
whom I would answer as I would for myself.”
“Then you think him absolutely incapable of committing such a deed?”
“Most decidedly I do,” the banker replied.
“Very well; then can you remember whether on the day on which you first
missed the articles that have been stolen, or on any days immediately
preceding it, anybody who was not a member of your household, happened
by chance to go to your bedroom?”
The banker thought for a moment, and then said with some hesitation:
“Nobody, absolutely nobody.”
The experienced official, however, was struck by the banker’s slight
embarrassment and momentary blush, so he took his hand, and looking him
straight in the face, he said:
“You are not quite candid with me; somebody was with you, and you wish
to conceal the fact from me. You must tell me everything.”
“No, no; indeed there was nobody here.” “Then at present, there is only
one person on whom any suspicion can rest — and that is your valet.”
“I will vouch for his honesty,” the banker replied immediately.
“You may be mistaken, and I shall be obliged to question the man.”
“May I beg you to do it with every possible consideration?”
 “You may rely upon me for that.”
An hour later, the banker’s valet was in the police director’s private
room, who first of all looked at his man very closely, and then came to the
conclusion that such an honest, unembarrassed face, and such quiet, steady
eyes could not possibly belong to a criminal.
“Do you know why I have sent for you?”
“No, your Honor.”
“A large theft has been committed in your master’s house,” the police
director continued, “from his bedroom. Do you suspect anybody? Who has
been into the room, within the last few days?”
“Nobody but myself, except my master’s family.”
“Do you not see, my good fellow, that by saying that, you throw suspicion
on yourself?”
“Surely, sir,” the valet exclaimed, “you do not believe...”
“I must not believe anything; my duty is merely to investigate and to
follow up any traces that I may discover,” was the reply. “If you have been
the only person to go into the room within the last few days, I must hold you
responsible.”
“My master knows me...”
The police director shrugged his shoulders: “Your master has vouched for
your honesty, but that is not enough for me. You are the only person on whom,
at present, any suspicion rests, and therefore I must — sorry as I am to do so
— have you arrested.”
“If that is so,” the man said, after some hesitation, “I prefer to speak the
truth, for my good name is more to me than my situation. Somebody was in
my master’s apartments yesterday.”
“And this somebody was...?”
“A lady.”
“A lady of his acquaintance?”
The valet did not reply for some time.
“It must come out,” he said at length. “My master keeps a woman — you
understand, sir, a pretty, fair woman; and he has furnished a house for her and
goes to see her, but secretly of course, for if my mistress were to find it out,
there would be a terrible scene. This person was with him yesterday.”
“Were they alone?”
“I showed her in, and she was in his bedroom with him; but I had to call
him out after a short time, as his confidential clerk wanted to speak to him,
and so she was in the room alone for about a quarter of an hour.”
“What is her name?”
“Cæcelia K —— ; she is a Hungarian.” At the same time the valet gave
him her address.
Then the director of police sent for the banker, who, on being brought face
to face with his valet, was obliged to acknowledge the truth of the facts
which the latter had alleged, painful as it was for him to do so; whereupon
orders were given to take Cæcelia K —— into custody.
In less than half an hour, however, the police officer who had been
dispatched for that purpose, returned and said that she had left her
apartments, and most likely the Capital also, the previous evening. The
unfortunate banker was almost in despair. Not only had he been robbed of a
hundred and fifty thousand florins, but at the same time he had lost the
beautiful woman, whom he loved with all the passion of which he was
capable. He could not grasp the idea that a woman whom he had surrounded
with Asiatic luxury, whose strangest whims he had gratified, and whose
tyranny he had borne so patiently, could have deceived him so shamefully,
and now he had a quarrel with his wife, and an end of all domestic peace,
into the bargain.
The only thing the police could do was to raise the hue and cry after the
lady, who had denounced herself by her flight, but it was all of no use. In
vain did the banker, in whose heart hatred and thirst for revenge had taken the
place of love, implore the Director of Police to employ every means to bring
the beautiful criminal to justice, and in vain did he undertake to be
responsible for all the costs of her prosecution, no matter how heavy they
might be. Special police officers were told off to try and discover her, but
Cæcelia K —— was so rude as not to allow herself to be caught.
Three years had passed, and the unpleasant story appeared to have been
forgotten. The banker had obtained his wife’s pardon and — what he cared
about a good deal more — he had found another charming mistress, and the
police did not appear to trouble themselves about the beautiful Hungarian any
more.
We must now change the scene to London. A wealthy lady who created
much sensation in society, and who made many conquests both by her beauty
and her free behavior, was in want of a groom. Among the many applicants
for the situation, there was a young man, whose good looks and manners gave
people the impression that he must have been very well educated. This was a
recommendation in the eyes of the lady’s maid, and she took him immediately
to her mistress’s boudoir. When he entered, he saw a beautiful, voluptuous
looking woman, at most, twenty-five years of age, with large, bright eyes and
blue-black hair, which seemed to increase the brilliancy of her fair
complexion, lying on a sofa. She looked at the young man, who also had thick
black hair, and who turned his glowing black eyes to the ground, beneath her
searching gaze, with evident satisfaction, and she seemed particularly taken
with his slender, athletic build, and then she said half lazily and half proudly:
“What is your name?”
“Lajos Mariassi.”
“A Hungarian?”
And there was a strange look in her eyes.
“Yes.”
“How did you come here?”
“I am one of the many emigrants who have forfeited their country and their
life; and I, who come of a good family, and who was an officer of the
Honveds, must now ... go into service, and thank God if I find a mistress who
is at the same time beautiful and an aristocrat, as you are.”
Miss Zoë — that was the lovely woman’s name — smiled, and at the
same time showed two rows of pearly teeth.
“I like your looks,” she said, “and I feel inclined to take you into my
service, if you are satisfied with my terms.”
“A lady’s whim,” her maid said to herself, when she noticed the ardent
looks which Miss Zoë gave her manservant, “which will soon pass away.”
But that experienced female was mistaken that time.
Zoë was really in love, and the respect with which Lajos treated her, put
her into a very bad temper. One evening, when she intended to go to the
Italian Opera, she countermanded her carriage, and refused to see her noble
adorer, who wished to throw himself at her feet, and ordered her groom to be
sent up to her boudoir.
“Lajos,” she began, “I am not at all satisfied with you.”
“Why, Madame?”
“I do not wish to have you about me any longer; here are your wages for
three months. Leave the house immediately.” And she began to walk up and
down the room, impatiently.
“I will obey you, Madame,” the groom replied, “but I shall not take my
wages.”
 “Why not?” she asked hastily.
“Because then I should be under your authority for three months,” Lajos
said, “and I intend to be free, this very moment, so that I may be able to tell
you that I entered your service, not for the sake of your money, but because I
love and adore a beautiful woman in you.”
“You love me!” Zoë exclaimed. “Why did you not tell me sooner? I
merely wished to banish you from my presence, because I love you, and did
not think that you loved me. But you shall smart for having tormented me so.
Come to my feet immediately.”
The groom knelt before the lovely girl, whose moist lips sought his at the
same instant.
From that moment Lajos became her favorite. Of course he was not
allowed to be jealous, as the young lord was still her official lover, who had
the pleasure of paying everything for that licentious beauty, and besides him,
there was a whole army of so-called “good friends,” who were fortunate
enough to obtain a smile now and then, and occasionally, something more,
and who, in return, had permission to present her with rare flowers, a parrot
or diamonds.
The more intimate Zoë became with Lajos, the more uncomfortable she
felt when he looked at her, as he frequently did, with undisguised contempt.
She was wholly under his influence and was afraid of him, and one day,
while he was playing with her dark curls, he said jeeringly:
“It is usually said that contrasts usually attract each other, and yet you are
as dark as I am.”
She smiled, and then tore off her black curls, and immediately the most
charming, fair-haired woman was sitting by the side of Lajos, who looked at
her attentively, but without any surprise.
He left his mistress at about midnight, in order to look after the horses, as
he said, and she put on a very pretty nightdress and went to bed. She
remained awake for fully an hour, expecting her lover, and then she went to
sleep, but in two hours’ time she was roused from her slumbers, and saw a
police inspector and two constables by the side of her magnificent bed.
“Whom do you want?” she cried.
“Cæcelia K —— .”
“I am Miss Zoë.”
“Oh! I know you,” the Inspector said with a smile; “be kind enough to take
off your dark locks, and you will be Cæcelia K —— . I arrest you in the
name of the law.”
“Good heavens!” she stammered, “Lajos has betrayed me.”
“You are mistaken, Madame,” the Inspector replied; “he has merely done
his duty.”
“What? Lajos . . . my lover?”
“No, Lajos, the detective.”
Cæcelia got out of bed, and the next moment she sank fainting onto the
floor.
 AN EXOTIC PRINCE

In the forthcoming reminiscences, a lady will frequently be mentioned who

played a great part in the annals of the police from 1848 to 1866, and we
will call her Wanda von Chabert. Born in Galicia of German parents, and
carefully brought up in every way, she married a rich and handsome officer
of noble birth, from love, when she was sixteen. The young couple, however,
lived beyond their means, and when her husband died suddenly, two years
after they were married, she was left anything but well off.
As Wanda had grown accustomed to luxury and amusement, the quiet life
in her parents’ house did not suit her any longer, and even while she was still
in mourning for her husband, she allowed a Hungarian magnate to make love
to her, and she went off with him at a venture, and continued the same
extravagant life which she had led when her husband was alive, at her own
authority. At the end of two years, however, her lover left her in a town in
North Italy, almost without means, and she was thinking of going on the stage,
when chance provided her with another resource, which enabled her to
reassure her position in society. She became a secret police agent, and soon
was one of their most valuable members. In addition to the proverbial
charms and wit of a Polish woman, she also possessed high linguistic
attainments, and she spoke Polish, Russian, French, German, English and
Italian, almost equally fluently and correctly; then she had also that
encyclopædic polish, which impresses most people much more than the most
profound learning of a specialist. She was very attractive in appearance, and
she knew how to set off her good looks by all the arts of dress and coquetry.
In addition to this, she was a woman of the world in the widest sense of
the term; pleasure-loving, faithless, unstable, and therefore never in any
danger of really losing her heart, and consequently her head. She used to
change the place of her abode, according to what she had to do. Sometimes
she lived in Paris among the Polish emigrants, in order to find out what they
were doing, and maintained intimate relations with the Tuileries and the
Palais Royal at the same time; then she went to London for a short time, or
hurried off to Italy, to watch the Hungarian exiles, only to reappear suddenly
in Switzerland, or at one of the fashionable German watering-places.
In revolutionary circles, she was looked upon as an active member of the
great League of Freedom, and diplomatists regarded her as an influential
friend of Napoleon III.
She knew every one, but especially those men whose names were to be
met with every day, in the papers, and she reckoned Victor Emmanuel,
Rouher, Gladstone, and Gortschakoff among her friends, as well as Mazzini,
Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mieroslawsky and Bakunin.
In the spring of 185- she was at Vevey, on the lovely lake of Geneva, and
went into raptures when talking to an old German diplomatist about the
beauties of nature, and about Calame, Stifter and Turgenev, whose “Diary of
a Hunter” had just become fashionable.
One day a man appeared at the table d’hôte, who excited unusual
attention, and hers especially, so that there was nothing strange in her asking
the proprietor of the hotel what his name was; and she was told that he was a
wealthy Brazilian, and that his name was Don Escovedo.
Whether it was an accident, or whether he responded to the interest which
the young woman felt for him, at any rate she constantly met him wherever
she went, when she was taking a walk, or was on the lake, or was looking at
the newspapers in the reading room; and at last she was obliged to confess to
herself that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Tall, slim, and yet
muscular, the young, beardless Brazilian had a head which any woman might
envy him; features which were not only beautiful and noble, but were also
extremely delicate, with dark eyes which possessed a wonderful charm, and
thick, auburn curly hair, which completed the attractiveness and the
strangeness of his appearance.
They soon became acquainted, through a Prussian officer, whom the
Brazilian had requested to introduce him to the beautiful Polish lady — for
Frau von Chabert was taken for one in Vevey — and she, cold and designing
as she was, blushed slightly when he stood before her for the first time; and
when he gave her his arm he could feel her hand tremble slightly on it. The
same evening they went out riding together, the next he was lying at her feet,
and on the third she was his. For four weeks the lovely Wanda and the
Brazilian lived together as if they had been in Paradise, but he could not
deceive her searching eyes any longer.
 For her sharp and practiced gaze had already discovered in him that
indefinable something which makes a man appear a suspicious character.
Any other woman would have been pained and horrified at such a discovery,
but she found the strange consolation in it, that her handsome adorer had
promised also to become a very interesting object for her pursuit, and so she
began systematically to watch the man who lay unsuspectingly at her feet.
She soon found out that he was no conspirator, but she asked herself in
vain whether she was to look for a common swindler, an impudent
adventurer or perhaps even a criminal in him. The day that she had foreseen
soon came; the Brazilian’s banker “unaccountably” had omitted to send him
any money, and so he borrowed some of her. “So he is a male courtesan,” she
said to herself; and the handsome man soon required money again, and she
lent it to him, until at last he left suddenly, and nobody knew where he had
gone to; only this much, that he had left Vevey as the companion of an old but
wealthy Wallachian lady; and so this time, clever Wanda was duped.
A year afterwards she met the Brazilian unexpectedly at Lucca, with an
insipid-looking, light-haired, thin Englishwoman on his arm. Wanda stood
still and looked at him steadily, but he glanced at her quite indifferently; he
did not choose to know her again.
The next morning, however, his valet brought her a letter from him, which
contained the amount of his debt in Italian hundred liri notes, which were
accompanied by a very cool excuse. Wanda was satisfied, but she wished to
find out who the lady was, in whose company she constantly saw Don
Escovedo.
“Don Escovedo.”
An Austrian count, who had a loud and silly laugh, said:
“Who has saddled you with that yarn? The lady is Lady Nitingsdale, and
his name is Romanesco.”
“Romanesco?”
“Yes, he is a rich Boyar from Moldavia, where he has extensive estates.”
Romanesco kept a faro bank in his apartments, and he certainly cheated,
for he nearly always won; it was not long, therefore, before other people in
good society at Lucca shared Madame von Chabert’s suspicions, and
consequently Romanesco thought it advisable to vanish as suddenly from
Lucca as Escovedo had done from Vevey, and without leaving any more
traces behind him.
 Some time afterwards, Madame von Chabert was on the island of
Heligoland, for the sea-bathing; and one day she saw Escovedo-Romanesco
sitting opposite to her at the table d’hôte, in very animated conversation with
a Russian lady; only his hair had turned black since she had seen him last.
Evidently his light hair had become too compromising for him.
“The sea water seems to have a very remarkable effect upon your hair,”
Wanda said to him spitefully, in a whisper.
“Do you think so?” he replied, condescendingly.
“I fancy that at one time your hair was fair.”
“You are mistaking me for somebody else,” the Brazilian replied, quietly.
“I am not.”
“For whom do you take me, pray?” he said with an insolent smile.
“For Don Escovedo.”
“I am Count Dembizki from Valkynia,” the former Brazilian said with a
bow; “perhaps you would like to see my passport.”
“Well, perhaps....”
And at last, he had the impudence to show her his false passport.
A year afterwards, Wanda met Count Dembizki in Baden, near Vienna.
His hair was still black, but he had a magnificent, full, black beard; he had
become a Greek prince, and his name was Anastasio Maurokordatos. She
met him once in one of the side walks in the park, where he could not avoid
her. “If it goes on like this,” she called out to him in a mocking voice, “the
next time I see you, you will be king of some negro tribe or other.”
That time, however, the Brazilian did not deny his identity; on the
contrary, he surrendered at discretion, and implored her not to betray him,
and as she was not revengeful, she pardoned him, after enjoying his terror for
a time, and promised him that she would hold her tongue, as long as he did
nothing contrary to the laws.
“First of all, I must beg you not to gamble.”
“You have only to command; and we do not know each other in future?”
“I must certainly insist on that,” she said maliciously.
The Exotic Prince had, however, made the conquest of the charming
daughter of a wealthy Austrian Count, and had cut out an excellent young
officer who was wooing her; and he, in his despair began to make love to
Frau von Chabert, and at last told her he loved her, but she only laughed at
him.
“You are very cruel,” he stammered in confusion.
 “I? What are you thinking about?” Wanda replied, still smiling; “all I
mean is, that you have directed your love to the wrong address, for
Countess....”
“Do not speak of her; she is engaged to another man.”
“As long as I choose to permit it,” she said; “but what will you do, if I
bring her back to your arms? Will you still call me cruel?”
“Can you do this?” the young officer asked, in great excitement.
“Well, supposing I can do it, what shall I be then?”
“An angel, whom I shall thank on my knees.”
A few days later, the rivals met at a coffee house; the Greek prince began
to lie and boast, and the Austrian officer gave him the lie direct, and in
consequence, it was arranged that they should fight a duel with pistols next
morning in a wood close to Baden. But as the officer was leaving the house
with his second the next morning, a Police Commissary came up to him and
begged him not to trouble himself any further about the matter, but another
time to be more careful before accepting a challenge.
“What does it mean?” the officer asked, in some surprise.
“It means that this Maurokordatos is a dangerous swindler and adventurer,
whom we have just taken into custody.”
“He is not a prince?”
“No; a circus rider.”
An hour later the officer received a letter from the charming Countess, in
which she humbly begged for pardon; the happy lover set off to go and see
her immediately, but on the way a sudden thought struck him, and so he turned
back in order to thank beautiful Wanda, as he had promised, on his knees.
 VIRTUE IN THE BALLET

It is a strange feeling of pleasure that the writer about the stage and the
characters of the theatrical feels, when he occasionally discovers a good,
honest human heart in the twilight behind the scenes. Of all the witches and
semi-witches of that eternal Walpurgis night, whose boards represent the
world, the ladies of the ballet have at all times and in all places been
regarded at least like saints, although Hackländer repeatedly told in vain in
his earlier novels, to convince us that true virtue appears in tights and short
petticoats and is only to be found in ballet girls. I fear that the popular voice
is right as a general rule, but is equally true that here and there one finds a
pearl in the dust, and even in the dirt, and the short story that I am about to
relate, will best illustrate my assertion.
Whenever a new, youthful dancer appeared at the Vienna Opera House,
the habitués began to go after her, and did not rest, until the fresh young rose
had been plucked by some hand or other, though often it was old and
trembling. For how could those young and pretty, sometimes even beautiful
girls who, with every right to life, love and pleasure, were poor and had to
subsist on a very small salary, resist the seduction of the smell of flowers and
of the flash of diamonds? And if one resisted it, it was love, some real,
strong passion, that gave her the strength for this, generally, however, only to
go after luxury all the more shamelessly and selfishly, when her lover
forsook her.
At the beginning of the winter season of 185 — the pleasing news was
spread among the habitués, that a girl of dazzling beauty was going to appear
very shortly in the ballet at the Court Theater. When the evening came,
nobody had yet seen that much discussed phenomenon, but report spread her
name from mouth to mouth; it was Satanella. The moment when the troop of
elastic figures in fluttering petticoats jumped onto the stage, every opera-
glass in the boxes and stalls was directed on the stage, and at the same instant
the new dancer was discovered, although she timidly kept in the background.
She was one of those girls who are surrounded by the bright halo of
virginity, but who at the same time present a splendid type of womanhood;
she had the voluptuous form of Rubens’ second wife, whom they called, not
untruly, the risen Green Helen, and her head with its delicate nose, its small
full mouth, and its dark inquiring eyes, reminded people of the celebrated
picture of the Flemish Venus in the Belvedere in Vienna.
She took the old guard of the Vienna Court Theater by storm, and the very
next morning a perfect shower of billets doux, jewels and bouquets fell into
the poor ballet girl’s attic. For a moment she was dazzled by all this splendor
and looked at the gold bracelets, the brooches set with rubies and emeralds,
and at the sparkling earrings, with flushed cheeks, but then an unspeakable
terror of being lost and of sinking into degradation, seized her, and she
pushed the jewels away and was about to send them back. But as is usual in
such cases, her mother intervened in favor of the generous gentlemen, and so
the jewels were accepted, but the notes which accompanied them were not
answered at present. A second and a third discharge of Cupid’s artillery
followed, without making any impression on that virtuous girl; in
consequence a greater number of her admirers grew quiet, though some
continued to send her presents, and to assail her with love letters, and one
had the courage to go still further.
He was a wealthy banker, who had just called on the mother of Henrietta,
as we will call the fair-haired ballet girl, and then one evening, quite
unexpectedly, on the girl herself. He by no means met with the reception
which he had expected from the pretty girl in a faded cotton gown; Henrietta
treated him with a certain amount of good humored respect, which had a
much more unpleasant effect on him than that coldness and prudery, which is
so often synonymous with coquetry and selfish speculation, among a certain
class of women. In spite of everything, however, he soon went to see her
daily, and lavished his wealth, without her asking him for anything, on the
beautiful dancer, and he gave her no chance of refusing, for he relied on the
mother for everything. She took pretty, small apartments for her daughter and
herself in the Kärntnerstrasse and furnished them elegantly, hired a cook and
housemaid, made an arrangement with a fly-driver, and lastly clothed her
daughter’s lovely limbs in silk, velvet and valuable lace.
Henrietta persistently held her tongue at all this; only once she said to her
mother in the presence of the Stock Exchange Jupiter:
“Have you won a prize in the lottery?”
“Of course, I have,” her mother replied with a laugh.
 The girl, however, had given away her heart long before, and quite
contrary to all precedent, to a man whose very name she was ignorant of, and
who sent her no diamonds, and not even any flowers. But he was young and
good-looking, and stood so retiringly, and so evidently in love, at the small
side door of the Opera House every night, when she got out of her
antediluvian rickety fly, and also when she got into it again after the
performance, that she could not help noticing him. Soon, he began to follow
her wherever she went, and once he summoned up courage to speak to her,
when she had been to see a friend in a remote suburb. He was very nervous,
but she thought all that he said very clear and logical, and she did not hesitate
for a moment to confess that she returned his love.
“You have made me the happiest, and at the same time the most wretched
of men,” he said after a pause.
“What do you mean?” she said innocently.
“Do you not belong to another man?” he asked her in a sad voice.
She shook her abundant, light curls.
“Up till now, I have belonged to myself alone, and I will prove it to you,
by requesting you to call upon me frequently and without restraint. Everyone
shall know that we are lovers. I am not ashamed of belonging to an honorable
man, but I will not sell myself.”
“But your splendid apartments, and your dresses,” her lover interposed
shyly, “you cannot pay for them out of your salary.”
“My mother has won a large prize in the lottery, or made a hit on the Stock
Exchange.” And with these words, the determined girl cut short all further
explanations.
That same evening the young man paid his first visit, to the horror of the
girl’s mother, who was so devoted to the Stock Exchange, and he came again
the next day, and nearly every day. Her mother’s reproaches were of no more
avail than Jupiter’s furious looks, and when the latter one day asked for an
explanation as to certain visits, the girl said proudly:
“That is very soon explained. He loves me as I love him, and I presume
you can guess the rest.”
And he certainly did guess the rest, and disappeared, and with him the
shower of gold ceased.
The mother cried and the daughter laughed. “I never gave the worn out old
rake any hopes, and what does it matter to me, what bargain you made with
him? I always thought that you had been lucky on the Stock Exchange. Now,
however, we must seriously consider about giving up our apartments, and
make up our minds to live as we did before.”
“Are you really capable of making such a sacrifice for me, to renounce
luxury and to have my poverty?” her lover said.
“Certainly I am! Is not that a matter of course when one loves?” the ballet
girl replied in surprise.
“Then let me inform you, my dear Henrietta,” he said, “that I am not so
poor as you think; I only wished to find out, whether I could make myself
loved for my own sake, I have done so. I am Count L —— , and though I am
a minor and dependent on my parents, yet I have enough to be able to retain
your pretty rooms for you, and to offer you, if not a luxurious, at any rate a
comfortable existence.”
On hearing this, Mamma dried her tears immediately. Count L ——
became the girl’s acknowledged lover, and they passed the happiest hours
together. Unselfish as the girl was, she was yet such a thoroughly ingenuous
Viennese, that, whenever she saw anything that took her fancy, whether it was
a dress, a cloak or one of those pretty little ornaments for a side table, she
used to express her admiration in such terms, as forced her lover to make her
a present of the object in question. In this way, Count L —— incurred
enormous debts, which his father paid repeatedly; at last, however, he
inquired into the cause of all this extravagance, and when he discovered it,
he gave his son the choice of giving up his connection with the dancer, or of
relinquishing all claims on the paternal money box.
It was a sorrowful evening, when Count L —— told his mistress of his
father’s determination.
“If I do not give you up, I shall be able to do nothing for you,” he said at
last, “and I shall not even know how I should manage to live myself, for my
father is just the man to allow me to want, if I defy him. That, however, is a
very secondary consideration; but as a man of honor, I cannot bind you, who
have every right to luxury and enjoyment, to myself, from the moment when I
cannot even keep you from want, and so I must set you at liberty.”
“But I will not give you up,” Henrietta said proudly.
The young Count shook his head sadly.
“Do you love me?” the ballet girl said, quickly.
“More than my life.”
“Then we will not separate, as long as I have anything,” she continued.
 And she would not give up her connection with him, and when his father
actually turned Count L —— into the street, she took her lover into her own
lodgings. He obtained a situation as a copyist clerk in a lawyer’s office, and
she sold her valuable dresses and jewels, and so they lived for more than a
year.
The young man’s father did not appear to trouble his head about them, but
nevertheless he knew everything that went on in their small home, and knew
every article that the ballet girl sold; until at last, softened by such love and
strength of character, he himself made the first advances to a reconciliation
with his son.
At the present time, Henrietta wears the diamonds which formerly
belonged to the old Countess, and it is long since she was a ballet girl, for
now she sits by the side of her husband in a carriage on whose panels their
armorial bearings are painted.
 IN HIS SWEETHEART’S LIVERY

At present she is a great lady, an elegant, intellectual woman, a celebrated

actress; but in the year 1847, when our story begins, she was a beautiful, but
not very moral girl, and then it was that the young, talented Hungarian poet,
who was the first to discover her gifts for the stage, made her acquaintance.
The slim, ardent girl, with her bright, brown hair and her large blue eyes,
attracted the careless poet, and he loved her, and all that was good and noble
in her nature, put forth fresh buds and blossoms in the sunshine of his poetic
love.
They lived in an attic in the old Imperial city on the Danube, and she
shared his poverty, his triumphs and his pleasures, and she would have
become his true and faithful wife, if the Hungarian revolution had not torn
him from her arms.
The poet became the soldier of freedom, and followed the Magyar
tricolor, and the Honved drums, while she was carried away by the current of
the movement in the capital, and she might have been seen discharging her
musket, like a brave Amazon, at the Croats, who were defending the town
against Görgey’s assaulting battalions.
But at last Hungary was subdued, and was governed as if it had been a
conquered country.
It was said that the young poet had fallen at Temesvar, and his mistress
wept for him, and married another man, which was nothing either new or
extraordinary. Her name was now Frau von Kubinyi, but her married life was
not happy; and one day it occurred to her that her lover had told her that she
had talent for the stage, and whatever he said, had always proved correct, so
she separated from her husband, studied a few parts, appeared on the stage,
and the public, the critics, actors and literature were lying at her feet.
She obtained a very profitable engagement, and her reputation increased
with every part she played; and before the end of a year after her first
appearance, she was the lioness of society. Everybody paid homage to her,
and the wealthiest men tried to obtain her favors; but she remained cold and
reserved, until the General commanding the district, who was a handsome
man of noble bearing, and a gentleman in the highest sense of the word,
approached her.
Whether she was flattered at seeing that powerful man, before whom
millions trembled, and who had to decide over the life and death, the honor
and happiness of so many thousands, fettered by her soft curls, or whether her
enigmatical heart for once really felt what true love was, suffice it to say, that
in a short time she was his acknowledged mistress, and her princely lover
surrounded her with the luxury of an Eastern queen.
But just then a miracle occurred — the resurrection of a dead man. Frau
von Kubinyi was driving through the Corso in the General’s carriage; she
was lying back negligently in the soft cushions, and looking carelessly at the
crowd on the pavement. Then, she caught sight of a common Austrian soldier
and screamed out aloud.
Nobody heard that cry, which came from the depths or a woman’s heart,
nobody saw how pale and how excited that woman was, who usually seemed
made of marble, not even the soldier who was the cause of it. He was a
Hungarian poet, who, like so many other Honveds, now wore the uniform of
an Austrian soldier.
Two days later, to his no small surprise he was told to go to the General
in command, as orderly, and when he reported himself to the adjutant, he told
him to go to Frau von Kubinyi’s, and to await her orders.
Our poet only knew her by report, but he hated and despised the beautiful
woman, who had sold herself to the enemy of the country, most intensely; he
had no choice, however, but to obey.
When he arrived at her house, he seemed to be expected, for the porter
knew his name, took him into his lodge, and without any further explanation,
told him immediately to put on the livery of his mistress, which was lying
there ready for him. He ground his teeth, but resigned himself without a word
to his wretched, though laughable fate; it was quite clear that the actress had
some purpose in making the poet wear her livery. He tried to remember
whether he could formerly have offended her by his notices as a theatrical
critic, but before he could arrive at any conclusion, he was told to go and
show himself to Frau von Kubinyi.
She evidently wished to enjoy his humiliation.
He was shown into a small drawing-room, which was furnished with an
amount of taste and magnificence such as he had never seen before, and was
told to wait. But he had not been alone many minutes, before the door-
curtains were parted and Frau von Kubinyi came in, calm but deadly pale, in
a splendid dressing gown of some Turkish material, and he recognized his
former mistress.
“Irma!” he exclaimed.
The cry came from his heart, and it also affected the heart of the woman,
who was surfeited with pleasure, so greatly that the next moment she was
lying on the breast of the man whom she had believed to be dead, but only for
a moment, and then he freed himself from her.
“We are fated to meet again thus!” she began.
“Not through any fault of mine,” he replied bitterly.
“And not through mine either,” she said quickly; “everybody thought that
you were dead, and I wept for you; that is my justification.”
“You are really too kind,” he replied sarcastically. “How can you
condescend to make any excuses to me? I wear your livery, and you have to
order, and I have to obey; our relative positions are clear enough.”
Frau von Kubinyi turned away to hide her tears.
“I did not intend to hurt your feelings,” he continued: “but I must confess
that it would have been better for both of us, if we had not met again. But
what do you mean by making me wear your livery? It is not enough that I
have been robbed of my happiness? Does it afford you any pleasure to
humiliate me as well?”
“How can you think that?” the actress exclaimed. “Oh! Ever since I have
discovered your unhappy lot, I have thought of nothing but the means of
delivering you from it, and until I succeed in doing this, however, I can at
least make it more bearable for you.”
“I understand,” the unhappy poet said with a sneer. “And in order to do
this, you have begged your present worshiper, to turn your former lover into a
footman.”
“What a thing to say to me!”
“Can you find any other plea?”
“You wish to punish me for having loved you, idolized you, I suppose?”
the painter continued. “So exactly like a woman! But I can perfectly well
understand that the situation promises to have a fresh charm for you...”
Before he could finish what he was saying, the actress quickly left the
room; he could hear her sobbing, but he did not regret his words, and his
contempt and hatred for her only increased, when he saw the extravagance
and the princely luxury with which she was surrounded. But what was the use
of his indignation? He was wearing her livery, he was obliged to wait upon
her and to obey her, for she had the corporal’s cane at her command, and it
really seemed as if he incurred the vengeance of the offended woman; as if
the General’s insolent mistress wished to make him feel her whole power; as
if he were not to be spared the deepest humiliation.
The General and two of Frau von Kubinyi’s friends, who were servants of
the Muses like she was, for one was a ballet dancer, and the two others were
actresses, had come to tea, and he was to wait on them.
While it was getting ready, he heard them laughing in the next room, and
the blood flew to his head, and when the butler opened the door Frau von
Kubinyi appeared on the General’s arm; she did not, however, look at her
new footman, her former lover, triumphantly or contemptuously, but she gave
him a glance of the deepest commiseration.
Could he after all have wronged her?
Hatred and love, contempt and jealousy were struggling in his breast, and
when he had to fill the glasses, the bottle shook in his hand.
“Is this the man?” the General said, looking at him closely.
Frau von Kubinyi nodded.
“He was evidently not born for a footman,” the General added.
“And still less for a soldier,” the actress observed.
These words fell heavily on the unfortunate poet’s heart, but she was
evidently taking his part, and trying to rescue him from his terrible position.
Suspicion, however, once more gained the day.
“She is tired of all pleasures, and satisfied with enjoyment,” he said to
himself; “she requires excitement and it amuses her to see the man whom she
formerly loved, and who, as she knows, still loves her, tremble before her.
And when she pleases she can see me tremble; not for my life, but for fear of
the disgrace which she can inflict upon me at the moment if it should give her
any pleasure.”
But suddenly the actress gave him a look which was so sad and so
imploring, that he looked down in confusion.
From that time he remained in her house without performing any duties,
and without receiving any orders from her; in fact he never saw her, and did
not venture to ask after her, and two months had passed in this way, when the
General unexpectedly sent for him. He waited, with many others, in the ante-
room, and when the General came back from parade, he saw him and
beckoned him to follow, and as soon as they were alone, he said:
 “You are free, as you have been allowed to purchase your discharge.”
“Good heavens!” the poet stammered, “how am I to ...”
“That is already done,” the General replied. “You are free.”
“How is it possible? How can I thank your Excellency!”
“You owe me no thanks,” he replied; “Frau von Kubinyi bought you out.”
The poor poet’s heart seemed to stop; he could not speak, nor even
stammer a word; but with a low bow, he rushed out and tore wildly through
the streets, until he reached the mansion of the woman whom he had so
misunderstood, quite out of breath; he must see her again, and throw himself
at her feet.
“Where are you going to?” the porter asked him.
“To Frau von Kubinyi’s.”
“She is not here.”
“Not here?”
“She has gone away.”
“Gone away? Where to?”
“She started for Paris two hours ago.”
 DELILA

In a former reminiscence, we made the acquaintance of a lady, who had done

the police many services in former years, and whom we called Wanda von
Chabert. It is no exaggeration, if we say that she was at the same time the
cleverest, the most charming and the most selfish woman whom one could
possibly meet. She was certainly not exactly what is called beautiful, for
neither her face nor her figure were symmetrical enough for that, but if her
head was not beautiful in the style of the antique, neither like the Venus of
Milo nor Ludoirsi’s Juno, it was, on the other hand, in the highest sense
delightful like the ladies whom Wateau and Mignard painted. Everything in
her little face, and in its frame of soft brown hair was attractive and
seductive, her low, Grecian forehead, her bright, almond shaped eyes, her
small nose, and her full, voluptuous lips, her middling height and her small
waist with its, perhaps, almost too full bust, and above all her walk, that half
indolent, half coquettish swaying of her broad hips, were all maddeningly
alluring.
And this woman, who was born for love, was as eager for pleasure and as
amorous as few other women have even been, but for that very reason she
never ran any danger of allowing her victims to escape her from pity; on the
contrary, she soon grew tired of each of her favorites, and her connection
with the police was then extremely useful to her, in order to get rid of an
inconvenient, or jealous lover.
Before the war between Austria and Italy in 1859, Frau von Chabert was
in London, where she lived alone in a small, one-storied house with her
servants, and was in constant communication with emigrants from all
countries.
She herself was thought to be a Polish refugee, and the luxury by which
she was surrounded, and a fondness for sport, and above all for horses,
which was remarkable even in England, made people give her the title of
Countess. At that period Count T —— was one of the most prominent
members of the Hungarian propaganda, and Frau von Chabert was
commissioned to pay particular attention to all he said and did; but in spite of
all the trouble she took, she had not hitherto even succeeded in making his
acquaintance. He lived the life of a misanthrope, quite apart from the great
social stream of London, and he was not believed to be either gallant, or
ardent in love. Fellow-countrymen of his, who had known him formerly,
during the Magyar revolution, described him as very cautious, cold and
silent, so that if any man possessed a charm against the toils, which she set
for him, it was he.
Just then it happened that as Wanda was riding in Hyde Park quite early
one morning before there were many people about, her thoroughbred English
mare took fright, and threatened to throw the plucky rider, who did not for a
moment lose her presence of mind, from the saddle. Before her groom had
time to come to her assistance, a man in a Hungarian braided coat rushed
from the path, and caught hold of the animal’s reins. When the mare had
grown quite quiet, he was about to go away with a slight bow, but Frau von
Chabert detained him, so that she might thank him, and so had leisure to
examine him more closely. He was neither young nor handsome, but was
well-made, like all Hungarians are, and had an interesting and very
expressive face. He had a sallow complexion, which was set off by a short,
black full beard, and he looked as if he were suffering, while he fixed two,
great, black fanatical eyes on the beautiful young woman, who was smiling at
him so amiably, and it was the strange look in those large eyes which aroused
in the soul of the woman who was so excitable, that violent, but passing
feeling which she called love. She turned her horse and accompanied the
stranger on his side, and he seemed to be even more charmed by her chatter
than by her appearance, for his grave face grew more and more animated,
and at last he himself became quite friendly and talkative. When he took
leave of her, Wanda gave him her card, on the back of which her address was
written, and he immediately gave her his in return.
She thanked him and rode off, looking at his name as she did so; it was
Count T —— .
She felt inclined to give a shout of pleasure when she found that the noble
quarry, which she had been hunting so long, had at last come into her
preserves, but she did not even turn her head round to look at him, such was
the command which that woman had over herself and her movements.
Count T —— called upon her the very next day, soon he came every day,
and in less than a month after that innocent adventure in Hyde Park, he was at
her feet; for when Frau von Chabert made up her mind to be loved, nobody
was able to withstand her. She became the Count’s confidante almost as
speedily as she had become his mistress, and every day, and almost every
hour, she, with the most delicate coquetry, laid fresh fetters on the Hungarian
Samson. Did she love him?
Certainly she did, after her own fashion, and at first she had not the
remotest idea of betraying him; she even succeeded in completely concealing
her connection with him, not only in London but also in Vienna.
Then the war of 1859 broke out, and like most Hungarian and Polish
refugees, Count T —— hurried off to Italy, in order to place himself at the
disposal of that great and patriotic Piedmontese statesman, Cavour.
Wanda went with him, and took the greatest interest in his revolutionary
intrigues in Turin; for some time she seemed to be his right hand, and it
looked as if she had become unfaithful to her present patrons. Through his
means, she soon became on intimate terms with Piedmontese government
circles, and that was his destruction.
A young Italian diplomatist, who frequently negotiated with Count T ——
, or in his absence, with Wanda, fell madly in love with the charming Polish
woman, and she, who was never cruel, more especially when she herself had
caught fire, allowed herself to be conquered by the handsome, intellectual,
daring man. In measure as her passion for the Italian increased, so her
feelings for Count T —— declined, and at last she felt that her connection
with him was nothing but a hindrance and a burden, and as soon as Wanda
had reached that point, her adorer was as good as lost.
Count T —— was not a man whom she could just coolly dismiss, or with
whom she might venture to trifle, and that she knew perfectly well; so in
order to avoid a catastrophe, the consequences of which might be
incalculable for her, she did not let him notice the change in her feelings
towards him at first, and kept the Italian, who belonged to her, at a proper
distance.
When peace had been concluded, and the great, peaceful revolution,
which found its provisional settlement in the Constitution of February and in
the Hungarian agreement, began in Austria, the Hungarian refugees
determined to send Count T —— to Hungary, that he might assume the
direction of affairs there. But as he was still an outlaw, and as the death
sentence of Arab hung over his head like the sword of Damocles, he
consulted with Wanda about the ways and means of reaching his fatherland
unharmed and of remaining there undiscovered. Although that clever woman
thought of a plan immediately, yet she told Count T —— that she would think
the matter over, and she did not bring forward her proposition for a few days,
which was then, however, received by the Count and his friends with the
highest approval, and was immediately carried into execution. Frau von
Chabert went to Vienna as Marchioness Spinola, and T —— accompanied
her as her footman; he had cut his hair short, and shaved off his beard; so that
in his livery, he was quite unrecognizable. They passed the frontier in safety,
and reached Vienna without any interference from the authorities; and there
they first of all went to a small hotel, but soon took a small, handsome flat in
the center of the town. Count T —— immediately hunted up some members
of his party, who had been in constant communication with the emigrants,
since Vilagos, and the conspiracy was soon in excellent train, while Wanda
whiled away her time with a hussar officer, without, however, losing sight of
her lover and of his dangerous activity, for a moment, on that account.
And at last, when the fruit was ripe for falling into her lap, she was sitting
in the private room of the Minister of Police, opposite to the man with whom
she was going to make the evil compact.
“The emigrants must be very uneasy and disheartened at an agreement
with, and reconciliation to, Hungary,” he began.
“Do not deceive yourself,” Frau von Chabert replied; “nothing is more
dangerous in politics than optimism, and the influence of the revolutionary
propaganda was never greater than it is at present. Do not hope to conciliate
the Magyars by half concessions, and, above all things, do not underestimate
the movement, which is being organized openly, in broad daylight.”
“You are afraid of a revolution?”
“I know that they are preparing for one, and that they expect everything
from that alone.”
The skeptical man smiled.
“Give me something besides views and opinions, and then I will
believe...”
“I will give you the proof,” Wanda said, “but before I do you the greatest
service that lies in my power, I must be sure that I shall be rewarded for all
my skill and trouble.”
“Can you doubt it?”
“I will be open with you,” Wanda continued.
“During the insurrectionary war in Transylvania, Urban had excellent
spies, but they have not been paid to this day. I want money....”
 “How much?”
With inimitable ease, the beautiful woman mentioned a very considerable
sum. The skeptical man got up to give a few orders, and a short time
afterwards the money was in Wanda’s hands.
“Well?”
“The emigrants have sent one of their most influential and talented
members to organize the revolution in Hungary.”
“Have they sent him already?”
“More than that, for Count T —— is in Vienna at this moment.”
“Do you know where he is hiding?”
“Yes.”
“And you are sure that you are not mistaken?”
“I am most assuredly not mistaken,” she replied with a frivolous laugh;
“Count T —— , who was my admirer in London and Turin, is here in my
house, as my footman.”
An hour later, the Count was arrested. But Wanda only wished to get rid of
her tiresome adorer, and not to destroy him. She had been on the most
intimate terms with him long enough, and had taken part in his political plans
and intrigues, to be able to give the most reliable information about him
personally, as well as about his intentions, and that information was such
that, in spite of the past, and of the Count’s revolutionary standpoint, they
thought they had discovered in him the man who was capable of bringing
about a real reconciliation between the monarch and his people. In
consequence of this, T —— , who thought that he had incurred the gallows,
stood in the Emperor’s presence, and the manner in which the latter
expressed his generous intentions with regard to Hungary, carried the old
rebel away, and he gave him his word of honor that he would bring the nation
back to him, reconciled. And he kept his word, although, perhaps, not exactly
in the sense in which he gave it.
He was allowed full liberty in going to Hungary, and Wanda accompanied
him. He had no suspicion that even in his mistress’s arms he was under
police supervision, and from the moment when he made his appearance in his
native land officially, as the intermediary between the crown and the people,
she had a fresh interest in binding a man of such importance, whom
everybody regarded as Hungary’s future Minister-President, to herself.
He began to negotiate, and at first everything went well, but soon the
yielding temper of the government gave rise continually to fresh demands,
and before long, what one side offered and the other side demanded, was so
far apart, that no immediate agreement could be thought of. The Count’s
position grew more painful every day; he had pledged himself too deeply to
both sides, and in vain he sought for a way out of the difficulty.
Then one day the Minister of Police unexpectedly received a letter from
Wanda, in which she told him that T —— , urged on by his fellow-
countrymen, and branded as a traitor by the emigrants, was on the point of
heading a fresh conspiracy.
Thereupon, the government energetically reminded that thoroughly honest
and noble man of his word of honor, and T —— , who saw that he was
unable to keep it, ended his life by a pistol bullet.
Frau von Chabert left Hungary immediately after the sad catastrophe, and
went to Turin, where new lovers, new splendors and new laurels awaited
her.
We may, perhaps, hear more of her.
 A MESALLIANCE

It is a generally acknowledged truth, that the prerogatives of the nobility are

only maintained at the present time through the weakness of the middle
classes, and many of these who have established themselves and their
families by their intellect, industry and struggles, get into a state of bliss,
which reminds those who see it, of intoxication, as soon as they are permitted
to enter aristocratic circles, or can be seen in public with barons and counts;
and above all, when these treat them in a friendly manner, no matter from
what motive, or when they see a prospect of a daughter of theirs driving in a
carriage with armorial bearings on the panels, as a countess.
Many women and girls of the citizen class would not hesitate for a
moment to refuse an honorable, good-looking man of their own class, in
order to go to the altar with the oldest, ugliest and stupidest dotard among the
aristocracy.
I shall never forget saying in a joke to a young, well-educated girl of a
wealthy, middle-class family, who had the figure and bearing of a queen,
shortly before her marriage, not to forget an ermine cloak in her trousseau.
“I know it would suit me capitally,” she replied in all seriousness, “and I
should certainly have worn one, if I had married Baron R —— , which I was
nearly doing, as you know, but it is not suitable for the wife of a government
official.”
When a girl of the middle classes wanders from the paths of virtue, her
fall may, as a rule, be rightly ascribed to her hankering after the nobility.
In a small German town there lived, some years ago, a tailor, whom we
will call Löwenfuss, a man who, like all knights of the shears, was equally
full of aspirations after culture and liberty. After working for one master for
some time as a poor journeyman, he married his daughter, and after his
father-in-law’s death, he succeeded to his business, and as he was
industrious, lucky and managed it well, he soon grew very well off, and was
in a position to give his daughters an education, for which many a nobleman’s
daughters might have envied them; for they learned, not only French and
music, but had also acquired many more solid branches of knowledge, and as
they were both pretty and charming girls, they soon became very much
thought of and sought after.
Fanny, the eldest, especially, was her father’s pride and the favorite of
society; she was of middle height, slim, with a thoroughly maidenly figure,
and with almost an Italian face, in which two large, dark eyes seemed to ask
for love and submission at the same time; and yet the girl with the plentiful,
black hair was not in the least intended to command, for she was one of those
romantic women who will give themselves, or even throw themselves, away,
but who can never be subjugated. A young physician fell in love with her,
and wished to marry her; Fanny returned his love, and her parents gladly
accepted him as a son-in-law, but she made it a condition that he should visit
her freely and frequently for two years, before she would consent to become
his wife, and she declared that she would not go to the altar with him, until
she was convinced that not only their hearts, but also that their characters
harmonized. He agreed to her wish, and became a regular visitor at the house
of the educated tailor; they were happy hours for the lovers; they played, sang
and read together, and he told the girl some things from his medical
experiences, which excited and moved her.
Just then, one day an officer went to the tailor’s house, to order some
civilian’s clothes. This was not an unusual event in itself, but it was soon to
be the cause of one; for accidentally the daughter of the artist in clothes
came into the shop, just as the officer was leaving it, and on seeing her, he let
go of the door-handle, and asked the tailor who the young lady was.
“My daughter,” the tailor said, proudly.
“May I beg you to introduce me to the young lady, Herr Löwenfuss?” the
hussar said.
“I feel flattered at the honor you are doing me,” the tailor replied, with
evident pleasure.
“Fanny, the Captain wishes to make your acquaintance; this is my
daughter, Fanny, Captain ...”
“Captain Count Kasimir W —— ,” the hussar interrupted him, as he went
up to the pretty girl, and paid her a compliment or two. They were very
commonplace, stale, everyday phrases, but in spite of this, they flattered the
girl, intelligent as she was, extremely, because it was a cavalry officer and a
Count to boot who addressed them to her. And when, at last, the Captain, in
the most friendly manner, asked the tailor’s permission to be allowed to visit
at the house, both father and daughter granted it to him most readily.
 The very next day Count W —— paid his visit, in full dress uniform, and
when Mamma Löwenfuss made some observations about it, how handsome it
was, and how well it became him, he told them that he should not wear it
much longer, as he intended to quit the service soon, and to look for a wife,
in whom birth and wealth were matters of secondary consideration, while a
good education and a knowledge of domestic matters were of paramount
importance; adding that as soon as he had found one, he meant to retire to his
estates.
From that moment, Papa and Mamma Löwenfuss looked upon the Count as
their daughter’s suitor; it is certain that he was madly in love with Fanny; he
used to go to their house every evening, and made himself so liked by all of
them, that the young doctor soon felt himself to be superfluous, and so his
visits became rarer and rarer. The Count confessed his love to Fanny on a
moonlight night, while they were sitting in an arbor covered with
honeysuckle, which formed nearly the whole of Herr Löwenfuss’ garden; he
swore that he loved, that he adored her, and when at last she lay trembling in
his arms he tried to take her by storm, but that bold cavalry-exploit did not
succeed, and the good-looking hussar found out, for the first time in his life,
that a woman can at the same time be romantic, passionately in love, and yet
virtuous.
The next morning, the tailor called on the Count, and begged him very
humbly to state what his intentions with regard to Fanny were. The enamored
hussar declared that he was determined to make the tailor’s little daughter,
Countess W —— . Herr Löwenfuss was so much overcome by his feelings,
that he showed great inclination to embrace his future son-in-law, The Count,
however, laid down certain conditions. The whole matter must be kept a
profound secret, for he had every prospect of inheriting half a million of
florins, on the death of an aunt, who was already eighty years old, which he
should risk by a mesalliance.
When they heard this, the girl’s parents certainly hesitated for a time, to
give their consent to the marriage, but the handsome hussar, whose ardent
passion carried Fanny away, at last gained the victory. The doctor received a
pretty little note from the tailor’s daughter, in which she told him that she
gave him back his promise, as she had not found her ideal in him. Fanny then
signed a deed, by which she formerly renounced all claims to her father’s
property, in favor of her sister, and left her home and her father’s house with
the Count under cover of the night, in order to accompany him to Poland,
where the marriage was to take place in his castle.
Of course malicious tongues declared that the hussar had abducted Fanny,
but her parents smiled at such reports, for they knew better, and the moment
when their daughter would return as Countess W —— would amply
recompense them for everything.
Meanwhile, the Polish Count and the romantic German girl were being
carried by the train through the dreary plains of Masovia. They stopped in a
large town to make some purchases, and the Count, who was very wealthy
and liberal, provided his future wife with everything that befits a Countess,
and which a girl could fancy, and then they continued their journey. The
country grew more picturesque, but more melancholy, as they went further
East; the somber Carpathians rose from the snow-covered plains and
villages, surrounded by white glistening walls, and stunted willows stood by
the side of the roads, ravens sailed through the white sky, and here and there
a small peasant’s sledge shot by, drawn by two thin horses.
At last they reached the station, where the Count’s steward was waiting
for them with a carriage and four, which brought them to their destination
almost as swiftly as the iron steed.
The numerous servants were drawn up in the yard of the ancient castle to
receive their master and mistress, and they gave loud cheers for her, for
which she thanked them smilingly. When she went into the dim, arched
passages, and the large rooms, for a moment she felt a strange feeling of fear,
but she quickly checked it, for was not her most ardent wish to be fulfilled in
a couple of hours?
She put on her bridal attire, in which a half comical, half sinister-looking
old woman with a toothless mouth and a nose like an owl’s, assisted her, and
just as she was fixing the myrtle wreath onto her dark curls, the bell began to
ring, which summoned her to her wedding. The Count himself, in full
uniform, led her to the chapel of the castle, where the priest, with the steward
and the castellan as witnesses, and the footmen in grand liveries, were
awaiting the handsome young couple.
After the wedding, the marriage certificate was signed in the vestry, and a
groom was sent to the station, where he dispatched a telegram to her parents,
to the effect that the hussar had kept his word, and that Fanny Löwenfuss had
become Countess Faniska W —— .
 Then the newly-married couple sat down to a beautiful little dinner in
company of the chaplain, the steward and the castellan; the champagne made
them all very cheerful, and at last the Count knelt down before his young and
beautiful wife, boldly took her white satin slipper off her foot, filled it with
wine, and emptied it to her health.
At length night came, a thorough, Polish wedding night, and Faniska had
just finished dressing and was looking at herself with proud satisfaction in
the great mirror that was fastened into the wall, from top to bottom. A white
satin train flowed down behind her like rays from the moon, a half-open
jacket of bright green velvet, trimmed with valuable ermine, covered her
voluptuous, virgin bust and her classic arms, only to show them all the more
seductively at the slightest motion, while the wealth of her dark hair, in
which diamonds hung here and there like glittering dew-drops, fell down her
neck and mingled with the white fur. The Count came in a red velvet dressing
gown trimmed with sable; at a sign from him, the old woman who was
waiting on his wife’s divinity left the room, and the next moment he was lying
like a slave at the feet of his lovely young wife, who raised him up, and was
pressing him to her heaving bosom, when a noise which she had never heard
before, a wild howling, startled the loving woman in the midst of her highest
bliss.
“What was that?” she asked, trembling.
The Count went to the window without speaking, and she followed him,
with her arms round him, and looked half timidly, half curiously out into the
darkness, where large bright spots were moving about in pairs, in the park at
her feet.
“Are they will-o’-the-wisps?” she whispered.
“No, my child, they are wolves,” the Count replied, fetching his double-
barreled gun, which he loaded, and went out on the snow-covered balcony,
while she drew the fur more closely over her bosom, and followed him.
“Will you shoot?” the Count asked her in a whisper, and when she
nodded, he said: “Aim straight at the first pair of bright spots that you see;
they are the eyes of those amiable brutes.”
Then he handed her the gun and pointed it for her.
“That is the way — are you pointing straight?”
“Yes.”
“Then fire.”
 A flash, a report, which the echo from the hills repeats four times, and two
of the unpleasant-looking lights had vanished.
Then the Count fired, and by that time their people were all awake; they
drove away the wolves with torches and shouts, and laid the two large
animals, the spoils of a Polish wedding night, at the feet of their young
mistress.
And the days that followed resembled that night. The Count showed
himself the most attentive husband, as his wife’s knight and slave, and she
felt quite at home in that dull castle; she rode, drove, smoked, read French
novels and beat her servants as well as any Polish Countess could have done.
In the course of a few years, she presented the Count with two children, and
although he appeared very happy at that, yet, like most husbands, he grew
continually cooler, more indolent, and neglectful of her. From time to time he
left the castle, to see after his affairs in the capital, and the intervals between
those journeys became continually shorter. Faniska felt that her husband was
tired of her, and much as it grieved her, she did not let him notice it; she was
always the same.
But at last the Count remained away altogether; at first he used to write,
but at last the poor, weeping woman did not even receive letters to comfort
her in her unhappy solitude, and his lawyer sent the money that she and her
children required.
She conjectured, hoped and doubted, suffered and wept for more than a
year; then she suddenly went to the capital and appeared unexpectedly in his
apartments. Painful explanations followed, until at last the Count told her that
he no longer loved her, and could not live with her for the future, and when
she wished to make him do so by legal means, and entrusted her case to a
celebrated lawyer, the Count denied that she was his wife. She produced
her marriage certificate, when the most infamous fraud came to light. A
confidential servant of the Count had acted the part of the priest, and the
tailor’s beautiful daughter had, as a matter of fact, merely been the Count’s
mistress, and her children were bastards.
The virtuous woman then saw, when it was too late, that it was she who
had formed a mesalliance. Her parents would have nothing to do with her,
and at last it turned out in the bargain that the Count was married long before
he knew her, but that he did not live with his wife.
Then Fanny applied to the police magistrates; she wanted to appeal to
justice, but she was dissuaded from taking criminal proceedings; for although
they would certainly lead to the punishment of her daring seducer, they would
also bring about her own total ruin.
At last, however, her lawyer effected a settlement between them, which
was favorable to Fanny, and which she accepted for the sake of her children.
The Count paid her a considerable sum down, and gave her the gloomy castle
to live in. Thither she returned with a broken heart, and from that time she
lived alone, a sullen misanthrope, a fierce despot.
From time to time, a stranger wandering through the Carpathians, meets a
pale woman of demonic beauty, wearing a magnificent sable skin jacket and
with a gun over her shoulder, in the forest, or in the winter in a sledge,
driving her foaming horses until they nearly drop from fatigue, while the
sleigh bells utter a melancholy sound, and at last die away in the distance,
like the weeping of a solitary, deserted human heart.
 A NIGHT IN WHITECHAPEL

My friend Ledantec and I were twenty-five and we had come to London for
the first time in our lives. It was a Saturday evening in December, cold and
foggy, and I think that all that combined is more than enough to explain why
my friend Ledantec and I were most abominably drunk, though, to tell the
truth, we did not feel any discomfort from it. On the contrary, we were
floating in an atmosphere of perfect bliss. We did not speak, certainly, for we
were incapable of doing so, but then we had no inclination for conversation.
What would be the good of it? We could so easily read all our thoughts in
each others eyes! And all our thoughts consisted in the sweet and unique
knowledge, that we were thinking about nothing whatever.
It was not, however, in order to arrive at that state of delicious,
intellectual nihility, thai we had gone to mysterious Whitechapel. We had
gone into the first public-house we saw, with the firm intention of studying
manners and customs, — not to mention morals, — there as spectators, artists
and philosophers, but in the second public-house we entered, we ourselves
became like the objects of our investigations, that is to say, sponges soaked
in alcohol. Between one public-house and the other, the outer air seemed to
squeeze those sponges, which then got just as dry as before, and thus we
rolled from public-house to public-house, until at last the sponges could not
hold any more.
Consequently, we had for some time bidden farewell to our studies in
morals, and now they were limited to two impressions: zig-zags through the
darkness outside, and a gleam of light outside the public-houses. As to the
inhibition of brandies, whiskies and gins, that was done mechanically, and
our stomachs scarcely noticed it.
But what strange beings we had elbowed with during our long stoppages!
What a number of faces to be remembered, what clothes, what attitudes, what
talk and what rags!
At first we tried to note them exactly in our memory, but there were so
many of them, and our brain got mixed so quickly, that at present we had no
very clear recollection of anything or anybody. Even objects that were
immediately before us appeared to us in a vague, dusky phantasmagoria and
got confounded with precious objects in an inextricable manner. The world
became a sort of kaleidoscope to us, seen in a dream through the penumbra of
an aquarium.
Suddenly we were aroused from this state of somnolence, awakened as if
by a blow in the chest, and imperiously forced to fix our attention on what we
saw, for amidst this whirl of strange sights, one stranger than all attracted our
eyes and seemed to say to us: “Look at me.”
It was at the open door of a public-house. A ray of light streamed into the
street through the half-open door, and that brutal ray fell right onto the specter
that had just risen up there, dumb and motionless.
For it was indeed a specter, pitiful and terrible, and, above all, most real,
as it stood out boldly against the dark background of the street, which it made
darker still behind it!
Young, yes; the woman was certainly young; there could be no doubt about
that, when one looked at her smooth skin, her smiling mouth which showed
her white teeth, and firm bust which could be plainly noted under her thin
dress.
But then, how explain her perfectly white hair, not gray or growing gray,
but absolutely white, as white as any octogenarian’s?
And then her eyes, her eyes beneath her smooth brow, were surely the
eyes of an old woman? Certainly they were, and of a woman one could not
tell how old, for it must have taken years of trouble and sorrow, of tears and
of sleepless nights, and a whole long existence, thus to dull, to wear out and
to roughen those vitreous pupils.
Vitreous? Not exactly that. For roughened glass still retains a dull and
milky brightness, a recollection, as it were, of its former transparency. But
her eyes seemed rather to have been made of metal, which had turned rusty,
and really if pewter could rust I should have compared them to pewter
covered with rust. They had the dead color of pewter, and at the same time,
they emitted a glance which was the color of reddish water.
But it was not until some time later that I tried to define them thus
approximately by retrospective analysis. At that moment, being altogether
incapable of such an effort, I could only establish in my own mind the idea of
extreme decrepitude and horrible old age, which they produced in my
imagination.
 Have I said that they were set in very puffy eyelids, which had no lashes
whatever, and on her forehead without wrinkles there was not a vestige of
eyebrow? When I tell you this, and considering their dull look beneath the
hair of an octogenarian, it is not surprising that Ledantec and I said in a low
voice at the sight of this woman, who was evidently young:
“Oh! poor, poor old woman!”
Her great age was further accentuated by the terrible poverty that was
revealed by her dress. If she had been better dressed, her youthful looks
would, perhaps, have struck us more, but her thin shawl, which was all that
she had over her chemise, her single petticoat which was full of holes, and
almost in rags, and which did not nearly reach to her bare feet, her straw hat
with ragged feathers and with ribbons of no particular color through age, it
all seemed so ancient, so prodigiously antique!
From what remote superannuated, abolished period did they all spring?
One did not venture to guess, and by a perfectly natural association of ideas,
one seemed to infer that the unfortunate creature herself, was as old as her
clothes were. Now, by one, I mean by Ledantec and myself, that is to say, by
two men who were abominably drunk and who were arguing with the special
logic of intoxication.
It was also under the softening influence of alcohol that we looked at the
vague smile on those lips with the teeth of a child, without stopping to reflect
on the beauty of those youthful teeth, and seeing nothing except her fixed and
almost idiotic smile, which no longer contrasted with the dull expression of
her looks, but, on the contrary, strengthened them. For in spite of her teeth, it
was the smile of an old woman in our imagination, and as for me, I was
really pleased at the thought of being so acute when I inferred that this
grandmother with such pale lips, had the set of teeth of a young girl, and still,
thanks to the softening influence of alcohol, I was not angry with her for this
artifice. I even thought it particularly praiseworthy, since, after all, the poor
creature thus carried out her calling conscientiously, which was to seduce us.
For there was no possible doubt about the matter, that this grandmother was
nothing more nor less than a prostitute.
And then, drunk! Horribly drunk, much more drunk than Ledantec and I
were, for we really could manage to say: “Oh! Pity the poor, poor old
woman!” While she was incapable of articulating a single syllable, of
making a gesture, or even of imparting a gleam of promise, a furtive flash of
allurement to her eyes. With her hands crossed on her stomach, and resting
against the front of the public-house, with her whole body as stiff as if she
had been in a state of catalepsy, she had nothing alluring about her, except her
sad smile, and that inspired us with all the more pity because she was even
more drunk than we were, and so, by identical, spontaneous movement, we
each of us seized her by an arm, to take her into the public-house with us.
To our great astonishment she resisted, sprang back, and so was in the
shadow again, out of the ray of light which came through the door, while, at
the same time, she began to walk through the darkness and to drag us with
her, for she was clinging to our arms. We followed her without speaking and
without knowing where we were going, but without the least uneasiness on
that score. Only, when she suddenly burst into violent sobs as she walked,
Ledantec and I began to sob in unison.
The cold and the fog had suddenly congested our brains again, and we had
again lost all precise consciousness of our acts, of our thoughts and of our
sensations. Our sobs had nothing of grief in them, but we were floating in an
atmosphere of perfect bliss, and I can remember that at that moment it was no
longer the exterior world which seemed to me as if I were looking at it
through the penumbra of an aquarium; it was I myself, an I composed of
three, which was changing into something that was floating adrift in
something, though what it was I did not know, composed of palpable fog and
intangible water, and it was exquisitely delightful.
From that moment I remember nothing more until what follows, and which
had the effect of a clap of thunder on me, and made me rise up from the
bottom of the depth to which I had descended.
Ledantec was standing in front of me, his face convulsed with horror, his
hair standing on end and his eyes staring out of his head, and he shouted to
me: —
“Let us escape! Let us escape!” Whereupon I opened my eyes wide, and
found myself lying on the ground, in a room into which daylight was shining.
I saw some rags hanging against the wall, two chairs, a broken jug lying on
the floor by my side, and in a corner a wretched bed on which a woman was
lying, who was no doubt dead, for her head was hanging over the side, and
her long white hair reached almost to my feet.
With a bound I was up, like Ledantec.
“What!” I said to him, while my teeth chattered: “Did you kill her?”
“No, no,” he replied. “But that makes no difference; let us be off.”
 I felt completely sober by that time, but I did think that he was still
suffering somewhat from the effects of last night’s drunk; otherwise, why
should he wish to escape? while the remains of pity for the unfortunate
woman forced me to say: —
“What is the matter with her? If she is ill, we must look after her.”
And I went to the wretched bed, in order to put her head back on the
pillow, but I discovered that she was neither dead nor ill, but only sound
asleep, and I also noticed that she was quite young. She still wore that idiotic
smile, but her teeth were her own and those of a girl. Her smooth skin and
her firm bust showed that she was not more than sixteen; perhaps not so
much.
“There! You see it, you can see it!” Ledantec said. “Let us be off.”
He tried to drag me out, and he was still drunk; I could see it by his
feverish movements, his trembling hands and his nervous looks. Then he
implored me and said: —
“I slept beside the old woman; but she is not old. Look at her; look at her;
yes, she is old after all!”
And he lifted up her long hair by handfuls; it was like handfuls of white
silk, and then he added, evidently in a sort of delirium, which made me fear
an attack of delirium tremens: “To think that I have begotten children, three,
four children. Who knows how many children, all in one night! And they
were born immediately, and have grown up already! Let us be off.”
Decidedly it was an attack of madness. Poor Ledantec! What could I do
for him? I took his arm and tried to calm him, but he thought that I was going
to try and make him go to bed with her again, and he pushed me away and
exclaimed with tears in his voice: “If you do not believe me, look under the
bed; the children are there; they are there, I tell you. Look here, just look
here.”
He threw himself down, flat on his stomach, and actually pulled out one,
two, three, four children, who had hidden under the bed. I do not exactly
know whether they were boys or girls, but all, like the sleeping woman, had
white hair, the hair of an octogenarian.
Was I still drunk, like Ledantec, or was I mad? What was the meaning of
this strange hallucination? I hesitated for a moment, and shook myself to be
sure that it was I.
No, no, I had all my wits about me, and I in reality saw that horrible lot of
little brats; they all had their faces in their hands, and were crying and
squalling, and then suddenly one of them jumped onto the bed; all the others
followed his example, and the woman woke up.
And then we stood, while those five pairs of eyes, without eyebrows or
eyelashes, eyes with the dull color of pewter, and whose pupils had the color
of red water, were steadily fixed on us.
“Let us be off! let us be off!” Ledantec repeated, leaving go of me, and at
that time I paid attention to what he said, and, after throwing some small
change onto the floor, I followed him, to make him understand, when he
should be quite sober, that he saw before him a poor Albino prostitute, who
had several brothers and sisters.
 COUNTESS SATAN

They were discussing dynamite, the social revolution, Nihilism, and even
those who cared least about politics, had something to say. Some were
alarmed, others philosophized, while others again, tried to smile.
“Bah!” N —— said, “when we are all blown up, we shall see what it is
like. Perhaps, after all, it may be an amusing sensation, provided one goes
high enough.”
“But we shall not be blown up at all,” G —— the optimist, said,
interrupting him. “It is all a romance.”
“You are mistaken, my dear fellow,” Jules de C —— replied. “It is like a
romance, but with that confounded Nihilism, everything seems like one, but it
would be a mistake to trust to it. Thus, I myself, the manner in which I made
Bakounine’s acquaintance ...”
They knew that he was a good narrator, and it was no secret that his life
had been an adventurous one, so they drew closer to him, and listened
religiously. This is what he told them.

II

“I met Countess Nioska W —— , that strange woman who was usually called
Countess Satan, in Naples; I immediately attached myself to her out of
curiosity, and I soon fell in love with her. Not that she was beautiful, for she
was a Russian who had all the bad characteristics of the Russian type. She
was thin and squat, at the same time, while her face was sallow and puffy,
with high cheek bones and a Cossack’s nose. But her conversation bewitched
every one.
“She was many-sided, learned, a philosopher, scientifically depraved,
satanic. Perhaps the word is rather pretentious, but it exactly expresses what
I want to say, for in other words, she loved evil for the sake of evil. She
rejoiced in other people’s vices, and liked to sow the seeds of evil, in order
to see it flourish. And that on a fraud, on an enormous scale. It was not
enough for her to corrupt individuals; she only did that to keep her hand in;
what she wished to do, was to corrupt the masses. By slightly altering it after
her own fashion, she might have adopted the famous saying of Caligula. She
also wished that the whole human race had but one head; but not in order that
she might cut it off, but that she might make the philosophy of Nihility
flourish there.
“What a temptation to become the lord and master of such a monster! And
I allowed myself to be tempted, and undertook the adventure. The means
came unsought for by me, and the only thing that I had to do, was to show
myself more perverted and satanical that she was herself. — And so I played
the devil.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we writers are the best workmen for doing evil, as our
books may be bottles of poison. The so-called men of action, only turn the
handle of the mitrailleuse which we have loaded. Formulas will destroy the
world, and it is we who invent them.’
“‘That is true,’ she said, ‘and that is what is wanting in Bakounine, I am
sorry to say.’
“That name was constantly in her mouth, and so I asked her for details,
which she gave me, as she knew the man intimately.
“‘After all,’ she said, with a contemptuous grimace, ‘he is only a kind of
Garibaldi.’
“She told me, although she made fun of him as she did so, about his
Odyssey of the barricades and of the hulks which made up Bakounine’s
legend, and which is, nevertheless, only the exact truth; his part of chief of
the insurgents, at Prague and then at Dresden; his first death sentence; about
his imprisonment at Olmütz and in the casemates of the fortress of St. Peter
and St. Paul; in a subterranean dungeon at Schüsselburg; about his exile to
Siberia and his wonderful escape down the river Amour, on a Japanese
coasting-vessel by way of Yokohama and San Francisco, and about his final
arrival in London, whence he was directing all the operations of Nihilism.
“‘You see,’ she said, ‘he is a thorough adventurer, and now all his
adventures are over. He got married at Tobolsk and became a mere
respectable, middle-class man. And then, he has no individual ideas. Herzen,
the phamphleteer of Kolokol inspired him with the only fertile phrase that he
ever uttered: Land and Liberty! But that is not yet the definite formula, the
general formula; what I will call, the dynamite formula. At best, Bakounine
would become an incendiary, and burn down cities. And what is that, I ask
you? Bah? A second-hand Rostopchin! He wants a prompter, and I offered to
become his but he did not take me seriously.’ ...
“It would be useless to enter into all the Psychological details which
marked the course of my passion for the Countess, and to explain to you more
fully the attraction of curiosity which she offered me more and more every
day. It was getting exasperating, and the more so, as she resisted me as
stoutly as the shyest of innocents could have done, but at the end of a month
of mad Satanism, I saw what her game was. Do you know what she had
thought of? She meant to make me Bakounine’s prompter, or, at any rate, that
is what she said. But no doubt she reserved the right to herself, and that is
how I understood her, to prompt the prompter, and my passion for her, which
she purposely left unsatisfied, assured her that absolute power over me.
“All this may appear madness to you, but it is, nevertheless, the exact
truth, and, in short, one morning she bluntly made the offer: ‘Become
Bakounine’s soul, and you shall have me.’
“Of course, I accepted, for it was too fantastically strange to refuse; do
you think so? What an adventure! What luck! A number of letters between the
Countess and Bakounine prepared the way; I was introduced to him at his
house, and they discussed me there. I became a sort of Western prophet, a
mystic charmer who was ready to nihilate the Latin races, the Saint Paul of
the new religion of nothingness, and at last a day was fixed for us to meet in
London. He lived in a small, one-storied house in Pimlico, with a tiny garden
in front, and nothing noticeable about it.
“We were first of all shown into the commonplace parlor of all English
homes, and then upstairs. The room where the Countess and I were left, was
small, and very badly furnished, with a square table with writing materials
on it, in the middle. That was his sanctuary; the deity soon appeared, and I
saw him in flesh and bone; especially in flesh, for he was enormously stout.
His broad face, with prominent cheek-bones, in spite of the fat; and with a
nose like a double funnel, with small, sharp eyes, which had a magnetic look,
proclaimed the Tartar, the old Turanian blood, which produced the Attilas,
the Gengis-Khams, the Tamerlanes. The obesity, which is characteristic of
the nomad races, who are always on horseback or driving, added to his
Asiatic look. The man was certainly not a European, a slave, a descendant of
the deistic Aryans, but a descendant of the Atheistic hordes, who had several
times already almost overrun Europe, and who, instead of any ideas of
progress, have the belief in nihility, at the bottom of their hearts.
“I was astonished, for I had not expected that the majesty of a whole race,
could be thus revived in a man, and my stupefaction increased after an hour’s
conversation. I could quite understand why such a Colossus had not wished
for the Countess as his Egeria; she was a mere silly child to have dreamt of
acting such a part to such a thinker. She had not felt the profoundness of that
horrible philosophy which was hidden under that material activity, nor had
she seen the prophet under that man of the barricades. Or, perhaps, he had not
thought it advisable to reveal himself to her like that; but he revealed himself
to me, and inspired me with terror.
“A prophet? Oh! yes. He thought himself an Attila, and foresaw the
consequences of his revolution; it was not only from instinct, but also from
theory that he urged a nation on to nihilism. The phrase is not his, but
Tourgueneff’s, I believe, but the idea certainly belongs to him. He got his
program of agricultural communism from Herzen, and his destructive
radicalism from Pougatcheff, but he did not stop there. I mean that he went on
to evil for the sake of evil. Herzen wished for the happiness of the Slav
peasant; Pougatcheff wanted to be elected Emperor, but all that Bakounine
wanted, was to overthrow the actual order of things, no matter by what
means, and to replace social concentration by a universal upheaval.
“It was the dream of a Tartar; it was true nihilism pushed to extreme
practical conclusions. It was, in a word, the applied philosophy of chance,
the indeterminateism of anarchy. Monstrous it may be, but grand in its
monstrosity.
“And you must note, that the man of action who was so despised by the
Countess, discovered in Bakounine the gigantic dreamer whom I have just
shown you, and his dream did not remain a dream, but began to be realized. It
was by the care of that organizer that the Nihilistic party assumed a body; a
party in which there is a little of everything, you know; but on the whole, a
formidable party, on account of the advanced guard in true Nihilism, whose
object is nothing less than to destroy the Western world, to see it blossom
from under the ruins of a general dispersion, which is the last conception of
modern Tartarism.
“I never saw Bakounine again, for the Countess’s conquest would have
been too dearly bought by any attempt to act a comedy with this Old-Man-of-
the-Mountains. And besides that, after this visit, poor Countess Satan
appeared to me quite silly. Her famous Satanism was nothing but the flicker
of a spirit-lamp, after the general conflagration of which the other had
dreamt, and she had certainly shown herself very silly, when she could not
understand that prodigious monster. And as she had seduced me, only by her
intellect and her perversity, I was disgusted as soon as she laid aside that
mask. I left her without telling her of my intention, and never saw her again,
either.
“No doubt they both took me for a spy from the Third section of the
Imperial Chancellery. In that case, they must have thought me very strong to
have resisted, and all I have to do is to look out, if any affiliated members of
their society recognize me!...”
III

Then he smiled, and turning to the waiter who had just come in, he said:
“Meanwhile, open us another bottle of champagne, and make the cork pop! It
will, at any rate, somewhat accustom us to the day when we shall all be
blown up with dynamite ourselves.”
 KIND GIRLS

Every Friday, regularly, at about eleven o’clock in the morning, he came into
the courtyard, put down his soft hat at his feet, struck a few chords on his
guitar and then began a ballad in his full, rich voice. And soon at every
window in the four sides of that dull, barrack-like building, some girls
appeared, one in an elegant dressing gown, another in a little jacket, most of
them with their breasts and arms bare, all of them just out of bed, with their
hair hastily twisted up, their eyes blinking in the sudden blaze of sunlight,
their complexions dull and their eyes still heavy from want of sleep.
They swayed themselves backwards and forwards to his slow melody,
and gave themselves up to the enjoyment of it, and coppers, and even silver,
poured into the handsome singer’s hat, and more than one of them would have
liked to have followed the penny which she threw to him, and to have gone
with the singer who had the voice of a siren, and who seemed to say to all
these amorous girls; “Come, come to my retreat, where you will find a
palace of crystal and gold, and wreaths which are always fresh, and
happiness and love which never die.”
That was what they seemed to hear, those unhappy girls, when they heard
him sing the songs of the old legends, which they had formerly believed. That
was what they understood by the foolish words of the ballad. Then and
nothing else, for how could any one doubt it, on seeing the fresh roses on
their cheeks, and the tender flame which flickered like a mystic night-light in
their eyes, which had, for the moment, become the eyes of innocent young
girls again? But of young girls, who had grown up very quickly, alas! who
were very precocious, and who very soon became the women that they were,
poor vendors of love, always in search of love for which they were paid.
That was why, when he had finished his second ballad, and sometimes
even sooner, concupiscent looks appeared in their eyes. The boatman of their
dreams, the water-sprite of fairy tales, vanished in the mist of their childish
recollections, and the singer re-assumed his real shape, that of musician and
strolling player, whom they wished to pay, to be their lover. And the coppers
and small silver were showered on him again, with engaging smiles, with the
leers of a street-walker, even with: “p’st, p’st,” which soon transformed the
barrack-like courtyard into an enormous cage full of twittering birds, while
some of them could not restrain themselves, but said aloud, rolling their eyes
with desire: “How handsome the creature is! Good heavens, how handsome
he is!”
He was really handsome, and nobody could deny it, and even too
handsome, with a regular beauty which almost palled on people. He had
large, almond-shaped, gentle eyes, a Grecian nose, a bow-shaped mouth,
hidden by a heavy moustache, and long, black, curly hair; in short, a head fit
to be put into a hair-dresser’s window, or, better still, perhaps, onto the front
page of the ballads which he was singing. But what made him still
handsomer, was that his self-conceit had a look of sovereign indifference for
he was not satisfied with not replying to the smiles, the ogles, and the p’st,
p’st’s, by taking no notice of them; but when he had finished he shrugged his
shoulders, he winked mischievously, and turned his lips contemptuously,
which said very clearly: “The stove is not being heated for you, my little
kittens!”
Often, one might have thought that he expressly wished to show his
contempt, and that he tried to make himself thought unpoetical in the eyes of
all those amorous girls, and to check their love, for he cleared his throat
ostentatiously and offensively, more than was necessary, after singing, as if
he would have liked to spit at them. But all that did not make him unpoetical
in their eyes, and many of them, most of them, who were absolutely mad on
him, went so far as to say that he did it like a swell!
The girl, who in her enthusiasm had been the first to utter that exclamation
of intense passion, and who, after throwing him small silver, had thrown him
a twenty-franc gold piece, at last made up her mind to have an explanation.
Instead of a p’st, p’st, she spoke to him boldly one morning, in the presence of
all the others, who religiously held their tongues.
“Come up here,” she called out to him, and from habit she added: “I will
be very nice, you handsome dark fellow.”
At first they were dumbfounded at her audacity, and then all their cheeks
flushed with jealousy, and the flame of mad desire shot from their eyes, from
every window there came a perfect torrent of:
“Yes, come up, come up.” “Don’t go to her! Come to me.”
And, meanwhile, there was a shower of half-pence, of francs, of gold
coins, as well as of cigars and oranges, while lace pocket handkerchiefs, silk
neckties, and scarfs fluttered in the air and fell round the singer, like a flight
of many colored butterflies.
He picked up the spoil calmly, almost carelessly, stuffed the money into
his pocket, made a bundle of the furbelows, which he tied up as if they had
been soiled linen, and then raising himself up, and putting his felt hat on his
head, he said:
“Thank you, ladies, but indeed I cannot.”
They thought that he did not know how to satisfy so many demands at
once, and one of them said: “Let him choose.”
“Yes, yes, that is it!” they all exclaimed unanimously.
But he repeated: “I tell you, I cannot.”
They thought he was excusing himself out of gallantry, and several of them
exclaimed, almost with tears of emotion: “Women are all heart!” And the
same voice that had spoken before, (it was one of the girls who wished to
settle the matter amicably), said: “We must draw lots.”
“Yes, yes, that is it,” they all cried. And again there was a religious
silence, more religious than before, for it wras caused by anxiety, and the
beatings of their hearts may have been heard.
The singer profited by it, to say slowly: “I cannot have that either; nor all
of you at once, nor one after the other; nothing! I tell you that I cannot.”
“Why? Why?” And now they were almost screaming, for they were angry
and sorry at the same time. Their cheeks had gone from scarlet to livid, their
eyes flashed fire, and some shook their fists menacingly.
“Silence!” the girl cried, who had spoken first. “Be quiet, you pack of
huzzys! Let him explain himself, and tell us why!”
“Yes, yes, let us be quiet! Make him explain himself in God’s name!”
Then, in the fierce silence that ensued, the singer said, opening his arms
wide, with a gesture of despairing inability to do what they wanted:
“What do you want? It is very amusing, but I cannot do more. I have two
girls of my own already, at home.”
 PROFITABLE BUSINESS

He certainly did not think himself a saint, nor had he any hypocritical
pretensions to virtue, but, nevertheless, he thought as highly of himself as
much as he did of anybody else, and perhaps, even a trifle more highly. And
that, quite impartially, without any more self love than was necessary, and
without his having to accuse himself of being self conceited. He did himself
justice, that was all, for he had good moral principles, and he applied them,
especially, if the truth must be told, not only to judging the conduct of others,
but also, it must be allowed, in a measure for regulating his own conduct, as
he would have been very vexed if he had been able to think of himself:
“On the whole, I am what people call a perfectly honorable man.”
Luckily, he had never (oh! never), been obliged to doubt that excellent
opinion which he had of himself, which he liked to express thus, in his
moments of rhetorical expansion:
“My whole life gives me the right to shake hands with myself.”
Perhaps a subtle psychologist would have found some flaws in this armor
of integrity, which was sanctimoniously satisfied with itself. It was, for
example, quite certain that our friend had no scruples in making profit out of
the vices or misfortunes of his neighbors, provided that he was not in his own
opinion, the person who was solely, or chiefly responsible for them. But, on
the whole, it was only one manner of looking at it, nothing more, and there
were plenty of materials for casuistic arguments in it. This kind of discussion
is particularly unpleasant to such simple natures as that of his worthy fellow,
who would have replied to the psychologist.
“Why go on a wild goose chase? As for me, I am perfectly sincere.”
You must not, however, believe that this perfect sincerity prevented him
from having elevated views. He prided himself on having a weakness for
imagination and the unforeseen, and if he would have been offended at being
called a dishonorable man, he would, perhaps have been still more hurt if
anybody had attributed middle-class tastes to him.
Accordingly, in love affairs, he expressed a most virtuous horror of
adultery, for if he had committed it, it would not have been able to bear that
testimony to himself, which was so sweet to his conscience:
“Ah! As for me, I can declare that I never wronged anybody!”
While, on the other hand, he was not satisfied with pleasure which was
paid for by the hour, and which debases the noblest desires of the heart, to
the vulgar satisfaction of a physical requirement. What he required, so he
used to say, while lifting his eyes up to heaven was:
“Something rather more ideal than that!”
That search after the ideal did not, indeed, cost him any great effort, as it
was limited to not going to licensed houses of ill-fame, and to not accosting
streetwalkers with the simple words: “How much?”
It consisted chiefly in wishing to be gallant even with such women, and in
trying to persuade himself that they liked him for his own sake, and in
preferring those whose manner, dress and looks allowed room for
suppositions and romantic illusions, such as:
“She might be taken for a little work-girl who has not yet lost her virtue.”
“No, I rather think she is a widow, who has met with misfortunes.”
“What if she be a fashionable lady in disguise!”
And other nonsense, which he knew to be such, even while imagining it,
but whose imaginary flavor was very pleasant to him, all the same.
With such tastes, it was only natural that this pilgrim followed and pushed
up against women in the large shops, and whenever there was a crowd, and
that he especially looked out for those ladies of easy virtue, for nothing is
more exciting than those half-closed shutters, behind which a face is
indistinctly seen, and from which one hears a furtive: “P’st! P’st!”
He used to say to himself: “Who is she? Is she young and pretty? Is she
some old woman, who is terribly skillful at her business, but who yet does
not venture to show herself any longer? Or is she some new beginner, who
has not yet acquired the boldness of an old hand? In any case, it is the
unknown, perhaps, that is my ideal during the time it takes me to find my way
upstairs;” and always as he went up, his heart beat, as it does at a first
meeting with a beloved mistress.
But he had never felt such a delicious shiver as he did on the day on
which he penetrated into that old house in the blind alley in Ménilmontant.
He could not have said why, for he had often gone after so-called love in
much stranger places; but now, without any reason, he had a presentiment that
he was going to meet with an adventure, and that gave him a delightful
sensation.
 The woman who had made the sign to him, lived on the third floor, and all
the way upstairs his excitement increased, until his heart was beating
violently when he reached the landing. At the same time, he was going up, he
smelt a peculiar odor, which grew stronger and stronger, and which he had
tried in vain to analyze, though all he could arrive at was, that it smelt like a
chemist’s shop.
The door on the right, at the end of the passage, was opened as soon as he
put his foot on the landing, and the woman said, in a low voice:
“Come in, my dear.”
A whiff of a very strong smell met his nostrils through the open door, and
suddenly he exclaimed:
“How stupid I was! I know what it is now; it is carbolic acid, is it not?”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “Don’t you like it, dear? It is very wholesome,
you know.”
The woman was not ugly, although not young; she had very good eyes,
although they were sad and sunken in her head; evidently she had been
crying, very much quite recently, and that imparted a special spice to the
vague smile which she put on, so as to appear more amiable.
Seized by his romantic ideas once more, and under the influence of the
presentiment which he had had just before, he thought — and the idea filled
him with pleasure:
“She is some widow, whom poverty has forced to sell herself.”
The room was small, but very clean and tidy, and that confirmed him in
his conjecture, as he was curious to verify its truth, he went into the three
rooms which opened into one another. The bedroom, came first; next there
came a kind of a drawing-room, and then a dining-room, which evidently
served as a kitchen, for a Dutch tiled stove stood in the middle of it, on
which a stew was simmering, but the smell of carbolic acid was even
stronger in that room. He remarked on it, and added with a laugh:
“Do you put it with your soup?”
And as he said this, he laid hold of the handle of the door which led into
the next room, for he wanted to see everything, even that nook, which was
apparently a store cupboard, but the woman seized him by the arm, and
pulled him violently back.
“No, no,” she said, almost in a whisper, and in a hoarse and suppliant
voice, “no, dear, not there, not there, you must not go in there.”
“Why?” he said, for his wish to go in had only become stronger.
 “Because if you go in there, you will have no inclination to remain with
me, and I so want you to stay. If you only knew!”
“Well, what?” And with a violent movement, he opened the glazed door,
when the smell of carbolic acid seemed almost to strike him in the face, but
what he saw, made him recoil still more, for on a small iron bedstead, lay the
dead body of a woman fantastically illuminated by a single wax candle, and
in horror he turned to make his escape.
“Stop, my dear,” the woman sobbed; and clinging to him, she told him
amidst a flood of tears, that her friend had died two days previously, and that
there was no money to bury her. “Because,” she said, “you can understand
that I want it to be a respectable funeral, we were so very fond of each other!
Stop here, my dear, do stop. I only want ten francs more. Don’t go away.”
They had gone back into the bedroom, and she was pushing him towards
the bed:
“No,” he said, “let me go. I will give you the ten francs, but I will not stay
here; I cannot.”
He took his purse out of his pocket, extracted a ten-franc piece, put it on
the table, and then went to the door; but when he had reached it, a thought
suddenly struck him, as if somebody were reasoning with him, without his
knowledge.
“Why lose these ten francs? Why not profit by this woman’s good
intentions. She certainly did her business bravely, and if I had not known
about the matter, I should certainly not have gone away for some time ... Well
then?”
But other obscurer suggestions whispered to him:
“She was her friend! ... They were so fond of each other! Was it
friendship or love? Oh! love apparently. Well, it would surely be avenging
morality, if this woman were forced to be faithless to that monstrous love?”
And suddenly the man turned round and said in a low and trembling voice:
“Look here! If I give you twenty francs instead of ten, I suppose you could
buy some flowers for her, as well?”
The unhappy woman’s face brightened with pleasure and gratitude.
“Will you really give me twenty?”
“Yes,” he replied, “and more perhaps. It quite depends upon yourself.”
And with the quiet conscience of an honorable man who, at the same time,
is not a fool he said gravely:
“You need only be very complaisant.”
 And he added, mentally: “Especially as I deserve it, as in giving you
twenty francs I am performing a good action.”
 VIOLATED

“Really,” Paul repeated, “really!”

“Yes, I who am here before you have been violated, and violated by!...
But if I were to tell you immediately by whom, there would be no story, eh?
And as you want a story, eh? And as you want a story, I will tell you all about
it from beginning to end, and I shall begin at the beginning.
“I had been shooting over the waste land in the heart of Brittany for a
week, which borders on the Black Mountain. It is a desolate and wild
country, but it abounds in game. One can walk for hours without meeting a
human being, and when one meets anybody, it is just the same as if one had
not, for the people are absolutely ignorant of French, and when I got to an inn
at night, I had to employ signs to let the people know that I wanted supper
and bed.
“As I happened to be in a melancholy frame of mind at the time, that
solitude delighted me, and my dog’s companionship was quite enough for me,
and so you may guess my irritation when I perceived one morning that I was
being followed, absolutely followed, by another sportsman who seemed to
wish to enter into conversation with me. The day before, I had already
noticed him obstructing the horizon several times, and I had attributed it to
the chances of sport, which brought us both to the same likely spots for game,
but now I could not be mistaken! The fellow was evidently following me,
and was stretching his little pair of compasses as much as he could, so as to
keep up with my long strides, and took short cuts, so as to catch me up at the
half circle.
“As he seemed bent upon the matter, I naturally grew obstinate also, and
he spent his whole day in trying to catch me up, while I spent mine in trying
to baffle him, and we seemed to be playing at hide-and-seek; the
consequences were, that when it was getting dark, I had completely lost
myself in the most deserted part of the moor. There was no cottage near, and
not even a church spire in the distance. The only land-mark, was the hateful
outline of that cursed man, about five hundred yards off.
 “Of course he had won the game! I should have to put a good face on the
matter, and allow him to join me, or rather I should have to join him myself,
if I did not wish to sleep in the open air and with an empty stomach, and so I
went up to him, and asked my way in a half-surly manner.
“He replied very affably, that there was no inn in the neighborhood, as the
nearest village was five leagues off, but that he lived only about an hour’s
walk off, and that he considered himself very fortunate in being able to offer
me hospitality.
“I was utterly done up, and how could I refuse? So we went off through
the heather and furze; I walking slowly because I was so tired, and he went
tripping along merrily with his legs like a basset hound’s, which seemed
untirable.
“And yet he was an old man, and not strongly built, for I could have
knocked him over by blowing on him; but how he could walk, the beast!
“But he was not a troublesome companion, as I imagined he would have
been, and he did not at all seem to wish to enter into conversation with me,
as I feared he would. When he had given his invitation, and I had accepted it
and thanked him in a few words, he did not open his lips again, and we
walked on in silence, and only his glances worried me, for I felt them on me,
as if he wished to force me into an intimacy, which my closed lips refused.
But on the whole, his tenacious looks, which I noticed furtively, appeared
sympathetic and even admiring — yes; really admiring!
“But I could not give him as good as he brought, for he was certainly not
handsome; his legs were short, and rather bandy and he was thin and narrow-
chested. His face was like a bit of parchment, furrowed and wrinkled,
without a hair on it to hide the folds in his skin. His hair resembled that of an
Ignorantin brother, with its gray locks falling onto his greasy collar; he had a
nose like a ferret, and rat’s eyes, but he was able to offer me food and
quarters for the night, and it was not requisite that he should be handsome, in
order to do that.
“Capital food, and very comfortable quarters! A manorial dwelling, a real
old, well-furnished manor-house; and in the large dining-room, in front of the
huge fireplace, where a large fire was blazing, dinner was laid; I will say no
more than that! A hotch-potch, which had been stewing since morning, no
doubt! A salmis of woodcock, in defense of which angels would have taken
up arms; buckwheat cakes, in cream, flavored with aniseed, and a cheese,
which is a rare thing and hardly ever to be found in Brittany, a cheese to
make any one eat a four pound loaf if he only smelt the rind! The whole
washed clown by Chambertin, and then brandy distilled by cider, which was
so good that it made a man fancy that he had swallowed a deity in velvet
breeches; not to mention the cigars, pure, smuggled havannahs; large, strong,
not dry but green, on the contrary, which made a strong and intoxicating
smoke.
“And how the little old gentleman stuffed, and drank and smoked! He was
an ogre, a choirister, a sapper, and so was I, I must confess, and, upon my
word, I cannot remember what we talked about during our Gargantuan feed!
But we certainly talked, but what about? About shooting, certainly, and about
women most probably. Confound it! Among men, after drinking! Yes, yes,
about women, I am quite sure, and he told some funny stories, did the little
old man! Especially about a portrait which was hanging over the large
fireplace, and which represented his grandmother, a marchioness of the old
régime. She was a woman who had certainly played some pranks, and they
said that she was still frisky and had good legs and thighs when she was
seventy.
“‘It is extraordinary,’ I remarked, ‘how like you are to that portrait.’
“‘Yes,’ the old man replied with a smile; and then he added in his harsh,
tremulous voice: ‘I resemble her in everything. I am only sixty, and I feel as
if I should have lusty, hot blood in me until I am seventy.’
“And then suddenly, very much moved, and looking at me admiringly, as
he had done once before, he said to the portrait:
“‘I say, marchioness, what a pity that you did not know this handsome
young fellow!’
“I remembered that apostrophe and that look very well, when I went to
bed about an hour later, nearly drunk, in the large room papered in white and
gold, to which I was shown by a tall, broad-shouldered footman, who wished
me good-night in Breton.
“Good-night, yes! But that implied going to sleep, which was just what I
could not do. The Chambertin, the cider brandy and the cigars had certainly
made me drunk, but not so as to overcome me altogether. On the contrary, I
was excited, my nerves were highly strung, my blood was heated, and I was
in a half-sleep in which I felt that I was very much alive, and my whole being
was in a vibration and expansion, just as if I had been smoking hashecah.
“Of course! That was it; I was dreaming while I was awake; but I saw the
door open and the marchioness come in, who had stepped down, out of her
frame. She had taken off her furbelows, and was in her nightgown. Her high
head-dress was replaced by a simple knot of ribbon, which confined her
powdered hair into a small chignon, but I recognized her quite plainly, by the
trembling light of the candle which she was carrying. It was her face with its
piercing eyes, its pointed nose and its smiling and sensual mouth. She did not
look so young to me as she appeared in her portrait. Bah! Perhaps that was
merely caused by the feeble, flickering light! But I had not even time to
account for it, not to reflect on the strangeness of the sight, nor to discuss the
matter with myself and to say: ‘Am I dead drunk, or is it a ghost?’
“No, I had no time, and that is the fact, for the candle was suddenly blown
out and the marchioness was in my bed and holding me in her arms, and one
fixed idea, the only one that I had, haunted me, which was:
“‘Had the marchioness good limbs, and was she still frisky at seventy?’
And I did not care much if she was seventy and if she was a ghost or not; I
only thought of one thing: ‘Has she really good limbs?’”
“By Jove, yes! She did not speak. Oh, marchioness! marchioness! And
suddenly in spite of myself and to convince myself that it was not a mere
fantastic dream, I exclaimed:
“‘Why, good heavens! I am not dreaming!’
“‘No, you are not dreaming,’ two lips replied, trying to press themselves
against mine.
“But, oh! horror! The mouth smelt of cigars and brandy! The voice was
that of the little old man!
“With a bound I sent him flying on to the ground, and jumped out of bed,
shouting:
“‘Beast! beast!’
“Then I heard the door slam, and bare feet pattering on the stairs as he ran
away; so I dressed hastily in the dark and went downstairs, still shouting.
“In the hall below, where I could see through the upper windows that the
dawn was breaking, I met the broad-shouldered footman, who was holding a
great cudgel in his hand. He was bawling also, in Breton, and pointed to the
open door, outside where my dog was waiting. What could I say to this
savage who did not speak French? Should I face his cudgel? There was no
reason for doing so; and besides, I was even more ashamed than furious; so I
hastily took up my gun and my game-bag, which were in the hall, and went
off without turning round.
 “Disgusted with sport in that part of the country, I returned to Brest the
same day, and there, timidly and with many precautions, I tried to find out
something about the little old man....
“‘Oh, I know!’ somebody replied at last to my question; ‘you are speaking
of the manor-house at Hervénidozse, where the old countess lives, who
dresses like a man and sleeps with her coachman.’
“And with a deep sigh of relief, and much to the astonishment of my
informant, I replied:
“‘Oh! so much the better!’”
 JEROBOAM

Anyone who said, or even insinuated, that the Reverend William Greenfield,
Vicar of St. Sampson’s, Tottenham, did not make his wife Anna perfectly
happy, would certainly have been very malicious. In their twelve years of
married life, he had honored her with twelve children, and could anybody
decently ask anything more of a saintly man?
Saintly to heroism in truth! For his wife Anna, who was endowed with
invaluable virtues, which made her a model among wives and a paragon
among mothers, had not been equally endowed physically, for, in one word,
she was hideous. Her hair, which was coarse though it was thin, was the
color of the national half-and-half, but of thick half-and-half which looked
as if it had been already swallowed several times, and her complexion,
which was muddy and pimply, looked as if it were covered with sand mixed
with brickdust. Her teeth, which were long and protruding, seemed as if they
were about to start out of their sockets in order to escape from that mouth
with scarcely any lips, whose sulphurous breath had turned them yellow.
They were evidently suffering from bile.
Her china-blue eyes looked vaguely, one very much to the right and the
other very much to the left, with a divergent and frightened squint; no doubt in
order that they might not see her nose, of which they felt ashamed. And they
were quite right! Thin, soft, long, pendant, sallow, and ending in a violet
knob, it irresistibly reminded those who saw it of something which cannot be
mentioned except in a medical treatise. Her body, through the inconceivable
irony of nature, was at the same time thin and flabby, wooden and chubby,
without having either the elegance of slimness or the rounded gracefulness of
stoutness. It might have been taken for a body which had formerly been
adipose, but which had now grown thin, while the covering had remained
floating on the framework.
She was evidently nothing but skin and bones, but then she had too many
bones and too little skin.
It will be seen that the reverend gentleman had done his duty, his whole
duty, more than his duty, in sacrificing a dozen times on this altar. Yes, a
dozen times bravely and loyally! A dozen times, and his wife could not deny
it nor dispute the number, because the children were there to prove it. A
dozen times, and not one less!
And alas! not once more; and that was the reason why, in spite of
appearances, Mrs. Anna Greenfield ventured to think, in the depths of her
heart, that the Reverend William Greenfield, Vicar of St. Sampson’s,
Tottenham, had not made her perfectly happy; and she thought so all the more
as, for four years now, she had been obliged to renounce all hope of that
annual sacrifice, which was so easy and so fugitive formerly, but which had
now fallen into disuse. In fact, at the birth of the twelfth child, the reverend
gentleman had expressly said to her:
“God has greatly blessed our union, my dear Anna. We have reached the
sacred number of the twelve tribes of Israel, and were we now to persevere
in the works of the flesh, it would be mere debauchery, and I cannot suppose
that you would wish me to end my exemplary life in lustful practices.”
His wife blushed and looked down, and the holy man, with the legitimate
pride of virtue which is its own reward, audibly thanked Heaven that he was
“not as other men are.”
A model among wives and the paragon of mothers, Anna lived with him
for four years on those terms, without complaining to anyone, and contented
herself by praying fervently to God that He would mercifully inspire her
husband with the desire to begin a second series of the twelve tribes. At
times even, in order to make her prayers more efficacious, she tried to
compass that end by culinary means. She spared no pains, and gorged the
reverend gentleman with highly-seasoned dishes. Hare soup, ox-tails stewed
in sherry, the green fat in turtle soup, stewed mushrooms, Jerusalem
artichokes, celery, and horse-radish; hot sauces, truffles, hashes with wine
and cayenne pepper in them, curried lobsters, pies made of cocks’ combs,
oysters, and the soft roe of fish; and all these dishes were washed down by
strong beer and generous wines, Scotch ale, Burgundy, dry champagne,
brandy, whiskey and gin; in a word, by that numberless array of alcoholic
drinks with which the English people love to heat their blood.
And, as a matter of fact, the reverend gentleman’s blood became very
heated, as was shown by his nose and cheeks, but in spite of this, the powers
above were inexorable, and he remained quite indifferent as regards his
wife, who was unhappy and thoughtful at the sight of that protruding nasal
appendage, which, alas! was alone in its glory.
 She became thinner, and at the same time, flabbier than ever, and almost
began to lose her trust in God, when, suddenly, she had an inspiration. Was it
not, perhaps, the work of devil?
She did not care to inquire too closely into the matter, as she thought it a
very good idea, and it was this:
“Go to the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and there, perhaps, you will
discover the secret to make yourself loved.”
Decidedly luck favored her, for her husband immediately gave her
permission to go, and as soon as she got into the Esplanade des Invalides,
she saw the Algerian dancers, and she said to herself.
“Surely this would inspire William with the desire to be the father of the
thirteenth tribe!”
But how could she manage to get him to be present at such abominable
orgies? For she could not hide from herself that it was an abominable
exhibition, and she knew how scandalized he would be at their voluptuous
movements. She had no doubt that the devil had led her there, but she could
not take her eyes off the scene, and it gave her an idea; and so for nearly a
fortnight you might have seen the poor, unattractive woman sitting, and
attentively and curiously watching the swaying hips of the Algerian women.
She was learning.
The very evening of her return to London, she rushed into her husband’s
bedroom, disrobed herself in an instant, except for a thin gauze covering, and
for the first time in her life appeared before him in all the ugliness of her
semi-nudity.
“Come, come,” the saintly man stammered out, “are you — are you mad,
Anna! What demon has possessed you? Why inflict the disgrace of such a
spectacle on me?”
But she did not listen to him, and did not reply, but suddenly she also
began to sway her hips about like an almah. The reverend gentleman could
not believe his eyes, and in his stupefaction, he did not think of covering them
with his hands or even of shutting them. He looked at her, stupefied and
dumbfounded, a prey to the hypnotism of ugliness. He watched her as she
came forward and retired, and went up and down, as she skipped and
wriggled, and threw herself into extraordinary attitudes. For a long time he
sat motionless and almost unable to speak. He only said in a low voice:
“Oh, Lord! To think that twelve times!... twelve times!... a whole dozen!”
However, she fell into a chair, panting and worn out, and said to herself:
 “Thank Heaven! William looks like he used to do formerly on the days
that he honored me. Thank Heaven! There will be a thirteenth tribe, and then
a fresh series of tribes, for William is very methodical in all that he does!”
But William merely took a blanket off the bed and threw it over her,
saying in a voice of thunder:
“Your name is no longer Anna, Mrs. Greenfield; for the future you shall be
called Jezabel. I only regret that I have twelve times mingled my blood with
your impure blood.” And then, seized by pity, he added: “If you were only in
a state of inebriety, of intoxication, I could excuse you.”
“Well, yes, yes!” she exclaimed, repentantly, “yes, I am in that state ...
Forgive me, William — forgive a poor drunken woman!”
“I will forgive you, Anna,” he replied, and he gave her a wash-hand
basin, saying: “Cold water will do you good, and when your head is clear,
remember the lesson which you must learn from this occurrence.”
“What lesson?” she asked, humbly.
“That people ought never to depart from their usual habits.”
“But why, then, William,” she asked, timidly, “have you changed your
habits?”
“Hold your tongue!” he cried— “hold your tongue, Jezabel! Have you not
got over your intoxication yet? For twelve years I certainly followed the
divine precept: increase and multiply, once a year. But since then, I have
grown accustomed to something else, and I do not wish to alter my habits.”
And the Reverend William Greenfield, Vicar of St. Sampson’s,
Tottenham, the saintly man whose blood was inflamed by heating food and
liquor, whose ears were like full-blown poppies and who had a nose like a
tomato, left his wife and, as had been his habit for four years, went to make
love to Polly, the servant.
“Now, Polly,” he said, “you are a clever girl, and I mean, through you, to
teach Mrs. Greenfield a lesson she will never forget. I will try and see what I
can do for you.”
And in order to this, he called her his little Jezabel, and said to her, with
an unctuous smile:
“Call me Jeroboam! You don’t understand why? Neither do I, but that
does not matter. Take off all your things, Polly, and show yourself to Mrs.
Greenfield.”
The servant did as she was bidden, and the result was that Mrs.
Greenfield never again hinted to her husband the desirability of laying the
foundation of a thirteenth tribe.
 MARGOT’S TAPERS

Margot Fresquyl had allowed herself to be tempted for the first time by the
delicious intoxication of the mortal sin of loving, on the evening of
Midsummer Day.
While most of the young people were holding each others’ hands and
dancing in a circle round the burning logs, the girl had slyly taken the
deserted road which led to the wood, leaning on the arm of her partner, a tall,
vigorous farm servant, whose Christian name was Tiennou, which, by the
way, was the only name he had borne from his birth. For he was entered on
the register of births with this curt note: Father and mother unknown; he
having been found on St. Stephen’s Day under a shed on a farm, where some
poor, despairing wretch had abandoned him, perhaps even without turning
her head round to look at him.
For months Tiennou had madly worshiped that fair, pretty girl, who was
now trembling as he clasped her in his arms, under the sweet coolness of the
leaves. He religiously remembered how she had dazzled him — like some
ecstastic vision, the recollection of which always remains imprinted on the
eyes — the first time that he saw her in her father’s mill, where he had gone
to ask for work. She stood out all rosy from the warmth of the day, amidst the
impalpable clouds of flour, which diffused an indistinct whiteness through
the air. With her hair hanging about her in untidy curls, as if she had just
awakened from a profound sleep, she stretched herself lazily, with her bare
arms clasped behind her head, and yawned so as to show her white teeth,
which glistened like those of a young wolf, and her maiden nudity appeared
beneath her unbuttoned bodice with innocent immodesty. He told her that he
thought her adorable, so stupidly, that she made fun of him and scourged him
with her cruel laughter; and, from that day he spent his life in Margot’s
shadow. He might have been taken for one of those wild beasts ardent with
desire, which ceaselessly utter maddened cries to the stars on nights when
the constellations bathe the dark coverts in warm light. Margot met him
wherever she went, and seized with pity, and by degrees agitated by his sobs,
by his dumb entreaties, by the burning looks which flashed from his large
eyes, she had returned his love; she had dreamt restlessly that during a whole
night she had been in his vigorous arms which pressed her like corn that is
being crushed in the mill, that she was obeying a man who had subdued her,
and learning strange things which the other girls talked about in a low voice
when they were drawing water at the well.
She had, however, been obliged to wait until Midsummer Day, for the
miller watched over his heiress very carefully.
The two lovers told each other all this as they were going along the dark
road, and innocently giving utterance to words of happiness, which rise to the
lips like the forgotten refrain of a song. At times they were silent, not
knowing what more to say, and not daring to embrace each other any more.
The night was soft and warm, the warmth of a half-closed alcove in a
bedroom, and which had the effect of a tumbler of new wine.
The leaves were sleeping motionless and in supreme peace, and in the
distance they could hear the monotonous sound of the brooks as they flowed
over the stones. Amidst the dull noise of the insects, the nightingales were
answering each other from tree to tree, and everything seemed alive with
hidden life, and the sky was bright with such a shower of falling stars, that
they might have been taken for white forms wandering among the dark trunks
of the trees.
“Why have we come?” Margot asked, in a panting voice. “Do you not
want me any more, Tiennou?”
“Alas! I dare not,” he replied. “Listen: you know that I was picked up on
the high road, that I have nothing in the world except my two arms, and that
Miller Fresquyl will never let his daughter marry a poor devil like me.”
She interrupted him with a painful gesture, and putting her lips to his, she
said:
“What does that matter? I love you, and I want you ... Take me ...”
And it was thus, on St. John’s night, Margot Fresquyl for the first time
yielded to the mortal sin of love.

II

Did the miller guess his daughter’s secret, when he heard her singing merrily
from dawn till dusk, and saw her sitting dreaming at her window instead of
sewing as she was in the habit of doing?
Did he see it when she threw ardent kisses from the tips of her fingers to
her lover at a distance?
However that might have been, he shut poor Margot in the mill as if it had
been a prison. No more love or pleasure, no more meetings at night at the
verge of the wood. When she chatted with the passers-by, when she tried
furtively to open the gate of the enclosure and to make her escape, her father
beat her as if she had been some disobedient animal, until she fell on her
knees on the floor with clasped hands, scarcely able to move and her whole
body covered with purple bruises.
She pretended to obey him, but she revolted in her whole being, and the
string of bitter insults which he heaped upon her rang in her head. With
clenched hands, and a gesture of terrible hatred, she cursed him for standing
in the way of her love, and at night, she rolled about on her bed, bit the
sheets, moaned, stretched herself out for imaginary embraces, maddened by
the sensual heat with which her body was still palpitating. She called out
Tiennou’s name aloud, she broke the peaceful stillness of the sleeping house
with her heartrending sobs, and her dejected voice drowned the monotonous
sound of the water that was dripping under the arch of the mill, between the
immovable paddles of the wheel.

III

Then there came that terrible week in October when the unfortunate young
fellows who had drawn bad numbers had to join their regiments. Tiennou
was one of them, and Margot was in despair to think that she should not see
him for five interminable years, that they could not even, at that hour of sad
farewells, be alone and exchange those consoling words which afterwards
alleviate the pain of absence.
Tiennou prowled about the house, like a starving beggar, and one morning,
while the miller was mending the wheel, he managed to see Margot.
“I will wait for you in the old place to-night,” he whispered, in terrible
grief. “I know it is the last time ... I shall throw myself into some deep hole in
the river if you do not come! ...”
“I will be there, Tiennou,” she replied, in a bewildered manner. “I swear I
will be there ... even if I have to do something terrible to enable me to
come!”
 The village was burning in the dark night, and the flames, fanned by the
wind, rose up like sinister torches. The thatched roofs, the ricks of corn, the
haystacks, and the barns fell in, and crackled like rockets, while the sky
looked as if they were illuminated by an aurora borealis. Fresquyl’s mill
was smoking, and its calcined ruins were reflected on the deep water. The
sheep and cows were running about the fields in terror, the dogs were
howling, and the women were sitting on the broken furniture, and were crying
and wringing their hands; while during all this time Margot was abandoning
herself to her lover’s ardent caresses, and with her arms round his neck, she
said to him, tenderly:
“You see that I have kept my promise ... I set fire to the mill so that I might
be able to get out. So much the worse if all have suffered. But I do not care
as long as you are happy in having me, and love me!”
And pointing to the fire which was still burning fiercely in the distance,
she added with a burst of savage laughter:
“Tiennou, we shall not have such beautiful tapers at out wedding Mass
when you come back from your regiment!”
And thus it was that for the second time Margot Fresquyl yielded to the
mortal sin of love.
 CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT

“It is certain,” Sulpice de Laurièr said, “that I had absolutely forgotten the
date on which I was to allow myself to be taken in the very act, with a
mistress for the occasion. As neither my wife nor I had any serious nor
plausible reason for a divorce, not even the slightest incompatibility of
temper, and as there is always a risk of not softening the heart of even the
most indulgent judge when he is told that the parties have agreed to drag their
load separately, each for themselves, that they are too frisky, too fond of
pleasure and of wandering about from place to place to continue the conjugal
experiment, we between us got up the ingenious stage arrangement of, ‘a
serious wrong...’
“This was funnier than all the rest, and under any other circumstances it
would have been repugnant to me to mix up our servants in the affair like so
many others do, or to distress that pretty little, fair and delicate Parisian
woman, even though it were only in appearance and to pass as a common
Sganarelle with the manners of a carter, in the eyes of some scoundrel of a
footman, or of some lady’s maid. And so when Maître Le Chevrier, that kind
lawyer who certainly knows more female secrets than the most fashionable
confessor, gave a startled exclamation on seeing me still in my dressing-
gown, and slowly smoking a cigar like an idler who has no engagements
down on his tablets, and who is quietly waiting for the usual time for
dressing and going to dine at his club, he exclaimed:
“‘Have you forgotten that this is the day, at the Hôtel de Bade, between
five and six o’clock? In an hour, Madame de Laurière will be at the office of
the Police Commissary in the Rue de Provence, with her uncle and Maître
Cantenac ...’
“An hour; I only had an hour, sixty short minutes to dress in, to take a
room, find a woman and persuade her to go with me immediately, and to
excite her feelings, so that this extravagant adventure might not appear too
equivocal to the Commissary of Police. One hour in which to carry out such a
program was enough to make a man lose his head. And there were no
possible means of putting off that obligatory entertainment, to let Madame Le
Laurière know in time, and to gain a few minutes more.
“‘Have you found a woman, at any rate?’ Maître de Chevrier continued
anxiously.
“‘No, my dear sir!’
“I immediately began to think of the whole string of my dear female
friends. Should I choose Liline Ablette, who could refuse me nothing, Blanch
Rebus, who was the best comrade a man ever had, or Lalie Spring, that
luxurious creature, who was constantly in search of something new? Neither
one nor the other of them, for it was ninety-nine chances to one that all these
confounded girls were in the Bois de Boulogne, or at their dressmakers!”
“‘Bah! Just pick up the first girl you meet on the pavement.’
“And before the hour was up, I was bolting the door of a room, which
looked out onto the boulevard.
“The woman whom I had picked up, as she was walking past the cafés,
from the Vaudeville to Tortoni’s, was twenty at the most. She had an
impudent, snub nose, as if it had been turned up in fun by a fillip, large eyes
with-deep rims round them; her lips were too red, and she had the slow,
indolent walk of a girl who goes in for debauchery too freely and who began
too soon, but she was pretty, and her linen was very clean and neat. And she
was evidently used to chance love-making, and had a way of undressing
herself in two or three rapid movements, of throwing her toggery to the right
and left, until she was extremely lightly clad, and of throwing herself onto the
bed which astonished me as a sight that was well worth seeing.
“She did not talk much, though she began by saying: ‘Pay up at once, old
man ... You don’t look like a fellow who would bilk a girl, but it puts me into
better trim when I have been paid.’
“I gave her two napoleons, and she eyed me with gratitude and respect at
the same time, but also with that uneasy look of a girl who asks herself:
‘What does this tool expect for it?’
“The whole affair began to amuse me, and I must confess that I was rather
taken with her, for she had a beautiful figure and complexion, and I was
hoping that the Commissary would not come directly, when there was a loud
rapping at the door.
“She sat up with a start, and grew so pale that one would have said she
was about to faint.
 “‘What a set of pigs, to come and interrupt people like this!’ she muttered
between her teeth; while I affected the most complete calm.
“‘Somebody who has made a mistake in the room, my dear,’ I said.
“But this noise increased, and suddenly I heard a man’s voice saying
clearly and authoritatively:
“‘Open the door, in the name of the law!’
“On hearing that, one would have thought that she had received a shock
from an electric battery, by the nimble manner in which she jumped out of
bed; and quickly putting on her stays and her dress anyhow, she endeavored
to discover a way out in every corner of the room, like a wild beast, trying to
escape from its cage. I thought that she was going to throw herself out of the
window, so I seized hold of her to prevent her.
“The unfortunate creature acted like a madwoman, and when she felt my
arm round her waist, she cried in a hoarse voice:
“‘I see it ... You have sold me ... You thought that I should expose
myself.... Oh! you filthy brutes — you filthy brutes!’
“And suddenly, passing from abuse to entreaties, pale and with chattering
teeth, she threw herself at my feet, and said, in a low voice:
“‘Listen to me, my dear: you don’t look a bad sort of fellow, and you
would not like them to lock me up. I have a kid and the old woman to keep.
Hide me behind the bed, do, and please don’t give me up.... I will make it up
to you, and you shall have no cause for grumbling....’
“At that moment however, the lock which they had unscrewed fell onto the
floor with a metallic sound, and Madame de Laurière and the Police
Commissary, wearing his tricolored scarf, appeared in the door, while
behind them the heads of the uncle and of the lawyer could be seen
indistinctly in the background.
“The girl had uttered a cry of terror and going up to the Commissary she
said, panting:
“‘I swear to you that I am not guilty, that I was not ... I will tell you
everything if you will promise me not to tell them that I spilt, for they would
pay me out....’
“The Commissary, who was surprised, but who guessed that there was
something which was not quite clear behind all this, forgot to draw up his
report, and so the lawyer went up to him and said:
“‘Well, monsieur, what are we waiting for?’
 “But he paid no attention to anything but the woman, and looking at her
sharply and suspiciously through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he said to her
in a hard voice:
“‘Your names and surnames?’
“‘Juliette Randal, or as I am generally called, Jujutte Pipehead.’
“‘So you will swear you were not— ‘
“She interrupted him eagerly:
“‘I swear it, monsieur, and I know that my little man had nothing to do
with it either. He was only keeping a look-out while the others collared the
swag. ... I will swear that I can account for every moment of my time that
night. Roquin was drunk, and told me everything.... They got five thousand
francs from Daddy Zacharias, and of course Roquin had his share, but he did
not work with his partners. It was Minon Ménilmuche, whom they call
Drink-without-Thirst, who held the gardener’s hands, and who bled him
with a blow from his knife.’
“The Commissary let her run on, and when she had finished, he questioned
me, as if I had belonged to Jujutte’s band.
“‘Your name, Christian name, and profession?’
“‘Marquis Sulpice de Laurièr, living on my own private income, at 24,
Rue de Galilee.’
“‘De Laurièr? Oh, very well.... Excuse me, monsieur, but at Madame de
Laurière’s request, I declare formally before these gentlemen, who will be
able to give evidence, that the girl Juliette Randal, whom they call Jujutte
Tête-de-Pipe, is your mistress. You are at liberty to go, Monsieur le
Marquis, and you, girl Randal answer my questions.’
“Thus, by the most extraordinary chance, our divorce suit created a
sensation which I had certainly never foreseen. I was obliged to appear in the
Assize Court as a witness in the celebrated case of those burglars, when
three of them were condemned to death, and to undergo the questioning of the
idiotic Presiding Judge, who tried by all means in his power to make me
acknowledge that I was Jujutte Tête-de-Pipe’s regular lover; and in
consequence, ever since then I have passed as an ardent seeker after novel
sensations, and a man who wallows in the lowest depths of the Parisian
dunghill.
“I cannot say that this unjust reputation has brought me any pleasant love
affairs. Women are so perverse, so absurd, and so curious!”
 MOHAMMED FRIPOULI

“Shall we have our coffee on the roof?” asked the captain.

I answered: “Yes, certainly.”
He rose. It was already dark in the room which was lighted only by the
interior court, after the fashion of Moorish houses. Before the high, ogive
windows, convolvulus vines hung from the gnat terrace, where they passed
the hot summer evenings. There only remained upon the table some grapes,
big as plums, some fresh figs of a violet hue, some yellow pears, some long,
plump bananas, and some Tougourt dates in a basket of alfa.
The Moor who waited on them opened the door and I went upstairs to the
azure walls which received from above the soft light of the dying day.
And soon as I gave a deep sigh of happiness, on reaching the terrace. It
overlooked Algiers, the harbor, the roadstead, and the distant shores.
The house, bought by the captain, was a former Arab residence, situated
in the midst of the old city, among those labyrinthine little streets, where
swarm the strange population of the African coasts.
Beneath us, the flat, square roofs descended, like steps of giants, to the
pointed roofs of the European quarter of the city. Behind these might be
perceived the flags of the boats at anchor, then the sea, the open sea, blue and
calm under the blue and calm sky.
We stretched ourselves upon the mats, our heads resting upon cushions,
and while leisurely sipping the savory coffee of the locality, I gazed at the
first stars in the dark azure. They were hardly perceptible, so far away, so
pale as yet giving scarcely any light.
A light heat, a winged heat, caressed our skins. And at times the warm,
heavy air, in which there was a vague odor, the odor of Africa, seemed the
hot breath of the desert, coming over the peaks of Atlas. The captain, lying on
his back, said:
“What a country, my dear boy! How soft life is here! How peculiar and
delicious repose is in this land! How the nights seem to be made for
dreams.”
 I looked at the stars coming out with a lazy, yet active, curiosity, with a
drowsy happiness.
I murmured:
“You might tell me something of your life in the south.”
Captain Marret was one of the oldest officers in the army of Africa, an
officer of fortune, a former spahi, who had cut his way to his present rank.
Thanks to him, to his relations and friendships, I had been able to
accomplish a superb trip to the desert, and I had come that evening to thank
him before going to France.
He said: “What kind of a story do you want? I have had so many
adventures during twelve years of sand, that I can’t think of a single one.”
And I replied: “Well, tell me of the Arabian women.” He did not reply. He
remained stretched out with his arms bent, and his hands under his head, and
I noticed at times the odor of his cigar, the smoke of which went straight up
into the sky, so breezeless was the night.
And all of a sudden he began to laugh.
“Ah! yes, I’ll tell you about a queer affair which occurred in my first days
in Algeria.
“We had then in the army of Africa some extraordinary types, such as have
not been seen since, types which would have amused you, so much in fact,
that you would have wanted to spend all your life in this country.
“I was a simple spahi, a little spahi, twenty years old, light-haired,
swaggering, supple, and strong. I was attached to a military command at
Boghar. You know Boghar, which they call the balcony of the south. You have
seen from the top of the fort the beginning of this land of fire, devoured,
naked, tormented, stony, and red. It is really the antechamber to the desert, the
broiling and superb frontier of the immense region of yellow solitudes.
“Well, there were forty of us spahis at Boghar, a company of joyeux, and
a squadron of Chasseurs d’Afrique, when it was learned that the tribe of the
Ouled-Berghi had assassinated an English traveler, come, no man knows
how, into the country, for the English have the devil in their bodies.
“Punishment had to be given for the crime against a European; but the
commanding officer hesitated at sending a column, thinking, in truth, that one
Englishman wasn’t worth so much of a movement.
“Now, as he was talking of this affair with the captain and the lieutenant, a
quartermaster of spahis who was waiting for orders proposed all at once to
go and punish the tribe if they would give him only six men. You know that in
the south they are more free than in the city garrisons and there exists
between officer and soldier a sort of comradeship which is not found
elsewhere.
“The captain began to laugh:
“‘You, my good man?’
“‘Yes, captain, and if you desire it, I will bring you back the whole tribe
as prisoners.’
“The commandant, who had fantastic ideas, took him at his word.
“‘You will start to-morrow morning with six men of your own selection,
and if you don’t accomplish your purpose, look out for yourself.’
“The sub officer smiled in his mustache.
“‘Fear nothing, commandant. My prisoners shall be here Wednesday noon
at latest.’
“The quartermaster, Mohammed Fripouli, as he was called, was a Turk, a
true Turk, who had entered the service of France, after a life which had been
very much knocked about and not altogether too clean. He had traveled in
many places, in Greece, in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Palestine, and he had
been forced to pay a good many forfeits on the way. He was an ex-Bashi-
Bazouk, bold, ferocious, and gay, with the calm gaiety of the Oriental. He
was stout, very stout, but supple as a monkey and he rode a horse
marvelously well. His mustache, incredibly thick and long, always aroused
in me a confused idea of the crescent moon and a scimiter. He hated the
Arabs with a deadly hatred, and he pursued them with frightful cruelty,
continually inventing new tricks, calculated and terrible perfidies. He was
possessed, too, of incredible strength and inconceivable audacity.
“The commandant said to him: ‘Choose your men, my blade.’
“Mohammed took me. He had confidence in me, the brave man, and I was
grateful to him, body and soul, for this choice, which gave me as much
pleasure as the Cross of Honor later.
“So we started the next morning, at dawn, all seven of us, and nobody
else. My comrades were composed of those bandits, those plunderers, who,
after marauding and playing the vagabond in all possible countries, finish by
taking service in some foreign legion. Our army in Africa was then full of
these rascals, excellent soldiers, but not at all scrupulous.
“Mohammed had given to each to carry ten pieces of rope about a meter in
length. I was charged, besides as being the youngest and the least heavy, with
a piece about a hundred meters long. When he was asked what he was going
to do with all that rope, he answered with his sly and placid air:
“‘It is to fish for the Arabs.’
“And he winked his eye mischievously, an action which he had learned
from an old Chasseur d’Afrique from Paris.
“He marched in front of our squad, his head wrapped in a red turban,
which he always wore in a campaign, and he smiled with cunning chuckles in
his enormous mustache.
“He was truly handsome, this big Turk, with his powerful paunch, his
shoulders of a colossus and his tranquil air. He rode a white horse of medium
height, but strong; and the rider seemed ten times too big for his mount.
“We were passing through a long, dry ravine, bare and yellow, in the
valley of the Chelif, and we talked of our expedition. My companions had all
possible accents, there being among them a Spaniard, a Greek, an American,
and two Frenchmen. As for Mohammed Fripouli, he spoke with an incredibly
thick tongue.
“The sun, the terrible sun, the sun of the south, which no one knows
anything about on the other side of the Mediterranean, fell upon our
shoulders, and we advanced at a walk, as they always do in that country.
“All day we marched without meeting a tree or an Arab.
“Toward one o’clock in the afternoon, we had eaten, near a little spring
which flowed between the rocks, the bread and dried mutton which we had
brought in our knapsacks; then after twenty minutes’ rest, went out again on
our way.
“Toward six o’clock in the evening, finally, after a long detour which our
leader had forced us to make, we discovered behind a knob, a tribe
encamped. The brown, low tents made dark spots on the yellow earth,
looking like great mushrooms growing at the foot of this red hill which was
burned by the sun.
“They were our game. A little further away, on the edge of a meadow of
alfa of a dark green color, the tied horses were pasturing.
“‘Gallop!’ ordered Mohammed, and we arrived like a whirlwind in the
midst of the camp. The women, terrified, covered with white rags which
hung floating upon them, ran quickly to their canvas huts, cringing and
crouching and crying like hunted beasts. The men, on the contrary, came from
all sides to defend themselves. We struck right for the tallest tent, that of the
agha.
 “We kept our sabers in the scabbards, after the example of Mohammed,
who galloped in a singular fashion. He sat absolutely motionless, erect upon
his small horse, which strove under him madly to carry such a weight. And
the tranquillity of the rider with his long mustache contracted strangely with
the liveliness of the animal.
“The native chief came out of his tent as we arrived before it. He was a
tall, thin man, dark, with a gleaming eye, full forehead, and arched eyebrows.
“He cried in Arabic:
“‘What do you want?’
“Mohammed, stopping his horse short, replied in his language: ‘Was it
you who killed the English traveler?’
“The agha said in a strong voice:
“‘I am not going to be examined by you!’
“There was around us, as it were, a rumbling tempest. The Arabs ran up
from all sides, pressing and surrounding us, all the time vociferating loudly.
“They had the air of ferocious birds of prey, with their big curved noses,
their thin faces with high cheek-bones, their flowing garments, agitated by
their gestures.
“Mohammed smiled, his turban crooked, his eye excited, and I saw
shivers of pleasure on his cheeks which were pendulous, fleshy, and
wrinkled.
“He replied in a thunderous voice:
“‘Death to him who has given death!’
“And he pointed his revolver at the brown face of the agha. I saw a little
smoke leap from the muzzle; then a red foam of blood and brains spurted
from the forehead of the chief. He fell, like a block, on his back, spreading
out his arms, which lifted like wings the folds of his burnous.
“Truly, I thought my last day had come, such a terrible tumult rose about
us.
“Mohammed had drawn his saber. We unsheathed ours, like him. He
cried, whirling away the men, who were pressing him the closest:
“‘Life to those who submit. Death to all others.’
“And seizing the nearest in his herculean grasp, he dragged him to his
saddle, tied his hands, yelling to us:
“‘Do as I, and saber those who resist.’
“In five minutes, we had captured twenty Arabs, whose wrists we
securely bound. Then we pursued the fleeing ones, for there had been a
perfect rout around us at the sight of the naked sabers. We captured about
twenty more men.
“Over all the plains might be seen white objects which were running. The
women were dragging along their children and uttering piercing cries. The
yellow dogs, like jackals, barked around us, and showed us their white fangs.
“Mohammed, who seemed mad with joy, leaped from his horse at a bound
and seizing the cord which I had brought:
“‘Attention!’ he cried, ‘two men to the ground.’ “Then he made a terrible
and peculiar thing — a string of prisoners, or rather a string of hanged men.
He had firmly tied the two wrists of the first captive, then he made a running
knot around his neck with the same cord, which bound again the arm of the
next and twisted it around his neck. Our fifty prisoners soon found
themselves fastened in such a way that the slightest movement of one to flee
would strangle him as well as his two neighbors. Every gesture they made
pulled on the noose around their necks, and they had to march with the same
step with but a pace separating from one another, under the penalty of falling
immediately, like a hare in a snare.
“When this strange deed was done, Mohammed began to laugh, with his
silent laughter, which shook his stomach without a sound leaving his mouth.
“‘That’s an Arabian chain.’ said he.
“We began to twist and turn before the terrified and piteous faces of the
prisoners.
“‘Now,’ cried our chief, ‘at each end fix me that.’ “A stake was fastened
at each end of this ribbon of white-clad captives, like phantoms, who stood
motionless as if they had been changed into stones.
“‘Now, let us dine!’ said the Turk. A fire was made and a sheep was
cooked, which we ate with our fingers. Then we had some dates which we
found in the trees; drank some milk obtained in the Arab tents; and we picked
up a few silver trinkets forgotten by the fugitives. We were tranquilly
finishing our repast, when I perceived, on the hill opposite, a singular
gathering. It was the women who had just now fled, nothing but women. They
came running toward us. I pointed them out to Mohammed Fripouli.
“He smiled:
“‘It is the dessert!’ said he.
“‘Ah! yes! the dessert.’
“They approached, running like mad women, and soon we were peppered
with stones which they hurled at us without stopping their pace; then we saw
that they were armed with knives, tent stakes, and old utensils.
“‘To horse!’ cried Mohammed. It was time. The attack was terrible. They
came to free the prisoners and tried to cut the rope. The Turk, understanding
the danger, became furious and shouted: ‘Saber them! Saber them! Saber
them!’ And as we stood motionless, disturbed by this new kind of charge,
hesitating at killing women, he threw himself upon the advancing band.
“He charged all alone, this battalion of women, in tatters, and he began to
saber them, the wretch, like a madman, with such rage and fury, that a white
body might be seen to fall at every stroke of his arm.
“He was so terrible, that the women, terrified, fled as quickly as they had
come, leaving on the ground a dozen dead and wounded, whose crimson
blood stained their white garments.
“And Mohammed, frowning, turned toward us, exclaiming:
“‘Start, start, my sons! They will come back.’
“And we beat a retreat, conducting at a slow step our prisoners, who
were paralyzed by fear of strangulation.
“The next day, noon struck as we arrived at Boghar with our chain of
hanged men. Only six died on the way. But it had often been necessary to
loosen the knots from one end of the convoy to the other, for every shock half
strangled ten captives at once.”
The captain was silent. I did not say anything in reply. I thought of the
strange country where such things could be seen and I gazed at the
innumerable and shining flock of stars in the dark sky.
 THE CONFESSION

Monsieur de Champdelin had no reason to complain of his lot as a married

man; nor could he accuse destiny of having played him in a bad turn, as it
does so many others, for it would have been difficult to find a more
desirable, merrier, prettier little woman, or one who was easier to amuse and
to guide than his wife. To see the large, limpid eyes which illuminated her
fair, girlish face, one would think that her mother must have spent whole
nights before her birth, in looking dreamily at the stars, and so had become,
as it were, impregnated with their magic brightness. And one did not know
which to prefer — her bright, silky hair, or her slightly restroussé nose, with
its vibrating nostrils, her red lips, which looked as alluring as a ripe peach,
her beautiful shoulders, her delicate ears, which resembled mother-of-pearl,
or her slim waist and rounded figure, which would have delighted and
tempted a sculptor.
And then she was always merry, overflowing with youth and life, never
dissatisfied, only wishing to enjoy herself, to laugh, to love and be loved,
and putting all the house into a tumult, as if it had been a great cage full of
birds. In spite of all this, however, that worn out fool, Champdelin, had never
cared much about her, but had left that charming garden lying waste, and
almost immediately after their honeymoon, he had resumed is usual bachelor
habits, and had begun to lead the same fast life that he had done of old.
It was stronger than he, for his was one of those libertine natures which
are constant targets for love, and which never resign themselves to domestic
peace and happiness. The last woman who came across him, in a love
adventure, was always the one whom he loved best, and the mere contact
with a petticoat inflamed him, and made him commit the most imprudent
actions.
As he was not hard to please, he fished, as it were, in troubled waters,
went after the ugly ones and the pretty ones alike, was bold even to
impudence, was not to be kept off by mistakes, nor anger, nor modesty, nor
threats, though he sometimes fell into a trap and got a thrashing from some
relative or jealous lover; he withstood all attempts to get hush-money out of
him, and became only all the more enamored of vice and more ardent in his
lures and pursuit of love affairs on that account.
But the work-girls and the shop-girls and all the tradesmen’s wives in
Saint Martéjoux knew him, and made him pay for their whims and their
coquetry, and had to put up with his love-making. Many of them smiled or
blushed when they saw him under the tall plane-trees in the public garden, or
met him in the unfrequented, narrow streets near the Cathedral, with his thin,
sensual face, whose looks had something satyr-like about them, and some of
them used to laugh at him and make fun of him, though they ran away when he
went up to them. And when some friend or other, who was sorry that he could
forget himself so far, used to say to him, when he was at a loss for any other
argument: “And your wife, Champdelin? Are you not afraid that she will
have her revenge and pay you out in your own coin?” his only reply was a
contemptuous and incredulous shrug of the shoulders.
She deceive him, indeed; she, who was as devout, as virtuous, and as
ignorant of forbidden things as a nun, who cared no more for love than she
did for an old slipper! She, who did not even venture on any veiled allusions,
who was always laughing, who took life as it came, who performed her
religious duties with edifying assiduity, she to pay him back, so as to make
him look ridiculous, and to gad about at night? Never! Anyone who could
think such a thing must have lost his senses.
However, one summer day, when the roofs all seemed red-hot, and the
whole town appeared dead, Monsieur de Champdelin had followed two
milliner’s girls, with bandboxes in their hands from street to street,
whispering nonsense to them, and promising beforehand to give them
anything they asked him for, and had gone after them as far as the Cathedral.
In their fright, they took refuge there, but he followed them in, and,
emboldened by the solitude of the nave, and by the perfect silence in the
building, he became more enterprising and bolder. They did not know how to
defend themselves, or to escape from him, and were trembling at his daring
attempts, and at his kisses, when he saw a confessional whose doors were
open, in one of the side chapels. “We should be much more comfortable in
there, my little dears,” he said, going into it, as if to get such an unexpected
nest ready for them.
But they were quicker than he, and throwing themselves against the grated
door, they pushed it to before he could turn round, and locked him in. At first
he thought it was only a joke, and it amused him; but when they began to
laugh heartily and putting their tongues at him, as if he had been a monkey in
a cage, and overwhelmed him with insults, he first of all grew angry, and then
humble, offering to pay well for his ransom, and he implored them to let him
out, and tried to escape like a mouse does out of a trap. They, however, did
not appear to hear him, but naively bowed to him ceremoniously, wished him
good night, and ran out as fast as they could.
Champdelin was in despair; he did not know what to do, and cursed his
bad luck. What would be the end of it? Who would deliver him from that
species of prison, and was he going to remain there all the afternoon and
night, like a portmanteau that had been forgotten at the lost luggage office? He
could not manage to force the lock, and did not venture to knock hard against
the sides of the confessional, for fear of attracting the attention of some
beadle or sacristan. Oh! those wretched girls, and how people would make
fun of him and write verses about him, and point their fingers at him, if the
joke were discovered and got noised abroad!
By and by, he heard the faint sound of prayers in the distance and through
the green serge curtain that concealed him Monsieur Champdelin heard the
rattle of the beads on the chaplets, as the women repeated their Ave Maria’s,
and the rustle of dresses and the noise of footsteps on the pavement.
Suddenly, he felt a tickling in his throat that nearly choked him, and he
could not altogether prevent himself from coughing, and when at last it
passed off, the unfortunate man was horrified at hearing some one come into
the chapel and up to the confessional. Whoever it was, knelt down, and gave
a discreet knock at the grating which separated the priest from his penitents,
so he quickly put on the surplice and stole which were hanging on a nail, and
covering his face with his handkerchief, and sitting back in the shade, he
opened the grating.
It was a woman, who was already saying her prayers and he gave the
responses as well as he could, from his boyish recollections, and was
somewhat agitated by the delicious scent that emanated from her half-raised
veil and from her bodice; but at her first words he started so, that he almost
fainted. He had recognized his wife’s voice, and it felt to him as if his seat
were studded with sharp nails, that the sides of the confessional were closing
in on him, and as if the air were growing rarified.
He now collected himself, however, and regaining his self-possession, he
listened to what she had to say with increasing curiosity, and with some
uncertain, and necessary interruptions. The young woman sighed, was
evidently keeping back something, spoke about her unhappiness, her
melancholy life, her husband’s neglect, the temptations by which she was
surrounded, and which she found it so difficult to resist; her conscience
seemed to be burdened by an intolerable weight, though she hesitated to
accuse herself directly. And in a low voice, with unctuous and coaxing tones,
and mastering himself, Champdelin said:
“Courage, my child; tell me everything; the divine mercy is infinite; tell
me all, without hesitation.”
Then, all at once, she told him everything that was troubling her; how
passion and desire had thrown her into the arms of one of her husband’s best
friends, the exquisite happiness that they felt when they met every day, his
delightful tenderness, which she could no longer resist, the sin which was her
joy, her only object, her consolation, her dream. She grew excited, sobbed,
seemed enervated and worn out, as if she were still burning from her lover’s
kisses, hardly seemed to know what she was saying, and begged for
temporary absolution from her sins; but then Champdelin, in his exasperation,
and unable to restrain himself any longer, interrupted her in a furious voice:
“Oh! no! Oh! no; this is not at all funny ... keep such sort of things to
yourself, my dear!”

Poor little Madame de Champdelin nearly went out of her mind with fright
and astonishment, and they are now waiting for the decree which will break
their chains and let them part.
 WAS IT A DREAM?

OR

THE DEAD GIRL

“I had loved her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How
queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in
one’s mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips; a
name which comes up continually, which rises like the water in a spring,
from the depths of the soul, which rises to the lips, and which one repeats
over and over again which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a
prayer.
“I am going to tell you our story, for love only has one, which is always
the same. I met her and loved her; that is all. And for a whole year I have
lived on her tenderness, on her caresses, in her arms, in her dresses, on her
words, so completely wrapped up, bound, imprisoned in everything which
came from her, that I no longer knew whether it was day or night, if I was
dead or alive, on this old earth of ours, or elsewhere.
“And then she died. How? I do not know. I no longer know; but one
evening she came home wet, for it was raining heavily, and the next day she
coughed, and she coughed for about a week, and took to her bed. What
happened I do not remember now, but doctors came, wrote and went away.
Medicines were brought, and some women made her drink them. Her hands
were hot, her forehead was burning, and her eyes bright and sad. When I
spoke to her, she answered me, but I do not remember what we said. I have
forgotten everything, everything, everything! She died, and I very well
remember her slight, feeble sigh. The nurse said: ‘Ah! and I understood, I
understood!’
“I knew nothing more, nothing. I saw a priest, who said: ‘Your mistress?’
and it seemed to me as if he were insulting her. As she was dead, nobody had
the right to know that any longer, and I turned him out. Another came who
was very kind and tender, and I shed tears when he spoke to me about her.
 “They consulted me about the funeral, but I do not remember anything that
they said, though I recollected the coffin, and the sound of the hammer when
they nailed her down in it. Oh! God, God!
“She was buried! Buried! She! In that hole! Some people came — female
friends. I made my escape, and ran away; I ran, and then I walked through the
streets, and went home, and the next day I started on a journey.”

“Yesterday I returned to Paris, and when I saw my room again — our

room, our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human
being after death, I was seized by such a violent attack of fresh grief, that I
was very near opening the window and throwing myself out into the street.
As I could not remain any longer among these things, between these walls
which had enclosed and sheltered her, and which retained a thousand atoms
of her, of her skin and of her breath in their imperceptible crevices, I took up
my hat to make my escape, and just as I reached the door, I passed the large
glass in the hall, which she had put there so that she might be able to look at
herself every day from head to foot as she went out, to see if her toilet looked
well, and was correct and pretty, from her little boots to her bonnet.
“And I stopped short in front of that looking-glass in which she had so
often been reflected. So often, so often, that it also must have retained her
reflection. I was standing there, trembling, with my eyes fixed on the glass —
on that flat, profound, empty glass — which had contained her entirely, and
had possessed her as much as I had, as my passionate looks had. I felt as if I
loved that glass. I touched it, it was cold. Oh! the recollection! sorrowful
mirror, burning mirror, horrible mirror, which makes us suffer such torments!
Happy are the men whose hearts forget everything that it has contained,
everything that has passed before it, everything that has looked at itself in it,
that has been reflected in its affection, in its love! How I suffer!
“I went on without knowing it, without wishing it; I went towards the
cemetery. I found her simple grave, a white marble cross, with these few
words:
“‘She loved, was loved, and died.’
“She is there, below, decayed! How horrible! I sobbed with my forehead
on the ground, and I stopped there for a long time, a long time. Then I saw
that it was getting dark, and a strange, a mad wish, the wish of a despairing
lover seized me. I wished to pass the night, the last night in weeping on her
grave. But I should be seen and driven out. How was I to manage? I was
cunning, and got up, and began to roam about in that city of the dead. I
walked and walked. How small this city is, in comparison with the other, the
city in which we live: And yet, how much more numerous the dead are than
the living. We want high houses, wide streets, and much room for the four
generations who see the daylight at the same time, drink water from the
spring, and wine from the vines, and eat the bread from the plains.
“And for all the generations of the dead, for all that ladder of humanity
that has descended down to us, there is scarcely anything afield, scarcely
anything! The earth takes them back, oblivion effaces them. Adieu!
“At the end of the abandoned cemetery, I suddenly perceived that the one
where those who have been dead a long time finish mingling with the soil,
where the crosses themselves decay, where the last comers will be put to-
morrow. It is full of untended roses, of strong and dark cypress trees, a sad
and beautiful garden, nourished on human flesh.
“I was alone, perfectly alone, and so I crouched in a green tree, and hid
myself there completely among the thick and somber branches, and I waited,
clinging to the stem, like a shipwrecked man does to a plank.
“When it was quite dark, I left my refuge and began to walk softly, slowly,
inaudibly, through that ground full of dead people, and I wandered about for a
long time, but could not find her again. I went on with extended arms,
knocking against the tombs with my hands, my feet, my knees, my chest, even
with my head, without being able to find her. I touched and felt about like a
blind man groping his way, I felt the stones, the crosses, the iron railings, the
metal wreaths, and the wreaths of faded flowers! I read the names with my
fingers, by passing them over the letters. What a night! What a night! I could
not find her again!
“There was no moon. What a night! I am frightened, horribly frightened in
these narrow paths, between two rows of graves. Graves! graves! graves!
nothing but graves! On my right, on my left, in front of me, around me,
everywhere there were graves! I sat down on one of them, for I could not
walk any longer, my knees were so weak. I could hear my heart beat! And I
could hear something else as well. What? A confused, nameless noise. Was
the noise in my head in the impenetrable night, or beneath the mysterious
earth, the earth sown with human corpses? I looked all around me, but I
cannot say how long I remained there; I was paralyzed with terror, drunk
with fright, ready to shout out, ready to die.
 “Suddenly, it seemed to me as if the slab of marble on which I was sitting,
was moving. Certainly, it was moving, as if it were being raised. With a
bound, I sprang on to the neighboring tomb, and I saw, yes, I distinctly saw
the stone which I had just quitted, rise upright, and the dead person appeared,
a naked skeleton, which was pushing the stone back with its bent back. I saw
it quite clearly, although the night was so dark. On the cross I could read:
“‘Here lies Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He loved
his family, was kind and honorable, and died in the grace of the Lord.’
“The dead man also read what was inscribed on his tombstone; then he
picked up a stone off the path, a little, pointed stone, and began to scrape the
letters carefully. He slowly effaced them altogether, and with the hollows of
his eyes he looked at the places where they had been engraved, and, with the
tip of the bone, that had been his forefinger, he wrote in luminous letters, like
those lines which one traces on walls with the tip of a lucifer match:
“‘Here reposes Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He
hastened his father’s death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit his
fortune, he tortured his wife, tormented his children, deceived his
neighbors, robbed everyone he could, and died wretched.’
“When he had finished writing, the dead man stood motionless, looking at
his work, and on turning round I saw that all the graves were open, that all
the dead bodies had emerged from them, and that all had effaced the lies
inscribed on the gravestones by their relations, and had substituted the truth
instead. And I saw that all had been tormentors of their neighbors —
malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues, calumniators, envious; that
they had stolen, deceived, performed every disgraceful, every abominable
action, these good fathers, these faithful wives, these devoted sons, these
chaste daughters, these honest tradesmen, these men and women who were
called irreproachable, and they were called irreproachable, and they were
all writing at the same time, on the threshold of their eternal abode, the truth,
the terrible and the holy truth which everybody is ignorant of, or pretends to
be ignorant of, while the others are alive.
“I thought that she also must have written something on her tombstone, and
now, running without any fear among the half-open coffins, among the
corpses and skeletons, I went towards her, sure that I should find her
immediately. I recognized her at once, without seeing her face, which was
covered by the winding-sheet, and on the marble cross, where shortly before
I had read: ‘She loved, was loved, and died,’ I now saw: ‘Having gone out
one day, in order to deceive her lover, she caught cold in the rain and
died.’”

“It appears that they found me at daybreak, lying on the grave

unconscious.”
 THE LAST STEP

Monsier de Saint-Juéry would not have deceived his old mistress for
anything in the world: perhaps from an instinctive fear that he had heard of
adventures that turn out badly, make a noise, and bring about hateful family
quarrels, crises from which one emerges enervated and exasperated with
destiny, and, as it were, with the weight of a bullet on one’s feet, and also
from his requirement for a calm, sheep-like existence, whose monotony was
never disturbed by any shock, and perhaps from the remains of the love
which had so entirely made him, during the first years of their connection, the
slave of the proud, dominating beauty, and of the enthralling charm of that
woman.
He kept out of the way of temptation almost timidly, and was faithful to
her, and as submissive as a spaniel. He paid her every attention, did not
appear to notice that the outlines of her figure, which had formerly been so
harmonious and supple, were getting too full and puffy, that her face, which
used to remind him of a blush rose, was getting wrinkled, and that her eyes
were getting dull. He admired her in spite of everything, almost blindly, and
clothed her with imaginary charms, with an autumnal beauty, with the
majestic and serene softness of an October twilight, and with the last
blossoms which unfold by the side of the walks, strewn with dead leaves.
But although their connection had lasted for many years, though they were
as closely bound to each other as if they had been married, and although
Charlotte Guindal pestered him with entreaties, and upset him with continual
quarrels on the subject, and, in spite of the fact that he believed her to be
absolutely faithful to him, and worthy of his most perfect confidence and
love, yet Monsieur de Saint-Juéry had never been able to make up his mind
to give her his name, and to put their false position on a legal footing.
He really suffered from this, but remained firm and defended his position,
quibbled, sought for subterfuges, replied by the eternal and vague: “What
would be the good of it,” which nearly sent Charlotte mad, made her furious
and caused her to say angry and ill-tempered things. But he remained passive
and listless, with his back bent like a restive horse under the whip.
 He asked her whether it was really necessary to their happiness, as they
had no children? Did not everybody think that they were married? Was not
she everywhere called Madame de Saint-Juéry, and had their servants any
doubt that they were in the service of respectable, married people? Was not
the name which had been transmitted to a man from father to son, intact,
honored, and often with a halo of glory round it, a sacred trust which no one
had a right to touch? What would she gain if she bore it legitimately? Did she
for a moment suppose that she would rise higher in people’s estimation, and
be more admitted into society, or that people would forget that she had been
his regular mistress before becoming his wife? Did not everybody know that
formerly, before he rescued her from that Bohemian life in which she had
been waiting for her chance in vain, and was losing her good looks, Charlotte
Guindal frequented all the public balls, and showed her legs liberally at the
Moulin-Rouge.
Charlotte knew his crabbed, though also kindly character, which was at
the same time logical and obstinate, too well to hope that she would ever be
able to overcome his opposition and scruples, except by some clever
woman’s trick, some well-acted scene in a comedy; so she appeared to be
satisfied with his reasons, and to renounce her bauble, and outwardly she
showed an equable and conciliatory temper, and no longer worried Monsieur
de Saint-Juéry with her recriminations, and thus the time went by, in calm
monotony, without fruitless battles or fierce assaults.
Charlotte Guindal’s medical man was Doctor Rabatel, one of those clever
men who appear to know everything, but whom a country bone-setter would
reduce to a “why?” by a few questions; one of those men who wish to
impress everybody with their apparent value, and who make use of their
medical knowledge as if it were some productive commercial house, which
carried on a suspicious business; who can scent out those persons whom they
can manage as they please, as if they were a piece of soft wax, who keep
them in a continual state of terror, by keeping the idea of death constantly
before their eyes.
They soon manage to obtain the mastery over such persons, scrutinize
their consciences as well as the cleverest priest could do, make sure of being
well paid for their complicity as soon as they have obtained a footing
anywhere, and drain their patients of their secrets, in order to use them as a
weapon for extorting money on occasions. He felt sure immediately that this
middle-aged lady wanted something of him, as by some extraordinary
perversion of taste, he was rather fond of the remains of a good-looking
woman, if they were well got up, and offered to him; of that high flavor
which arises from soft lips, which had been made tender through years of
love, from gray hair powdered with gold, from a body engaged in its last
struggle, and which dreams of one more victory before abdicating power
altogether, he did not hesitate to become his new patient’s lover.
When winter came, however, a thorough change took place in Charlotte’s
health, that had hitherto been so good. She had no strength left, she felt ill
after the slightest exertion, complained of internal pains, and spent whole
days lying on the couch, with set eyes and without uttering a word, so that
everybody thought that she was dying of one of those mysterious maladies
which cannot be coped with, but which, by degrees, undermines the whole
system. It was sad to see her rapidly sinking, lying motionless on her
pillows, while a mist seemed to have come over her eyes, and her hands lay
helplessly on the bed and her mouth seemed sealed by some invisible finger.
Monsieur de Saint-Juéry was in despair; he cried like a child, and he
suffered as if somebody had plunged a knife into him, when the doctor said to
him in his unctuous voice:
“I know that you are a brave man, my dear sir, and I may venture to tell
you the whole truth.... Madame de Saint-Juéry is doomed, irrevocably
doomed.... Nothing but a miracle can save her, and alas! there are no
miracles in these days. The end is only a question of a few hours, and may
come quite suddenly....”
Monsieur de Saint-Juéry had thrown himself into a chair, and was sobbing
bitterly, covering his face with his hands.
“My poor dear, my poor darling,” he said, through his tears.
“Pray compose yourself, and be brave,” the doctor continued, sitting
down by his side, “for I have to say something serious to you, and to convey
to you our poor patient’s last wishes.... A few minutes ago, she told me the
secret of your double life, and of your connection with her.... And now, in
view of death, which she feels approaching so rapidly, for she is under no
delusion, the unhappy woman wishes to die at peace with heaven, with the
consolation of having regulated her equivocal position, and of having
become your wife.”
Monsieur de Saint-Juéry sat upright, with a bewildered look, while he
moved his hands nervously; in his grief he was incapable of manifesting any
will of his own, or of opposing this unexpected attack.
 “Oh! anything that Charlotte wishes, doctor; anything, and I will myself go
and tell her so, on my knees!”

The wedding took place discreetly, with something funereal about it, in
the darkened room, where the words which were spoken had a strange sound,
almost of anguish. Charlotte, who was lying in bed, with her eyes dilated
through happiness, had put both trembling hands into those of Monsieur de
Saint-Juéry, and she seemed to expire with the word: “Yes” on her lips. The
doctor looked at the moving scene, grave and impassive, with his chin buried
in his white cravat, and his two arms resting on the mantel-piece, while his
eyes twinkled behind his glasses....
The next week, Madame de Saint-Juéry began to get better, and that
wonderful recovery about which Monsieur de Saint-Juéry tells everybody
with effusive gratitude, who will listen to him, has so increased Doctor
Rabatel’s reputation, that at the next election he will be made a member of
the Academy of Medicine.
 ONE EVENING

The steamboat Kleber had stopped, and I was admiring the beautiful bay of
Bougie, that was opened out before us. The high hills were covered with
forests, and in the distance the yellow sands formed a beach of powdered
gold, while the sun shed its fiery rays on the white houses of the town.
The warm African breeze blew the odor of that great, mysterious continent
into which men of the Northern races but rarely penetrate, into my face. For
three months I had been wandering on the borders of that great, unknown
world, on the outskirts of that strange world of the ostrich, the camel, the
gazelle, the hippopotamus, the gorilla, the lion and the tiger, and the negro. I
had seen the Arab galloping like the wind, and passing like a floating
standard, and I had slept under those brown tents, the moving habitation of
those white birds of the desert, and I felt, as it were, intoxicated with light,
with fancy, and with space.
But now, after this final excursion, I should have to start, to return to
France and to Paris, that city of useless chatter, of commonplace cares, and
of continual hand-shaking, and I should bid adieu to all that I had got to like
so much, which was so new to me, which I had scarcely had time to see
thoroughly, and which I so much regretted to leave.
A fleet of small boats surrounded the steamer, and, jumping into one
rowed by a negro lad, I soon reached the quay near the old Saracen gate,
whose gray ruins at the entrance of the Kabyle town, looked like an old
escutcheon of nobility. While I was standing by the side of my portmanteau,
looking at the great steamer lying at anchor in the roads, and filled with
admiration at that unique shore, and that semi-circle of hills, bathed in blue
light, which were more beautiful than those of Ajaccio, or of Porto, in
Corsica, a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and on turning round I saw a
tall man with a long beard, dressed in white flannel, and wearing a straw hat,
standing by my side, and looking at me with his blue eyes.
“Are you not an old school-fellow of mine?” he said.
“It is very possible. What is your name?”
“Trémoulin.”
 “By Jove! You were in the same class as I was.”
“Ah! Old fellow, I recognized you immediately.”
He seemed so pleased, so happy at seeing me, that in an outburst of
friendly selfishness, I shook both the hands of my former school-fellow
heartily, and felt very pleased at meeting him thus.
For four years Trémoulin had been one of the best and most intimate
school friends, one of those whom we are too apt to forget as soon as we
leave. In those days he had been a tall, thin fellow, whose head seemed to be
too heavy for his body; it was a large, round head, and hung sometimes to the
right and sometimes to the left, onto his chest. Trémoulin was very clever,
however, and had a marvelous aptitude for learning, and had an instinctive
intuition for all literary studies, and gained nearly all the prizes in our class.
We were fully convinced at school, that he would turn out a celebrated
man, a poet, no doubt, for he wrote verses, and was full of ingeniously
sentimental ideas. His father, who kept a chemist’s shop near the Panthéon,
was not supposed to be very well off, and I had lost sight of him as soon as
he had taken his bachelor’s degree, and now I naturally asked him what he
was doing there.
“I am a planter,” he replied.
“Bah! You really plant?”
“And I have my harvest.”
“What is it?”
“Grapes, from which I make wine.”
“Is your wine-growing a success?”
“A great success.”
“So much the better, old fellow.”
“Were you going to the hotel?”
“Of course I was.”
“Well, then, you must just come home with me, instead!”
“But! ...”
“The matter is settled.”
And he said to the young negro who was watching our movements: “Take
that home, Al.”
And the lad put my portmanteau on his shoulder, and set off, raising the
dust with his black feet, while Trémoulin took my arm and led me off. First
of all, he asked me about my journey, and what impressions it had had on me,
and seeing how enthusiastic I was about it, he seemed to like me better than
ever. He lived in an old Moorish house, with an interior courtyard, without
any windows looking into the street, and commanded by a terrace, which, in
its turn, commanded those of the neighboring houses, as well as the bay, and
the forests, the hill, and the open sea, and I could not help exclaiming:
“Ah! That is what I like; the whole of the East lays hold of me in this
place. You are indeed lucky to be living here! What nights you must spend
upon that terrace! Do you sleep there?”
“Yes, in the summer. We will go onto it this evening. Are you fond of
fishing?”
“What kind of fishing?”
“Fishing by torchlight.”
“Yes, I am particularly fond of it.”
“Very well, then, we will go after dinner, and we will come back and
drink sherbet on my roof.”
After I had had a bath, he took me to see the charming Kabyle town, a
veritable cascade of white houses toppling down to the sea, and then, when it
was getting dusk, we went in, and after an excellent dinner, we went down to
the quay, and we saw nothing except the fires and the stars, those large,
bright, scintillating African stars. A boat was waiting for us, and as soon as
we had got in, a man whose face I could not distinguish, began to row, while
my friend was getting ready the brazier which he would light later, and he
said to me: “You know I have a mania for a fish-spear, and nobody can
handle it better than I can.”
“Allow me to compliment you on your skill.” We had rowed round a kind
of mole, and now we were in a small bay full of high rocks, whose shadows
looked like towers built in the water, and I suddenly perceived that the sea
was phosphorescent, and as the oars moved gently, they seemed to light up
moving flames, that followed in our wake, and then died out, and I leant over
the side of the boat and watched it, as we glided over that glimmer in the
darkness.
Where were we going to? I could not see my neighbors; in fact, I could
see nothing but the luminous ripple, and the sparks of water dropping from
the oars; it was hot, very hot, and the darkness seemed as hot as a furnace,
and this mysterious motion with these two men in that silent boat, had a
peculiar effect upon me.
Suddenly the rower stopped. Where were we? I heard a slight scratching
noise close to me, and I saw a hand, nothing but a hand applying a lighted
match to the iron grating which was fastened over the bows of the boat,
which was covered with wood, as if it had been a floating funeral pile, and
which soon was blazing brightly and illuminating the boat and the two men,
an old, thin, pale, wrinkled sailor, with a pocket-handkerchief tied round his
head, instead of a cap, and Trémoulin, whose fair beard glistened in the light.
The other began to row again, while Trémoulin kept throwing wood onto
the brazier, which burnt red and brightly. I leant over the side again, and
could see the bottom, and a few feet below us there was that strange country
of the water, which vivifies plants and animals, just like the air of heaven
does. Trémoulin, who was standing in the bows with his body bent forward,
and holding the sharp-pointed trident in his hand, was on the look-out with
the ardent gaze of a beast of prey watching for its spoil, and, suddenly, with a
swift movement, he darted his forked weapon into the sea so vigorously that
it secured a large fish swimming near the bottom. It was a conger eel, which
managed to wriggle, half dead as it was, into a puddle of the brackish water.
Trémoulin again threw his spear, and when he pulled it up, I saw a great
lump of red flesh which palpitated, moved, rolled and unrolled, long, strong,
soft feelers round the handle of the trident. It was an octopus, and Trémoulin
opened his knife, and with a swift movement plunged it between the eyes,
and killed it. And so our fishing continued until the wood began to run short.
When there was not enough left to keep up the fire, Trémoulin dipped the
braziers into the sea, and we were again buried in darkness.
The old sailor began to row again, slowly and regularly, though I could
not tell where the land or where the port was. By-and-bye, however, I saw
lights. We were nearing the harbor.
“Are you sleepy?” my friend said to me.
“Not the slightest.”
“Then we will go and have a chat on the roof.”
“I shall be delighted.”
Just as we got onto the terrace, I saw the crescent moon rising behind the
mountains, and around us, the white houses, with their flat roofs, descending
down towards the sea, while human forms were standing or lying on them,
sleeping or dreaming under the stars; whole families wrapped in long gowns,
and resting in the calm night, after the heat of the day.
It suddenly seemed to me as if the Eastern mind were taking possession of
me, the poetical and legendary spirit of a people with simply and flowery
thoughts. My head was full of the Bible and of The Arabian Nights; I could
hear the prophets proclaiming miracles, and I could see princesses wearing
silk drawers on the roofs of the palaces, while delicate perfumes, whose
smoke assumed the forms of genii, were burning on silver dishes, and I said
to Trémoulin:
“You are very fortunate in living here.”
“I came here quite by accident,” he replied.
“By accident?”
“Yes, accident and unhappiness brought me here.”
“You have been unhappy?”
“Very unhappy.”
He was standing in front of me, wrapped in his bournoose, and his voice
had such a painful ring in it that it almost made me shiver; after a moment’s
silence, he continued:
“I will tell you what my troubles have been; perhaps it will do me good to
speak about them.”
“Let me hear them.”
“Do you really wish it?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. You remember what I was at school; a sort of poet,
brought up in a chemist’s shop. I dreamt of writing books, and I tried it, after
taking my degree, but I did not succeed. I published a volume of verse, and
then a novel, and neither of them sold, and then I wrote a play, which was
never acted.”
“Next, I lost my heart, but I will not give you an account of my passion.
Next door to my father’s shop, there was a tailor’s, who had a daughter, with
whom I fell in love. She was very clever, and had obtained her certificates
for higher education, and her mind was bright and active, quite in keeping
indeed with her body. She might have been taken for fifteen, although she was
two-and-twenty. She was very small, with delicate features, outlines and
tints, just like some beautiful water color. Her nose, her mouth, her blue eyes,
her light hair, her smile, her waist, her hands, all looked as if they were fit
for a stained window, and not for everyday life, but she was lively, supple,
and incredibly active, and I was very much in love with her. I remember two
or three walks in the Luxembourg Garden, near the Medices fountain, which
were certainly the happiest hours of my life. I dare say you have known that
foolish condition of tender madness, which causes us to think of nothing but
of acts of adoration! One really becomes possessed, haunted by a woman,
and nothing exists for us, by the side of her.
“We soon became engaged, and I told her my projects of the future, which
she did not approve of. She did not believe that I was either a poet, a
novelist, or a dramatic author, and thought a prosperous business could
afford perfect happiness. So I gave up the idea of writing books, and
resigned myself to selling them, and I bought a bookseller’s business at
Marseilles, the owner of which had just died.
“I had three very prosperous years. We had made our shop into a sort of
literary drawing-room, where all the men of letters in the town used to come
and talk. They came in, as if it had been a club, and exchanged ideas on
books, on poets, and especially on politics. My wife, who took a very active
part in the business, enjoyed quite a reputation in the town, but, as for me,
while they were all talking downstairs, I was working in my studio upstairs,
which communicated with the shop by a winding staircase. I could hear their
voices, their laughter, and their discussions, and sometimes I left off writing
in order to listen. I kept in my own room to write a novel — which I never
finished.
“The most regular frequenters of the shop were Monsieur Montina, a man
of good private means, a tall, handsome man, like one meets with in the South
of France, with an olive skin, and dark, expressive eyes; Monsieur Barbet, a
magistrate; two merchants, who were partners, Messrs. Faucil and
Labarrègue, and General, the Marquis de la Flèche, the head of the Royalist
party, the principal man in the whole district, an old fellow of sixty-six.
“My business prospered, and I was happy, very happy. One day, however,
about three o’clock, when I was out on business, as I was going through the
Rue Saint Ferréol, I suddenly saw a woman come out of a house, whose
figure and appearance were so much like my wife’s that I should have said to
myself: ‘There she is!’ if I had not left her in the shop half an hour before,
suffering from a headache. She was walking quickly on before me, without
turning round, and, in spite of myself, I followed her, as I felt surprised and
uneasy. I said to myself: ‘It it she; no, it is quite impossible, as she has a sick
headache. And then, what could she have to do in that house?’ However, as I
wished to have the matter cleared up, I made haste after her. I do not know
whether she felt or guessed that I was behind her, or whether she recognized
my step, but she turned round suddenly. It was she! When she saw me, she
grew very red and stopped, and then, with a smile, she said: ‘Oh! Here you
are!’ I felt choking.
“‘Yes; so you have come out? And how is your headache?’
“‘It is better, and I have been out on an errand.’
“‘Where?’
“‘To Lacaussade’s, in the Rue Cassinelli, to order some pencils,’
“She looked me full in the face. She was not flushed now, but rather pale,
on the contrary. Her clear, limpid eyes — ah! those women’s eyes! —
appeared to be full of truth, but I felt vaguely and painfully that they were full
of lies. I was much more confused and embarrassed than she was herself,
without venturing to suspect, but sure that she was lying, though I did not
know why, and so I merely said:
“‘You were quite right to go out, if you felt better.’
“‘Oh! yes; my head is much better.’
“‘Are you going home?’
“‘Yes, of course I am.’
“I left her, and wandered about the streets by myself. What was going on?
While I was talking to her, I had an intuitive feeling of her falseness, but now
I could not believe that it was so, and when I returned home to dinner, I was
angry for having suspected her, even for a moment.
“Have you ever been jealous? It does not matter whether you have or not,
but the first drop of jealousy had fallen into my heart, and that is always like
a spark of fire. It did not formulate anything, and I did not think anything; I
only knew that she had lied. You must remember that every night, after the
customers and clerks had left, we were alone, and either strolled as far as the
harbor, when it was fine, or remained talking in my office, if the weather was
bad, and I used to open my heart to her without any reserve, because I loved
her. She was part of my life, the greater part, and all my happiness, and in her
small hands she held my trusting, faithful heart captive.
“During those first days, those days of doubt, and before my suspicions
increased and assumed a precise shape, I felt as depressed and chilly as
when we are going to be seriously ill. I was continually cold, really cold,
and could neither eat nor sleep. Why had she told me a lie? What was she
doing in that house? I went there, to try and find out something, but I could
discover nothing. The man who rented the first floor, and who was an
upholsterer, had told me all about his neighbors, but without helping me the
least. A midwife had lived on the second floor, a dressmaker and a manicure
and chiropodist on the third, and two coachmen and their families in the
attics.
“Why had she told me a lie? It would have been so easy for her to have
said that she had been to the dressmaker’s or the chiropodist’s. Oh! How I
longed to question them, also! I did not say so, for fear that she might guess
my suspicions. One thing, however, was certain; she had been into that house,
and had concealed the fact from me, so there was some mystery in it. But
what? At one moment, I thought there might be some laudable purpose in it,
some charitable deed that she wished to hide, some information which she
wished to obtain, and I found fault with myself for suspecting her. Have not
all of us the right of our little, innocent secrets, a kind of second, interior life,
for which one ought not to be responsible to anybody? Can a man, because he
has taken a girl to be his companion through life, demand that she shall
neither think nor do anything without telling him, either before or afterwards?
Does the word marriage mean renouncing all liberty and independence? Was
it not quite possible that she was going to the dressmaker’s without telling
me, or that she was going to assist the family of one of the coachmen? Or she
might have thought that I might criticize, if not blame, her visit to the house.
She knew me thoroughly, and my slightest peculiarities, and perhaps she
feared a discussion, even if she did not think that I should find fault with her.
She had very pretty hands, and I ended by supposing that she was having
them secretly attended to by the manicure in the house which I suspected, and
that she did not tell me of it, for fear that I should think her extravagant. She
was very methodical and economical, +and looked after all her household
duties most carefully, and no doubt she thought that she should lower herself
in my eyes, were she to confess that slight piece of feminine extravagance.
Women have very many subtleties and innate tricks in their soul!
“But none of my own arguments reassured me. I was jealous, and I felt
that my suspicion was affecting me terribly, that I was being devoured by it. I
felt secret grief and anguish, and a thought which I still veiled, and I did not
dare to lift the veil, for beneath it I should find a terrible doubt.... A lover! ...
Had not she a lover? ... It was unlikely, impossible.... A mere dream ... and
yet? ...
“I continually saw Montina’s face before my eyes. I saw the tall, silly-
looking, handsome man, with his bright hair, smiling into her face, and I said
to myself: ‘He is the one!’ I concocted a story of their intrigues. They had
talked a book over together, had discussed the love ventures it contained, had
found something in it that resembled them, and they had turned that analogy
into reality. And so I watched them, a prey to the most terrible sufferings that
a man can endure. I bought shoes with india-rubber soles, so that I might be
able to walk about the house without making any noise, and I spent half my
time in going up and down my little spiral staircase, in the hope of surprising
them, but I always found that the clerk was with them.
“I lived in a constant state of suffering. I could no longer work, nor attend
to my business. As soon as I went out, as soon as I had walked a hundred
yards along the street, I said to myself: ‘He is there!’ and when I found he
was not there, I went out again! But almost immediately I went back again,
thinking: ‘He has come now!’ and that went on every day.
“At night it was still worse, for I felt her by my side in bed asleep, or
pretending to be asleep! Was she really sleeping? No, most likely not. Was
that another lie?
“I remained motionless on my back, hot from the warmth of her body,
panting and tormented. Oh! how intensely I longed to get up, to get a hammer
and to split her head open, so as to be able to see inside it! I knew that I
should have seen nothing except what is to be found in every head, and I
should have discovered nothing, for that would have been impossible. And
her eyes! When she looked at me, I felt furious with rage. I looked at her ...
she looked at me! Her eyes were transparent, candid ... and false, false!
Nobody could tell what she was thinking of, and I felt inclined to run pins
into them, and to destroy those mirrors of falseness.
“Ah! how well I could understand the Inquisition! I would have applied
the torture, the boot.... Speak!...Confess!...You will not? ...Then wait!...And I
would have seized her by the throat until I choked her.... Or else I would
have held her fingers into the fire. ...Oh! how I should have enjoyed doing it!
...Speak!...Speak!...You will not? I would have held them on the coals, and
when the tips were burnt, she would have confessed... certainly she would
have confessed!”
Trémoulin was sitting up, shouting, with clenched fists. Around us, on the
neighboring roofs, people awoke and sat up, as he was disturbing their sleep.
As for me, I was moved and powerfully interested, and in the darkness I
could see that little woman, that little, fair, lively, artful woman, as if I had
known her personally. I saw her selling her books, talking with the men
whom her childish ways attracted, and in her delicate, doll-like head, I could
see little crafty ideas, silly ideas, the dreams which a milliner smelling of
musk attached to all heroes of romantic adventures. I suspected her just like
he did, I hated and detested her, and would willingly have burnt her fingers
and made her confess.
Presently, he continued more calmly: “I do not know why I have told you
all this, for I have never mentioned it to anyone, but then, I have not seen
anybody or spoken to anybody for two years! And it was seething in my heart
like a fermenting wine. I have got rid of it, and so much the worse for you.
Well, I had made a mistake, but it was worse than I thought, much worse. Just
listen. I employed the means which a man always does under such
circumstances, and pretended that I was going to be away from home for a
day, and whenever I did this my wife went out to lunch. I need not tell you
how I bribed a waiter in the restaurant to which they used to go, so that I
might surprise them.
“He was to open the door of their private room for me and I arrived at the
appointed time, with the fixed determination of killing them both. I could see
the whole scene, just as if it had already occurred! I could see myself going
in. A small table covered with glasses, bottles and plates separated her from
Montina, and they would be so surprised when they saw me, that they would
not even attempt to move, and without a word, I should bring down the
loaded stick which I had in my hand, on the man’s head. Killed by one blow,
he would fall with his head on the table, and then, turning towards her, I
should leave her time — a few moments — to understand it all and to stretch
out her arms towards me, mad with terror, before dying in her turn. Oh! I was
ready, strong, determined, and pleased, madly pleased at the idea. The idea
of the terrified look that she would throw at my raised stick, of her arms that
she would stretch out to me, of her horrified cry, of her livid and convulsed
looks, avenged me beforehand. I would not kill her at one blow! You will
think me cruel, I dare say; but you do not know what a man suffers. To think
that a woman, whether she be wife or mistress, whom one loves, gives
herself to another, yields herself up to him as she does to you, and receives
kisses from his lips, as she does from yours! It is a terrible, an atrocious
thing to think of. When one feels that torture, one is ready for anything. I only
wonder that more women are not murdered, for every man who has been
deceived longs to commit murder, has dreamt of it in the solitude of his own
room, or on a deserted road, and has been haunted by the one fixed idea of
satisfied vengeance.
 “I arrived at the restaurant, and asked whether they were there. The waiter
whom I had bribed replied: ‘Yes, Monsieur,’ and taking me upstairs, he
pointed to a door, and said: ‘That is the room!’ So I grasped my stick, as if
my fingers had been made of iron, and went in. I had chosen a most
appropriate moment, for they were kissing most lovingly, but it was not
Montina; it was General de la Fléche, who was sixty-six years old, and I had
so fully made up my mind that I should find the other one there, I was
motionless from astonishment.
“And then ... and then, I really do not quite know what I thought; no, I
really do not know. If I had found myself face to face with the other, I should
have been convulsed with rage, but on seeing this old man, with a fat stomach
and pendulous cheeks, I was nearly choked with disgust. She, who did not
look fifteen, small and slim as she was, had given herself to this fat man, who
was nearly paralyzed, because he was a marquis and a general, the friend
and representative of dethroned kings. No, I do not know what I felt, nor
what I thought. I could not have lifted my hand against this old man; it would
have been a disgrace to me, and I no longer felt inclined to kill my wife, but
all women who could be guilty of such things! I was no longer jealous, but
felt distracted, as if I had seen the horror of horrors!
“Let people say what they like of men, they are not so vile as that! If a man
is known to have given himself up to an old woman in that fashion, people
point their fingers at him. The husband or lover of an old woman is more
despised than a thief. We men are a decent lot, as a rule, but many women,
especially in Paris, are absolutely bad. They will give themselves to all men,
old or young, from the most contemptible and different motives, because it is
their profession, their vocation, and their function. They are the eternal,
unconscious, and serene prostitutes, who give up their bodies, because they
are the merchandise of love, which they sell or give, to the old man who
frequents the pavements with money in his pocket, or else for glory, to a
lecherous old king, or to a celebrated and disgusting old man.”
He vociferated like a prophet of old, in a furious voice, under the starry
sky, and with the rage of a man in despair, he repeated all the glorified
disgrace of all the mistresses of old kings, the respectable shame of all those
virgins who marry old husbands, the tolerated disgrace of all those young
women who accept old kisses with a smile.
I could see them, as he evoked their memory, since the beginning of the
world, surging round us in that Eastern night, girls, beautiful girls, with vile
souls, who, like the lower animals, who know nothing of the age of the male,
are docile to senile desires. They rose up before one, the handmaids of the
patriarchs, who are mentioned in the Bible, Hagar, Ruth, the daughters of Lot,
Abigail, Abishag, the virgin of Shunam, who reanimated David with her
caresses when he was dying, and the others, young, stout, white, patricians or
plebeians, irresponsible females belonging to a master, and submissive
slaves, whether caught by the attraction of royalty, or bought as slaves!
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I went away,” he replied simply. And we remained sitting side by side
for a long time without speaking, only dreaming! ...
I have retained an impression of that evening that I can never forget. All
that I saw, felt, and heard, our fishing excursion, the octopus also, perhaps
that harrowing story, amidst those white figures on the neighboring roofs, all
seemed to concur in producing a unique sensation. Certain meetings, certain
inexplicable combinations of things, decidedly contain a larger quantity of
the secret quintessence of life, than that which is spread over the ordinary
events of our days, without anything exceptional happening to them.
 THE HERMAPHRODITE

“Upon my word, I laughed at it as much as the rest,” Navarette exclaimed; “I

laughed at it with that profound, cruel pitilessness which we all of us, who
are well made and vigorous, feel for those whom their step-mother, Nature,
has disfigured in some way or other, for those laughable, feeble creatures
who are, however, more to be pitied than those poor deformed wretches from
whom we turn away in spite of ourselves.
“I had been the first to make fun of him at the club, to find those easy
words which are remembered, and to turn that smooth, flabby, pink, ugly
face, like that of an old woman, and of a Levantine eunuch in which the mouth
is like a piece of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten with
concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of a gorilla,
at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish, without any
affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a weathercock with every
wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the world except gambling and old
Dresden china.
“However, our intercourse was invariably limited to a careless, ‘Good
morning,’ and to the usual shake of the hands which men exchange when they
meet at the theater or the club, and so I had neither to defend him, nor to
uphold him as a friend. But I can swear to you that now I reproach myself for
all these effusive jeers and bitter things, and they weigh on my conscience
now that I have been told the other side, the equivocal enigma of that
existence.”
“A Punch and Judy secret,” Bob Shelley said, throwing the end of his
cigar into the fire.
“Oh! yes; we were a hundred miles from the truth when we merely
supposed that he was unfit for service. This unhappy Lantosque, a well-born,
clever man, and very rich to boot, might have exhibited himself in some
traveling booth, for he was an hermaphrodite; do you understand? an
hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of
physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which
Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly everything
of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our sex, with his
shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a loose, wide coat, his
cheeks, his chin, and upper lip without a vestige of hair, and he had to appear
like a man, to restrain and stifle his instincts, his tastes, desires, and dreams,
to fight ceaselessly against himself, and never to allow anything of that which
he endured, nor what he longed for, nor that which was sapping his very life,
to be discovered.
“Once only he was on the point of betraying himself, in spite of himself.
He ardently loved a man, as Chloe must have loved Daphnis. He could not
master himself, or calm his feverish passion, and went towards the abyss as
if seized by mental giddiness. He could imagine nothing handsomer, more
desirable, or more charming than that chance friend. He had sudden
transports, fits of surprise, tenderness, curiosity, jealousy, the ardent longings
of an old maid who is afraid of dying a virgin, who is waiting for love as for
her deliverance, who attaches herself and devotes herself to a lover with her
whole being, and who grows emaciated and dries up, and remains
misunderstood and despised.
“And as they have both disappeared now, the lover dead from a sword
thrust in the middle of the chest, at Milan, on account of some ballet girl, and
as he certainly died without knowing that he had inspired such a passion, I
may tell you his name.
“He was Count Sebinico, who used to deal at faro with such delicate,
white hands, and who wore rings on nearly every finger, who had such a
musical voice, and who, with his wavy hair, and his delicate profile, looked
like a handsome, Florentine Condottiere.
“It must be very terrible to be thus ashamed of oneself, to have that
longing for kisses which console the most wretched in their misery, which
satisfy hunger and thirst, and assuage pain; that illusion of delicious,
intoxicating kisses, the delight and the balm of which such a person can never
know; the horror of that dishonor of being pointed at, made fun of, driven
away like unclean creatures that prostitute their sex, and make love vile by
unmentionable rites; oh! the constant bitterness of seeing that the person we
love makes fun of us, ill-uses us, and does not show us even the slightest
friendship!”
“Poor devil!” Jean d’Orthyse said, in a sad and moved voice. “In his
place, I should have blown my brains out.”
 “Everybody says that, my dear fellow, but how few there are who venture
to forestall that intruder, who always come too quickly.”
“Lantosque had splendid health, and declared that he had never put a
penny into a doctor’s pocket, and if he had allowed himself to have been
looked after when he was confined to his bed two months before, by an
attack of influenza, we should still be hearing him propose a game of poker
before dinner, in his shrill voice. His death, however, was as tragic and
mysterious as all those tales from beyond the grave are, on which the
Invisible rests.”
“Although he had a cough, which threatened to tear his chest to pieces,
and although he was haunted by the fear of death, of that great depth of
darkness in which we lose ourselves in the abyss of Annihilation and
Oblivion, he obstinately refused to have his chest sounded, and repulsed
Doctor Pertuzés almost furiously, who thought he had gone out of his mind.”
“He cowered down, and covered himself with the bed-clothes up to his
chin, and found strength enough to tear up the prescriptions, and to drive
everyone, whether friend or relation, who tried to make him listen to reason,
and who could not understand his attacks of rage and neurosis from his
bedside. He seemed to be possessed by some demon, like those women in
hysterical convulsions, whom the bishops used formerly to exorcise writh
much pomp. It was painful to see him.”
“That went on for a week, during which time the pneumonia had ample
opportunities for ravaging and giving the finishing stroke to his body, which
had been so robust and free from ailments hitherto, and he died, trying to utter
some last words which nobody understood, and endeavoring to point out one
particular article of furniture in the room.”
“His nearest relation was a cousin, the Marquis de Territet, a skeptic,
who lived in Burgundy, and whom all this disturbance had upset in his habits,
and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal formalities, the funeral,
and all the rest of it, as soon as possible.
“Without reflecting on the strange suggestiveness of that death-bed, and
without looking to see whether there might not be, somehow or other, a will
in which Lantosque expressed his last wishes, he wanted to spare his corpse
the contact of mercenary hands, and to lay him out himself.
“You may judge of his surprise when, on throwing back the bed-clothes,
he first of all saw that Lantosque was dressed from head to foot in tights,
which accentuated, rather than otherwise, his female form.
 “Much alarmed, feeling that he must have been violating some supreme
order, and comprehending it all, he went to his cousin’s writing-table,
opened it, and successively searched every drawer, and soon found an
envelope fastened with five seals, and addressed to him. He broke them and
read as follows, written on a sheet of black-edged paper:
“‘This is my only will. I leave all that I possess to my cousin, Roland de
Territet, on condition that he will undertake my funeral; that in his own
presence, he will have me wrapped up in the sheets of the bed on which I
die, and have me put into the coffin so, without any further preparations. I
wish to be cremated at Père-Lachaise, and not to be subjected to any
examination, or post-mortem, whatever may happen.’”
“And how came the marquis to betray the secret?” Bob Shelley asked.
“The marquis is married to a charming Parisian woman, and was any
married man, who loved his wife, ever known to keep a secret from her?”
 MARROCA

You ask me, my dear friend, to send you my impressions of Africa, my

adventures, and especially an account of my love affairs in this country
which has attracted me for so long. You laughed a great deal beforehand at
my dusky sweethearts, as you called them, and declared that you could see
me returning to France, followed by a tall, ebony-colored woman, with a
yellow silk handkerchief round her head, and wearing voluminous bright-
colored trousers.
No doubt the Moorish women will have their turn, for I have seen several
of them who have made me feel very much inclined to have to fall in love
with them; but by way of making a beginning, I came across something better,
and very original.
In your last letter to me, you say: “When I know how people love in a
country, I know that country well enough to describe it, although I may never
have seen it.” Let me tell you, then, that here they love furiously. From the
very first moment, one feels a sort of trembling ardor, of constant desire, to
the very tips of the fingers, which over-excites our amorous powers, and all
our faculties of physical sensation, from the simple contact of the hands,
down to that unnamable requirement which makes us commit so many follies.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not know whether you call love of the
heart, love of the soul, whether sentimental idealism, Platonic love, in a
word, can exist on this earth; I doubt it, myself. But that other love, sensual
love, which has something good, a great deal of good about it, is really
terrible in this climate. The heat, the burning atmosphere which makes you
feverish, those suffocating blasts of wind from the south, those waves of fire
which come from the desert which is so near us, that oppressive sirocco,
which is more destructive and withering than fire, that perpetual
conflagration of an entire continent, that is burnt even to its stones by a fierce
and devouring sun, inflame the blood, excite the flesh, and make brutes of us.
But to come to my story, I shall not tell you about the beginning of my stay
in Africa. After going to Bona, Constantine, Biskara and Setif, I went to
Bougie through the defiles of Chabet, by an excellent road through a large
forest, which follows the sea at a height of six hundred feet above it, as far as
that wonderful bay of Bougie, which is as beautiful as that of Naples, of
Ajaccio, or of Douarnenez, which are the most lovely that I know.
Far away in the distance, before one goes round the large inlet where the
water is perfectly calm, one sees the Bougie. It is built on the steep sides of a
high hill, which is covered with trees, and forms a white spot on that green
slope; it might almost be taken for the foam of a cascade, falling into the sea.
I had no sooner set foot in that delightful, small town, than I knew that I
should stay for a long time. In all directions the eye rests on rugged, strangely
shaped hill-tops, which are so close together that one can hardly see the open
sea, so that the gulf looks like a lake. The blue water is wonderfully
transparent, and the azure sky, a deep azure, as if it had received two coats of
paint, expands its wonderful beauty above it. They seem to be looking at
themselves in a glass, and to be a reflection of each other.
Bougie is a town of ruins, and on the quay, when one arrives, one sees
such a magnificent ruin, that one might imagine one was at the opera. It is the
old Saracen Gate, overgrown with ivy, and there are ruins in all directions
on the hills round the town, fragments of Roman walls, bits of Saracen
monuments, the remains of Arabic buildings.
I had taken a small, Moorish house, in the upper town. You know those
dwellings, which have been described so often. They have no windows on
the outside; but they are lighted from top to bottom, by an inner court. On the
first floor, they have a large, cool room, in which one spends the days, and a
terrace on the roof, on which one spends the nights.
I at once fell in with the custom of all hot countries, that is to say, of
having a siesta after lunch. That is the hottest time in Africa, the time when
one can scarcely breathe; when the streets, the fields, and the long, dazzling,
white roads are deserted, when everyone is asleep, or at any rate, trying to
sleep, attired as scantily as possible.
In my drawing-room, which had columns of Arabic architecture, I had
placed a large, soft couch, covered with a carpet from Djebel Amour, very
nearly in the costume of Assan, but I could not sleep, as I was tortured by my
continence. There are two forms of torture on this earth, which I hope you
will never know: the want of water, and the want of women, and I do not
know which is the worst. In the desert, men would commit any infamy for the
sake of a glass of clean, cold water, and what would one not do in some of
the towns of the littoral, for a handsome, fleshy, healthy girl? For there is no
lack of girls in Africa; on the contrary, they abound, but to continue my
comparison, they are as unwholesome and decayed as the muddy water in the
wells of Sahara.
Well, one day when I was feeling more enervated than usual, I was trying
in vain to close my eyes. My legs twitched as if they were being pricked, and
I tossed about uneasily on my couch, until at last, unable to bear it any longer,
I got up and went out. It was a terribly hot day, in the middle of July, and the
pavement was hot enough to bake bread on. My shirt, which was soaked with
perspiration immediately, clung to my body, and on the horizon there was a
slight, white vapor, which seemed to be palpable heat.
I went down to the sea, and going round the port, I went along the shore of
the pretty bay where the baths are. There was nobody about, and nothing was
stirring; not a sound of bird or of beast was to be heard, the very waves did
not lap, and the sea appeared to be asleep in the sun.
Suddenly, behind one of the rocks, which were half covered by the silent
water, I heard a slight movement, and on turning round, I saw a tall, naked
girl, sitting up to her breasts in the water, taking a bath; no doubt she
reckoned on being alone, at that hot period of the day. Her head was turned
towards the sea, and she was moving gently up and down, without seeing me.
Nothing could be more surprising than that picture of the beautiful woman
in the water, which was as clear as crystal, under a blaze of light. For she
was a marvelously beautiful woman, tall, and modeled like a statue. She
turned round, uttered a cry, and half swimming, half walking, she went and
hid altogether behind her rock; but as she must necessarily come out, I sat
down on the beach and waited. Presently, she just showed her head, which
was covered with thick black plaits. She had a rather large mouth, with full
lips, large, bold eyes, and her skin, which was rather tanned by the climate,
looked like a piece of old, hard, polished ivory.
She called out to me: “Go away!” and her full voice, which corresponded
to her strong build, had a guttural accent, and as I did not move, she added:
“It is not right of you to stop there, monsieur.” I did not move, however, and
her head disappeared. Ten minutes passed, and then her hair, then her
forehead, and then her eyes reappeared, but slowly and prudently, as if she
were playing at hide-and-seek, and were looking to see who was near. This
time she was furious, and called out: “You will make me get some illness,
and I shall not come out as long as you are there.” Thereupon, I got up and
went away, but not without looking round several times. When she thought I
was far enough off, she came out of the water; bending down and turning her
back to me, she disappeared in a cavity in the rock, behind a petticoat that
was hanging up in front of it.
I went back the next day. She was bathing again, but she had a bathing
costume, and she began to laugh, and showed her white teeth. A week later
we were friends, and in another week we were eager lovers. Her name was
Marroca, and she pronounced it as if there were a dozen r’s in it. She was the
daughter of Spanish colonists, and had married a Frenchman, whose name
was Pontabeze. He was in government employ, though I never exactly knew
what his functions were. I found out that he was always very busy, and I did
not care for anything else.
She then altered her time for having her bath, and came to my house every
day, to have a siesta there. What a siesta! It could scarcely be called
reposing! She was a splendid girl, of a somewhat animal, but superb type.
Her eyes were always glowing with passion; her half-open mouth, her sharp
teeth, and even her smiles, had something ferociously loving about them; and
her curious, long and straight breasts, which were as pointed as if they had
been pears of flesh, and as elastic as if they contained steel springs, gave her
whole body something of the animal, made her a sort of inferior and
magnificent being, a creature who was destined for unbridled love, and
which roused in me the idea of those ancient deities, who gave expression to
their tenderness on the grass and under the trees.
And then, her mind was as simple as two and two are four, and a sonorous
laugh served her instead of thought.
Instinctively proud of her beauty, she hated the slightest covering, and ran
and frisked about my house with daring and unconscious immodesty. When
she was at last overcome and worn out by her cries and movements, she used
to sleep soundly and peacefully while the overwhelming heat brought out
minute spots of perspiration on her brown skin, and from under her arms.
Sometimes she returned in the evening, when her husband was on duty
somewhere, and we used to lie on the terrace, scarcely covered by some
fine, gauzy, Oriental fabric. When the full moon lit up the town and the gulf,
with its surrounding frame of hills, we saw on all the other terraces what
looked like an army of silent phantoms lying, who would occasionally get up,
change their places, and lie down again, in the languorous warmths of the
starry sky.
 But in spite of the brightness of African nights, Marroca would insist on
stripping herself almost naked in the clear rays of the moon; she did not
trouble herself much about anybody who might see us, and often, in spite of
my fears and entreaties, she uttered long, resounding cries, which made the
dogs in the distance howl.
One night, when I was sleeping under the starry sky, she came and knelt
down on my carpet, and putting her lips, which curled slightly, close to my
face, she said: “You must come and stay at my house.” I did not understand
her, and asked: “What do you mean?” “Yes, when my husband has gone
away; you must come and be with me.”
I could not help laughing, and said: “Why, as you come here?” And she
went on almost talking into my mouth, sending her hot breath into my throat,
and moistening my moustache with her lips: “I want it as a remembrance.”
Still I did not grasp her meaning; she put her arms round my neck. “When you
are no longer here, I shall think of it.”
I was touched and amused at the same time, and said: “You must be mad. I
would much rather stop here.”
As a matter of fact, I have no liking for assignations under the conjugal
roof; they are mouse-traps, in which the unwary are always caught. But she
begged and prayed, and even cried, and at last said: “You shall see how I
will love you there.” Her wish seemed so strange that I could not explain it
to myself; but on thinking it over, I thought I could discern a profound hatred
for her husband, the secret vengeance of a woman who takes a pleasure in
deceiving him, and who, moreover, wishes to deceive him in his own house.
“Is your husband very unkind to you?” I asked her. She looked vexed, and
said: “Oh! No, he is very kind.” “But you are not fond of him?” She looked at
me with astonishment in her large eyes. “Indeed, I am very fond of him, very;
but not so fond as I am of you.”
I could not understand it all, and while I was trying to get at her meaning,
she pressed one of those kisses, whose power she knew so well, onto my
lips, and whispered: “But you will come, will you not?” I resisted, however,
and so she got up immediately, and went away; nor did she come back for a
week. On the eighth day she came back, stopped gravely at the door of my
room, and said: “Are you coming to my house to-night? ... If you refuse, I
shall go away.” Eight days is a very long time, my friend, and in Africa those
eight days are as good as a month. “Yes,” I said, and opened my arms, and
she threw herself into them.
 At night she waited for me in a neighboring street, and took me to their
house, which was very small, and near the harbor. I first of all went through
the kitchen, where they had their meals, and then into a very tidy,
whitewashed room, with photographs on the walls, and paper flowers under
a glass case. Marroca seemed beside herself with pleasure, and she jumped
about, and said: “There, you are at home, now.” And I certainly acted as
though I had been, though I felt rather embarrassed and somewhat uneasy.
Suddenly a loud knocking at the door made us start, and a man’s voice
called out: “Marroca, it is I.” She started: “My husband! ... Here, hide under
the bed, quickly.” I was distractedly looking for my overcoat, but she gave
me a push, and panted out: “Come along, come along.”
I lay down flat on my stomach, and crept under the bed without a word,
while she went into the kitchen. I heard her open a cupboard, and then shut it
again, and she came back into the room, carrying some object which I could
not see, but which she quickly put down; and as her husband was getting
impatient, she said, calmly: “I cannot find the matches.” Then suddenly she
added: “Oh! Here they are; I will come and let you in.”
The man came in, and I could see nothing of him but his feet, which were
enormous. If the rest of him was in proportion, he must have been a giant.
I heard kisses, a little pat on her naked flesh, and a laugh, and he said, in a
strong Marseilles accent: “I forgot my purse, so I was obliged to come back;
you were sound asleep, I suppose.” He went to the cupboard, and was a long
time in finding what he wanted; and as Marocca had thrown herself onto a
bed, as if she were tired out, he went up to her, and no doubt tried to caress
her, for she flung a volley of angry r’s at him. His feet were so close to me
that I felt a stupid, inexplicable longing to catch hold of them, but I restrained
myself, and when he saw that he could not succeed in his wish, he got angry,
and said: “You are not at all nice, to-night. Good-bye.” I heard another kiss,
then the big feet turned, and I saw the nails in the soles of his shoes as he
went into the next room, the front door was shut, and I was saved!
I came slowly out of my retreat, feeling rather humiliated, and while
Marroca danced a jig round me, shouting with laughter, and clapping her
hands, I threw myself heavily into a chair. But I jumped up with a bound, for I
had sat down on something cold, and as I was no more dressed than my
accomplice was, the contact made me start, and I looked round. I had sat
down on a small axe, used for cutting wood, and as sharp as a knife. How
had it got there? ... I had certainly not seen it when I went in; but Marroca
seeing me jump up, nearly choked with laughter, and coughed with both hands
on her stomach.
I thought her amusement rather out of place; we had risked our lives
stupidly, and I still felt a cold shiver down my back, and I was rather hurt at
her foolish laughter. “Supposing your husband had seen me?” I said. “There
was no danger of that,” she replied. “What do you mean? ... No danger? That
is a good joke! ... If he had stooped down, he must have seen me.”
She did not laugh any more; she only looked at me with her large eyes,
which were bright with merriment. “He would not have stooped.” “Why?” I
persisted. “Just suppose that he had let his hat fall, he would have been sure
to pick it up, and then... I was well prepared to defend myself, in this
costume!” She put her two strong, round arms about my neck, and, lowering
her voice, as she did when she said: “I adorre you,” she whispered: “Then
he would never have got up again.” I did not understand her, and said: “What
do you mean?”
She gave me a cunning wink, and put out her hand to the chair on which I
had sat down, and her outstretched hands, her smile, her half-open lips, her
white, sharp, and ferocious teeth, all drew my attention to the little axe which
was used for cutting wood, whose sharp blade was glistening in the candle-
light, and while she put out her hand as if she were going to take it, she put
her left arm round me, and drawing me to her, and putting her lips against
mine, with her right arm she made a motion as if she were cutting off the head
of a kneeling man!
This, my friend, is the manner in which people here understand conjugal
duties, love, and hospitality!
 THE ASSIGNATION

Although she had her bonnet and jacket on, with a black veil over her face,
and another in her pocket, which she would put on over the other as soon as
she had got into the cab, she was beating +the top of her little boot with the
point of her parasol, and remained sitting in her room, without being able to
make up her mind to keep this appointment.
And yet, how many times within the last two years had she dressed herself
thus, when she knew that her husband would be on the Stock Exchange, in
order to go to the bachelor chambers of her lover, the handsome Viscount de
Martelet.
The clock behind her was ticking loudly, a book which she had half read
through was lying open on a little rosewood writing-table between the
windows, and a strong, sweet smell of violets from two bunches which were
in a couple of Dresden china vases, mingled with a vague smell of verbena
which came through the half-open door of her dressing-room.
The clock struck three, she rose up from her chair, she turned round to
look at herself in the glass and smiled. “He is already waiting for me, and
will be getting tired.”
Then she left the room, told her footman that she would be back in an hour,
at the latest — which was a lie; went downstairs and ventured into the street
on foot.
It was towards the end of May, that delightful time of the year, when the
spring seems to be besieging Paris, and to conquer it over its roofs, invading
the houses through their walls, and making it look gay, shedding brightness
over its stone façades, the asphalt of its pavements, the stones on the roads,
bathing it and intoxicating it with sap, like a forest putting on its spring
verdure.
Madame Haggan went a few steps to the right, intending, as usual, to go
along the Parade Provence, where she would hail a cab; but the soft air, that
feeling of summer which penetrates our breast on some days, now took
possession of her so suddenly that she changed her mind, and went down the
Rue de la Chausée d’Antin, without knowing why, but vaguely attracted by a
desire to see the trees in the Square de la Trinité.
“He may just wait ten minutes longer for me,” she said to herself. And that
idea pleased her also as she walked slowly through the crowd. She fancied
that she saw him growing impatient, looking at the clock, opening the
window, listening at the door, sitting down for a few moments, getting up
again, and not daring to smoke, as she had forbidden him to do so when she
was coming to him, and throwing despairing looks at his box of cigarettes.
She walked slowly, interested in what she saw, the shops and the people
she met, walking slower and slower, and so little eager to get to her
destination that she only sought for some pretext for stopping, and at the end
of the street, in the little square, the verdure attracted her so much, that she
went in, took a chair, and, sitting down, watched the hands of the clock as
they moved.
Just then, the half hour struck, and her heart beat with pleasure when she
heard the chimes. She had gained half-an-hour; then it would take her a
quarter of an hour to reach the Rue Miromesnil, and a few minutes more in
strolling along — an hour! a whole hour saved from her rendez-vous! She
would not stop three-quarters of an hour, and that business would be finished
once more.
Oh! she disliked going there! Just like a patient going to the dentist, so she
had the intolerable recollection of all their past meetings, one a week on an
average, for the last two years; and the thought that another was going to take
place immediately made her shiver with misery from head to foot. Not that it
was exactly painful, like a visit to the dentist, but it was wearisome, so
wearisome, so complicated, so long, so unpleasant, that anything, even a visit
to the dentist would have seemed preferable to her. She went on, however,
but very slowly, stopping, sitting down, going hither and thither, but she went.
Oh! how she would have liked to miss this meeting, but she had left the
unhappy viscount in the lurch, twice following, during the last month, and she
did not dare to do it again so soon. Why did she go to see him? Oh! why?
Because she had acquired the habit of doing it, and had no reason to give
poor Martelet when he wanted to know the why! Why had she begun it?
Why? She did not know herself, any longer. Had she been in love with him?
Very possibly! Not very much, but a little, a long time ago! He was very nice,
sought after, perfectly dressed, most courteous, and after the first glance, he
was a perfect lover for a fashionable woman. He had courted her for three
months — the normal period, an honorable strife and sufficient resistances
— and then she had consented, and with what emotion, what nervousness,
what terrible, delightful fear, and that first meeting in his small, ground-floor
bachelor rooms, in the Rue de Miromesnil. Her heart? What did her little
heart of a woman who had been seduced, vanquished, conquered, feel when
she for the first time entered the door of that house which was her nightmare?
She really did not know! She had quite forgotten. One remembers a fact, a
date, a thing, but one hardly remembers, after the lapse of two years, what an
emotion, which soon vanished, because it was very slight, was like. But, oh!
she had certainly not forgotten the others, that rosary of meetings, that road to
the cross of love, and those stations, which were so monotonous, so
fatiguing, so similar to each other, that she felt a nauseating taste in her mouth
at what was going to happen so soon.
And the very cabs were not like the other cabs which one makes use of for
ordinary purposes! Certainly, the cabmen guessed. She felt sure of it, by the
very way they looked at her, and the eyes of these Paris cabmen are terrible!
When one remembers they are constantly remembering, in the Courts of
Justices, after a lapse of several years, faces of criminals whom they have
only driven once, in the middle of the night, from some street or other to a
railway station, and that they have to do with almost as many passengers as
there are hours in the day, and that their memory is good enough for them to
declare: “That is the man whom I took up in the Rues des Martyrs, and put
down at the Lyons Railway Station, at 12 o’clock at night, on July 10, last
year!” Is it not terrible when one risks what a young woman risks when she is
going to meet her lover, and has to trust her reputation to the first cabman she
meets? In two years she had employed at least a hundred to a hundred and
twenty in that drive to the Rue Miromesnil, reckoning only one a week, and
they were so many witnesses, who might appear against her at a critical
moment.
As soon as she was in the cab, she took another veil, which was as thick
and dark as a domino mask, out of her pocket, and put it on. That hid her face,
but what about the rest, her dress, her bonnet, and her parasol? They might be
remarked; they might, in fact, have been seen already. Oh! I What misery she
endured in this Rue de Miromesnil! She thought that she recognized all the
foot-passengers, the servants, everybody, and almost before the cab had
stopped, she jumped out and ran past the porter who was standing outside his
lodge. He must know everything, everything! — her address, her name, her
husband’s profession — everything, for those porters are the most cunning of
policemen! For two years she had intended to bribe him, to give him (to
throw at him one day as she passed him) a hundred-franc bank-note, but she
had never once dared to do it. She was frightened! What of? She did not
know! Of his calling her back, if he did not understand? Of a scandal? Of a
crowd on the stairs? Of being arrested, perhaps? To reach the Viscount’s
door, she had only to ascend a half a flight of stairs, and it seemed to her as
high as the tower of Saint Jacques’ Church.
As soon as she had reached the vestibule, she felt as if she were caught in
a trap, and the slightest noise before or behind her, nearly made her faint. It
was impossible for her to go back, because of that porter who barred her
retreat; and if anyone came down at that moment she would not dare to ring at
Martelet’s door, but would pass it as if she had been going elsewhere! She
would have gone up, and up, and up! She would have mounted forty flights of
stairs! Then, when everything would seem quiet again down below, she
would run down, feeling terribly frightened, lest she would not recognize the
lobby.
He was there in a velvet coat lined with silk, very stylish, but rather
ridiculous, and for two years he had never altered his manner of receiving
her, not in a single movement! As soon as he had shut the door, he used to say
this: “Let me kiss your hands, my dear, dear friend!” Then he followed her
into the room, when with closed shutters and lighted candles, out of
refinement, no doubt, he knelt down before her and looked at her from head
to foot with an air of adoration. On the first occasion that had been very nice
and very successful; but now it seemed to her as if she saw Monsieur
Delauney acting the last scene of a successful piece for the hundred and
twentieth time. He might really change his manner of acting. But no, he never
altered his manner of acting, poor fellow. What a good fellow he was, but
very commonplace!
And how difficult it was to undress and dress without a lady’s maid!
Perhaps that was the moment when she began to take a dislike to him. When
he said: “Do you want me to help you?” she could have killed him. Certainly
there were not many men as awkward as he was, or as uninteresting.
Certainly, little Baron de Isombal would never have asked her in such a
manner: “Do you want me to help you?” He would have helped her, he was
so witty, so funny, so active. But there! He was a diplomatist, he had been
about in the world, and had roamed everywhere, and, no doubt, dressed and
undressed women who were arrayed in every possible fashion! ...
The church clock struck the three-quarters, and she looked at the dial, and
said: “Oh, how agitated he will be!” and then she quickly left the square; but
she had not taken a dozen steps outside, when she found herself face to face
with a gentleman who bowed profoundly to her.
“Why! Is that you, Baron?” she said, in surprise. She had just been
thinking of him.
“Yes, Madame.” And then, after asking how she was, and a few vague
words, he continued: “Do you know that you are the only one — you will
allow me to say of my lady friends, I hope? who has not yet seen my
Japanese collection.”
“But my dear Baron, a lady cannot go to a bachelor’s room like this.”
“What do you mean? That is a great mistake, when it is a question of
seeing a rare collection!”
“At any rate, she cannot go alone.”
“And why not? I have received a number of ladies alone, only for the sake
of seeing my collection! They come every day. Shall I tell you their names?
No — I will not do that; one must be discreet, even when one it not guilty; as
a matter of fact, there is nothing improper in going to the house of a well-
known serious man who holds a certain position, unless one goes for an
unavoidable reason!”
“Well, what you have said is certainly correct, at bottom.”
“So you will come and see my collection?”
“When?”
“Well, now, immediately.”
“Impossible; I am in a hurry.”
“Nonsense, you have been sitting in the square for this last half hour.”
“You were watching me?”
“I was looking at you.”
“But I am sadly in a hurry.”
“I am sure you are not. Confess that you are in no particular hurry.”
Madame Haggan began to laugh, and said: “Well, ... no ... not ... very....”
A cab passed close to them, and the little Baron called out: “Cabman!”
and the vehicle stopped, and opening the door, he said: “Get in, Madame.”
“But, Baron! no, it is impossible to-day; I really cannot.”
 “Madame, you are acting very imprudently; get in! people are beginning to
look at us, and you will collect a crowd; they will think I am trying to carry
you off, and we shall both be arrested; please get in!”
She got in, frightened and bewildered, and he sat down by her side, saying
to the cabman: “Rue de Provence.”
But suddenly she exclaimed: “Good heavens! I have forgotten a very
important telegram; please drive to the nearest telegraph office first of all.”
The cab stopped a little farther on, in the Rue de Châteaudun, and she said
to the Baron: “Would you kindly get me a fifty centimes telegraph form? I
promised my husband to invite Martelet to dinner to-morrow, and had quite
forgotten it.”
When the Baron returned and gave her the blue telegraph form, she wrote
in pencil:
“My Dear Friend: I am not at all well. I am suffering terribly from
neuralgia, which keeps me in bed. Impossible to go out. Come and dine to-
morrow night, so that I may obtain my pardon.
“JEANNE.”
She wetted the gum, fastened it carefully, and addressed it to: “Viscount
de Martelet, 240 Rue Miromesnil,” and then, giving it back to the Baron, she
said: “Now, will you be kind enough to throw this into the telegram box.”
 AN ADVENTURE

“Come! Come!” Pierre Dufaille said, shrugging his shoulders. “What are you
talking about, when you say that there are no more adventures? Say that there
are no more adventurous men, and you will be right! Yes, nobody ventures to
trust to chance, in these days, for as soon as there is any slight mystery, or a
spice of danger, they draw back. If, however, a man is willing to go into them
blindly, and to run the risk of anything that may happen, he can still meet with
adventures, and even I, who never look for them, met with one in my life, and
a very startling one; let me tell you.
“I was staying in Florence, and was living very quietly, and all I indulged
in, in the way of adventures, was to listen occasionally to the immoral
proposals with which every stranger is beset at night on the Piazzo de la
Signoria, by some worthy Pandarus or other, with a head like that of a
venerable priest. These excellent fellows generally introduce you to their
families, where debauchery is carried on in a very simple, and almost
patriarchal fashion, and where one does not run the slightest risk.
“One day as I was admiring Benvenuto Cellini’s wonderful Perseus, in
front of the Loggia del Lanzi, I suddenly felt my sleeve pulled somewhat
roughly, and on turning round, I found myself face to face with a woman of
about fifty, who said to me with a strong German accent: ‘You are French,
Monsieur, are you not?’ ‘Certainly, I am,’ I replied. ‘And would you like to
go home with a very pretty woman?’
“‘Most certainly I should,’ I replied, with a laugh.
“Nothing could have been funnier than the looks and the serious air of the
procuress, or than the strangeness of the proposal, made to broad daylight,
and in very bad French, but it was even worse when she added: ‘Do you
know everything they do in Paris?’ ‘What do you mean, my good woman?’ I
asked her, rather startled. ‘What is done in Paris, that is not done everywhere
else?’
“However, when she explained her meaning, I replied that I certainly
could not, and as I was not quite so immodest as the lady, I blushed a little.
But not for long, for almost immediately afterwards I grew pale, when she
said: ‘I want to assure myself of it, personally.’ And she said this in the same
phlegmatic manner, which did not seem so funny to me now, but, on the
contrary, rather frightened me. ‘What!’ I said. ‘Personally! You! Explain
yourself!’
“If I had been rather surprised before, I was altogether astonished at her
explanation. It was indeed an adventure, and was almost like a romance. I
could scarcely believe my ears, but this is what she told me.
“She was the confidential attendant on a lady moving in high society, who
wished to be initiated into the most secret refinements of Parisian high life,
and who had done me the honor of choosing me for her companion. But then,
this preliminary test! ‘By Jove!’ I said to myself, ‘this old German hag is not
so stupid as she looks!’ And I laughed in my sleeve, as I listened
inattentively to what she was saying to persuade me.
“‘My mistress is the prettiest woman you can dream of; a real beauty;
springtime! A flower!’ ‘You must excuse me, but if your mistress is really
like springtime and a flower, you (pray excuse me for being so blunt) are not
exactly that, and perhaps I should not exactly be in a mood to humor you, my
dear lady, in the same way that I might her.’
“She jumped back, astonished in turn: ‘Why, I only want to satisfy myself
with my own eyes; not by injuring you.’ And she finished her explanation,
which had been incomplete before. All she had to do was to go with me to
Mother Patata’s well-known establishment, and there to be present while I
conversed with one of its fair and frail inhabitants.
“‘Oh!’ I said to myself, ‘I was mistaken in her tastes. She is, of course, an
old, shriveled up woman, as I guessed, but she is a specialist. This is
interesting, upon my word! I never met with such a one before!’
“Here, gentlemen, I must beg you to allow me to hide my face for a
moment. What I said was evidently not strictly correct, and I am rather
ashamed of it; my excuse must be that I was young, that Patata’s was a
celebrated place, of which I had heard wonderful things said, but the entry to
which was barred me, on account of my small means. Five napoleons was
the price! Fancy! I could not treat myself to it, and so I accepted the good
lady’s offer. I do not say that it was not disagreeable, but what was I to do?
And then, the old woman was a German, and so her five napoleons were a
slight return for our five milliards, which we paid them as our war indemnity.
“Well, Patata’s boarder was charming, the old woman was not too
troublesome, and your humble servant did his best to sustain the ancient glory
of Frenchmen.
“Let me drink my disgrace to the dregs! On the next day but one after, I
was waiting at the statue of Perseus. It was shameful, I confess, but I enjoyed
the partial restitution of the five milliards, and it is surprising how a
Frenchman loses his dignity, when he is traveling.
“The good lady made her appearance at the appointed time. It was quite
dark, and I followed her without a word, for, after all, I was not very proud
of the part I was playing. But if you only knew how fair that little girl at
Patata’s was! As I went along, I thought only of her, and did not pay any
attention to where we were going, and I was only roused from my reverie by
hearing the old woman say: ‘Here we are. Try and be as entertaining as you
were the day before yesterday.’
“We were not outside Patata’s house, but in a narrow street running by the
side of a palace with high walls, and in front of us was a small door, which
the old woman opened gently.
“For a moment I felt inclined to draw back. Apparently the old hag was
also ardent on her own account! She had me in a trap! No doubt she wanted
in her turn to make use of my small talents! But, no! That was impossible!
“‘Go in! Go in!’ she said. ‘What are you afraid of? My mistress is so
pretty, so pretty, much prettier than the little girl of the other day.’ So it was
really true, this story out of The Arabian Nights? Why not? And after all,
what was I risking? The good woman would certainly not injure me, and so I
went in, though somewhat nervously.
“Oh! My friend, what an hour I spent then! Paradise! and it would be
useless, impossible to describe it to you! Apartments fit for a princess, and
one of those princesses out of fairy tales, a fairy herself. An exquisite
German woman, exquisite as German women can be, when they try. An
Undine of Heinrich Heine’s, with hair like the Virgin Mary’s, innocent blue
eyes, and a skin like strawberries and cream.
“Suddenly, however, my Undine got up, and her face convulsed with fury
and pride. Then, she rushed behind some hangings, where she began to give
vent to a flood of German words, which I did not understand, while I
remained standing, dumbfounded. But just then, the old woman came in, and
said, shaking with fear: ‘Quick, quick; dress yourself and go, if you do not
wish to be killed.’
“I asked no questions, for what was the good of trying to understand?
Besides, the old woman, who grew more and more terrified, could not find
any French words, and chattered wildly. I jumped up and got into my shoes
and overcoat and ran down the stairs, and in the street.
“Ten minutes later, I recovered my breath and my senses, without knowing
what streets I had been through, nor where I had come from, and I stole
furtively into my hotel, as if I had been a malefactor.
“In the cafés the next morning, nothing was talked of except a crime that
had been committed during the night. A German baron had killed his wife
with a revolver, but he had been liberated on bail, as he had appealed to his
counsel, to whom he had given the following explanation, to the truth of
which the lady companion of the baroness had certified.
“She had been married to her husband almost by force, and detested him,
and she had some particular reasons (which were not specified) for her
hatred of him. In order to have her revenge on him, she had had him seized,
bound and gagged by four hired ruffians, who had been caught, and who had
confessed everything. Thus, reduced to immobility, and unable to help
himself, the baron had been obliged to witness a degrading scene, where his
wife caressed a Frenchman, and thus outraged conjugal fidelity and German
honor at the same time. As soon as he was set at liberty, the baron had
punished his faithless wife, and was now seeking her accomplice.”
“And what did you do?” someone asked Pierre Dufaille.
“The only thing I could do, by George!” he replied. “I put myself at the
poor devil’s disposal; it was his right, and so we fought a duel. Alas! It was
with swords, and he ran me right through the body. That was also his right,
but he exceeded his right when he called me her ponce. Then I gave him his
chance, and as I fell, I called out with all the strength that remained to me: ‘A
Frenchman! A Frenchman! Long live France!’”
 THE DOUBLE PINS

“Ah; my-dear fellow, what jades women are!”

“What makes you say that?”
“Because they have played me an abominable trick.”
“You?”
“Yes, me.”
“Women, or a woman?”
“Two women.”
“Two women at once?”
“Yes.”
“What was the trick?”
The two young men were sitting outside a café on the Boulevards, and
drinking liquors mixed with water, those aperients which look like infusions
of all the shades in a box of water-colors. They were nearly the same age,
twenty-five to thirty. One was dark and the other fair, and they had the same
semi-elegant look of stock-jobbers, of men who go to the Stock Exchange,
and into drawing-rooms, who are to be seen everywhere, who live
everywhere, and love everywhere. The dark one continued.
“I have told you of my connection with that little woman, a tradesman’s
wife, whom I met on the beach at Dieppe?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, you know what it is. I had a mistress in Paris, whom I
loved dearly; an old friend, a good friend, and it has grown into a habit, in
fact, and I value it very much.”
“Your habit.”
“Yes, my habit, and hers also. She is married to an excellent man, whom I
also value very much, a very cordial fellow. A capital companion! I may say,
I think that my life is bound up with that house.”
“Well?”
“Well! they could not manage to leave Paris, and I found myself a
widower at Dieppe.”
“Why did you go to Dieppe?”
 “For change of air. One cannot remain on the Boulevards the whole time.”
“And then?”
“Then I met the little woman I mentioned to you on the beach there.”
“The wife of that head of the public office?”
“Yes; she was dreadfully dull; her husband only came every Sunday, and
he is horrible! I understand her perfectly, and we laughed and danced
together.”
“And the rest?”
“Yes, but that came later. However, we met, we liked each other. I told
her I liked her, and she made me repeat it, so that she might understand it
better, and she put no obstacles in my way.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes, a little; she is very nice.”
“And what about the other?”
“The other was in Paris! Well, for six weeks it was very pleasant, and we
returned here on the best of terms. Do you know how to break with a woman,
when that woman has not wronged you in any way?”
“Yes, perfectly well.”
“How do you manage it?”
“I give her up.”
“How do you do it?”
“I do not see her any longer.”
“But supposing she comes to you?”
“I am ... not at home.”
“And if she comes again?”
“I say I am not well.”
“If she looks after you?”
“I play her some dirty trick.”
“And if she puts up with it?”
“I write to her husband anonymous letters, so that he may look after her on
the days that I expect her.”
“That is serious! I cannot resist, and do not know how to bring about a
rupture, and so I have a collection of mistresses. There are some whom I do
not see more than once a year, others every ten months, others on those days
when they want to dine at a restaurant, those whom I have put at regular
intervals do not worry me, but I often have great difficulty with the fresh
ones, so as to keep them at proper intervals.”
 “And then....”
“And then ... Then, this little woman was all fire and flame, without any
fault of mine, as I told you! As her husband spends all the whole day at his
office, she began to come to me unexpectedly, and twice she nearly met my
regular one on, the stairs.”
“The devil!”
“Yes; so I gave each of them her days, regular days, to avoid confusion;
Saturday and Monday for the old one, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday for the
new one.”
“Why did you show her the preference?”
“Ah! My dear friend, she is younger.”
“The devil!”
“Yes; so I gave each of them her days, regular days, to avoid confusion;
Saturday and Monday for the old one, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday for the
new one.”
“Why did you show her the preference?”
“Ah! My dear friend, she is younger.”
“So that only gave you two days to yourself in a week.”
“That is enough for one.”
“Allow me to compliment you on that.”
“Well, just fancy that the most ridiculous and most annoying thing in the
world happened to me. For four months everything had been going on
perfectly; I felt perfectly safe, and I was really very happy, when suddenly,
last Monday, the crash came.
“I was expecting my regular one at the usual time, a quarter past one, and
was smoking a good cigar, and dreaming, very well satisfied with myself,
when I suddenly saw that it was past the time, at which I was much surprised,
for she is very punctual, but I thought that something might have accidentally
delayed her. However, half-an-hour passed, then an hour, an hour and a half,
and then I knew that something must have detained her; a sick headache,
perhaps, or some annoying visitor. That sort of waiting is very vexatious, that
... useless waiting ... very annoying and enervating. At last, I made up my
mind to go out, and not knowing what to do, I went to her and found her
reading a novel.”
“Well!” I said to her. And she replied quite calmly:
“My dear I could not come; I was hindered.”
“How?”
 “My ... something else.”
“What was it?
“A very annoying visit.”
“I saw that she would not tell me the true reason, and as she was very
calm, I did not trouble myself any more about it, and hoped to make up for
lost time with the other, the next day, and on the Tuesday, I was very ... very
excited, and amorous in expectation of the public official’s little wife, and I
was surprised that she had not come before the appointed time, and I looked
at the clock every moment, and watched the hands impatiently, but the quarter
past, then the half-hour, then two o’clock. I could not sit still any longer, and
walked up and down very soon in great strides, putting my face against the
window, and my ears to the door, to listen whether she was not coming
upstairs.”
“Half-past two, three o’clock! I seized my hat, and rushed to her house.
She was reading a novel my dear fellow! ‘Well!’ I said, anxiously, and she
replied as calmly as usual: ‘I was hindered, and could not come.’
“‘By what?’
“‘An annoying visit.’
“Of course, I immediately thought that they both knew everything, but she
seemed so calm and quiet, that I set aside my suspicions, and thought it was
only some strange coincidence, as I could not believe in such dissimulation
on her part, and so, after half-an-hour’s friendly talk, which was, however,
interrupted a dozen times by her little girl coming in and out of the room. I
went away, very much annoyed. Just imagine the next day....”
“The same thing happened?”
“Yes, and the next also. And that went on for three weeks without any
explanation, without anything explaining that strange conduct to me, the secret
of which I suspected, however.”
“They knew everything?”
“I should think so, by George. But how? Ah! I had a great deal of anxiety
before I found it out.”
“How did you manage it at last?”
“From their letters, for on the same day they both gave me their dismissal
in identical terms.”
“Well?”
“This is how it was.... You know that women always have an array of pins
about them. I know hairpins, I doubt them, and look after them, but the others
are much more treacherous; those confounded little black-headed pins which
look all alike to us, great fools that we are, but which they can distinguish,
just as we can distinguish a horse from a dog.
“Well, it appears that one day my minister’s little wife left one of those
tell-tale instruments pinned to the paper, close to my looking-glass. My usual
one had immediately seen this little black speck, no bigger than a flea, and
had taken it out without saying a word, and then had left one of her pins,
which was also black, but of a different pattern, in the same place.
“The next day, the minister’s wife wished to recover her property, and
immediately recognized the substitution. Then her suspicions were aroused,
and she put in two and crossed them, and my original one replied to this
telegraphic signal by three black pellets, one on the top of the other, and as
soon as this method had begun, they continued to communicate with one
another, without saying a word, only to spy on each other. Then it appears
that the regular one, being bolder, wrapped a tiny piece of paper round the
little wire point, and wrote upon it: C. D., Poste Restante, Boulevards,
Malherbes.
“Then they wrote to each other. You understand that was not everything
that passed between them. They set to work with precaution, with a thousand
stratagems, with all the prudence that is necessary in such cases, but the
regular one did a bold stroke, and made an appointment with the other. I do
not know what they said to each other; all that I know is, that I had to pay the
costs of their interview. There you have it all!”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“And you do not see them any more?”
“I beg your pardon. I see them as friends, for we have not quarreled
altogether.”
“And have they met again?”
“Yes, my dear fellow, they have become intimate friends.”
“And has not that given you an idea?”
“No, what idea?”
“You great booby! The idea of making them put back the pins where they
found them.”
 UNDER THE YOKE

As he was a man of quiet and regular habits, and of a simple and affectionate
disposition, and had nothing to disturb the even tenor of his life, Monsieur de
Loubancourt suffered more than most men do from his widowerhood. He
regretted his lost happiness, was angry with fate, which separated united
couples so brutally, and which made choice of a tranquil existence, whose
sleepy quietude had not hitherto been troubled by any cares or chimeras, in
order to rob it of its happiness.
Had he been younger, he might, perhaps, have been tempted to form a new
line, to fill up the vacant place, and to marry again. But when a man is nearly
sixty, such ideas make people laugh, for they have something ridiculous and
insane about them; and so he dragged on his dull and weary existence,
escaped from all those familiar objects which constantly recalled the past to
him, and went from hotel to hotel without taking an interest in anything,
without becoming intimate with anyone, even temporarily; inconsolable,
silent, almost enigmatical, and looking funereal in his eternal black clothes.
He was generally alone, though on rare occasions he was accompanied by
his only son, who used to yawn by stealth, and who seemed to be mentally
counting the hours, as if he were performing some hateful, enforced duty in
spite of himself.
Two years of this crystallization went past, and one was as monotonous,
and as void of incident, as the other.
One evening, however, in a boarding-house at Cannes, where he was
staying on his wanderings, there was a young woman dressed in mourning,
among the new arrivals, who sat next to him at dinner. She had a sad, pale
face, that told of suffering, a beautiful figure, and large, blue eyes with deep
rings round them, but which, nevertheless, looked like the first star which
shines in the twilight.
All remarked her, although he usually took no notice of women, no matter
whatever they were, ugly or pretty; he looked at her and listened to her. He
felt less lonely by her side, though he did not know why. He trembled with
instinctive and confused happiness, just as if in some distant country he had
found some female friend or relative, who at last would understand him, tell
him some news, and talk to him in his dear native language about everything
that a man leaves behind him when he exiles himself from home.
What strange affinity had thrown them together thus? What secret forces
had brought their grief in contact? What made him so sanguine and so calm,
and incited him to take her suddenly into his confidences, and urged him on to
resistless curiosity?
She was an experienced traveler, who had no illusions, and was in search
of adventures; one of those women who frequently change their name, and
who, as they have made up their minds to swindle if luck is not on their side,
act a continual part, an adventuress, who could put on every accent; who for
the sake of her course, transformed herself into a Slav, or into an American,
or simply into a provincial; who was ready to take part in any comedy in
order to make money, and not to be obliged to waste her strength and her
brains on fruitless struggles or on wretched expedients. Thus she
immediately guessed the state of this melancholy sexagenarian’s mind, and
the illusions which attracted him to her, and scented the spoils which offered
themselves to her cupidity of their own accord, and divined under what guise
she ought to show herself, to make herself accepted and loved.
She initiated him into depths of grief which were unknown to him, by
phrases which were cut short by sighs, by fragments of her story, which she
finished by a disgusted shrug of the shoulders, and a heartrending smile, and
by insensibly exciting his feelings. In a word, she triumphed over the last
remaining doubts, which might still have mingled with the affectionate pity
with which that poor, solitary heart, which, so full of bitterness, overflowed.
And so, for the first time since he had become a widower, the old man
confided in another person, poured out his old heart into that soul which
seemed to be so like his own, which seemed to offer him a refuge where he
could be cheered up, and where the wounds of his heart could be healed, and
he longed to throw himself into those sisterly arms, to dry his tears and to
exercise his grief there.

Monsieur de Loubancourt, who had married at twenty-five, as much from

love as from judgment, had lived quietly and peacefully in the country, much
more than in Paris. He was ignorant of the female wiles of temptations,
offered to creatures like Wanda Pulska, who was made up of lies, and only
cared for pleasure, a virgin soil on which any seed will grow.
 She attached herself to him, became his shadow, and by degrees, part of
his life. She showed herself to be a charitable woman who devoted herself to
an unhappy man, who endeavored to console him, and who, in spite of her
youth, was willing to be the inseparable companion of the old man in his
slow, daily walks. She never appeared to tire of his anecdotes and
reminiscences, and she played cards with him. She waited on him carefully
when he was confined to his bed, appeared to have no sex, and transformed
herself; and though she handled him skillfully, she seemed ingenuous and
ignorant of evil. She acted like an innocent young girl, who had just been
confirmed; but for all that, she chose dangerous hours and certain spots in
which to be sentimental and to ask questions which agitated and disconcerted
him, and abandoned her slender fingers to his feverish hands, which pressed
and held them in a tender clasp.
And then, there were wild declarations of love, prayers and sobs which
frightened her; wild adieux, which were not followed by his departure, but
which brought about a touching reconciliation and the first kiss, and then, one
night, while they were traveling together, he forced open the door of her
bedroom at the hotel, which she had locked, and came in like a mad man.
There was the phantom of violence, and the fallacious submission of a
woman, who was overcome by so much tenderness, who rebelled no longer,
but who accepted the yoke of her master and lover. And then, the conquest of
the body after the conquest of the heart, which forged his chain link by link,
pleasures which besot and corrupt old men, and dry up their brains, until at
last he allowed himself to be induced, almost unconsciously, to make an
odious and stupid will.
Informed, perhaps, by anonymous letters, or astonished because his father
kept him altogether at a distance from him, and gave no signs of life,
Monsieur de Loubancourt’s son joined them in Provence. But Wanda Pulska,
who had been preparing for that attack for a long time, waited for it
fearlessly.
She did not seem disconcerted at that sudden visit, but was very charming
and affable towards the new comer, reassured him by her careless airs of a
girl, who took life as it came, and who was suffering from the consequences
of a fault, and did not trouble her head about the future.
He envied his father, and grudged him such a treasure. Although he had
come to combat her dangerous influence, and to treat the woman, who had
assumed the place of death, and who governed her lover as his sovereign
mistress, as an enemy, he shrunk from his task, panted with desire, lost his
head, and thought of nothing but treason and of an odious partnership.
She managed him even more easily than she had managed Monsieur de
Loubancourt, molded him just as she chose; made him her tool, without even
giving him the tips of her fingers, or granting him the slightest favor, induced
him to be so imprudent, that the old man grew jealous, watched them,
discovered the intrigue, and found mad letters in which his son was angry,
begged, threatened and implored.
One evening, when she knew that her lover had come in, and was hiding
in a dark cupboard in order to watch them, Wanda happened to be alone in
the drawing-room, which was full of light, of beautiful flowers, with this
young fellow, five-and-twenty. He threw himself at her feet and declared his
love, and besought her to run away with him, and when she tried to bring him
to reason and repulsed him, and told him in a loud and very distinct voice,
how she loved Monsieur de Loubancourt, he seized her wrists with brutal
violence, and maddened with passion and stammering words of love and
lust, he pushed her towards one of the couches.
“Let me go,” she said, “let me go immediately,... You are a brute to take
advantage of a woman like that.... Please let me go, or I shall call the
servants to my assistance.”
The next moment, the old man, terrible in his rage, rushed out of his hiding
place with clenched fists and a slobbering mouth, threw himself on the
startled son, and pointing to the door with a superb gesture, he said:
“You are a dirty scoundrel, sir. Get out of my house immediately, and
never let me see you again!”

The comedy was over. Grateful for such fidelity and real affection,
Monsieur de Loubancourt married Wanda Pulska, whose name appeared on
the civil register — which was a detail of no importance to a man who was
in love — as Frida Krubstein; she came from Saxony, and had been a servant
at an inn. Then he disinherited his son, as far as he could.
And now that she is a respectable and respected widow, Madame de
Loubancourt is received everywhere by society in those places of winter
resort where people’s by-gone history is so rarely gone into, and where
women bear a name, who are pretty, and who can waltz — like the Germans
can, are always well received.
 THE READ ONE AND THE OTHER

“Well, really,” Chasseval said, standing with his back to the fire, “could any
of those respectable shop-keepers and wine growers have possibly believed
that that pretty little Parisian woman, with her soft innocent eyes, like those
of a Madonna, with such smiling lips and golden hair, and who always
dressed so simple, was their candidate’s mistress?”
She was a wonderful help to him, and accompanied him even to the most
outlying farms; went to the meetings in the small village cafés and had a
pleasant and suitable word for every one, and did not recoil at a glass of
mulled wine or a grip of the hand, and was always ready to join in
farandole. She seemed to be so in love with Eliénne Rulhiére, to trust him so
entirely, to be so proud of forming half of his life, and of belonging to him,
gave him such looks full of pleasure and of hope, and listened to all he said
so intently, that voters who might have hesitated, allowed themselves by
degrees to be talked over and persuaded; and promised their votes to the
young doctor, whose name they never heard mentioned in the district before.
That electoral campaign had been like a truant’s escapade for Jane
Dardenne; it was a delightful and unexpected holiday, and as she was an
actress at heart, she played her part seriously, and threw herself into her
character, and enjoyed herself more than she ever enjoyed herself in her most
adventurous outings.
And then there came in the pleasure of being taken for a woman of the
world, of being flattered, respected and envied, and of getting out of the usual
groove for a time, and also the dream that this journey of a few weeks would
have the sequence, that her lover would not separate from her on their return,
but would sacrifice the woman whom he no longer loved, and whom he
ironically used to call his Cinderella, to her.
At night, when they had laid aside all pretense, and when they were alone
in their room in the hotel, she coaxed him and flattered him, spurred his
ambition on, threw her quivering arms around him, and amidst her kisses,
whispered those words to him, which make a man proud and warm his heart,
and give him strength, like a stout dram of alcohol.
 The two between them captured the district, and won the election easily,
and in spite of his youth, Eliénne Rulhiére was chosen by a majority of five
thousand. Then, of course, there were more fetes and banquets, at which Jane
was present, and where she was received with enthusiastic shouts; there
were fireworks, when she was obliged to set light to the first rocket, and
balls at which she astonished those worthy people by her affability. And
when they left, three little girls dressed in white, as if they were going to be
confirmed, came onto the platform and recited some complimentary verses to
her while the band played the Marseillaise, the women waved their pocket-
handkerchiefs, and the men their hats, and leaning out of the carriage
window, looking charming in her traveling costume, with a smile on her lips,
and with moist eyes, as was fitting at such a pathetic leave-taking, actress as
she was, with a sudden and childlike gesture, she blew kisses to them from
the tips of her fingers, and said:
“Good-bye, my friends, good-bye, only for the present; I shall never forget
you!”
The deputy, who was also very effusive, had invited his principal
supporters to come and see him in Paris as there were plenty of excursion
trains. They all took him at his word, and Rulhière was obliged to invite
them all to dinner.
In order to avoid any possible mishaps, he gave his wife a foretaste of
their guests. He told her that they were rather noisy, talkative, and
unpolished, and that they would, no doubt, astonish her by their manners and
their accent, but that, as they had great influence, and were excellent men,
they deserved a good reception. It was a very useful precaution, for when
they came into the drawing-room in their new clothes, expanding with
pleasure, and with their hair pomatumed as if they had been going to a
country wedding, they felt inclined to fall down before the new Madame
Rulhière to whom the deputy introduced them, and who seemed to be
perfectly at home there.
At first they were embarrassed, felt uncomfortable and out of place, did
not know what to say, and had to seek their words; they buttoned and
unbuttoned their gloves, answered her questions at random, and racked their
brains to discover the solution of the enigma. Captain Mouredus looked at the
fire, with the fixed gaze of a somnambulist, Marius Barbaste scratched his
fingers mechanically, while the three others, the factory manager, Casemajel,
Roquetton, the lawyer, and Dustugue, the hotel proprietor, looked at Rulhière
anxiously.
The lawyer was the first to recover himself. He got up from his arm chair
laughing heartily, dug the deputy in the ribs with his elbow, and said:
“I understand it all, I understand it; you thought that people do not come to
Paris to be bored, eh? Madame is delightful, and I congratulate you,
Monsieur.”
He gave a wink, and made signs behind his back to his friends, and then
the captain had his turn.
“We are not boobies, and that fellow Roquetton is the most knowing of the
lot of us.... Ah! Monsieur Rulhière, without any exaggeration, you are the
cream of good fellows.”
And with a flushed face, and expanding his chest, he said sonorously:
“They certainly turn them out very pretty in your part of the country, my
little lady!”
Madame Rulhière, who did not know what to say, had gone up to her
husband for protection; but she felt much inclined to go to her own room
under some pretext or other, in order to escape from her intolerable task. She
kept her ground, however, during the whole of dinner, which was a noisy,
jovial meal, during which the five electors, with their elbows on the table,
and their waistcoats unbuttoned, and half drunk, told coarse stories, and
swore like troopers. But as the coffee and the liquors were served in the
smoking room, she took leave of her guests in an impatient voice, and went to
her own room with the hasty step of an escaped prisoner, who is afraid of
being retaken.
The electors sat staring after her with gaping mouths, and Mouredus lit a
cigar, and said:
“Just listen to me, Monsieur Rulhiére; it was very kind of you to invite us
here, to your little quiet establishment, but to speak to you frankly, I should
not, in your place, wrong my lawful wife for such a stuck-up piece of goods
as this one is.”
“The captain is quite right,” Roquetton the notary opined; “Madame
Rulhiére, the lawful Madame Rulhiére, is much more amiable, and altogether
nicer. You are a scoundrel to deceive her; but when may we hope to see
her?”
And with a paternal grimace, he added:
 “But do not be uneasy; we will all hold our tongue; it would be too sad if
she were to find it out.”
 THE UPSTART

You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like the type of a happy
man, with his fat cheeks that are the color of ripe apples, his small, reddish
moustache, turned up over his thick lips, with his prominent eyes, which
never know any emotion or sorrow, which remind one of the calm eyes of
cows and oxen, and his long back fixed onto two little wriggling, crooked
legs, which obtained for him the nickname of corkscrew from some nymph of
the ballet.
Dupontel, who had taken the trouble to be born, but not like the grand
seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made fun of once upon a time, was ballasted
with a respectable number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir of a
house that had sold household utensils and appliances for over a century.
Naturally, like every other upstart who respects himself, he wished to
appear something, to play at being a clubman, and also to play to the gallery,
because he had been educated at Vangirard and knew a little English; because
he had gone through his voluntary service in the army for twelve months at
Rouen; because he was a tolerable singer, could drive four-in-hands, and
play lawn-tennis.
Always studiedly well-dressed, too correct in every way, copying his
way of speaking, his hats and his trousers from the three or four snobs who
set the fashion, reproducing other people’s witticisms, learning anecdotes
and jokes by heart, like a lesson, to use them again at small parties,
constantly laughing, without knowing why his friends burst into roars of
merriment, and was in the habit of keeping pretty girls for the pleasure of his
best friends. Of course he was a perfect fool, but after all, a capital fellow, to
whom it was only right to extend a good deal of indulgence.
When he had taken his thirty-first mistress, and had made the discovery
that in love, money does not create happiness two-thirds of the time, that they
had all deceived him, and made him perfectly ridiculous at the end of the
week, Charles Dupontel made up his mind to settle down as a respectable
married man, and to marry, not from calculation or from reason, but for love.
 One autumn afternoon at Auteuil, he noticed in front of the club stand,
among the number of pretty women who were standing round the braziers, a
girl with such lovely delicate complexion that it looked like an apple
blossom; her hair was like threads of gold, and she was so slight and supple
that she reminded him of those outlines of saints which one sees in old
stained-glass church windows. There was also something enigmatical about
her, for she had at the same time the delightfully ingenuous look of a school
girl during the holidays, and also of some enlightened young lady, who
already knew the how and the why of everything, who is exuberant with
youth and life, and who is eagerly waiting for the moment when marriage
will at length allow her to say and to do everything that comes into her head,
and to amuse herself to satiety.
Then she had such small feet that they would have gone into a woman’s
hand, a waist that could have been clasped by a bracelet, turned up
eyelashes, which fluttered like the wings of a butterfly, close on an impudent
and sensual nose, and a vague, mocking smile that made folds in her lips, like
the petals of a rose.
Her father was a member of the Jockey Club, who was generally cleared
out, as they call it, in the great races, but who yet defended his position
bravely, and continued that, and who kept himself afloat by prodigies of
coolness and skill. He belonged to a race which could prove that his
ancestors had been at the court of Charlemagne, and not as musicians or
cooks, as some people declared.
Her youth and beauty and her father’s pedigree dazzled Dupontel, upset
his brain, and altogether turned him upside down, and combined they seemed
to him to be a mirage of happiness and of pride of family.
He got introduced to her father, at the end of a game of baccarat, invited
him to shoot with him, and a month later, as if it were an affair to be hurried
over, he asked for and obtained the hand of Mademoiselle Therése de
Montsaigne, and felt as happy as a miner who has discovered a vein of
precious metal.
The young woman did not require more than twenty-four hours to discover
that her husband was nothing but a ridiculous puppet, and immediately set
about to consider how she might best escape from her cage, and befool the
poor fellow, who loved her with all his heart.
And she deceived him without the least pity or the slightest scruple; she
did it as if it were from instinctive hatred, as if it were a necessity for her not
only to make him ridiculous, but also to forget that she ought to sacrifice her
virgin dreams to him, to belong to him, and to submit to his hateful caresses
without being able to defend himself and to repel him.
She was cruel, as all women are when they do not love, delighted in doing
audacious and absurd things, and in visiting everything, and in braving
danger. She seemed like a young colt, that is intoxicated with the sun, the air
and its liberty, and which gallops wildly across the meadows, jumps hedges
and ditches, kicks, and whinnies joyously, and rolls about in the long, sweet
grass.
But Dupontel remained quite imperturbable; he had not the slightest
suspicion, and was the first to laugh when anybody told him some good story
of a husband who had been cuckolded, although his wife repelled him,
quarreled with him, and constantly pretended to be out of sorts or tired out, in
order to escape from him. She seemed to take a malicious pleasure in
checkmating him by her personal remarks, her disenchanting answers, and
her apparent listlessness.
They saw a great deal of company, and he called himself Du Pontel now,
and he even had thoughts of buying a title from the Pope; he only read certain
newspapers, kept up a regular correspondence with the Orleans Princes, was
thinking of starting a racing stable, and finished up by believing that he really
was a fashionable man, and strutted about, and was puffed out with conceit,
as he had probably never read La Fontaine’s fable, in which he tells the story
of the ass that is laden with relics which people salute, and so takes their
bows to himself.
Suddenly, however, anonymous letters disturbed his quietude, and tore the
bandage from his eyes.
At first he tore them up without reading them, and shrugged his shoulders
disdainfully; but he received so many of them, and the writer seemed so
determined to dot his i’s and cross his t’s and to clear his brain for him, that
the unhappy man began to grow disturbed, and to watch and to ferret about.
He instituted minute inquiries, and arrived at the conclusion that he no longer
had the right to make fun of other husbands, and that he was the perfect
counterpart of Sganarelle.
Furious at having been duped, he set a whole private inquiry agency to
work, continually acted a part, and one evening appeared unexpectedly with
a commissary of police in the snug little bachelor’s quarters which concealed
his wife’s escapades.
 Therése, who was terribly frightened, and at her wits’ end at being thus
surprised in all the disorder of her lover’s apartments, and pale with shame
and terror, hid herself behind the bed curtains, while he, who was an officer
of dragoons, very much vexed at being mixed up in such a pinchbeck scandal,
and at being caught in a silk shirt by these men who were so correctly
dressed in frock coats, frowned angrily, and had to restrain himself so as not
to fling his victim out of a window.
The police commissary, who was calmly looking at this little scene with
the coolness of an amateur, prepared to verify the fact that they were caught
flagrante delicto, and in an ironical voice said to her husband, who had
claimed his services:
“I must ask for your name in full, Monsieur?”
“Charles Joseph Edward Dupontel,” was the answer. And as the
commissary was writing it down from his dictation, he added suddenly: “Du
Pontel in two words, if you please, Monsieur le Commissionaire!”
 THE CARTER’S WENCH

The driver, who had jumped from his box, and was now walking slowly by
the side of his thin horses, waking them up every moment by a cut of the
whip, or a coarse oath, pointed to the top of the hill, where the windows of a
solitary house, in which the inhabitants were still up, although it was very
late and quite dark, were shining like yellow lamps, and said to me:
“One gets a good drop there, Monsieur, and well served, by George.”
And his eyes flashed in his thin, sunburnt face, which was of a deep
brickdust color, while he smacked his lips like a drunkard, who remembers a
bottle of good liquor that he has lately drunk, and drawing himself up in a
blouse like a vulgar swell, he shivered like the back of an ox, when it is
sharply pricked with the goad.
“Yes, and well served by a wench who will turn your head for you before
you have tilted your elbow and drank a glass!”
The moon was rising behind the snow-covered mountain peaks, which
looked almost like blood under its rays, and which were crowned by dark,
broken clouds, which whirled about and floated, and reminded the passenger
of some terrible Medusa’s head. The gloomy plains of Capsir, which were
traversed by torrents, extensive meadows in which undefined forms were
moving about, fields of rye, like huge golden table-covers, and here and there
wretched villagers, and broad sheets of water, into which the stars seemed to
look in a melancholy manner, opened out to the view. Damp gusts of winds
swept along the road, bringing a strong smell of hay, of resin of unknown
flowers, with them, and erratic pieces of rock, which were scattered on the
surface like huge boundary stones, had spectral outlines.
The driver pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes, twirled his
large moustache, and said in an obsequious voice:
“Does Monsieur wish to stop here? This is the place!”
It was a wretched wayside public-house, with a reddish slate roof, that
looked as if it were suffering from leprosy, and before the door there stood
three wagons drawn by mules, and loaded with huge stems of trees, and
which took up nearly the whole of the road; the animals, which were used to
halting there, were dozing, and their heavy loads exhaled a smell of a
pillaged forest.
Inside, three wagoners, one of whom was an old man, while the other two
were young, were sitting in front of the fire, which cackled loudly, with
bottles and glasses on a large round-table by their side, and were singing and
laughing boisterously. A woman with large round hips, and with a lace cap
pinned onto her hair, in the Catalan fashion, who looked strong and bold, and
who had a certain amount of gracefulness about her, and with a pretty, but
untidy head, was urging them to undo the strings of their great leather purses,
and replied to their somewhat indelicate jokes in a shrill voice, as she sat on
the knee of the youngest, and allowed him to kiss her and to fumble in her
bodice, without any signs of shame.
The coachman pushed open the door, like a man who knows that he is at
home.
“Good evening, Glaizette, and everybody; there is room for two more, I
suppose?”
The wagoners did not speak, but looked at us cunningly and angrily, like
dogs whose food had been taken from them, and who showed their teeth,
ready to bite, while the girl shrugged her shoulders and looked into their eyes
like some female wild beast tamer; and then she asked us with a strange
smile:
“What am I to get you?”
“Two glasses of cognac, and the best you have in the cupboard,”
Glaizette, the coachman replied, rolling a cigarette.
While she was uncorking the bottle I noticed how green her eyeballs
were; it was a fascinating, tempting green, like that of the great green
grasshopper; and also how small her hands were, which showed that she did
not use them much; how white her teeth were, and how her voice, which was
rather rough, though cooing, had a cruel, and at the same time, a coaxing
sound. I fancied I saw her, as in a mirage, reclining triumphantly on a couch,
indifferent to the fights which were going on about her, always waiting —
longing for him who would prove himself the stronger, and who would prove
victorious. She was, in short, the hospitable dispenser of love, by the side of
that difficult, stony road, who opened her arms to poor men, and who made
them forget everything in the profusion of her kisses. She knew dark matters,
which nobody in the world besides herself should know, which her sealed
lips would carry away inviolate to the other world. She had never yet loved,
and would never really love, because she was vowed to passing kisses
which were so soon forgotten.
I was anxious to escape from her as soon as possible; no longer to see her
pale, green eyes, and her mouth that bestowed caresses from pure charity; no
longer to feel the woman with her beautiful, white hands, so near one; so I
threw her a piece of gold and made my escape without saying a word to her,
without waiting for any change, and without even wishing her good-night, for
I felt the caress of her smile, and the disdainful restlessness of her looks.
The carriage started off at a gallop to Formiguéres, amidst a furious
jingling of bells. I could not sleep any more; I wanted to know where that
woman came from, but I was ashamed to ask the driver and to show any
interest in such a creature, and when he began to talk, as we were going up
another hill, as if he had guessed my sweet thoughts, he told me all he knew
about Glaizette. I listened to him with the attention of a child, to whom
somebody is telling some wonderful fairy tale.
She came from Fontpédrouze, a muleteers’ village, where the men spend
their time in drinking and gambling at the inn when they are not traveling on
the high roads with their mules, while the women do all the field work, carry
the heaviest loads on their back, and lead a life of pain and misery.
Her father kept an inn; the girl grew up very happy; she was courted
before she was fifteen, and was so coquettish that she was certain to be
almost always found in front of her looking-glass, smiling at her own beauty,
arranging her hair, trying to make herself like a young lady on the prado. And
now, as none of the family knew how to keep a halfpenny, but spent more than
they earned, and were like cracked jugs, from which the water escapes drop
by drop, they found themselves ruined one fine day, just as if they had been at
the bottom of a blind alley. So on the “Feast of Our Lady of Succor,” when
people go on a pilgrimage to Font Romea, and the villages are consequently
deserted, the inn-keeper set fire to the house. The crime was discovered
through la Glaizette, who could not make up her mind to leave the looking-
glass, with which her room was adorned, behind her, and so had carried it
off under her petticoat.
The parents were sentenced to many years’ imprisonment, and being let
loose to live as best she could, the girl became a servant, passed from hand
to hand, inherited some property from an old farmer, whom she had caught,
as if she had been a thrush on a twig covered with bird-lime, and with the
money she had built this public-house on the new road which was being built
across the Capsir.
“A regular bad one, Monsieur,” the coachman said in conclusion, “a vixen
such as one does not see now in the worst garrison towns, and who would
open the door to the whole fraternity, and not at all avaricious, but thoroughly
honest....”
I interrupted him in spite of myself, as if his words had pained me, and I
thought of those pale green eyes, those magic eyes, eyes to be dreamt about,
which were the color of grasshoppers, and I looked for them, and saw them
in the darkness; they danced before me like phosphorescent lights, and I
would have given then the whole contents of my purse to that man if he would
only have been silent and urged his horses on to full speed, so that their mad
gallop might carry me off quickly, quickly and far, and continually further
from that girl.
 THE MARQUIS

It was quite useless to expostulate when that obstinate little Sonia, with a
Russian name and Russian caprices, had said: “I choose to do it.” She was
so delicate and pretty also, with her slightly turned-up nose, and her rosy and
childish cheeks, while every female perversity was reflected in the depths of
her strange eyes, which were the color of the sea on a stormy evening. Yes,
she was very charming, very fantastic, and above all, so Russian, so
deliciously and imperiously Russian, and all the more Russian, as she came
from Montmarte, and in spite of this, not one of her seven lovers who
composed her usual menagerie had laughed when their enslaver said one
day:
“You know my feudal castle at Pludun-Herlouët, near Saint Jacut-de-la-
Mer, which I bought two years ago, and in which I have not yet set foot? Very
well, then! The day after to-morrow, which is the first of May, we will have
a house-warming there.”
The seven had not asked for any further explanation, but had accompanied
little Sonia, and were now ready to sit down to dinner under her presidency
in the dining-room of the old castle, which was situated ten hours from Paris.
They had arrived there that morning; they were going to have dinner and
supper together, and start off again at daybreak next morning; such were
Sonia’s orders, and nobody had made the slightest objection.
Two of her admirers, however, who were not yet used to her sudden
whims, had felt some surprise, which was quickly checked by expressions of
enthusiastic pleasure on the part of the others.
“What a delightful, original idea! Nobody else would have thought of such
things! Positively, nobody else. Oh! these Russians!” But those who had
known her for some time, and who had been consequently educated not to be
surprised at anything, found it all quite natural.
It was half-past six in the evening, and the gentlemen were going to dress.
Sonia had made up her mind to keep on her morning-gown, or if she dressed,
she would do so later. Just then she was not inclined to move out of her great
rocking-chair, from which she could see the sun setting over the sea. The
sight always delighted her very much. It might have been taken for a large red
billiard ball, rebounding from the green cloth. How funny it was! And how
lucky that she was all alone to look at it, for those seven would not have
understood it at all! Those men never have any soul, have they?
Certainly, the sunset was strange at first, but at length it made her sad, and
just now Sonia’s heart felt almost heavy, though the very sadness was sweet.
She was congratulating herself more than ever on being alone, so as to enjoy
that languor, which was almost like a gentle dream, when, in perfect harmony
with that melancholy and sweet sensation, a voice rose from the road, which
was overhung by the terrace; a tremulous, but fresh and pure voice sang the
following words to a slow melody:
“Walking in Paris, Having my drink, A friend of mine whispered: What do
you think? If love makes you thirsty, Then wine makes you lusty.”
The sound died away, as the singer continued on his way, and Sonia was
afraid that she should not hear the rest; it was really terrible; so she jumped
out of the rocking-chair, ran to the balustrade of terrace, and leaning over it,
she called out: “Sing it again! I insist on it. The song, the whole song!”
On hearing this, the singer looked round and then came back, without
hurrying, however, and as if he were prompted by curiosity, rather than by
any desire to comply with her order, and holding his hand over his eyes, he
looked at Sonia attentively, who, on her part, had plenty of time to look
closely at him.
He was an old man of about sixty-five, and his rags and the wallet over
his shoulder denoted a beggar, but Sonia immediately noticed that there was
a certain amount of affectation in his wretchedness. His hair and beard were
not shaggy and ragged, like such men usually wear them, and evidently he had
his hair cut occasionally, and he had a fine, and even distinguished face, as
Sonia said to herself. But she did not pay much attention to that, as for some
time she had noticed that old men at the seaside nearly all looked like
gentlemen.
When he got to the foot of the terrace, the beggar stopped, and wagged his
head and said: “Pretty! The little woman is very pretty!” But he did not obey
Sonia’s order, who repeated it, almost angrily this time, beating a violent
tattoo on the stone-work. “The song, the whole song!”
He did not seem to hear, but stood there gaping, with a vacant smile on his
face, and as his head was rather inclined towards his left shoulder, a thin
stream of saliva trickled from his lips onto his beard, and his looks became
more and more ardent. “How stupid I am!” Sonia suddenly thought. “Of
course he is waiting for something.” She felt in her pocket, in which she
always carried some gold by way of half-pence, took out a twenty-franc
piece and threw it down to the old man. He, however, did not take any notice
of it, but continued looking at her ecstatically, and was only roused from his
state of bliss by receiving a handful of gravel which she threw at him, right in
his face.
“Do sing!” she exclaimed. “You must; I will have it; I have paid you.”
And then, still smiling, he picked up the napoleon and threw it back onto the
terrace, and then he said proudly, though in a very gentle voice: “I do not ask
for charity, little lady; but if it gives you pleasure, I will sing you the whole
song, the whole of it, as often as you please.” And he began the song again, in
his tremulous voice, which was more tremulous than it had been before, as if
he were much touched.
Sonia was overcome, and without knowing was moved into tears;
delighted because the man had spoken to her so familiarly, and rather
ashamed at having treated him as a beggar; and now her whole being was
carried away by the slow rhythm of the melody, which related an old love
story, and when he had done he again looked at her with a smile, and as she
was crying, he said to her: “I dare say you have a beautiful horse, or a little
dog that you are very fond of, which is ill. Take me to it, and I will cure it: I
understand it thoroughly. I will do it gratis, because you are so pretty.”
She could not help laughing. “You must not laugh,” he said. “What are you
laughing at? Because I am poor? But I am not, for I had work yesterday, and
again to-day. I have a bag full. See, look here!” And from his belt he drew a
leather purse in which coppers rattled. He poured them out into the palm of
his hand, and said merrily: “You see, little one, I have a purse. Forty-seven
sous; forty-seven!” “So you will not take my napoleon?” Sonia said.
“Certainly not,” he replied. “I do not want it; and then, I tell you again, I will
not accept alms. So you do not know me?” “No, I do not.” “Very well, ask
anyone in the neighborhood. Everybody will tell you that the Marquis does
not live on charity.”
The Marquis! At that name she suddenly remembered that two years ago
she had heard his story. It was at the time that she bought the property, and the
vendor had mentioned the Marquis as one of the curiosities of the soil. He
was said to be half silly, at any rate an original, almost in his dotage, living
by any lucky bits that he could make as horse-coper and veterinary. The
peasants gave him a little work, as they feared that he might throw spells
over anyone who refused to employ him. They also respected him on account
of his former wealth and of his title, for he had been rich, very rich, and they
said that he really was a marquis, and it was said that he had ruined himself
in Paris by speculating. The reason, of course, was women!
At that moment the dinner bell began to ring, and a wild idea entered
Sonia’s head. She ran to the little door that opened onto the terrace, overtook
the musician, and with a ceremonious bow she said to him: “Will you give
me the pleasure and the honor of dining with me, Marquis?”
The old man left off smiling and grew serious; he put his hand to his
forehead, as if to bring old recollections back, and then with a very formal,
old-fashioned bow, he said: “With pleasure, my dear.” And letting his wallet
drop, he offered Sonia his arm.
When she introduced this new guest to them, all the seven, even to the best
drilled, started. “I see what disturbs you,” she said. “It is his dress. Well! It
really leaves much to be desired. But wait a moment; that can soon be
arranged.”
She rang for her lady’s maid and whispered something to her, and then she
said: “Marquis, your bath is ready in your dressing-room. If you will follow
Sabina, she will show you to it. These gentlemen and I will wait dinner for
you.” And as soon as he had gone out, she said to the youngest there: “And
now, Ernest, go upstairs and undress; I will allow you to dine in your
morning coat, and you will give your dress coat and the rest to Sabina, for the
Marquis.”
Ernest was delighted at having to play a part in the piece, and the six
others clapped their hands. “Nobody else could think of such things; nobody,
nobody!”
Half an hour later they were sitting at dinner, the Marquis in a dress coat
on Sonia’s left, and it was a great deception for the seven. They had reckoned
on having some fun with him, and especially Ernest, who set up as a wit, had
intended to draw him. But at the first attempt of this sort, Sonia had given him
a look which they all understood, and dinner began very ceremoniously for
the seven, but merrily and without restraint between Sonia and the old man.
They cut very long faces, those seven, but inwardly, if one can say so, for
of course they could not dream of showing how put out they were, and those
inward long faces grew longer still when Sonia said to the old fellow, quite
suddenly: “I say, how stupid these gentlemen are! Suppose we leave them to
themselves?”
The Marquis rose, offered her his arm again, and said: “Where shall we
go to?” But Sonia’s only reply was to sing the couplet of that song which she
had remembered:
“For three years I passed The nights with my love, In a beautiful bed In a
splendid alcove. Though wine makes me sleepy, Yet love keeps me frisky.”
And the seven, who were altogether dumbfounded this time, and who
could not conceal their vexation, saw the couple disappear out of the door
which led to Sonia’s apartments. “Hum!” Ernest ventured to say, “this is
really rather strong!” “Yes,” the eldest of the menagerie replied. “It certainly
is rather strong, but it will do! You know, there is nobody like her for
thinking of such things!”
The next morning, the château bell woke them up at six o’clock, when
they had agreed to return to Paris, and the seven men asked each other
whether they should go and wish Sonia good-morning, as usual, before she
was out of her room. Ernest hesitated more than any of them about it, and it
was not until Sabina, her maid, came and told them that her mistress insisted
upon it, that they could make up their minds to do so, and they were surprised
to find Sonia in bed by herself.
“Well!” Ernest asked boldly, “and what about the Marquis?” “He left very
early,” Sonia replied. “A queer sort of marquis, I must say!” Ernest observed
contemptuously, and growing bolder. “Why, I should like to know?” Sonia
replied, drawing herself up. “The man has his own habits, I suppose!” “Do
you know, Madame,” Sabina observed, “that he came back half an hour after
he left?” “Ah!” Sonia said, getting up and walking about the room. “He came
back? What did he want, I wonder?” “He did not say, Madame. He merely
went upstairs to see you. He was dressed in his old clothes again.”
And suddenly Sonia uttered a loud cry, and clapped her hands, and the
seven came round to see what had caused her emotion. “Look here! Just look
here!” she cried. “Do look on the mantel-piece! It is really charming! Do
look!”
And with a smiling, and yet somewhat melancholy expression in her eyes,
with a tender look which they could not understand, she showed them a small
bunch of wild flowers, by the side of a heap of half-pennies. Mechanically
she took them up and counted them, and then began to cry.
There were forty-seven of them.
 THE BED

On a hot afternoon during last summer, the large auction rooms seemed
asleep, and the auctioneers were knocking down the various lots in a listless
manner. In a back room, on the first floor, two or three lots of old silk,
ecclesiastical vestments, were lying in a corner.
They were copes for solemn occasions, and graceful chasubles on which
embroidered flowers surrounded symbolic letters on a yellowish ground,
which had become cream-colored, although it had originally been white.
Some second-hand dealers were there, two or three men with dirty beards,
and a fat woman with a big stomach, one of those women who deal in
second-hand finery, and who also manage illicit love affairs, who are
brokers in old and young human flesh, just as much as they are in new and old
clothes.
Presently a beautiful Louis XV. chasuble was put up for sale, which was
as pretty as the dress of a marchioness of that period; it had retained all its
colors, and was embroidered with lilies of the valley round the cross, and
long blue iris, which came up to the foot of the sacred emblem, and wreaths
of roses in the corners. When I had bought it, I noticed that there was a faint
scent about it, as if it were permeated with the remains of incense, or rather,
as if it were still pervaded by those delicate, sweet scents of by-gone years,
which seemed to be only the memory of perfumes, the soul of evaporated
essences.
When I got it home, I wished to have a small chair of the same period
covered with it; and as I was handling it in order to take the necessary
measures, I felt some paper beneath my fingers, and when I cut the lining,
some letters fell at my feet. They were yellow with age, and the faint ink was
the color of rust, and outside the sheet, which was folded in the fashion of
years long past, it was addressed in a delicate hand: To Monsieur l’Abbé
d’Argence
The first three lines merely settled places of meeting, but here is the third:
“My Friend; I am very unwell, ill in fact, and I cannot leave my bed. The
rain is beating against my windows, and I lie dreaming comfortably and
warmly on my eider-down coverlet. I have a book of which I am very fond,
and which seems as if it really applied to me. Shall I tell you what it is? No,
for you would only scold me. Then, when I have read a little, I think, and
will tell you what about.
“Having been in bed for three days, I think about my bed, and even in my
sleep I meditate on it still, and I have come to the conclusion that the bed
constitutes our whole life; for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall
die in it. If, therefore, I had Monsieur de Crébillon’s pen, I should write the
history of a bed, and what exciting and terrible, as well as delightful moving
occurrences would not such a book contain! What lessons and what subjects
for moralizing could one not draw from it, for everyone?
“You know my bed, my friend, but you will never guess how many things I
have discovered in it within the last three days, and how much more I love it,
in consequence. It seems to me to be inhabited, haunted, if I may say so, by a
number of people I never thought of, who, nevertheless, have left something
of themselves in that couch.
“Ah! I cannot understand people who buy new beds, beds to which no
memories or cares are attached. Mine, ours, which is so shabby, and so
spacious, must have held many existences in it, from birth to the grave. Think
of that, my friend; think of it all; review all those lives, a great part of which
was spent between these four posts, surrounded by these hangings
embroidered by human figures, which have seen so many things. What have
they seen during the three centuries since they were first put up?
“Here is a young woman lying on this bed. From time to time she sighs,
and then she groans and cries out; her mother is with her, and presently a
little creature that makes a noise like a cat mewing, and which is all
shriveled and wrinkled, comes from her. It is a male child to which she has
given birth, and the young mother feels happy in spite of her pain; she is
nearly suffocated with joy at that first cry, and stretches out her arms, and
those around her shed tears of pleasure; for that little morsel of humanity
which has come from her means the continuation of the family, the
perpetuation of the blood, of the heart, and of the soul of the old people, who
are looking on, trembling with excitement.
“And then, here are two lovers, who for the first time are flesh to flesh
together in that tabernacle of life. They tremble; but transported with delight,
they have the delicious sensation of being close together, and by degrees their
lips meet. That divine kiss makes them one, that kiss, which is the gate of a
terrestrial heaven, that kiss which speaks of human delights, which
continually promises them, announces them, and precedes them. And their
bed is agitated like the tempestuous sea, and it bends and murmurs, and itself
seems to become animated and joyous, for the maddening mystery of love is
being accomplished on it. What is there sweeter, what more perfect in this
world than those embraces, which make one single being out of two, and
which give to both of them at the same moment the same thought, the same
expectation, and the same maddening pleasure, which descends upon them
like a celestial and devouring fire?
“Do you remember those lines from some old poet, which you read to me
last year? I do not remember who wrote them, but it may have been Rousard:
“When you and I in bed shall lie, Lascivious we shall be, Enlaced,
playing a thousand tricks, Of lovers, gamesomely.
“I should like to have that verse embroidered on the top of my bed, where
Pyramus and Thisbe are continually looking at me out of their tapestry eyes.
“And think of death, my friend; of all those who have breathed out their
last sigh to God in this bed. For it is also the tomb of hopes ended, the door
which closes everything, after having been the one which lets in the world.
What cries, what anguish, what sufferings, what groans, how many arms
stretched out towards the past; what appeals to happiness that has vanished
for ever; what convulsions, what death-rattles, what gaping lips and distorted
eyes have there not been in this bed, from which I am writing to you, during
the three centuries that it has sheltered human beings!
“The bed, you must remember, is the symbol of life; I have discovered this
within the last three days. There is nothing good except the bed, and are not
some of our best moments spent in sleep?
“But then again, we suffer in bed! It is the refuge of those who are ill and
suffering; a place of repose and comfort for worn-out bodies, and, in a word,
the bed is part and parcel of humanity.
“Many other thoughts have struck me, but I have no time to note them
down for you, and then, should I remember them all? Besides that, I am so
tired that I mean to retire to my pillows, stretch myself out at full length, and
sleep a little. But be sure and come to see me at three o’clock to-morrow;
perhaps I may be better, and able to prove it to you.
“Good-bye, my friend; here are my hands for you to kiss, and I also offer
you my lips.”
 AN ADVENTURE IN PARIS

Is there any stronger feeling than curiosity in a woman? Oh! Fancy seeing,
knowing, touching what one has dreamt about! What would a woman not do
for that? When once a woman’s eager curiosity is aroused, she will be guilty
of any folly, commit any imprudence, venture upon anything, and recoil from
nothing. I am speaking of women who are really women, who are endowed
with that triple-bottomed disposition, which appears to be reasonable and
cold on the surface, but whose three secret compartments are filled. The first,
with female uneasiness, which is always in a state of flutter; the next, with
sly tricks which are colored in imitation of good faith, with those sophistical
and formidable tricks of apparently devout women; and the last, with all
those charming, improper acts, with that delightful deceit, exquisite perfidy,
and all those wayward qualities, which drive lovers who are stupidly
credulous, to suicide; but which delight others.
The woman whose adventure I am about to relate, was a little person from
the provinces, who had been insipidly chaste till then. Her life, which was
apparently so calm, was spent at home, with a busy husband and two
children, whom she brought up like an irreproachable woman. But her heart
beat with unsatisfied curiosity, and some unknown longing. She was
continually thinking of Paris, and read the fashionable papers eagerly. The
accounts of parties, of the dresses and various entertainments, excited her
longing; but, above all, she was strangely agitated by those paragraphs which
were full of double meaning, by those veils which were half raised by clever
phrases, and which gave her a glimpse of culpable and ravishing delights,
and from her country home, she saw Paris in an apotheosis of magnificent
and corrupt luxury.
And during the long nights, when she dreamt, lulled by the regular snores
of her husband, who was sleeping on his back by her side, with a silk
handkerchief tied round his head, she saw in her sleep those well-known men
whose names appeared on the first page of the newspapers as great stars in
the dark skies; and she pictured to herself their life of continual excitement,
of constant debauches, of orgies such as they indulged in in ancient Rome,
which were horridly voluptuous, with refinements of sensuality which were
so complicated that she could not even picture them to herself.
The boulevards seemed to her to be a kind of abyss of human passions,
and there could be no doubt that the houses there concealed mysteries of
prodigious love. But she felt that she was growing old, and this, without
having known life, except in those regular, horridly monotonous, everyday
occupations, which constitute the happiness of the home. She was still pretty,
for she was well preserved in her tranquil existence, like some winter fruit in
a closed cupboard; but she was agitated and devoured by her secret ardor.
She used to ask herself whether she should die without having experienced
any of those damning, intoxicating joys, without having plunged once, just
once into that flood of Parisian voluptuousness.
By dint of much perseverance, she paved the way for a journey to Paris,
found a pretext, got some relations to invite her, and as her husband could not
go with her, she went alone, and as soon as she arrived, she invented a
reason for remaining for two days, or rather for two nights, if necessary, as
she told him that she had met some friends who lived a little way out of town.
And then she set out on a voyage of discovery. She went up and down the
boulevards, without seeing anything except roving and numbered vice. She
looked into the large cafés, and read the Agony Column of the Figaro, which
every morning seemed to her like a tocsin, a summons to love. But nothing
put her on the track of those orgies of actors and actresses; nothing revealed
to her those temples of debauchery which she imagined opened at some
magic word, like the cave in the Arabian Nights, or those catacombs in
Rome, where the mysteries of a persecuted religion were secretly celebrated.
Her relations, who were quite middle-class people, could not introduce
her to any of those well-known men with whose names her head was full, and
in despair she was thinking of returning, when chance came to her aid. One
day, as she was going along the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin, she stopped to
look into a shop full of those colored Japanese knick-knacks, which strike the
eye on account of their color. She was looking at the little ivory buffoons, the
tall vases of flaming enamel, and the curious bronzes, when she heard the
shop-keeper dilating, with many bows, on the value of an enormous, pot-
bellied, comical figure, which was quite unique, he said, to a little, bald-
headed, gray-bearded man.
Every moment, the shop-keeper repeated his customer’s name, which was
a celebrated one, in a voice like a trumpet. The other customers, young
women and well-dressed gentlemen, gave a swift and furtive, but respectful
glance at the celebrated writer, who was looking admiringly at the china
figure. They were both equally ugly, as ugly as two brothers who had sprung
from the same mother.
“I will let you have it for a thousand francs, Monsieur Varin, and that is
exactly what it cost me. I should ask anybody else fifteen hundred, but I think
a great deal of literary and artistic customers, and have special prices for
them. They all come to me, Monsieur Varin. Yesterday, Monsieur Busnach
bought a large, antique goblet of me, and the other day I sold two candelabra
like this (is it not handsome?) to Monsieur Alexander Dumas. If Monsieur
Zola were to see that Japanese figure, he would buy it immediately, Monsieur
Varin.”
The author hesitated in perplexity, as he wanted to have the figure, but the
price was above him, and he thought no more about her looking at him than if
he had been alone in the desert. She came in trembling, with her eyes fixed
shamelessly upon him, and she did not even ask herself whether he were
good-looking, elegant or young. It was Jean Varin himself, Jean Varin. After a
long struggle, and painful hesitation, he put the figure down onto the table.
“No, it is too dear,” he said. The shop-keeper’s eloquence redoubled. “Oh!
Monsieur Varin, too dear? It is worth two thousand francs, if it is worth a
son.” But the man of letters replied sadly, still looking at the figure with the
enameled eyes: “I do not say it is not; but it is too dear for me.” And
thereupon, she, seized by a kind of mad audacity, came forward and said:
“What shall you charge me for the figure?” The shop-keeper, in surprise,
replied: “Fifteen hundred francs, Madame.” “I will take it.”
The writer, who had not even noticed her till that moment, turned round
suddenly; he looked at her from head to foot, with half-closed eyes,
observantly, and then he took in the details, as a connoisseur. She was
charming, suddenly animated by that flame which had hitherto been dormant
in her. And then, a woman who gives fifteen hundred francs for a knick-knack
is not to be met with every day.
But she was overcome by a feeling of delightful delicacy, and turning to
him, she said in a trembling voice: “Excuse me, Monsieur; no doubt I have
been rather hasty, as perhaps you had not finally made up your mind.” He,
however, only bowed, and said: “Indeed, I had, Madame.” And she, filled
with emotion, continued: “Well, Monsieur, if either to-day, or at any other
time, you change your mind, you can have this Japanese figure. I only bought
it because you seemed to like it.”
He was visibly flattered, and smiled. “I should much like to find out how
you know who I am?” he said. Then she told him how she admired him, and
became quite eloquent as she quoted his works, and while they were talking
he rested his arms on a table, and fixed his bright eyes upon her, trying to
make out who and what she really was. But the shop-keeper, who was
pleased to have that living puff of his goods, called out, from the other end of
the shop: “Just look at this, Monsieur Varin; is it not beautiful?”
And then everyone looked round, and she almost trembled with pleasure
at being seen talking so intimately with such a well-known man.
At last, however, intoxicated, as it were, by her feelings, she grew bold,
like a general does, who is going to give the order for an assault.
“Monsieur,” she said, “will you do me a great, a very great pleasure? Allow
me to offer you this funny Japanese figure, as a keepsake from a woman who
admires you passionately, and whom you have seen for ten minutes.”
Of course he refused, and she persisted, but still he resisted her offer, at
which he was much amused, and at which he laughed heartily; but that only
made her more obstinate, and she said: “Very well, then, I shall take it to
your house immediately. Where do you live?”
He refused to give her his address, but she got it from the shop-keeper,
and when she had paid for her purchase, she ran out to take a cab. The writer
went after her, as he did not wish to accept a present for which he could not
possibly account. He reached her just as she was jumping into the vehicle,
and getting in after her, he almost fell onto her, and then tumbled onto the
bottom of the cab as it started. He picked himself up, however, and sat down
by her side, feeling very much annoyed.
It was no good for him to insist and to beg her; she showed herself
intractable, and when they got to the door, she stated her conditions. “I will
undertake not to leave this with you,” she said, “if you will promise to do all
I want to-day.” And the whole affair seemed so funny to him that he agreed.
“What do you generally do at this time?” she asked him; and after hesitating
for a few moments, he replied: “I generally go for a walk.” “Very well, then,
we will go to the Bois de Boulogne!” she said, in a resolute voice, and they
started.
He was obliged to tell her the names of all the well-known women, pure
or impure, with every detail about them; their life, their habits, their private
affairs, and their vices; and when it was getting dusk, she said to him: “What
do you do every day at this time?” “I have some absinthe,” he replied, with a
laugh. “Very well, then, Monsieur,” she went on, seriously, “let us go and
have some absinthe.”
They went into a large café on the boulevard which he frequented, and
where he met some of his colleagues, whom he introduced to her. She was
half mad with pleasure, and she kept saying to herself: “At last! At last!” But
time went on, and she observed that she supposed it must be about his dinner
time, and she suggested that they should go and dine. When they left Bignon’s,
after dinner, she wanted to know what he did in the evening, and looking at
her fixedly, he replied: “That depends; sometimes I go to the theater.” “Very
well, then, Monsieur; let us go to the theater.”
They went to the Vaudeville with an order, thanks to him, and, to her great
pride, the whole house saw her sitting by his side, in the balcony stalls.
When the play was over, he gallantly kissed her hand, and said: “It only
remains for me to thank you for this delightful day....” But she interrupted
him: “What do you do at this time, every night?” “Why ... why ... I go home.”
She began to laugh, a little tremulous laugh. “Very well, Monsieur ... let us go
to your rooms.”
They did not say anything more. She shivered occasionally, from head to
foot, feeling inclined to stay, and inclined to run away, but with a fixed
determination, after all, to see it out to the end. She was so excited that she
had to hold onto the baluster as she went upstairs, and he came up behind her,
with a wax match in his hand.
As soon as they were in the room, she undressed herself quickly, and
retired without saying a word, and then she waited for him, cowering against
the wall. But she was as simple as it was possible for a provincial lawyer’s
wife to be, and he was more exacting than a pascha with three tails, and so
they did not at all understand each other. At last, however, he went to sleep,
and the night passed, and the silence was only disturbed by the tick-tack of
the clock, and she, lying motionless, thought of her conjugal nights; and by the
light of the Chinese lantern, she looked, nearly heart-broken, at the little fat
man lying on his back, whose round stomach raised up the bed-clothes like a
balloon filled with gas. He snored with the noise of a wheezy organ pipe,
with prolonged snorts and comic chokings. His few hairs profited by his
sleep, to stand up in a very strange way, as if they were tired of having been
fastened for so long to that pate, whose bareness they were trying to cover,
and a small stream of saliva was running out of one corner of his half-open
mouth.
At last the daylight appeared through the drawn blinds; so she got up and
dressed herself without making any noise, and she had already half opened
the door, when she made the lock creak, and he woke up and rubbed his eyes.
He was some moments before he quite came to himself, and then, when he
remembered all that had happened, he said: “What! Are you going already?”
She remained standing, in some confusion, and then she said, in a hesitating
voice: “Yes, of course; it is morning...”
Then he sat up, and said: “Look here, I have something to ask you, in my
turn.” And as she did not reply, he went on: “You have surprised me most
confoundedly since yesterday. Be open, and tell me why you did it all, for
upon my word I cannot understand it in the least.” She went close up to him,
blushing like as if she had been a virgin, and said: “I wanted to know ... what
... what vice ... really was, ... and ... well ... well, it is not at all funny.”
And she ran out of the room, and downstairs into the street.
A number of sweepers were busy in the streets, brushing the pavements,
the roadway, and sweeping everything on one side. With the same regular
motion, the motion of mowers in a meadow, they pushed the mud in front of
them in a semi-circle, and she met them in every street, like dancing puppets,
walking automatically with their swaying motion. And it seemed to her as if
something had been swept out of her; as if her over-excited dreams had been
pushed into the gutter, or into the drain, and so she went home, out of breath,
and very cold, and all that she could remember was the sensation of the
motion of those brooms sweeping the streets of Paris in the early morning.
As soon as she got into her room, she threw herself onto her bed and
cried.
 HAPPINESS

The sky was blue, with light clouds that looked like swans slowly sailing on
the waters of a lake, and the atmosphere was so warm, so saturated with the
subtle odors of the mimosas, that Madame de Viellemont ordered coffee to
be served on the terrace which overlooked the sea.
And while the steam rose from the delicate china cups, one felt an almost
inexpressible pleasure in looking at the sails, which were gradually
becoming lost in the mysterious distance, and at the almost motionless sea,
which had the sheen of jewels, which attracted the eyes like the looks of a
dreamy woman.
Monsieur de Pardeillac, who had arrived from Paris, fresh from the
remembrance of the last election there, from that Carnival of variegated
posters, which for weeks had imparted the strange aspect of some Oriental
bazaar to the whole city, had just been relating the victory of The General,
and went on to say that those who had thought that the game was lost, were
beginning to hope again.
After listening to him, old Count de Lancolme, who had spent his whole
life in rummaging libraries, and who had certainly compiled more
manuscripts than any Benedectine friar, shook his bald head, and exclaimed
in his shrill, rather mocking voice:
“Will you allow me to tell you a very old story, which has just come into
my head, while you were speaking, my dear friend, which I read formerly in
an old Italian city, though I forget at this moment where it was?
“It happened in the fifteenth century, which is far removed from our epoch,
but you shall judge for yourselves whether it might not have happened
yesterday.
“Since the day, when mad with rage and rebellion, the town had made a
bonfire of the Ducal palace, and had ignominiously expelled that patrician
who had been their podestat, as if he had been some vicious scoundrel, had
thrust his lovely daughter into a convent, and had forced his sons, who might
have claimed their parental heritage, and have again imposed the abhorred
yoke upon them, into a monastery, the town had never known any prosperous
times. One after another the shops closed, and money became as scarce as if
there had been an invasion of barbarian hordes, who had emptied the State
treasury, and stolen the last gold coin.
“The poor people were in abject misery, and in vain held out their hands
to passers-by under the church porches, and in the squares, while only the
watchmen disturbed the silence of the starlit nights, by their monotonous and
melancholy call, which announced the flight of the hours as they passed.
“There were no more serenades; no longer did viols and flutes trouble the
slumbers of the lovers’ choice; no longer were amorous arms thrown round
women’s supple waists, nor were bottles of red wine put to cool in the
fountains under the trees. There were no more love adventures, to the rhythm
of laughter and of kisses; nothing but heavy, monotonous weariness, and the
anxiety as to what the next day might bring forth, and ceaseless, unbridled
ambitions and lusts.
“The palaces were deserted, one by one, as if the plague were raging, and
the nobility had fled to Florence and to Rome. In the beginning, the common
people, artisans and shop-keepers had installed themselves in power, as in a
conquered city, and had seized posts of honor and well-paid offices, and had
sacked the Treasury with their greedy and eager hands. After them, came the
middle classes, and those solemn upstarts and hypocrites, like leathern
bottles blown out with wind, acting the tyrant and lying without the least
shame, disowned their former promises, and would soon have given the
finishing stroke to the unfortunate city, which was already at its last shifts.
“Discontent was increasing, and the sbirri could scarcely find time to tear
the seditious placards, which had been posted up by unknown hands, from the
walls.
“But now that the old podestat had died in exile, worn out with grief, and
that his children, who had been brought up under monastic rules, and were
accustomed to nothing so much as to praying, thought only of their own
salvation, there was nobody who could take his place.
“And so these kinglets profited by the occasion to strut about at their ease
like great nobles, to cram themselves with luxurious meals, to increase their
property by degrees, to put everything up for sale, and to get rid of those
who, later on, could have called for accounts, and have nailed them to the
pillory by their ears.
“Their arrogance knew no bounds, and when they were questioned about
their acts, they only replied by menaces or raillery, and this state of affairs
lasted for twenty years, when, as war was imminent with Lucca, the Council
raised troops and enrolled mercenaries. Several battles were fought in which
the enemy was beaten and was obliged to flee, abandoning their colors, their
arms, prisoners, and all the booty in their camp.
“The man who had led the soldiers from battle, whom they had acclaimed
as triumphant and laurel-crowned Caesar, around their campfires, was a poor
condottiere, who possessed nothing in the world except his clothes, his buff
jerkin and his heavy sword.
“They called him Hercules, on account of his strong muscles, his
imposing build, and his large head, and also Malavista, because in those
butcheries he had no pity, no weakness, but seemed, with his great murderous
arms, as if he had the long reach of death itself. He had neither title, deeds,
fortune, nor relations, for he had been born one night in the tent of a female
camp follower; for a long time, an old, broken drum had been his cradle, and
he had grown up anyhow, without knowing those maternal kisses and
endearments that warm the heart, or the pleasure of not always sleeping on a
hard bed, or of always eating tough beef, or of being obliged to tighten his
sword belt when luck had turned like a weathercock when the wind shifts,
and a man would gladly give all his share of the next booty for a moldy crust
of bread and a glass of water.
“He was a simple and a brave man, whose heart was as virgin as some
virgin shore, on which no human foot has ever yet left its imprint.
“The Chiefs of the Council were imprudent enough to summon Hercules
Malavista within the walls of the town, and to celebrate his arrival with
almost imperial splendor, more, however, to deceive the people and to
regain their waning popularity by means of some one else, by a ceremony
copied from those of Pagan Rome, than to honor and recompense the services
of a soldier whom they despised at the bottom of their hearts.
“The bells rang a full peal, and the archbishop and clergy and choir boys
went to meet the Captain, singing psalms and hymns of joy, as if it might have
been Easter. The streets and squares were strewn with branches of box roses
and marjoram, while the meanest homes were decorated with flags, and hung
with drapery and rich stuffs.
“The conqueror came in through Trajan’s gate, bare-headed, and with the
symbolical golden laurel wreath on his head; and sitting on his horse, that
was as black as a starless night, he appeared even taller, more vigorous and
more masculine than he really was. He had a joyous and tranquil smile on his
lips, and a hidden fire was burning in his eyes, and his soldiers bore the flags
and the trophies that he had gained, before him, and behind him there was a
noise of clashing partisans and cross-bows, and of loud voices shouting
vivats in his honor.
“In this fashion he traversed all the quarters of the town, and even the
suburbs. The women thought him handsome and proud, blew kisses to him,
and held up their children so that they might see him, and he might touch
them, and the men cheered him, and looked at him with emotion, and many of
them reflected and dreamt about that bright, unknown man, who appeared to
be surrounded by a halo of glory.
“The members of the Council began to perceive the extent of the almost
irreparable fault that they had committed, and did not know what to do in
order to ward off the danger by which they were menaced, and to rid
themselves of a guest who was quite ready to become their master. They saw
clearly that their hours were numbered, that they were approaching that fatal
period at which rioting becomes imminent, when the leaders are carried
away with it, like pieces of straw in a swift current.
“Hercules could not show himself in public without being received with
shouts of acclamation and noisy greetings, and deputations from the nobility,
as well as from the people, came repeatedly and told him that he had only to
make a sign and to say a word, for his name to be in every mouth, and for his
authority to be accepted. They begged him on their knees to accept the
supreme authority, as though he would be conferring a favor on them, but the
free-lance did not seem to understand them, and repelled their offers with the
superb indifference of a soldier who has nothing to do with the people or a
crown.
“At length, however, his resistance grew weaker; he felt the intoxication
of power, and grew accustomed to the idea of holding the lives of thousands
in his hands, of having a palace, arsenals full of arms, chests full of gold,
ships which he could send on adventurous cruises wherever he pleased, and
of governing that city, with all its houses and all its churches, and of being a
leading figure at all grand functions in the cathedral.
“The shop-keepers and merchants were overcome by terror at this, and
bowed before the shadow of that great sword, which might sweep them all
away and upset their false weights and scales. So they assembled secretly in
a monastery of the Carmelite friars outside the gates of the city, and a short
time afterwards the weaver Marconelli, and the money-changer Rippone
brought Giaconda, who was one of the most beautiful courtesans in Venice,
and who knew every secret in the Art of Love, and whose kisses were a
foretaste of Paradise, back with them from that city. She soon managed to
touch the soldier with her delicate, fair skin, to make him inhale its
bewitching odor in close proximity, and to dazzle him with her large, dark
eyes, in which the reflection of stars seemed to shine, and when he had once
tasted that feast of love, and that heavy wine of kisses, when he had clasped
that pink and white body in his arms, and had listened to that voice which
sounded as soft as music, and which promised him eternities of joy, and
vowed to him eternities of pleasures, Hercules lost his head, and forgot his
dreams and his oaths.
“Why lose precious hours in conspiring, in deluding himself with
chimeras; why risk his life when he loved and was loved, and when the
minutes were all too short, when he would have wished never to detach his
lips from those of the woman he loved?
“And so he did whatever Gioconda demanded.
“They fled from the city, without even telling the sentinels who were on
guard before his palace. They went far, far away, as they could not find any
retreat that was sufficiently unknown and hidden, and at last they stopped at a
small, quiet fishing village, where there were gardens full of lemon trees,
where the deserted beach looked as if it were covered with gold, and where
the sea was a deep blue until it was lost in the distance. And while the
captain and the courtesan loved each other and wore themselves out with
pleasure — with the enchantment of the sea close to them — the irritated
citizens, whom he had left were clamoring for their idol, were indignant at
his desertion, and tore up the paving stones in the streets, to stone the man
who had betrayed their confidence and worship.
“And they pulled his statue down from its pedestal, amidst spiteful songs
and jokes, and the members of the Council breathed again ... as they were no
longer afraid of the great sword.”
 THE OLD MAID

Count Eustache d’Etchegorry’s solitary country house had the appearance of

a poor man’s home, where people do not have enough to eat every day in the
week, where the bottles are more frequently filled at the pump than in the
cellar, and where they wait until it is dark before lighting the candles.
It was an old and sordid building; the walls were crumbling to pieces, the
grated, iron gates were eaten away by rust, the holes in the broken windows
had been mended with old newspapers, and the ancestral portraits which
hung against the walls, showed that it was no tiller of the soil, nor miserable
laborer whose strength had gradually worn out and bent his back, who lived
there. Great, knotty elm trees sheltered it, as if they had been a tall, green
screen, and a large garden, full of wild rose-trees and of straggling plants, as
well as of sickly-looking vegetables, which sprang up half-withered from the
sandy soil, went down as far as the bank of the river.
From the house, one could hear the monotonous sound of the water, which
at one time rushed yellow and impetuous towards the sea, and then again
flowed back, as if driven by some invisible force towards the town which
could be seen in the distance, with its pointed spires, its ramparts, and its
ships at anchor by the side of the quay, and its citadel built on the top of a
hill.
A strong smell of the sea came from the offing, mingled with the resinous
smell of pine logs, and of the large nets with great pieces of sea-weed
clinging to them, which were drying in the sun.
Why had Monsieur d’Etchegorry, who did not like the country, who was
of a sociable rather than of a solitary nature, for he never walked alone, but
kept step with the retired officers who lived there, and frequently played
game after game at piquet at the café, when he was in town, buried himself in
such a solitary place, by the side of a dusty road at Boucau, a village close to
the town, where on Sundays the soldiers took off their tunics, and sat in their
shirt sleeves in the public-houses, drank the thin wine of the country, and
teased the girls.
 What secret reasons had he for selling the mansion which he had
possessed at Bayonne, close to the bishop’s palace, and condemning his
daughter, a girl of nineteen, to such a dull, listless, solitary life; counting the
minutes far from everybody, as if she had been a nun, no one knew, but most
people said that he had lost immense sums in gambling, and had wasted his
fortune and ruined his credit in doubtful speculations. They wondered
whether he still regretted the tender, sweet woman whom he had lost, who
died one evening, after years of suffering, like a church lamp whose oil has
been consumed to the last drop. Was he seeking for perfect oblivion, for that
soothing repose in nature, in which a man becomes enervated, and which
envelopes him like a moist, warm cloth? How could he be satisfied with
such an existence? With the bad cooking, and the careless, untidy ways of a
char-woman, and with the shabby clothes, that were discolored by use!
His numerous relations had been anxious about it at first, and had tried to
cure him of his apparent hypochondria, and to persuade him to employ
himself with something, but as he was obstinate, avoided them, rejected their
friendly offers with arrogance and self-sufficiency, even his brothers had
abandoned him, and almost renounced him. All their affection had been
transferred to the poor child who shared his solitude, and who endured all
that wretchedness with the resignation of a saint. Thanks to them, she had a
few gleams of pleasure in their exile, and was not dressed like a beggar girl,
but received invitations, and appeared here and there at some ball, concert or
tennis party, and the girl was extremely grateful to them for it all, although
she would much have preferred that nobody should have held out a helping
hand to her, but have left her to her dull life, without any day dreams or
homesickness, so that she might grow used to her lot, and day by day lose all
that remained to her of her pride of race and of her youth.
With her sensitive and proud mind, she felt that she was treated exactly
like others were in society, that people showed her either too much pity or
too much indifference, that they knew all about her side life of undeserved
poverty, and that in the folds of her muslin dress they could smell the
mustiness of her home. If she was animated, or buoyed up with secret hopes
in her heart, if there was a smile on her lips, and her eyes were bright when
she went out at the gate, and the horses carried her off to town at a rapid trot,
she was all the more low-spirited and tearful when she returned home, and
she used to shut herself up in her room and find fault with her destiny,
declared to herself that she would imitate her father, show relations and
friends politely out, with a passive and resigned gesture, and make herself so
unpleasant and embarrassing that they would grow tired of it in the end, leave
long intervals between their visits, and finally would not come to see her at
all, but would turn away from her, as if from a hospital where incurable
patients were dying.
Nevertheless, the older the count grew, the more the supplies in the small
country house diminished, and the more painful and harder existence became.
If a morsel of bread was left uneaten on the table, if an unexpected dish was
served up at table, if she put a piece of ribbon into her hair, he used to heap
violent, spiteful reproaches on her, torrents of rage which defile the mouth,
and violent threats like those of a madman, who is tormented by some fixed
idea. Monsieur d’Etchegorry had dismissed the servant and engaged a char-
woman, whom he intended to pay, merely by small sums on account, and he
used to go to market with a basket on his arm.
He locked up every morsel of food, used to count the lumps of sugar and
charcoal, and bolted himself in all day long in a room that was larger than the
rest, and which for a long time had served as a drawing-room. At times he
would be rather more gentle, as if he were troubled by vague thoughts, and
used to say to his daughter, in an agonized voice, and trembling all over:
“You will never ask me for any accounts, I say?... You will never demand
your mother’s fortune?”
She always gave him the required promise, did not worry him with any
questions, nor give vent to any complaints, and thinking of her cousins, who
would have good dowries, who were growing up happily and peacefully,
amidst careful and affectionate surroundings and beautiful old furniture, who
were certain to be loved, and to get married some day, and she asked herself
why fate was so cruel to some, and so kind to others, and what she had done
to deserve such disfavor.
Marie-des-Anges d’Etchegorry, without being absolutely pretty,
possessed all the charm of her age, and everybody liked her. She was as tall
and slim as a lily, with beautiful, fine, soft fair hair, eyes of a dark,
undecided color, which reminded one of those springs in the depths of the
forests, in which a ray of the sun is but rarely reflected — mirrors which
changed now to violet, then to the color of leaves, but most frequently of a
velvety blackness — and her whole being exhaled a freshness of childhood,
and something that could not be described, but which was pleasant,
wholesome and frank.
 She lived on through a long course of years, growing old, faithful to the
man who might have given her his name, honorable, having resisted
temptations and snares, worthy of the motto which used to be engraved on the
tombs of Roman matrons before the Cæsars: “She spun wool, and kept at
home.”
When she was just twenty-one, Marie-des-Anges fell in love, and her
beautiful, dark, restless eyes for the first time became illuminated with a look
of dreamy happiness. For someone seemed to have noticed her; he waltzed
with her more frequently than he did with the other girls, spoke to her in a
low voice, dangled at her petticoats, and discomposed her so much, that she
flushed deeply as soon as she heard the sound of his voice.
His name was André de Gèdrè; he had just returned from Sénégal, where
after several months of daily fighting in the desert, he had won his sub-
lieutenant’s epaulets.
With his thin, sunburnt, yellow face, looking awkward in his tight coat, in
which his broad shoulders could not distend themselves comfortably, and in
which his arms, which had formerly been used to cut right and left, were
cramped in their tight sleeves, he looked like one of those pirates of old, who
used to scour the seas, pillaging, killing, hanging their prisoners to the yard-
arms, who were ready to engage a whole fleet, and who returned to the port
laden with booty, and occasionally with waifs and strays picked up at sea.
He belonged to a race of buccaneers or of heroes, according to the breeze
which swelled his sails and carried him North or South. Over head and ears
in debt, reduced to discounting doubtful legacies, to gambling at Casinos, and
to mortgaging the few acres of land that he had remaining at much below their
value, he nevertheless managed to make a pretty good figure in his hand to
mouth existence; he never gave in, never showed the blows that he had
received, and waited for the last struggle in a state of blissful inactivity,
while he sought for renewed strength and philosophy from the caressing lips
of women.
Marie-des-Anges seemed to him to be a toy which he could do with as he
liked. She had the flavor of unripe fruit; left to herself, and sentimental as she
was, she would only offer a very brief resistance to his attacks, and would
soon yield to his will, and when he was tired of her and threw her off, she
would bow to the inevitable, and would not worry him with violent scenes,
nor stand in his way, with threats on her lips. And so he was kind, and used
to wheedle her, and by degrees enveloped her in the meshes of a net, which
continually hemmed her in closer and closer. He gained entire possession of
her heart and confidence, and without expressing any wish or making any
promises, managed so to establish his influence over her, that she did nothing
but what he wished.
Long before Monsieur de Gèdrè had addressed any passionate words to
her, or any avowal which immediately introduces warmth and danger into a
flirtation, Marie-des-Anges had betrayed herself with the candor of a little
girl, who does not think she is doing any wrong, and cannot hide what she
thinks, what she is dreaming about, and the tenderness which lies hidden at
the bottom of her heart, and she no longer felt that horror of life which had
formerly tortured her. She no longer felt herself alone, as she had done
formerly — so alone, so lost, even among her own people, that everything
had become indifferent to her.
It was very pleasant and soothing to love and to think that she was loved,
to have a furtive and secret understanding with another heart, to imagine that
he was thinking of her at the same time that she was thinking of him, to shelter
herself timidly under his protection, to feel more unhappy each time she left
him, and to experience greater happiness every time they met.
She wrote him long letters, which she did not venture to send him when
they were written, for she was timid and feared that he would make fun of
them, and she sang the whole day through, like a lark that is intoxicated with
the sun, so that Monsieur d’Etchegorry scarcely recognized her any longer.
Soon they made appointments together in some secluded spot, meeting for
a few minutes in the aisles of the cathedral and behind the ramparts, or on the
promenade of the Alleés-Marinès, which was always dark, on account of the
dense foliage.
And at last, one evening in June, when the sky was so studded with stars
that it might have been taken for a triumphal route of some sovereign, strewn
with precious stones and rare flowers, Monsieur de Gèdrè went into the
large, neglected garden.
Marie-des-Anges was waiting for him in a somber walk with witch elms
on either side and listening for the least noise, looking at the closed windows
of the house, and nearly fainting, as much from fear as from happiness. They
spoke in a low voice. She was close to him and he must have heard the
beating of her heart, into which he had cast the first seeds of love, and he put
his arms around her and clasped her gently, as if she had been some little
bird that he was afraid of hurting, but which he did not wish to allow to
escape.
She no longer knew what she was doing, but was in a state of entire
intense, supreme happiness. She shivered, and yet something burning seemed
to permeate her whole being under her skin, from the nape of her neck to her
feet, like a stream of burning spirit, and she would not have had the strength
to disengage herself or to take a step forward, so she leant her head
instinctively and very tenderly against André’s shoulder. He kissed her hair,
touched her forehead with his lips, and at last put them against hers. The girl
felt as if she were going to die, and remained inert and motionless, with her
eyes full of tears.
He came nearly every evening for two months. She had not the courage to
repel him and to speak to him seriously of the future, and could not
understand why he had not yet asked her father for her hand and had not
fulfilled his former promises, until, one Sunday, as she was coming from
High Mass, walking on before her cousins, Marie-des-Anges heard the
following words, from a group in which André was standing, and he was the
speaker: “Oh! no,” he said, “you are altogether mistaken; I should never do
anything so foolish.... One does not marry a girl without a halfpenny; one
takes her for one’s mistress.”
The unhappy girl mastered her feelings, went down the steps of the porch
quite steadily, but feeling utterly crushed, as if by the news of some terrible
disaster, and joined the servant, who was waiting for her, to accompany her
back to Boucau. The effects of what she had heard were to give her a serious
illness and for some time she hovered between life and death, consumed and
wasted by a violent fever; and when after a fortnight’s suffering, she grew
convalescent, and looked at herself in the glass, she recoiled, as if she had
been face to face with an apparition, for there was nothing left of her former
self.
Her eyes were dull, her cheeks pale and hollow, and there were white
streaks in her silky, light hair. Why had she not succumbed to her illness?
Why had destiny reserved her for such a trial, and increased her unhappy lot,
that of disappointed hopes, thus? But when that rebellious feeling was over,
she accepted her cross, fell into a state of ardent devotion and became
crystallized in the torpor of an old woman, tried with all her might to rid her
memory of any recollections that had become incrusted in it, and to put a
thick black veil between herself and the past.
 She never walked in the garden now, and never went to Bayonne, and she
would have liked to have choked herself, and to have beaten herself, when,
in spite of her efforts and of her will, she remembered her lost happiness,
and when some sensual feeling and a longing for past pleasures agitated her
body afresh.
That lasted for four years, which finished her and altogether destroyed her
good looks and she had the figure and the appearance of an old maid, when
her father suddenly died, just as he was going to sit down to dinner; and
when the lawyer, who was summoned immediately, had ransacked the
cupboards and drawers, discovered a mass of securities, of bank-notes, and
of gold, which Count d’Etchegorry, who was eaten up with avarice, had
amassed eagerly, and hidden away, it was found that Mademoiselle Marie-
des-Anges, who was his sole heiress, possessed an income of fifty thousand
francs.
She received the news without any emotion, for of what use was such a
fortune to her now, and what should she do with it? Her eyes, alas! had been
too much opened by all the tears that had fallen from them for her to delude
herself with visionary hopes, and her heart had been too cruelly wounded to
warm itself by lying illusions, and she was seized by melancholy when she
thought that in future she would be coveted, she who had been kept at arm’s
length, as if she had been a leper; that men would come after her money with
odious impatience, that now that she was worn out and ugly, tired of
everything and everybody, she would most certainly have plenty of suitors to
refuse, and that perhaps he would come back to her, attracted by that amount
of money, like a hawk hovering over its prey, that he would try to re-kindle
the dead cinders, to revive some spark in them and to obtain pardon for his
cowardice.
Oh! With what bitter pleasure she could have thrown those millions into
the road to the ragged beggars, or scattered them about like manna to all who
were suffering and dying of hunger, and who had neither roof nor hearth! She
naturally soon became the target at which everyone aimed, the goal for which
all those who had formerly disdained her most, now eagerly tried.
Monsieur de Gèdrè was not long before he was in the ranks of her suitors,
as she had foreseen, and caused her that last heart-burning of seeing him
humble, kneeling at her feet, acting a comedy, trying every means of
overcoming her resistance, and to regain possession of that heart, which was
closed against him, after having been entirely his, in all its adorable virginity.
 And Marie-des-Anges had loved him so deeply that his letters in which he
recalled the past, and stirred up all the recollections of their love, their
kisses, and their dreams, softened her in spite of herself, and came across her
profound, incurable sadness, like a factitious light, the reflection of a bonfire,
which, from a distance, illuminates a prison cell for a moment.
He was poor himself and had not wished, so he said, to drag her into his
life of privation and shifts, and she thought to herself that perhaps he had
been right; and thus sensibly, like a mother or an elder sister, who has
become indulgent and wishes to close her eyes and her ears against
everything, to forgive again, to forgive always, she excused him, and tried to
remember nothing but those months of tenderness and of ecstacy, those
months of happiness, and that he had been the first, the only man who, in the
course of her unhappy, wasted life, had given her a moment’s peace, had
caused her to dream, and had made her happy, and youthful and loving.
He had been charitable towards her and she would be so a hundred fold
towards him; and so she grew happy again, when she said to herself that she
would be his benefactress, that even with his hard heart, he could not accept
the sacrifice from a woman, who, like so many others, might have returned
him evil for evil, but who preferred to be kind and maternal, after having
been in love with him, without some feelings of gratitude and emotion.
And that resolution transfigured her, restored to her temporarily,
something of her youth, which had so soon fled away, and a poor, heroic saint
amongst all the saints, she took refuge in a Carmelite convent, so as to escape
from this returning temptation, and to bequeath everything of which she could
lawfully dispose, to Monsieur de Gèdrè.
 THE AWAKENING

During the three years that she had been married, she had not left the Val de
Ciré, where her husband possessed two cotton-mills. She led a quiet life,
and although she had no children, she was quite happy in her house among the
trees, which the work-people called the château.
Although Monsieur Vasseur was considerably older than she was, he was
very kind. She loved him, and no guilty thought had ever entered her mind.
Her mother came and spent every summer at Ciré, and then returned to
Paris for the winter, as soon as the leaves began to fall.
Jeanne coughed a little every autumn, for the narrow valley through which
the river wound, grew foggy for five months. First of all, slight mists hung
over the meadows, making all the low-lying ground look like a large pond,
out of which the roof of the houses rose.
Then that white vapor, which rose like a tide, enveloped everything, and
turned the valley into a land of phantoms, through which men moved about
like ghosts, without recognizing each other ten yards off, and the trees,
wreathed in mist, and dripping with moisture, rose up through it.
But the people who went along the neighboring hills, and who looked
down upon the deep, white depression of the valley, saw the two huge
chimneys of Monsieur Vasseur’s factories, rising above the mist below. Day
and night they vomited forth two long trails of black smoke, and that alone
indicated that people were living in that hollow, which looked as if it were
filled with a cloud of cotton.
That year, when October came, the medical men advised the young woman
to go and spend the winter in Paris with her mother, as the air of the valley
was dangerous for her weak chest, and she went. For a month or so, she
thought continually of the house which she had left, to which she seemed
rooted, and whose well-known furniture and quiet ways she loved so much,
but by degrees she grew accustomed to her new life, and got to liking
entertainments, dinners and evening parties, and balls.
Till then, she had retained her girlish manners, she had been undecided
and rather sluggish; she walked languidly, and had a tired smile, but now she
became animated and merry, and was always ready for pleasure. Men paid
her marked attentions, and she was amused at their talk, and made fun of their
gallantries, as she felt sure that she could resist them, for she was rather
disgusted with love, from what she had learned of it in marriage.
The idea of giving up her body to the coarse caresses of such bearded
creatures, made her laugh with pity, and shudder a little with ignorance.
She asked herself how women could consent to those degrading contacts
with strangers, as they were already obliged to endure them with their
legitimate husbands. She would have loved her husband much more if they
had lived together like two friends, and had restricted themselves to chaste
kisses, which are the caresses of the soul.
But she was much amused by their compliments, by the desire which
showed itself in their eyes, and which she did not share, by their declarations
of love, which they whispered into her ear as they were returning to the
drawing-room after some grand dinner, by their words, which were
murmured so low that she almost had to guess them, and which left her blood
quite cool, and her heart untouched, while they gratified her unconscious
coquetry, while they kindled a flame of pleasure within her, and while they
made her lips open, her eyes glow bright, and her woman’s heart, to which
homage was due, quiver with delight.
She was fond of those tête-à-têtes when it was getting dusk, when a man
grows pressing, stammers, trembles and falls on his knees. It was a delicious
and new pleasure to her to know that they felt that passion which left her
quite unmoved, to say no, by a shake of the head, and with her lips, to
withdraw her hands, to get up and calmly ring for lights, and to see the man
who had been trembling at her feet, get up, confused and furious when he
heard the footman coming.
She often had a hard laugh, which froze the most burning words, and said
harsh things, which fell like a jet of icy water on the most ardent
protestations, while the intonations of her voice were enough to make any
man who really loved her, kill himself, and there were two especially who
made obstinate love to her, although they did not at all resemble one another.
One of them, Paul Péronel, was a tall man of the world, gallant and
enterprising, a man who was accustomed to successful love affairs, and who
knew how to wait, and when to seize his opportunity.
The other, Monsieur d’Avancelle, quivered when he came near her,
scarcely ventured to express his love, but followed her like a shadow, and
gave utterance to his hopeless desire by distracted looks, and the assiduity of
his attentions to her, and she made him a kind of slave who followed her
steps, and whom she treated as if he had been her servant.
She would have been much amused if anybody had told her that she would
love him, and yet she did love him, after a singular fashion. As she saw him
continually, she had grown accustomed to his voice, to his gestures, and to
his manner, as one grows accustomed to those with whom one meets
continually. Often his face haunted her in her dreams, and she saw him as he
really was; gentle, delicate in all his actions, humble, but passionately in
love, and she awoke full of those dreams, fancying that she still heard him,
and felt him near her, until one night (most likely she was feverish), she saw
herself alone with him in a small wood, where they were both of them sitting
on the grass. He was saying charming things to her, while he pressed and
kissed her hands.
She could feel the warmth of his skin and of his breath, and she was
stroking his hair, in a very natural manner.
We are quite different in our dreams to what we are in real life. She felt
full of love for him, full of calm and deep love, and was happy in stroking his
forehead and in holding him against her. Gradually he put his arms round her,
kissed her eyes and her cheeks without her attempting to get away from him;
their lips met, and she yielded.
When she saw him again, unconscious of the agitation that he had caused
her, she felt that she grew red, and while he was telling her of his love, she
was continually recalling to mind their previous meeting, without being able
to get rid of the recollection.
She loved him, loved him with refined tenderness, which arose chiefly
from the remembrance of her dream, although she dreaded the
accomplishment of the desires which had arisen in her mind.
At last, he perceived it, and then she told him everything, even to the
dread of his kisses, and she made him swear that he would respect her, and
he did so. They spent long hours of transcendental love together, during
which their souls alone embraced, and when they separated, they were
enervated, weak and feverish.
Sometimes their lips met, and with closed eyes they reveled in that long,
yet chaste caress; she felt, however, that she could not resist much longer, and
as she did not wish to yield, she wrote and told her husband that she wanted
to come to him, and to return to her tranquil, solitary life. But in reply, he
wrote her a very kind letter, and strongly advised her not to return in the
middle of the winter, and so expose herself to a sudden change of climate,
and to the icy mists of the valley, and she was thunderstruck, and angry with
that confiding man, who did not guess, who did not understand, the struggles
of her heart.
February was a warm, bright month, and although she now avoided being
alone with Monsieur Avancelle, she sometimes accepted his invitation to
drive round the lake in the Bois de Boulogne with him, when it was dusk.
On one of those evenings, it was so warm that it seemed as if the sap in
every tree and plant were rising. Their cab was going at a walk; it was
growing dusk, and they were sitting close together, holding each others’
hands, and she said to herself:
“It is all over, I am lost!” for she felt her desires rising in her again, the
imperious want for that supreme embrace, which she had undergone in her
dream. Every moment their lips sought each other, clung together and
separated, only to meet again immediately.
He did not venture to go into the house with her, but left her at her door,
more in love with him than ever, and half fainting.
Monsieur Paul Péronel was waiting for her in the little drawing-room,
without a light, and when he shook hands with her, he felt how feverish she
was. He began to talk in a low, tender voice, lulling her worn-out mind with
the charm of amorous words.
She listened to him without replying, for she was thinking of the other; she
thought she was listening to the other, and thought she felt him leaning against
her, in a kind of hallucination. She saw only him, and did not remember that
any other man existed on earth, and when her ears trembled at those three
syllables: “I love you,” it was he, the other man, who uttered them, who
kissed her hands, who strained her to his breast, like the other had done
shortly before in the cab. It was he who pressed victorious kisses on her lips,
it was his lips, it was he whom she held in her arms and embraced, whom
she was calling to, with all the longings of her heart, with all the over-
wrought ardor of her body.
When she awoke from her dream, she uttered a terrible cry. Captain
Fracasse was kneeling by her, and thanking her, passionately, while he
covered her disheveled hair with kisses, and she almost screamed out: “Go
away! go away! go away!”
 And as he did not understand what she meant, and tried to put his arm
round her waist again, she writhed, as she stammered out:
“You are a wretch, and I hate you! Go away! go away!” And he got up in
great surprise, took up his hat, and went.
The next day she returned to Val de Ciré, and her husband, who had not
expected her for some time, blamed her for a freak.
“I could not live away from you any longer,” she said.
He found her altered in character, and sadder than formerly, but when he
said to her:
“What is the matter with you? You seem unhappy. What do you want?” she
replied:
“Nothing. Happiness exists only in our dreams, in this world.”
Avancelle came to see her the next summer, and she received him without
any emotion, and without regret, for she suddenly perceived that she had
never loved him, except in a dream, from which Paul Péronel had brutally
roused her.
But the young man, who still adored her, thought as he returned to Paris:
“Women are really very strange, complicated and inexplicable beings.”
 THE JENNET

Every time he held an inspection on the review ground, General Daumont de

Croisailles was sure of a small success, and of receiving a whole packet of
letters from women the next day.
Some were almost illegible, scribbled on paper with a love emblem at the
top, by some sentimental milliner; the others ardent, as if saturated with
curry, letters which excited him, and suggested the delights of kisses to him.
Among them, also, there were some which evidently came from a woman
of the world, who was tired of her monotonous life, had lost her head, and let
her pen run on, without exactly knowing what she was writing, with those
mistakes in spelling here and there which seemed to be in unison with the
disordered beating of her heart.
He certainly looked magnificent on horseback; there was something of the
fighter, something bold and mettlesome about him, a valiant look, as our
grandmothers used to say, when they threw themselves into the arms of the
conquerors, between two campaigns, though the same conquerors had loud,
rough voices, even when they were making love, as they had to dominate the
noise of the firing, and violent gestures, as if they were using their swords
and issuing orders, who did not waste time over useless refinements, and in
squandering the precious hours which were counted so avariciously, in minor
caresses, but sounded the charge immediately, and made the assault, without
meeting with any more resistance than they did from a redoubt.
As soon as he appeared, preceded by dragoons, with his sword in his
hand, amidst the clatter of hoofs and jingle of scabbards and bridles, while
plumes waved and uniforms glistened in the sun, a little in front of his staff,
sitting perfectly upright in the saddle, and with his cocked hat with its black
plumes, slightly on one side, the surging crowd, which was kept in check by
the police officers, cheered him as if he had been some popular minister,
whose journey had been given notice of beforehand by posters and
proclamations.
That tumult of strident voices that went from one end of the great square to
the other, which was prolonged like the sound of the rising tide, which beats
against the shore with ceaseless noise, that rattle of rifles, and the sound of
the music that alternated with blasts of the trumpets all along the line, made
the General’s heart swell with unspeakable pride.
He attudinized in spite of himself, and thought of nothing but ostentation,
and of being noticed. He continually touched his horse with his spurs, and
worried it, so as to make it appear restive, and to prance and rear, to champ
its bit, and to cover it with foam, and then he would continue his inspection,
galloping from regiment to regiment with a satisfied smile, while the good
old infantry captains, sitting on their thin Arab horses, with their toes well
stuck out, said to one another:
“I should not like to have to ride a confounded, restive brute like that, I
know!”
But the General’s aide-de-camp, little Jacques de Montboron, could
easily have reassured them, for he knew those famous thoroughbreds, as he
had had to break them in, and had received a thousand trifling instructions
about them.
They were generally more or less spavined brutes, which he had bought at
Tattersall’s auctions for a ridiculous price, and so quiet and well in hand that
they might have been held with a silk thread, but with a good shape, bright
eyes, and coats that glistened like silk. They seemed to know their part, and
stepped out, pranced and reared, and made way for themselves, as if they had
just come out of the riding-school at Saumur.
That was his daily task, his obligatory service.
He broke them in, one after another, and transformed them into veritable
mechanical horses, accustomed them to bear the noise of trumpets and drums,
and of firing, without starting, tired them out by long rides the evening before
every review, and bit his lips to prevent himself from laughing when people
declared that General Daumont de Croisailles was a first-rate rider, who
was really fond of danger.
A rider! That was almost like writing history! But the aide-de-camp
discreetly kept up the illusion, outdid the others in flattery, and related
unheard-of feats of the General’s horsemanship.
And, after all, breaking in horses was not more irksome than carrying on a
monotonous and dull correspondence about the buttons on the gaiters, or than
thinking over projects of mobilization, or than going through accounts in
which he lost himself like in a labyrinth. He had not, from the very first day
that he entered the military academy at Saint-Cyr, learned that sentence which
begins the rules of the Interior Service, in vain:
“As discipline constitutes the principal strength of an army, it is very
important for every superior to obtain absolute respect, and instant obedience
from his inferiors.”
He did not resist, but accustomed himself thus to become a sort of
Monsieur Loyal, spoke to his chief in the most flattering manner, and
reckoned on being promoted over the heads of his fellow officers.
General Daumont de Croisailles was not married and did not intend to
disturb the tranquillity of his bachelor life as long as he lived, for he loved
all women, whether they were dark, fair or red-haired, too passionately to
love only one, who would grow old, and worry him with useless complaints.
Gallant, as they used to be called in the good old days, he kissed the hands
of those women who refused him their lips, and as he did not wish to
compromise his dignity, and be the talk of the town, he had rented a small
house just outside it.
It was close to the canal, in a quiet street with courtyards and shady
gardens, and as nothing is less amusing than the racket of jealous husbands,
or the brawling of excited women who are disputing or raising their voices
in lamentation, and as it is always necessary to foresee some unfortunate
incident or other in the amorous life, some unlucky mishap, some absurdly
imprudent action, some forgotten love appointment, the house had five
different doors.
So discreet, that he reassured even the most timid, and certainly not given
to melancholy, he understood extremely well how to vary his kisses and his
ways of proceeding; how to work on women’s feelings, and to overcome
their scruples, to obtain a hold over them through their curiosity to learn
something new, by the temptation of a comfortable, well-furnished, warm
room, that was fragrant with flowers, and where a little supper was already
served as a prologue to the entertainment. His female pupils would certainly
have deserved the first prize in a love competition.
So men mistrusted that ancient Lovelace as if he had been the plague,
when they had plucked some rare and delicious fruit, and had sketched out
some charming adventure, for he always managed to discover the weak spot,
and to penetrate into the place.
To some, he held out the lure of debauch without any danger attached to it,
the desire of finishing their amorous education, of reveling in perverted
enjoyment, and to others he held out the irresistible argument that seduced
Danae, that of gold.
Others, again, were attracted by his cocked hat and feathers, and by the
conceited hope of seeing him at their knees, of throwing their arms round him
as if he had been an ordinary lover, although he was a general who rode so
imposingly, who was covered with decorations, and to whom all the
regiments presented arms simultaneously, the chief whose orders could not
be commented on or disputed, and who had such a martial and haughty look.
His pay, allowances and his private income of fifteen thousand francs, all
went in this way, like water that runs out drop by drop, from a cracked bottle.
He was continually on the alert, and looked out for intrigues with the
acuteness of a policeman, followed women about, had all the impudence and
all the cleverness of the fast man who has made love for forty years, without
ever meaning anything serious, who knows all its lies, tricks and illusions,
and who can still do a march without halting on the road, or requiring too
much music to put him in proper trim. And in spite of his age and gray hairs,
he could have given a sub-lieutenant points, and was very often loved for
himself, which is the dream of men who have passed forty, and do not intend
to give up the game just yet.
And there were not a dozen in the town who could, without lying, have
declared to a jealous husband or a suspicious lover, that they had not, at any
rate, once staid late in the little house in the Eglisottes quarter, who could
have denied that they had not returned more thoughtful. Not a dozen,
certainly, and, perhaps, not six!
Among that dozen or six, however, was Jacques de Montboron’s mistress.
She was a little marvel, that Madame Courtade, whom the Captain had
unearthed in an ecclesiastical warehouse in the Faubourg Saint-Exupère, and
not yet twenty. They had begun by smiling at each other, and by exchanging
those long looks when they met, which seemed to ask for charity.
Montboron used to pass in front of the shop at the same hours, stopped for
a moment with the appearance of a lounger who was loitering about the
streets, but immediately her supple figure appeared, pink and fair, shedding
the brightness of youth and almost childhood round her, while her looks
showed that she was delighted at little gallant incidents which dispelled the
monotony and weariness of her life for a time, and gave rise to vague but
delightful hopes.
 Was love, that love which she had so constantly invoked, really knocking
at her door at last, and taking pity on her unhappy isolation? Did that officer,
whom she met whenever she went out, as if he had been faithfully watching
her, when coming out of church, or when out for a walk in the evening, who
said so many delightful things to her with his wheedling eyes, really love her
as she wished to be loved, or was he merely amusing himself at that game,
because he had nothing better to do in their quiet little town?
But in a short time he wrote to her, and she replied to him, and at last they
managed to meet in secret, to make appointments, and talk together.
She knew all the cunning tricks of a simple girl, who has tasted the most
delicious of sweets with the tip of her tongue, and acting in concert, and
giving each other the word, so that there might be no awkward mistake, they
managed to make the husband their unwitting accomplice, without his having
the least idea of what was going on.
Courtade was an excellent fellow, who saw no further than the tip of his
nose, incapable of rebelling, flabby, fat, steeped in devotion, and thinking too
much about heaven to see what a plot was being hatched against him, in our
unhappy vale of tears, as the psalters say.
In the good old days of confederacies, he would have made an excellent
chief of a corporation; he loved his wife more like a father than a husband,
considering that at his age a man ought no longer to think of such trifles, and
that, after all, the only real happiness in life was to keep a good table and to
have a good digestion, and so he ate like four canons, and drank in
proportion.
Only once during his whole life had he shown anything like energy — but
he used to relate that occurrence with all the pride of a conqueror, recalling
his most heroic battle — and that was on the evening when he refused to
allow the bishop to take his cook away, quite regardless of any of the
consequences of such a daring deed.
In a few weeks, the Captain became his regular table companion, and his
best friend. He had begun by telling him in a boastful manner that, in order to
keep a vow that he had made to St. George, during the charge up the slope at
Yron, during the battle of Gravelotte, he wished to send two censers and a
sanctuary lamp to his village church.
Courtade did his utmost, and all the more readily as this unexpected
customer did not appear to pay any regard to money. He sent for several
goldsmiths, and showed Montboron models of all kinds; he hesitated,
however, and did not seem able to make up his mind, and discussed the
subject, designed ornaments himself, gained time, and thus managed to spend
several hours every day in the shop.
In fact, he was quite at home in the place, shook hands with Courtade,
called him “my dear fellow,” and did not wince when he took his arm
familiarly before other people, and introduced him to his customers as, “My
excellent friend, the Marquis de Montboron.” He could go in and out of the
house as he pleased, whether the husband was at home or not.
The censers and the lamp were sent in due course to Montboron’s château
at Pacy-sur-Romanche (in Normandy), and when the package was undone, it
caused the greatest surprise to Jacques’ mother, who was more accustomed
to receiving requests for money from her son, than ecclesiastical objects.
Suddenly, however, without rhyme or reason, little Madame Courtade
became insupportable and enigmatical. Her husband could not understand it
at all, and grew uneasy, and continually consulted his friend the Captain.
Etiennette’s character seemed to have completely changed; she found fifty
pretexts for deserting the shop, for coming late, for avoiding tête-à-têtes, in
which people come to explanations, and mutually become irritated, though
such matters usually end in a reconciliation, amidst a torrent of kisses.
She disappeared for days at a time, and soon, Montboron, who was not
fitted to play the part of a Sganarelle, either by age or temperament, became
convinced that his mistress was making him wear the horns, that she was
hobnobbing with the General, and that she was in possession of one of the
five keys of the house in the Eglisottes quarter; and as he was as jealous as
an Andalusian, and felt a horror for that kind of pleasantry, he swore that he
would make his rival pay a hundred fold for the trick which he had played
him.
The Fourteenth of July was approaching, when there was to be a grand
parade of the whole garrison on the large review ground, and all along the
paling, which divided the spectators from the soldiers, itinerant dealers had
put up their stalls, and there were mountebanks’ and somnambulists’ booths,
menageries, and a large circus, which had gone through the town in caravans,
with a great noise of trumpets and of drums.
He had given his aide-de-camp his instructions beforehand, for he was
more anxious than ever to surprise people, and to have a horse like an
equestrian statue, an animal which should outdo that famous black horse of
General Boulanger’s, about which the Parisian loungers had talked so much,
and told Montboron not to mind what the price was, as long as he found him
a suitable charger.
When the Captain, a few days before the review, brought him a chestnut
jennet, with a long tail and flowing mane, which would not keep quiet for
five seconds, but kept on shaking its head, had extraordinary action,
answered the slightest touch of the leg, and stepped out as if it knew no other
motion, General Daumont de Croisailles showered compliments upon him,
and assured him that he knew few officers who possessed his intelligence
and his value, and that he should not forget him when the proper time came
for recommending him for promotion.
Not a muscle of the Marquis de Montboron’s face moved, and when the
day of the review arrived, he was at his post on the staff that followed the
General, who sat as upright as a dart in the saddle, and looked at the crowd
to see whether he could not recognize some old or new female friend there,
while his horse pranced and plunged.
He rode onto the review ground, amidst the increasing noise of applause,
with a smile upon his lips, when, suddenly, at the moment that he galloped up
into the large square, formed by the troops drawn up in a line, the band of the
fifty-third regiment struck up a quick march, and, as if obeying a
preconcerted signal, the jennet began to turn round, and to accelerate its
speed, in spite of the furious tugs at the bridle which the rider gave.
The horse performed beautifully, followed the rhythm of the music, and
appeared to be acting under some invisible impulse, and the General had
such a comical look on his face, he looked so disconcerted, rolled his eyes,
and seemed to be the prey to such terrible exasperation, that he might have
been taken for some character in a pantomime, while his staff followed him,
without being able to comprehend this fresh fancy of his.
The soldiers presented arms, the music did not stop, though the
instrumentalists were much astonished at this interminable ride.
The General at last became out of breath, and could scarcely keep in the
saddle, and the women, in the crowded ranks of the spectators, gave
prolonged, nervous laughs, which made the old roué’s ears tingle with
excitement.
The horse did not stop until the music ceased, and then it knelt down with
bent head, and put its nostrils into the dust.
It nearly gave General de Croisailles an attack of the jaundice, especially
when he found out that it was his aide-de-camp’s tit for tat, and that the
horse came from a circus which was giving performances in the town. And
what irritated him all the more was, that he could not even set it down against
Montboron and have him sent to some terrible out-of-the-way hole, for the
Captain sent in his resignation, wisely considering that sooner or later he
should have to pay the costs of that little trick, and that the chances were that
he should not get any further promotion, but remain stationary, like a cab
which some bilker has left standing for hours at one end of an arcade, while
he has made his escape at the other.
 RUST

During nearly his whole life, he had had an insatiable love for sport. He went
out every day, from morning till night, with the greatest ardor, in summer and
winter, spring and autumn, on the marshes, when it was close time on the
plains and in the woods. He shot, he hunted, he coursed, he ferreted; he spoke
of nothing but shooting and hunting, he dreamt of it, and continually repeated:
“How miserable any man must be who does not care for sport!”
And now that he was past fifty, he was well, robust, stout and vigorous,
though rather bald, and he kept his moustache cut quite short, so that it might
not cover his lips, and interfere with his blowing the horn.
He was never called by anything but his first Christian name, Monsieur
Hector, but his full name was Baron Hector Gontran de Coutelier, and he
lived in a small manor house which he had inherited, in the middle of the
woods; and though he knew all the nobility of the department, and met its
male representatives out shooting and hunting, he only regularly visited one
family, the Courvilles, who were very pleasant neighbors, and had been
allied to his race for centuries, and in their house he was liked, and taken the
greatest care of, and he used to say: “If I were not a sportsman, I should like
to be here always.”
Monsieur de Courville had been his friend and comrade from childhood,
and lived quietly as a gentleman farmer with his wife, daughter and son-in-
law, Monsieur de Darnetot, who did nothing, under the pretext of being
devoted to historical studies.
Baron de Coutelier often went and dined with his friends, as much with
the object of telling them of the shots he had made, as of anything else. He
had long stories about dogs and ferrets, of which he spoke as if they were
persons of note, whom he knew very well. He analyzed them, and explained
their thoughts and intentions:
“When Medor saw that the corn-crake was leading him such a dance, he
said to himself: ‘Wait a bit, my friend, we will have a joke.’ And then, with a
jerk of the head to me, to make me go into the corner of the clover field, he
began to quarter the sloping ground, noisily brushing through the clover to
drive the bird into a corner from which it could not escape.
“Everything happened as he had foreseen. Suddenly, the corn-crake found
itself on the borders of the clover, and it could not go any further without
showing itself; Medor stood and pointed, half-looking round at me, but at a
sign from me, he drew up to it, flushed the corn-crake; bang! down it came,
and Medor, as he brought it to me, wagged his tail, as much as to say: ‘How
about that, Monsieur Hector?’”
Courville, Darnetot, and the two ladies laughed very heartily at those
picturesque descriptions into which the Baron threw his whole heart. He
grew animated, moved his arms about, and gesticulated with his whole body;
and when he described the death of anything he had killed, he gave a
formidable laugh, and said:
“Was not that a good shot?”
As soon as they began to speak about anything else, he left off listening,
and hummed a hunting song, or a few notes to imitate a hunting horn, to
himself.
He had only lived for field sports, and was growing old, without thinking
about it, or guessing it, when he had a severe attack of rheumatism, and was
confined to his bed for two months, and nearly died of grief and weariness.
As he kept no female servant, for an old footman did all the cooking, he
could not get any hot poultices, nor could he have any of those little
attentions, nor anything that an invalid requires. His gamekeeper was his sick
nurse, and as the servant found the time hang just as heavily on his hands as it
did on his master’s, he slept nearly all day and all night in any easy chair,
while the Baron was swearing and flying into a rage between the sheets.
The ladies of the De Courville family came to see him occasionally, and
those were hours of calm and comfort for him. They prepared his herb tea,
attended to the fire, served him his breakfast up daintily, by the side of his
bed, and when they were going again, he used to say:
“By Jove! You ought to come here altogether,” which made them laugh
heartily.
When he was getting better, and was beginning to go out shooting again, he
went to dine with his friends one evening; but he was not at all in his usual
spirits. He was tormented by one continual fear — that he might have another
attack before shooting began, and when he was taking his leave at night,
when the women were wrapping him up in a shawl, and tying a silk
handkerchief round his neck, which he allowed to be done for the first time in
his life, he said in a disconsolated voice:
“If it goes on like this, I shall be done for.”
As soon as he had gone, Madame Darnetot said to her mother:
“We ought to try and get the Baron married.”
They all raised their hands at the proposal. How was it that they had never
thought of it before? And during all the rest of the evening they discussed the
widows whom they knew, and their choice fell on a woman of forty, who
was still pretty, fairly rich, very good-tempered and in excellent health,
whose name was Madame Berthe Vilers, and, accordingly, she was invited to
spend a month at the château. She was very dull at home, and was very glad
to come; she was lively and active, and Monsieur de Coutelier took her fancy
immediately. She amused herself with him as if he had been a living toy, and
spent hours in asking him slyly about the sentiments of rabbits and the
machinations of foxes, and he gravely distinguished between the various
ways of looking at things which different animals had, and ascribed plans
and subtle arguments to them, just as he did to men of his acquaintance.
The attention she paid him, delighted him, and one evening, to show his
esteem for her, he asked her to go out shooting with him, which he had never
done to any woman before, and the invitation appeared so funny to her that
she accepted it.
It was quite an amusement for them to fit her out; everybody offered her
something, and she came out in a sort of short riding habit, with boots and
men’s breeches, a short petticoat, a velvet jacket, which was too tight for her
across the chest, and a huntsman’s black velvet cap.
The Baron seemed as excited as if he were going to fire his first shot. He
minutely explained to her the direction of the wind, and how different dogs
worked. Then he took her into a field, and followed her as anxiously as a
nurse does when her charge is trying to walk for the first time.
Medor soon made a point, and stopped with his tail out stiff and one paw
up, and the Baron, standing behind his pupil, was trembling like a leaf, and
whispered:
“Look out, they are par ... par ... partridges.” And almost before he had
finished, there was a loud whirr — whirr, and a covey of large birds flew up
in the air, with a tremendous noise.
Madame Vilers was startled, shut her eyes, fired off both barrels and
staggered at the recoil of the gun; but when she had recovered her self-
possession, she saw that the Baron was dancing about like a madman, and
that Medor was bringing back the first of the two partridges which she had
killed.
From that day, Monsieur de Coutelier was in love with her, and used to
say, raising his eyes: “What a woman!” And he used to go and see them every
evening now, and talked about shooting.
One day, Monsieur de Courville, who was walking part of the way with
him, asked him, suddenly:
“Why don’t you marry her?”
The Baron was altogether taken by surprise, and said:
“What? I? Marry her? ... Well ... really....”
And he said no more for a while, but then, suddenly shaking hands with
his companion, he said:
“Good-bye, my friend,” and quickly disappeared in the darkness.
He did not go again for three days, but when he reappeared, he was pale
from thinking the matter over, and graver than usual. Taking Monsieur de
Courville aside, he said:
“That was a capital idea of yours; try and persuade her to accept me, for
one might say that a woman like she is, was made for me, and you and I shall
be able to have some sort of sport together, all the year round.”
As Monsieur de Courville felt certain that his friend would not meet with
a refusal, he replied:
“Propose to her immediately, my dear fellow, or would you rather that I
did it for you?”
But the Baron grew suddenly nervous, and said, with some hesitation:
“No, ... no.... I must go to Paris for ... for a few days. As soon as I come
back, I will give you a definite answer.” No other explanation was
forthcoming, and he started the next morning.
He made a long stay. One, two, three weeks passed, but Monsieur de
Coutelier did not return, and the Courvilles, who were surprised and uneasy,
did not know what to say to their friend, whom they had informed of the
Baron’s wishes. Every other day they sent to his house for news of him, but
none of his servants had a line.
But one evening, while Madame Vilers was singing, and accompanying
herself on the piano, a servant came with a mysterious air, and told Monsieur
de Courville that a gentleman wanted to see him. It was the Baron, in a
traveling suit, who looked much altered and older, and as soon as he saw his
old friend, he seized both his hands, and said, in a somewhat tired voice: “I
have just returned, my dear friend, and I have come to you immediately; I am
thoroughly knocked up.”
Then he hesitated in visible embarrassment, and presently said:
“I wished to tell you ... immediately ... that ... that business ... you know
what I mean ... must come to nothing.”
Monsieur de Courville looked at him in stupefaction. “Must come to
nothing?... Why?”
“Oh! Do not ask me, please; it would be too painful for me to tell you; but
you may rest assured that I am acting like an honorable man. I cannot ... I
have no right ... no right, you understand, to marry this lady, and I will wait
until she has gone, to come here again; it would be too painful for me to see
her. Good-bye.” And he absolutely ran away.
The whole family deliberated and discussed the matter, surmising a
thousand things. The conclusion they came to was, that the Baron’s past life
concealed some great mystery, that, perhaps, he had natural children, or some
connection of long standing. At any rate, the matter seemed serious, and so as
to avoid any difficult complications, they adroitly informed Madame Vilers
of the state of affairs, who returned home just as much of a widow as she had
come.
Three months more passed, when one evening, when he had dined rather
too well, and was rather unsteady on his legs, Monsieur de Coutelier, while
he was smoking his pipe with Monsieur de Courville, said to him:
“You would really pity me, if you only knew how continually I am
thinking about your friend.”
But the other, who had been rather vexed at the Baron’s behavior in the
circumstances, told him exactly what he thought of him:
“By Jove, my good friend, when a man has any secrets in his existence,
like you have, he does not make advances to a woman, immediately, as you
did, for you must surely have foreseen the reason why you had to draw
back.”
The Baron left off smoking in some confusion.
“Yes, and no; at any rate, I could not have believed what actually
happened.”
Whereupon, Monsieur de Courville lost his patience, and replied:
“One ought to foresee everything.”
 But Monsieur de Coutelier replied in a low voice, in case anybody should
be listening: “I see that I have hurt your feelings, and will tell you everything,
so that you may forgive me. You know that for twenty years I have lived only
for sport; I care for nothing else, and think about nothing else. Consequently,
when I was on the point of undertaking certain obligations with regard to this
lady, I felt some scruples of conscience. Since I have given up the habit of ...
of love, there! I have not known whether I was still capable of ... you know
what I mean ... Just think! It is exactly sixteen years since ... I for the last time
... you understand what I mean. In this neighborhood, it is not easy to ... you
know. And then, I had other things to do. I prefer to use my gun, and so before
entering into an engagement before the Mayor and the Priest to ... well, I was
frightened. I said to myself: ‘Confound it; suppose I missed fire!’ An
honorable man always keeps his engagements, and in this case, I was
undertaking sacred duties with regard to this lady, and so, to feel sure, I made
up my mind to go and spend a week in Paris.
“At the end of that time, nothing, absolutely nothing occurred. I always
lost the game.... I waited for a fortnight, three weeks, continually hoping. In
the restaurants, I ate a number of highly seasoned dishes, which upset my
stomach, and ... and it was still the same thing ... or rather, nothing. You will,
therefore, understand, that, in such circumstances, and having assured myself
of the fact, the only thing I could do was ... was ... to withdraw; and I did so.”
Monsieur de Courville had to struggle very hard not to laugh, and he
shook hands with the Baron, saying:
“I am very sorry for you,” and accompanied him half-way home.
When he got back, and was alone with his wife, he told her everything,
nearly choking with laughter; she, however, did not laugh, but listened very
attentively, and when her husband had finished, she said, very seriously:
“The Baron is a fool, my dear; he was frightened, that is all. I will write
and ask Berthe to come back here as soon as possible.”
And when Monsieur de Courville observed that their friend had made
such long and useless attempts, she merely said:
“Nonsense! When a man loves his wife, you know ... that sort of thing
adjusts itself to the situation.”
And Monsieur de Courville made no reply, as he felt rather confused
himself.
 THE SUBSTITUTE

“Madame Bonderoi?”
“Yes, Madame Bonderoi.”
“Impossible.”
“I tell you it is.”
Madame Bonderoi, the old lady in a lace cap, the devout, the holy, the
honorable Madame Bonderoi, whose little false curls looked as if they were
glued round her head.
“That is the very woman.”
“Oh! Come, you must be mad.”
“I swear to you that it is Madame Bonderoi.”
“Then please give me the details.”
“Here they are. During the life of Monsieur Bonderoi, the lawyer, people
said that she utilized his clerks for her own particular service. She is one of
those respectable middle-class women, with secret vices, and inflexible
principles, of whom there are so many. She liked good-looking young
fellows, and I should like to know what is more natural than that? Do not we
all like pretty girls?”
“As soon as old Bonderoi was dead, his widow began to live the peaceful
and irreproachable life of a woman with a fair, fixed income. She went to
church assiduously, and spoke evil of her neighbors, but gave no handle to
anyone for speaking ill of her, and when she grew old she became the little
wizened, sour-faced, mischievous woman whom you know. Well, this
adventure, which you would scarcely believe, happened last Friday.
“My friend, Jean d’Anglemare, is, as you know, a captain in a dragoon
regiment, who is quartered in the barracks in the Rue de la Rivette, and when
he got to his quarters the other morning, he found that two men of his
squadron had had a terrible quarrel. The rules about military honor are very
severe, and so a duel took place between them. After the duel they became
reconciled, and when their officer questioned them, they told him what their
quarrel had been about. They had fought on Madame Bonderoi’s account.”
“Oh!”
 “Yes, my dear fellow, about Madame Bonderoi.”
“But I will let Trooper Siballe speak.”
“This is how it was, Captain. About a year and a half ago, I was lounging
about the barrack-yard, between six and seven o’clock in the evening, when a
woman came up and spoke to me, and said, just as if she had been asking her
way: ‘Soldier, would you like to earn ten francs a week, honestly?’ Of
course, I told her that I decidedly should, and so she said: ‘Come and see me
at twelve o’clock to-morrow morning. I am Madame Bonderoi, and my
address is No. 6, Rue de la Tranchée.’ ‘You may rely upon my being there,
Madame.’ And then she went away, looking very pleased, and she added: ‘I
am very much obliged to you, soldier.’ ‘I am obliged to you, Madame,’ I
replied. But I plagued my head about the matter, until the time came, all the
same.
“At twelve o’clock, exactly, I rang the bell, and she let me in herself. She
had a lot of ribbons on her head.
“‘We must make haste,’ she said; ‘as my servant might come in.’
“‘I am quite willing to make haste,’ I replied, ‘but what am I to do?’
“But she only laughed, and replied: ‘Don’t you understand, you great
knowing fellow?’
“I was no nearer her meaning, I give you my word of honor, Captain, but
she came and sat down by me, and said:
“‘If you mention this to anyone, I will have you put in prison, so swear
that you will never open your lips about it.’
“I swore whatever she liked, though I did not at all understand what she
meant, and my forehead was covered with perspiration, so I took my pocket-
handkerchief out of my helmet, and she took it and wiped my brow with it;
then she kissed me, and whispered: ‘Then you will?’ ‘I will do anything you
like, Madame,’ I replied, ‘as that is what I came for.’
“Then she made herself clearly understood by her actions, and when I saw
what it was, I put my helmet onto a chair, and showed her that in the dragoons
a man never retires, Captain.
“Not that I cared much about it, for she was certainly not in her prime, but
it is no good being too particular in such a matter, as ten francs are scarce,
and then I have relations whom I like to help, and I said to myself: ‘There
will be five francs for my father, out of that.’
“When I had done my allotted task, Captain, I got ready to go, though she
wanted me to stop longer, but I said to her:
 “‘To everyone their due, Madame. A small glass of brandy costs two
sous, and two glasses cost four.’
“She understood my meaning, and put a gold ten-franc piece into my hand.
I do not like that coin, because it is so small that if your pockets are not very
well made, and come at all unsewn, one is apt to find it in one’s boots, or not
to find it at all, and so, while I was looking at it, she was looking at me. She
got red in the face, as she had misunderstood my looks, and she said: ‘Is not
that enough?’
“‘I did not mean that, Madame,’ I replied; ‘but if it is all the same to you, I
would rather have two five-franc pieces.’ And she gave them to me, and I
took my leave. This has been going on for a year and a half, Captain. I go
every Tuesday evening, when you give me leave to go out of barracks; she
prefers that, as her servant has gone to bed then, but last week I was not well,
and I had to go into the infirmary. When Tuesday came, I could not get out,
and I was very vexed, because of the ten francs which I had been receiving
every week, and I said to myself:
“‘If anybody goes there, I shall be done; and she will be sure to take an
artilleryman, and that made me very angry. So I sent for Paumelle, who
comes from my part of the country, and I told him how matters stood:
“‘There will be five francs for you, and five for me,’ I said. He agreed,
and went, as I had given him full instructions. She opened the door as soon as
he knocked, and let him in, and as she did not look at his face, she did not
perceive that it was not I, for, you know, Captain, one dragoon is very like
another, with their helmets on.
“Suddenly, however, she noticed the change, and she asked, angrily: ‘Who
are you? What do you want? I do not know you.’
“Then Paumelle explained matters; he told her that I was not well, and that
I had sent him as my substitute; so she looked at him, made him also swear to
keep the matter secret, and then she accepted him, as you may suppose, for
Paumelle is not a bad-looking fellow, either. But when he came back,
Captain, he would not give me my five francs. If they had been for myself, I
should not have said a word, but they were for my father, and on that score, I
would stand no nonsense, and I said to him:
“‘You are not particular in what you do, for a dragoon; you are a discredit
to your uniform.’
“He raised his fist, Captain, saying that fatigue duty like that was worth
double. Of course, everybody has his own ideas, and he ought not to have
accepted it. You know the rest.”
“Captain d’Anglemare laughed until he cried as he told me the story, but
he also made me promise to keep the matter a secret, just as he had promised
the two soldiers. So, above all, do not betray me, but promise me to keep it
to yourself.”
“Oh! You may be quite easy about that. But how was it all arranged, in the
end?”
“How? It is a joke in a thousand!... Mother Bonderoi keeps her two
dragoons, and reserves his own particular day for each of them, and in that
way everybody is satisfied.”
“Oh! That is capital! Really capital!”
“And he can send his old father and mother the money as usual, and thus
morality is satisfied.”
 THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES

Monsieur Pierre Agénor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the exact
opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness
personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of being guilty, even in
his dreams, of anything resembling a practical joke, however remotely. I
know nobody to whom he could be compared, unless it be the present
president of the French Republic. I think it is useless to carry the analogy any
further, and having said thus much, it will be easily understood that a cold
shiver passed through me when Monsieur Pierre Agénor de Vargnes did me
the honor of sending a lady to wait on me.
At about eight o’clock, one morning last winter, as he was leaving the
house to go to the Palais de Justice, his footman handed him a card, on
which was printed:

DOCTOR JAMES FERDINAND,

Member of the Academy of Medicine,
Port-au-Prince,
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

At the bottom of the card, there was written in pencil:

From Lady Frogère
Monsieur de Vargnes knew the lady very well, who was a very agreeable
Creole from Haiti, and whom he had met in many drawing-rooms, and, on the
other hand, though the doctor’s name did not awaken any recollections in
him, his quality and titles alone required that he should grant him an
interview, however short it might be. Therefore, although he was in a hurry to
get out, Monsieur de Vargnes told the footman to show in his early visitor, but
to tell him beforehand that his master was much pressed for time, as he had to
go to the Law Courts.
When the doctor came in, in spite of his usual imperturbability, he could
not restrain a movement of surprise, for the doctor presented that strange
anomaly of being a negro of the purest, blackest type, with the eyes of a white
man, of a man from the North, pale, cold, clear, blue eyes, and his surprise
increased when, after a few words of excuse for his untimely visit, he added,
with an enigmatical smile:
“My eyes surprise you, do they not? I was sure that they would, and, to
tell you the truth, I came here in order that you might look at them well, and
never forget them.”
His smile, and his words, even more than his smile, seemed to be those of
a madman. He spoke very softly, with that childish, lisping voice, which is
peculiar to negroes, and his mysterious, almost menacing words,
consequently, sounded all the more as if they were uttered at random by a
man bereft of his reason. But his looks, the looks of those pale, cold, clear,
blue eyes, were certainly not those of a madman. They clearly expressed
menace, yes, menace, as well as irony, and, above all, implacable ferocity,
and their glance was like a flash of lightning, which one could never forget.
“I have seen,” Monsieur de Vargnes used to say, when speaking about it,
“the looks of many murderers, but in none of them have I ever observed such
a depth of crime, and of impudent security in crime.”
And this impression was so strong, that Monsieur de Vargnes thought that
he was the sport of some hallucination, especially as when he spoke about
his eyes, the doctor continued with a smile, and in his most childish accents:
“Of course, Monsieur, you cannot understand what I am saying to you, and I
must beg your pardon for it. To-morrow, you will receive a letter which will
explain it at all to you, but, first all, it was necessary that I should let you
have a good, a careful look at my eyes, my eyes which are myself, my only
and true self, as you will see.”
With these words, and with a polite bow, the doctor went out, leaving
Monsieur de Vargnes extremely surprised, and a prey to this doubt, as he said
to himself:
“Is he merely a madman? The fierce expression, and the criminal depths
of his looks are perhaps caused merely by the extraordinary contrast between
his fierce looks and his pale eyes.”
And absorbed in these thoughts, Monsieur de Vargnes unfortunately
allowed several minutes to elapse, and then he thought to himself suddenly:
“No, I am not the sport of any hallucination, and this is no case of an
optical phenomenon. This man is evidently some terrible criminal, and I have
altogether failed in my duty in not arresting him myself at once, illegally,
even at the risk of my life.”
 The judge ran downstairs in pursuit of the doctor, but it was too late; he
had disappeared. In the afternoon, he called on Madame Frogère, to ask her
whether she could tell him anything about the matter. She, however, did not
know the negro doctor in the least, and was even able to assure him that he
was a fictitious personage, for, as she was well acquainted with the upper
classes in Haiti, she knew that the Academy of Medicine at Port-au-Prince
had no doctor of that name among its members. As Monsieur de Vargnes
persisted, and gave descriptions of the doctor, especially mentioning his
extraordinary eyes, Madame Frogère began to laugh, and said:
“You have certainly had to do with a hoaxer, my dear Monsieur. The eyes
which you have described, are certainly those of a white man, and the
individual must have been painted.”
On thinking it over, Monsieur de Vargnes remembered that the doctor had
nothing of the negro about him, but his black skin, his woolly hair and beard,
and his way of speaking, which was easily imitated, but nothing of the negro,
not even the characteristic, undulating walk. Perhaps, after all, he was only a
practical joker, and during the whole day, Monsieur de Vargnes took refuge
in that view, which rather wounded his dignity as a man of consequence, but
which appeased his scruples as a magistrate.
The next day, he received the promised letter, which was written, as well
as addressed, in letters cut out of the newspapers. It was as follows:
“MONSIEUR, —
“Doctor James Ferdinand does not exist, but the man whose eyes you saw
does, and you will certainly recognize his eyes. This man has committed two
crimes, for which he does not feel any remorse, but, as he is a psychologist,
he is afraid of some day yielding to the irresistible temptation of confessing
his crimes. You know better than anyone (and that is your most powerful aid),
with what imperious force criminals, especially intellectual ones, feel this
temptation. That great Poet, Edgar Poe, has written masterpieces on this
subject, which express the truth exactly, but he has omitted to mention the last
phenomenon, which I will tell you. Yes, I, a criminal, feel a terrible wish for
somebody to know of my crimes, and, when this requirement is satisfied, my
secret has been revealed to a confidant, I shall be tranquil for the future, and
be freed from this demon of perversity, which only tempts us once. Well!
Now that is accomplished. You shall have my secret; from the day that you
recognize me by my eyes, you will try and find out what I am guilty of, and
how I was guilty, and you will discover it, being a master of your profession,
which, by-the-bye, has procured you the honor of having been chosen by me
to bear the weight of this secret, which now is shared by us, and by us two
alone. I say, advisedly, by us two alone. You could not, as a matter of fact,
prove the reality of this secret to anyone, unless I were to confess it, and I
defy you to obtain my public confession, as I have confessed it to you, and
without danger to myself.”
Three months later, Monsieur de Vargnes met Monsieur X —— at an
evening party and at first sight, and without the slightest hesitation, he
recognized in him those very pale, very cold, and very clear blue eyes, eyes
which it was impossible to forget.
The man himself remained perfect impassive, so that Monsieur de Vargnes
was forced to say to himself:
“Probably I am the sport of a hallucination at this moment, or else there
are two pairs of eyes that are perfectly similar, in the world. And what eyes!
Can it be possible?”
The magistrate instituted inquiries into his life, and he discovered this,
which removed all his doubts.
Five years previously, Monsieur X —— had been a very poor, but very
brilliant medical student, who, although he never took his doctor’s degree,
had already made himself remarkable by his microbiological researches.
A young and very rich widow had fallen in love with him and married
him. She had one child by her first marriage, and in the space of six months,
first the child and then the mother died of typhoid fever, and thus Monsieur X
—— had inherited a large fortune, in due form, and without any possible
dispute. Everybody said that he had attended to the two patients with the
utmost devotion. Now, were these two deaths the two crimes mentioned in
his letter?
But then, Monsieur X —— must have poisoned his two victims with the
microbes of typhoid fever, which he had skillfully cultivated in them, so as to
make the disease incurable, even by the most devoted care and attention.
Why not?
“Do you believe it?” I asked Monsieur de Vargnes. “Absolutely,” he
replied. “And the most terrible thing about it is, that the villain is right when
he defies me to force him to confess his crime publicly for I see no means of
obtaining a confession, none whatever. For a moment, I thought of magnetism,
but who could magnetize that man with those pale, cold, bright eyes? With
such eyes, he would force the magnetizer to denounce himself as the culprit.”
 And then he said, with a deep sigh:
“Ah! Formerly there was something good about justice!”
And when he saw my inquiring looks, he added in a firm and perfectly
convinced voice:
“Formerly, justice had torture at its command.”
“Upon my word,” I replied, with all an author’s unconscious and simple
egotism, “it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange tale would
have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as regards the story I
intended to make of it.”
 ALLOUMA

One of my friends had said to me: —

“If you happen to be near Bordj-Ebbaba while you are in Algeria, be sure
and go to see my old friend Auballe, who has settled there.”
I had forgotten the name of Auballe and of Ebbaba, and I was not thinking
of this planter, when I arrived at his house by pure accident. For a month, I
had been wandering on foot through that magnificent district which extends
from Algiers to Cherchell, Orléansville, and Tiaret. It is at the same time
wooded and bare, grand and charming. Between two hills, one comes across
large pine forests in narrow valleys, through which torrents rush in the
winter. Enormous trees, which have fallen across the ravine, serve as a
bridge for the Arabs, and also for the tropical creepers, which twine round
the dead stems, and adorn them with new life. There are hollows, in little
known recesses of the mountains, of a terribly beautiful character, and the
sides of the brooks, which are covered with oleanders, are indescribably
lovely.
But what has left behind it the most pleasant recollections of that
excursion, is the long after-dinner walks along the slightly wooded roads on
those undulating hills, from which one can see an immense tract of country
from the blue sea as far as the chain of the Quarsenis, on whose summit there
is the cedar forest of Teniet-el-Haad.
On that day I lost my way. I had just climbed to the top of a hill, whence,
beyond a long extent of rising ground, I had seen the extensive plain of
Metidja, and then, on the summit of another chain, almost invisible in the
distances that strange monument which is called The Tomb of the Christian
Woman, and which was said to be the burial-place of the kings of Mauritana.
I went down again, going southward, with a yellow landscape before me,
extending as far as the fringe of the desert, as yellow as if all those hills were
covered with lions’ skins sewn together, sometimes a pointed yellow peak
would rise out of the midst of them, like the bristly back of a camel.
 I walked quickly and lightly, like as one does when following tortuous
paths on a mountain slope. Nothing seems to weigh on one in those short,
quick walks through the invigorating air of those heights, neither the body,
nor the heart, nor the thoughts, nor even cares. On that day I felt nothing of all
that crushes and tortures our life; I only felt the pleasure of that descent. In the
distance I saw an Arab encampment, brown pointed tents, which seemed
fixed to the earth, like limpets are to a rock, or else gourbis, huts made of
branches, from which a gray smoke rose. White figures, men and women,
were walking slowly about, and the bells of the flocks sounded vaguely
through the evening air.
The arbutus trees on my road hung down under the weight of their purple
fruit, which was falling on the ground. They looked like martyred trees, from
which blood-colored sweat was falling, for at the top of every tier there was
a red spot, like a drop of blood.
The earth all round them was covered with it, and as my feet crushed the
fruit, they left blood-colored traces behind them, and sometimes, as I went
along, I would jump and pick one, and eat it.
All the valleys were by this time filled with a white vapor, which rose
slowly, like the steam from the flanks of an ox, and on the chain of mountains
that bordered the horizon, on the outskirts of the desert of Sahara, the sky was
in flames. Long streaks of gold alternated with streaks of blood — blood
again! Blood and gold, the whole of human history — and sometimes
between the two there was a small opening in the greenish azure, far away
like a dream.
How far away I was from all those persons and things with which one
occupies oneself on the boulevards, far from myself also, for I had become a
kind of wandering being, without thought or consciousness, far from any
road, of which I was not even thinking, for as night came on, I found that I
had lost my way.
The shades of night were falling onto the earth like a shower of darkness,
and I saw nothing before me but the mountains, in the far distance. Presently,
I saw some tents in the valley, into which I descended, and tried to make the
first Arab I met understand in which direction I wanted to go. I do not know
whether he understood me, but he gave me a long answer, which I did not in
the least understand. In despair, I was about to make up my mind to pass the
night wrapped up in a rug near the encampment, when among the strange
words he uttered, I fancied that I heard the name, Bordj-Ebbaba, and so I
repeated:
“Bordj-Ebbaba.”
“Yes, yes.”
I showed him two francs that were a fortune to him, and he started off,
while I followed him. Ah! I followed that pale phantom which strode on
before me bare-footed along stony paths, on which I stumbled continually, for
a long time, and then suddenly I saw a light, and we soon reached the door of
a white house, a kind of fortress with straight walls, and without any outside
windows. When I knocked, dogs began to bark inside, and a voice asked in
French:
“Who is there?”
“Does Monsieur Auballe live here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The door was opened for me, and I found myself face to face with
Monsieur Auballe himself, a tall man in slippers, with a pipe in his mouth
and the looks of a jolly Hercules.
As soon as I mentioned my name, he put out both his hands and said:
“Consider yourself at home here, Monsieur.”
A quarter of an hour later I was dining ravenously, opposite to my host,
who went on smoking.
I knew his history. After having wasted a great amount of money on
women, he had invested the remnants of his fortune in Algerian landed
property and taken to money-making. It turned out prosperously; he was
happy, and had the calm look of a happy and contented man. I could not
understand how this fast Parisian could have grown accustomed to that
monstrous life in such a lonely spot, and I asked him about it.
“How long have you been here?” I asked him.
“For nine years.”
“And have you not been intolerably dull and miserable?”
“No, one gets used to this country, and ends by liking it. You cannot
imagine how it lays hold on people by those small, animal instincts that we
are ignorant of ourselves. We first become attached to it by our organs, to
which it affords secret gratifications which we do not inquire into. The air
and the climate overcome our flesh, in spite of ourselves, and the bright light
with which it is inundated keeps the mind clear and fresh, at but little cost. It
penetrates us continually by our eyes, and one might really say that it
cleanses the somber nooks of the soul.”
“But what about women?”
“Ah...! There is rather a dearth of them!”
“Only rather?”
“Well, yes ... rather. For one can always, even among the Arabs, find
some complaisant, native women, who think of the nights of Roumi.”
He turned to the Arab, who was waiting on me, who was a tall, dark
fellow, with bright, black eyes, that flashed beneath his turban, and said to
him:
“I will call you when I want you, Mohammed.” And then, turning to me, he
said:
“He understands French, and I am going to tell you a story in which he
plays a leading part.”
As soon as the man had left the room, he began:
“I had been here about four years, and scarcely felt quite settled yet in this
country, whose language I was beginning to speak, and forced, in order not to
break altogether with those passions that had been fatal to me in other places,
to go to Algiers for a few days, from time to time.
“I had bought this farm, this bordj, which had been a fortified post, and
was within a few hundred yards from the native encampment, whose man I
employ to cultivate my land. Among the tribe that had settled here, and which
formed a portion of the Oulad-Taadja, I chose, as soon as I arrived here, that
tall fellow whom you have just seen, Mohammed ben Lam’har, who soon
became greatly attached to me. As he would not sleep in a house, not being
accustomed to it, he pitched his tent a few yards from my house, so that I
might be able to call him from my window.
“You can guess what my life was, I dare say? Every day I was busy with
cleanings and plantations; I hunted a little, I used to go and dine with the
officers of the neighboring fortified posts, or else they came and dined with
me. As for pleasures ... I have told you what they consisted in. Algiers
offered me some which were rather more refined, and from time to time a
complaisant and compassionate Arab would stop me when I was out for a
walk, and offer to bring one of the women of his tribe to my house at night.
Sometimes I accepted, but more frequently I refused, from fear of the
disagreeable consequences and troubles it might entail upon me.
 “One evening, at the beginning of summer, as I was going home, after
going over the farm, as I wanted Mohammed, I went into his tent without
calling him, as I frequently did, and there I saw a woman, a girl, sleeping
almost naked, with her arms crossed under her head, on one of those thick,
red carpets, made of the fine wool of Djebel-Amour, and which are as soft
and as thick as a feather bed. Her body, which was beautifully white under
the ray of light that came in through the raised covering of the tent, appeared
to me to be one of the most perfect specimens of the human race that I had
ever seen, and most of the women about here are beautiful and tall, and are a
rare combination of features and shape. I let the edge of the tent fall in some
confusion, and returned home.
“I love women! The sudden flash of this vision had penetrated and
scorched me, and had rekindled in my veins that old, formidable ardor to
which I owe my being here. It was very hot for it was July, and I spent nearly
the whole night at my window, with my eyes fixed on the black Mohammed’s
tent made on the ground.
“When he came into my room the next morning, I looked him closely in the
face, and he hung his head, like a man who was guilty and in confusion. Did
he guess that I knew? I, however, asked him, suddenly:
“‘So you are married, Mohammed?’ and I saw that he got red, and he
stammered out: ‘No, mo’ssieuia!’
“I used to make him speak French to me, and to give me Arabic lessons,
which was often productive of a most incoherent mixture of languages;
however, I went on:
“‘Then why is there a woman in your tent?’
“‘She comes from the South,’ he said, in a low, apologetic voice.
“‘Oh! So she comes from the South? But that does not explain to me how
she comes to be in your tent.’
“Without answering my question, he continued:
“‘She is very pretty.’
“‘Oh! Indeed. Another time, please, when you happen to receive a pretty
woman from the South, you will take care that she comes to my gourbi, and
not to yours. You understand me, Mohammed?’
“‘Yes, mo’ssieuia,’ he repeated, seriously.
“I must acknowledge that during the whole day I was in a state of
aggressive excitement at the recollection of that Arab girl lying on the red
carpet, and when I went in at dinner time, I felt very strongly inclined to go to
Mohammed’s tent again. During the evening, he waited on me just as usual,
and hovered round me with his impassive face, and several times I was very
nearly asking him whether he intended to keep that girl from the South, who
was very pretty, in his camel skin tent for a long time.
“Towards nine o’clock, still troubled with that longing for female society
which is as tenacious as the hunting instinct in dogs, I went out to get some
fresh air, and to stroll about a little round that cone of brown skin through
which I could see a brilliant speck of light. I did not remain long, however,
for fear of being surprised by Mohammed in the neighborhood of his
dwelling. When I went in an hour later, I clearly saw his outline in the tent,
and then, taking the key out of my pocket, I went into the bordj, where
besides myself, there slept my steward, two French laborers, and an old cook
whom I had picked up in the Algiers. As I went up stairs, I was surprised to
see a streak of light under my door, and when I opened it, I saw a girl with
the face of a statue sitting on a straw chair by the side of the table, on which a
wax candle was burning; she was bedizened with all those silver gew-gaws
which women in the South wear on their legs, arms, breast, and even on their
stomach. Her eyes, which were tinged with kohl, to make them look larger,
regarded me earnestly, and four little blue spots, finely tatooed on her skin,
marked her forehead, her cheeks, and her chin. Her arms, which were loaded
with bracelets, were resting on her thighs, which were covered by the long,
red silk skirt that she wore.
“When she saw me come in, she got up and remained standing in front of
me, covered with her barbaric jewels, in an attitude of proud submission.
“‘What are you doing here?’ I said to her in Arabic.
“‘I am here because Mohammed told me to come.’
“‘Very well, sit down.’
“So she sat down and lowered her eyes, while I examined her attentively.
“She had a strange, regular, delicate, and rather bestial face, but
mysterious as that of a Buddha. Her lips, which were rather thick and
covered with a reddish efflorescence, which I discovered on the rest of her
body as well, indicated a slight admixture of negro blood, although her hands
and arms were of an irreproachable whiteness.
“I hesitated what to do with her, and felt excited, tempted and rather
confused, so in order to gain time and to give myself an opportunity for
reflection, I put other questions to her, about her birth, how she came into this
part of the country, and what her connection with Mohammed was. But she
only replied to those that interested me the least, and it was impossible for
me to find out why she had come, with what intention, by whose orders, nor
what had taken place between her and my servant. However, just as I was
about to say to her: ‘Go back to Mohammed’s tent,’ she seemed to guess my
intention, for getting up suddenly, and raising her two bare arms, on which
the jingling bracelets slipped down to her shoulders, she crossed her hands
behind my neck and drew me towards her with an irresistible air of suppliant
longing.
“Her eyes, which were bright from emotion, from that necessity of
conquering man, which makes the looks of an impure woman as seductive as
those of the feline tribe, allured me, enchained me, deprived me of all the
power of resistance, and filled me with impetuous ardor. It was a short,
sharp struggle of the eyes only, that eternal struggle between those two human
brutes, the male and the female, in which the male is always beaten.
“Her hands, which had clasped behind my head, drew me irresistibly,
with a gentle, increasing pressure, as if by mechanical force towards her red
lips, on which I suddenly laid mine while, at the same moment, I clasped her
body, that was covered with jingling silver rings, in an ardent embrace.
“She was as strong, as healthy, and as supple as a wild animal, with all
the motions, the ways, the grace, and even something of the odor of a gazelle,
which made me find a rare, unknown zest in her kisses, which was as strange
to my senses as the taste of tropical fruits.
“Soon — I say soon, although it may have been towards morning — I
wished to send her away, as I thought that she would go in the same way that
she had come; I did not, even, at the moment, ask myself what I should do
with her, or what she would do with me, but as soon as she guessed my
intention, she whispered:
“‘What do you expect me to do if you get rid of me now? I shall have to
sleep on the ground in the open air at night. Let me sleep on the carpet, at the
foot of your bed.’
“What answer could I give her, or what could I do? I thought that no doubt
Mohammed also would be watching the window of my room, in which a light
was burning, and questions of various natures, that I had not put to myself
during the first minutes, formulated themselves clearly in my brain.
“‘Stop here,’ I replied, ‘and we will talk.’
“My resolution was taken in a moment. As this girl had been thrown into
my arms, in this manner, I would keep her; I would make her a kind of slave-
mistress, hidden in my house, like women in a harem are. When the time
should come that I no longer cared for her, it would be easy for me to get rid
of her in some way or another, for on African soil those sort of creatures
almost belong to us, body and soul, and so I said to her:
“‘I wish to be kind to you, and I will treat you so that you shall not be
unhappy, but I want to know who you are and where you come from?’
“She saw clearly that she must say something, and she told me her story,
or rather a story, for no doubt she was lying from beginning to end, like all
Arabs always do, with or without any motive.
“That is one of the most surprising and incomprehensible signs of the
native character — the Arabs always lie. Those people in whom Islam has
become so incarnate that it has become part of themselves, to such an extent
as to model their instincts and modifies the entire race, and to differentiate it
from others in morals just as much as the color of the skin differentiates a
negro from a white man, are liars to the backbone, so that one can never trust
a word that they say. I do not know whether they owe that to their religion,
but one must have lived among them in order to know the extent to which
lying forms part of their being, of their heart and soul, until it has become a
kind of second nature, a very necessity of life, with them.
“Well, she told me that she was the daughter of a Caidi of the Ouled Sidi
Cheik, and of a woman whom he had carried off in a raid against the
Touaregs. The woman must have been a black slave, or, at any rate, have
sprung from a first cross of Arab and negro blood. It is well known that
negro women are in great request for harems, where they act as aphrodisiacs.
Nothing of such an origin was to be noticed, however, except the purple
color of her lips, and the dark nipples of her elongated breasts, which were
as supple as if they were on springs. Nobody who knew anything about the
matter, could be mistaken in that. But all the rest of her belonged to the
beautiful race from the South, fair, supple and with a delicate face which was
formed on straight and simple lines like those of a Hindoo figure. Her eyes,
which were very far apart, still further heightened the somewhat god-like
looks of this desert marauder.
“I knew nothing exactly about her real life. She related it to me in
incoherent fragments, that seemed to rise up at random from a disordered
memory, and she mixed up deliciously childish observations with them; a
whole vision of a Nomad world, born of a squirrel’s brain that had leapt
from tent to tent, from encampment to encampment, from tribe to tribe. And
all this was done with the severe looks that this reserved people always
preserve, with the appearance of a brass idol, and rather comic gravity.
“When she had finished, I perceived that I had not remembered anything of
that long story, full of insignificant events, that she had stored up in her flighty
brain, and I asked myself whether she had not simply been making fun of me
by her empty and would-be serious chatter, which told me nothing about her,
nor about any real facts connected with her life.
“And I thought of that conquered race, among whom we have encamped,
or, rather, who are encamping among us, whose language we are beginning to
speak, whom we see every day, living under the transparent linen of their
tents, on whom we have imposed our laws, our regulations, and our customs,
and about whom we know nothing, nothing more whatever, I assure you, than
if we were not here, and solely occupied in looking at them, for nearly sixty
years. We know no more about what is going on in those huts made of
branches, and under those small canvas cones that are fastened to the ground
by stakes, which are within twenty yards of our doors, than we know what
the so-called civilized Arabs of the Moorish houses in Algiers do, think, and
are. Behind the white-washed walls of their town houses, behind the
partition of their gourbi, which is made of branches, or behind that thin,
brown, camel-haired curtain which the wind moves, they live close to us,
unknown, mysterious, cunning, submissive, smiling, impenetrable. What if I
were to tell you, that when I look at the neighboring encampment through my
field glasses, I guess that there are superstitions, customs, ceremonies, a
thousand practices of which we know nothing, and which we do not even
suspect! Never previously, in all probability, did a conquered race know so
well how to escape so completely from the real domination, the moral
influence and the inveterate, but useless, investigations of the conquerors.
“Now I suddenly felt the insurmountable, secret barrier which
incomprehensible nature had set up between the two races, more than I had
ever felt it before, between this girl and myself, between this woman who
had just given herself to me, who had yielded herself to my caresses and to
me, who had possessed her, and, thinking of it for the first time, I said to her:
‘What is your name?’
“She did not speak for some moments, and I saw her start, as if she had
forgotten that I was there, and then, in her eyes that were raised to mine, I
saw that that moment had sufficed for her to be overcome by sleep, by
irresistible, sudden, almost overwhelming sleep, like everything that lays
hold of the mobile senses of women, and she answered, carelessly,
suppressing a yawn:
“‘Allouma.’
“‘Do you want to go sleep?’
“‘Yes,’ she replied.
“‘Very well then, go to sleep!’
“She stretched herself out tranquilly by my side, lying on her stomach,
with her forehead resting on her folded arms, and I felt almost immediately
that fleeting, untutored thoughts were lulled in repose, while I began to
ponder, as I lay by her side, and tried to understand it all. Why had
Mohammed given her to me? Had he acted the part of a magnanimous
servant, who sacrifices himself for his master, even to the extent of giving up
the woman whom he had brought into his own tent, to him? Or had he, on the
other hand, obeyed a more complex and more practical, though less generous
impulse, in handing over this girl who had taken my fancy, to my embrace?
An Arab, when it is a question of women, is rigorously modest and
unspeakably complaisant, and one can no more understand his rigorous and
easy morality, than one can all the rest of his sentiments. Perhaps, when I
accidentally went to his tent, I had merely forestalled the benevolent
intentions of this thoughtful servant, who had intended this woman, who was
his friend and accomplice, or perhaps even his mistress, for me.
“All these suppositions assailed me, and fatigued me so much, that, at last,
in my turn, I fell into a profound sleep, from which I was roused by the
creaking of my door, and Mohammed came in, to call me as usual. He opened
the window, through which a flood of light streamed in, and fell onto
Allouma who was still asleep; then he picked up my trousers, coat and
waistcoat from the floor in order to brush them. He did not look at the woman
who was lying by my side, did not seem to know or remark that she was
there, and preserved his ordinary gravity, demeanor and looks. But the light,
the movement, the slight noise which his bare feet made, the feeling of the
fresh air on her skin and in her lungs, roused Allouma from her lethargy. She
stretched out her arms, turned over, opened her eyes, and looked at me and
then Mohammed with the same indifference; then she sat up in bed and said:
‘I am hungry.’
“‘What would you like?’
“‘Kahoua.’
“‘Coffee and bread and butter.’
 “‘Yes.’
“Mohammed remained standing close to our bed, with my clothes under
his arm, waiting for my orders.
“‘Bring breakfast for Allouma and me,’ I said to him.
“He went out, without his face betraying the slightest astonishment or
anger, and as soon as he had left the room, I said to the girl:
“‘Will you live in my house?’
“‘I should like to, very much.’
“‘I will give you a room to yourself, and a woman to wait on you.’
“‘You are very generous, and I am grateful to you.’
“‘But if you behave badly, I shall send you away immediately.’
“‘I will do everything that you wish me to.’
“She took my hand, and kissed it as a token of submission, and just then
Mohammed came in, carrying a tray with our breakfast on it, and I said to
him: —
“‘Allouma is going to live here. You must spread a carpet on the floor of
the room at the end of the passage, and get Abd-El-Kader-El-Hadara’s wife
to come and wait on her.’
“‘Yes, mo’ssieuia.’
“That was all.
“An hour later, my beautiful Arab was installed in a large, airy, light
room, and when I went in to see that everything was in order, she asked me in
a supplicating voice, to give her a wardrobe with a looking-glass in the
doors. I promised her one, and then I left her squatting on the carpet from
Djebel-Amour, with a cigarette in her mouth, and gossiping with the old Arab
woman I had sent for, as if they had known each other for years.”

II

“For a month I was very happy with her, and I got strangely attached to this
creature belonging to another race, who seemed to me almost to belong to
some other species, and to have been born on a neighboring planet.
“I did not love her; no, one does not love the women of that primitive
continent. This small, pale blue flower of Northern countries never unfolds
between them and us, or even between them and their natural males, the
Arabs. They are too near to human animalism, their hearts are too
rudimentary, their feelings are not refined enough to rouse that sentimental
exaltation in us, which is the poetry of love. Nothing intellectual, no
intoxication of thought or feeling is mingled with that sensual intoxication
which those charming nonentities excite in us. Nevertheless, they captivate us
like the others do, but in a different fashion, which is less tenacious, and, at
the same time, less cruel and painful.
“I cannot even now explain precisely what I felt for her. I said to you just
now that this country, this bare Africa, without any arts, void of all
intellectual pleasures, gradually captivates us by its climate, by the continual
mildness of the dawn and sunset, by its delightful light, and by the feeling of
well-being with which it fills all our organs. Well, then! Allouma captivated
me in the same manner, by a thousand hidden, physical, alluring charms, and
by the procreative seductiveness, not of her embraces, for she was of
thoroughly oriental supineness in that respect, but of her sweet self-surrender.
“I left her absolutely free to come and go as she liked, and she certainly
spent one afternoon out of two with the wives of my native agricultural
laborers. Often also, she would remain for nearly a whole day admiring
herself in front of a mahogany wardrobe with a large looking-glass in the
doors that I had got from Miliana.
“She admired herself conscientiously, standing before the glass doors, in
which she followed her own movements with profound and serious attention.
She walked with her head somewhat thrown back, in order to be able to see
whether her hips and loins swayed properly; went away, came back again,
and then, tired with her own movements, she sat down on a cushion and
remained opposite to her own reflection, with her eyes fixed on her face in
the glass, and her whole soul absorbed in that picture.
“Soon, I began to notice that she went out nearly every morning after
breakfast, and that she disappeared altogether until evening, and as I felt
rather anxious about this, I asked Mohammed whether he knew what she
could be doing during all these long hours of absence, but he replied very
calmly:
“‘Do not be uneasy. It will be the Feast of Ramadan soon, and so she goes
to say her prayers.’
“He also seemed delighted at having Allouma in the house, but I never
once saw anything suspicious between them, and so I accepted the situation
as it was, and let time, accident, and life act for themselves.
“Often, after I had inspected my farm, my vineyards, and my clearings, I
used to take long walks. You know the magnificent forests in this part of
Algeria, those almost impenetrable ravines, where fallen pine trees hem the
mountain torrents, and those little valleys filled with oleanders, which look
like oriental carpets stretching along the banks of the streams. You know that
at every moment, in these woods and on these hills, where one would think
that nobody had ever penetrated, one suddenly sees the white dome of a
shrine that contains the bones of a humble, solitary marabout, which was
scarcely visited from time to time, even by the most confirmed believers,
who had come from the neighboring villages with a wax candle in their
pocket, to set up before the tomb of the saint.
“Now one evening as I was going home, I was passing one of these
Mohammedan chapels, and, looking in through the door, which was always
open, I saw a woman praying before the altar. That Arab woman, sitting on
the ground in that dilapidated building, into which the wind entered as it
pleased, and heaped up the fine, dry pine needles in yellow heaps in the
corners. I went near to see better, and recognized Allouma. She neither saw
nor heard me, so absorbed was she with the saint, to whom she was speaking
in a low voice, as she thought that she was alone with him, and telling this
servant of God all her troubles. Sometimes she stopped for a short time to
think, to try and recollect what more she had to say, so that she might not
forget anything that she wished to confide to him; then, again, she would
grow animated, as if he had replied to her, as if he had advised her to do
something that she did not want to do, and the reasons for which she was
impugning, and I went away as I had come, without making any noise, and
returned home to dinner.
“That evening, when I sent for her, I saw that she had a thoughtful look,
which was not usual with her.
“‘Sit down there,’ I said, pointing to her place on the couch by my side.
As soon as she had sat down, I stooped to kiss her, but she drew her head
away quickly, and, in great astonishment, I said to her:
“‘Well, what is the matter?’
“‘It is the Ramadan,’ she said.
“I began to laugh, and said: ‘And the Marabout has forbidden you to allow
yourself to be kissed during the Ramadan?’
“Oh, yes; I am an Arab woman, and you are a Roumi!’
“‘And it would be a great sin?’
“‘Oh, yes!’
“‘So you ate nothing all day, until sunset?’
 “‘No, nothing.’
“‘But you had something to eat after sundown?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, then, as it is quite dark now, you ought not to be more strict about
the rest than you are about your mouth.’
“She seemed irritated, wounded, and offended, and replied with an
amount of pride that I had never noticed in her before: —
“‘If an Arab girl were to allow herself to be touched by a Roumi during
the Ramadan, she would be cursed for ever.’
“‘And that is to continue for a whole month?’
“‘Yes, for the whole of the month of Ramadan,’ she replied, with great
determination.
“I assumed an irritated manner and said:— ‘Very well, then, you can go
and spend the Ramadan with your family.’
“She seized my hands, and, laying them on my heart, she said: —
“‘Oh! Please do not be unkind, and you shall see how nice I will be. We
will keep Ramadan together, if you like. I will look after you, and spoil you,
but don’t be unkind.’
“I could not help smiling at her funny manner and her unhappiness, and I
sent her to go to sleep at home, but, an hour later, just as I was thinking about
going to bed, there came two little taps at my door, which were so slight,
however, that I scarcely heard them; but when I said:— ‘Come in,’ Allouma
appeared carrying a large tray covered with Arab dainties; fried balls of
rice, covered with sugar, and a variety of other strange, Nomad pastry.
“She laughed, showing her white teeth, and repeated:— ‘Come, we will
keep Ramadan together.’
“You know that the fast, which begins at dawn and ends at twilight, at the
moment when the eye can no longer distinguish a black from a white thread,
is followed every evening by small, friendly entertainments, at which eating
is kept up until the morning, and the result is that for such of the natives as are
not very scrupulous, Ramadan consists of turning day into night, and night
into day. But Allouma carried her delicacy of conscience further than this.
She placed her tray between us on the divan, and taking a small, sugared ball
between her long, slender fingers, she put it into my mouth, and whispered:—
‘Eat it, it is very good.’
“I munched the light cake, which was really excellent, and asked her:—
‘Did you make that?’
 “‘Yes.’
“‘For me?’
“‘Yes, for you.’
“‘To enable me to support Ramadan?’
“‘Oh! Don’t be so unkind! I will bring you some every day.’
“Oh! the terrible month that I spent! A sugared, insipidly sweet month; a
month that nearly drove me mad; a month of spoiling and of temptation, of
anger and of vain efforts against an invincible resistance, but at last the three
days of Beiram came, which I celebrated in my own fashion, and Ramadan
was forgotten.
“The summer went on, and it was very hot, and in the first days of autumn,
Allouma appeared to me to be pre-occupied and absent-minded, and,
seemingly, taking no interest in anything, and, at last, when I sent for her one
evening, she was not to be found in her room. I thought that she was roaming
about the house, and I gave orders to look for her. She had not come in,
however, and so I opened my window, and called out: —
“‘Mohammed,’ and the voice of the man, who was lying in his tent,
replied: —
“‘Yes, mo’ssieuia.’
“‘Do you know where Allouma is?’
“‘No, mo’ssieuia ... it is not possible ... is Allouma lost?’
“A few moments later, my Arab came into my room, so agitated that he
could not master his feelings, and I said:
“‘Is Allouma lost?’
“‘Yes, she is lost.’
“‘It is impossible.’
“‘Go and look for her,’ I said.
“He remained standing where he was, thinking, seeking for her motives,
and unable to understand anything about it. Then he went into the empty room,
where Allouma’s clothes were lying about, in oriental disorder. He examined
everything, as if he had been a police officer, or, rather, he smelt like a dog,
and then, incapable of a lengthened effort, he murmured, resignedly: —
“‘She has gone, she has gone!’
“I was afraid that some accident had happened to her; that she had fallen
into some ravine and sprained herself, and I immediately sent all the men
about the place off with orders to look for her until they should find her, and
they hunted for her all that night, all the next day, and all the week long, but
nothing was discovered that could put us upon her track. I suffered, for I
missed her very much; my house seemed empty, and my existence a void.
And then, disgusting thoughts entered my mind. I feared that she might have
been carried off, or even murdered, but when I spoke about it to Mohammed,
and tried to make him share my fears, he invariably replied:
“‘No; gone away.’
“Then he added the Arab word r’ezale, which means gazelle, as if he
meant to say that she could run quickly, and that she was far away.
“Three weeks passed, and I had given up all hopes of seeing my Arab
mistress again, when one morning Mohammed came into my room, with
every sign of joy in his face, and said to me:
“‘Mo’ssieuia, Allouma has come back.’
“I jumped out of bed and said:
“‘Where is she?’
“‘She does not dare to come in! There she is, under the tree.’
“And stretching out his arm, he pointed out to me, through the window, a
whitish spot at the foot of an olive tree.
“I got up immediately, and went out to where she was. As I approached
what looked like a mere bundle of linen thrown against the gnarled trunk of
the tree, I recognized the large, dark eyes, the tattooed stars, and the long,
regular features of that semi-wild girl who had so captivated my senses. As I
advanced towards her, I felt inclined to strike her, to make her suffer pain,
and to have my revenge, and so I called out to her from a little distance:
“‘Where have you been?’
“She did not reply, but remained motionless and inert, as if she were
scarcely alive, resigned to my violence, and ready to receive my blows. I
was standing up, close to her, looking in stupefaction at the rags with which
she was covered, at those bits of silk and muslin, covered with dust, torn and
dirty, and I repeated, raising my hand, as if she had been a dog:
“‘Where have you come from?’
“‘From yonder,’ she said, in a whisper.
“‘Where is that?’
“‘From the tribe.’
“‘What tribe?’
“‘Mine.’
“‘Why did you go away?’
 “When she saw that I was not going to beat her, she grew rather bolder,
and said in a low voice: “‘I was obliged to do it.... I was forced to go, I
could not stop in the house any longer.’
“I saw tears in her eyes, and immediately felt softened. I leaned over her,
and when I turned round to sit down, I noticed Mohammed, who was
watching us at a distance, and I went on, very gently:
“‘Come, tell me why you ran away?’
“Then she told me, that for a long time in her Nomad’s heart she had felt
the irresistible desire to return to the tents, to lie, to run, to roll on the sand;
to wander about the plains with the flocks, to feel nothing over her head,
between the yellow stars in the sky and the blue stars in her face, except the
thin, threadbare, patched stuff, through which she could see spots of fire in
the sky, when she awoke during the night.
“She made me understand all that in such simple and powerful words, that
I felt quite sure that she was not lying, and pitied her, and I asked her:
“‘Why did you not tell me that you wished to go away for a time?’
“‘Because you would not have allowed me...’
“‘If you had promised to come back, I should have consented.’
“‘You would not have believed me.’
“Seeing that I was not angry, she began to laugh, and said:
“‘You see that is all over; I have come home again, and here I am. I only
wanted a few days there. I have had enough of it now, it is finished and
passed; the feeling is cured. I have come back, and have not that longing any
more. I am very glad, and you are very kind.’
“‘Come into the house,’ I said to her.
“She got up, and I took her hand, her delicate hand, with its slender
fingers, and triumphant in her rags, with her bracelets and her necklace
ringing, she went gravely towards my house, where Mohammed was waiting
for us, but before going in, I said:
“‘Allouma, whenever you want to return to your own people, tell me, and
I will allow you to go.’
“‘You promise?’
“‘Yes, I promise.’
“‘And I will make you a promise also. When I feel ill or unhappy’ — and
here she put her hand to her forehead, with a magnificent gesture— ‘I shall
say to you: “I must go yonder,” and you will let me go.’
 “I went with her to her room, followed by Mohammed, who was carrying
some water, for there had been no time to tell the wife of Abd-el-Kader-el-
Hadam that her mistress had returned. As soon as she got into the room, and
saw the wardrobe with the looking-glass in the door, she ran up to it, like a
child does when it sees its mother. She looked at herself for a few seconds,
made a grimace, and then in a rather cross voice, she said to the looking-
glass:
“‘Just you wait a moment; I have some silk dresses in the wardrobe. I
shall be beautiful in a few minutes.’
“And I left her alone, to act the coquette to herself.
“Our life began its usual course again, as formerly, and I felt more and
more under the influence of the strange, merely physical attractions of that
girl, for whom, at the same time, I felt a kind of paternal contempt. For two
months all went well, and then I felt that she was again becoming nervous,
agitated, and rather low-spirited, and one day I said to her: —
“‘Do you want to return home again?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘And you did not dare to tell me?’
“‘I did not venture to.’
“‘Go, if you wish to; I give you leave.’
“She seized my hands and kissed them, as she did in all her outbursts of
gratitude, and the same morning she disappeared.
“She came back, as she had done the first time, at the end of about three
weeks, in rags, covered with dust, and satiated with her Nomad life of sand
and liberty. In two years she returned to her own people four times in this
fashion.
“I took her back, gladly, without any feelings of jealousy, for with me
jealousy can only spring from love as we Europeans understand it. I might
very likely have killed her if I had surprised her in the act of deceiving me,
but I should have done it, just as one half kills a disobedient dog, from sheer
violence. I should not have felt those torments, that consuming fire —
Northern jealousy. I have just said that I should have killed her like a
disobedient dog, and, as a matter of fact, I loved her somewhat in the same
manner as one loves some very highly bred horse or dog, which it is
impossible to replace. She was a splendid animal, a sensual animal, an
animal made for pleasure, and which possessed the body of a woman.
 “I cannot tell you what an immeasurable distance separated our two souls,
although our hearts perhaps occasionally warmed towards each other. She
was something belonging to my house, she was part of my life, she had
become a very agreeable, daily, regular requirement with me, to which I
clung, and which the sensual man in me loved, that in me which was only
eyes and sensuality.
“Well, one morning, Mohammed came into my room with a strange look
on his face, that uneasy look of the Arabs, which resembles the furtive look
of a cat, face to face with a dog, and when I noticed his expression, I said:
“‘What is the matter, now?’
“‘Allouma has gone away.’
“I began to laugh, and said:— ‘Where has she gone to?’
“‘Gone away altogether, mo’ssieuia!’
“‘What do you mean by gone away altogether; you are mad, my man.’
“‘No, mo’ssieuia.’
“‘Why has she gone away? Just explain yourself; come!’
“He remained motionless, and evidently did not wish to speak, and then
he had one of those explosions of Arab rage, which make us stop in streets in
front of two demoniacs, whose oriental silence and gravity suddenly give
place to the most violent gesticulations, and the most ferocious vociferations,
and I gathered, amidst his shouts, that Allouma had run away with my
shepherd, and when I had partially succeeded in calming him, I managed to
extract the facts from him one by one.
“It was a long story, but at last I gathered that he had been watching my
mistress, who used to meet a sort of vagabond whom my steward had hired
the month before, behind the neighboring cactus woods, or in the ravine
where the oleanders flourished. The night before, Mohammed had seen her
go out without seeing her return, and he repeated, in an exasperated manner:
— ‘Gone, mo’ssieuia; she has gone away!’
“I do not know why, but his conviction, the conviction that she had run
away with this vagabond, laid hold of me irresistibly in a moment. It was
absurd, unlikely, and yet certain in virtue of that very unreasonableness,
which constitutes female logic.
“Boiling over with indignation, I tried to recall the man’s features, and I
suddenly remembered having seen him the previous week, standing on a
mound amidst his flock, and watching me. He was a tall Bedouin, the color
of whose bare limbs was blended with that of his rags; he was a type of a
barbarous brute, with high cheek bones, and a hooked nose, a retreating chin,
thin legs, and a tall carcass in rags, with the shifty eyes of a jackal.
“I did not doubt for a moment that she had run away with that beggar.
Why? Because she was Allouma, a daughter of the desert. A girl from the
pavement in Paris would have run away with my coachman, or some thief in
the suburbs.
“‘Very well,’ I said to Mohammed. Then I got up, opened my window, and
began to draw in the stifling South wind, for the sirocco was blowing, and I
thought to myself: —
“Good heavens! she is ... a woman, like so many others. Does anybody
know what makes them act, what makes them love, what makes them follow,
or throw over a man? One certainly does know, occasionally; but often one
does not, and sometimes one is in doubt. Why did she run away with that
repulsive brute? Why? Perhaps, because the wind had been blowing
regularly from the South, for a month; that was enough; a breath of wind!
Does she know, do they know, even the cleverest of them, why they act? No
more than a weather-cock that turns with the wind. An imperceptible breeze,
makes the iron, brass, zinc, or wooden arrow revolve, just in the same
manner as some imperceptible influence, some undiscernible impression
moves the female heart, and urges it on to resolutions, and it does not matter
whether they belong to town or country, the suburbs or the desert.
“They can then feel, provided that they reason and understand, why they
have done one thing rather than another, but, for the moment, they do not
know, for they are the playthings of their own sensibility, the thoughtless,
giddy-headed slaves of events, of their surroundings, of chance meetings, and
of all the sensations with which their soul and their body trembles!”
Monsieur Auballe had risen, and, after walking up and down the room
once or twice, he looked at me, and said, with a smile: —
“That is love in the desert!”
“Suppose she were to come back?” I asked him.
“Horrid girl!” he replied.
“But I should be very glad if she did return to me.”
“And you would pardon the shepherd?”
“Good heavens, yes! With women, one must always pardon ... or else
pretend not to see things.”
 THE ODALISQUE OF SENICHOU

In Senichou, which is a suburb of Prague, there lived about twenty years ago,
two poor but honest people, who earned their bread by the sweat of their
brow; he worked in a large printing establishment, and his wife employed
her spare time as a laundress. Their pride, and their only pleasure, was their
daughter Viteska, who was a vigorous, voluptuous-looking, handsome girl of
eighteen, whom they brought up very well and carefully. She worked for a
dress-maker, and was thus able to help her parents a little, and she made use
of her leisure moments to improve her education, and especially her music.
She was a general favorite in the neighborhood on account of her quiet
modest demeanor, and she was looked upon as a model by the whole suburb.
When she went to work in the town, the tall girl with her magnificent
head, which resembled that of an ancient, Bohemian Amazon, with its wealth
of black hair, and her dark, sparkling yet soft eyes, attracted the looks of
passers-by, in spite of her shabby dress, much more than the graceful, well-
dressed ladies of the aristocracy. Frequently some young, wealthy lounger
would follow her home; and even try to get into conversation with her, but
she always managed to get rid of them and their importunities, and she did
not require any protector, for she was quite capable of protecting herself
from any insults.
One evening, however, she met a man on the suspension bridge, whose
strange appearance made her give him a look which evinced some interest,
but perhaps even more surprise. He was a tall, handsome man with bright
eyes and a black beard; he was very sunburnt, and in his long coat, which
was like a caftan, with a red fez on his head, he gave those who saw him the
impression of an Oriental; he had noticed her look all the more as he himself
had been so struck by her poor, and at the same time regal, appearance, that
he remained standing and looking at her in such a way, that he seemed to be
devouring her with his eyes, so that Viteska, who was usually so fearless,
looked down. She hurried on and he followed her, and the quicker she
walked, the more rapidly he followed her, and, at last, when they were in a
narrow, dark street in the suburb, he suddenly said in an insinuating voice:
“May I offer you my arm, my pretty girl?” “You can see that I am old enough
to look after myself,” Viteska replied hastily; “I am much obliged to you, and
must beg you not to follow me any more; I am known in this neighborhood,
and it might damage my reputation.” “Oh! You are very much mistaken if you
think you will get rid of me so easily,” he replied. “I have just come from the
East and am returning there soon, come with me, and as I fancy that you are
as sensible as you are beautiful, you will certainly make your fortune there,
and I will bet that before the end of a year, you will be covered with
diamonds, and be waited on by eunuchs and female slaves.”
“I am a respectable girl, sir,” she replied proudly, and tried to go on in
front, but the stranger was immediately at her side again. “You were born to
rule,” he whispered to her. “Believe me, and I understand the matter, that you
will live to be a Sultaness, if you have any luck.” The girl did not give him
any answer, but walked on. “But, at any rate, listen to me,” the tempter
continued. “I will not listen to anything; because I am poor, you think it will
be easy for you to seduce me,” Viteska exclaimed: “but I am as virtuous as I
am poor, and I should despise any position which I had to buy with shame.”
They had reached the little house where her parents lived, and she ran in
quickly, and slammed the door behind her.
When she went into the town the next morning, the stranger was waiting at
the corner of the street where she lived, and bowed to her very respectfully.
“Allow me to speak a few words with you,” he began. “I feel that I ought to
beg your pardon for my behavior yesterday.” “Please let me go on my way
quietly,” the girl replied. “What will the neighbors think of me?” “I did not
know you,” he went on, without paying any attention to her angry looks, “but
your extraordinary beauty attracted me. Now that I know that you are as
virtuous as you are charming, I wish very much to become better acquainted
with you. Believe me, I have the most honorable intentions.”
Unfortunately, the bold stranger had taken the girl’s fancy, and she could
not find it in her heart to refuse him. “If you are really in earnest,” she
stammered in charming confusion, “do not follow me about in the public
streets, but come to my parents’ house like a man of honor, and state your
intentions there.” “I will certainly do so, and immediately, if you like,” the
stranger replied, eagerly. “No, no,” Viteska said; “but come this evening if
you like.”
The stranger bowed and left her, and really called on her parents in the
evening. He introduced himself as Ireneus Krisapolis, a merchant from
Smyrna, spoke of his brilliant circumstances, and finally declared that he
loved Viteska passionately. “That is all very nice and right,” the cautious
father replied, “but what will it all lead to? Under no circumstances can I
allow you to visit my daughter. Such a passion as yours often dies out as
quickly as it arises, and a respectable girl is easily robbed of her virtue.”
“And suppose I make up my mind to marry your daughter?” the stranger
asked, after a moment’s hesitation. “Then I shall refer you to my child, for I
shall never force Viteska to marry against her will,” her father said.
The stranger seized the pretty girl’s hand, and spoke in glowing terms of
his love for her, of the luxury with which she would be surrounded in his
house, of the wonders of the East, to which he hoped to take her, and at last
Viteska consented to become his wife. Thereupon the stranger hurried on the
arrangements for the wedding, in a manner that made the most favorable
impression on them all, and during the time before their marriage he lay at
her feet like her humble slave.
As soon as they were married, the newly-married couple set off on their
journey to Smyrna and promised to write as soon as they got there, but a
month, then two and three, passed without the parents, whose anxiety
increased every day, receiving a line from them, until at last the father in
terror applied to the police.
The first thing was to write to the Consul at Smyrna for information: his
reply was to the effect that no merchant of the name of Ireneus Krisapolis
was known in Smyrna, and that he had never been there. The police, at the
entreaties of the frantic parents, continued their investigations, but for a long
time without any result. At last, however, they obtained a little light on the
subject, but it was not at all satisfactory. The police at Pestle said that a man,
whose personal appearance exactly agreed with the description of Viteska’s
husband, had a short time before carried off two girls from the Hungarian
capital, to Turkey, evidently intending to trade in that coveted, valuable
commodity there, but that when he found that the authorities were on his track
he had escaped from justice by a sudden flight.

Four years after Viteska’s mysterious disappearance, two persons, a man

and a woman, met in a narrow street in Damascus, in a scarcely less strange
manner, than when the Greek merchant met Viteska on the suspension bridge
at Prague. The man with the black beard, the red fez, and the long, green
caftan, was no one else than Ireneus Krisapolis; matters appeared to be going
well with him; he had his hands comfortably thrust into the red shawl which
he had round his waist, and a negro was walking behind him with a large
parasol, while another carried his Chiloque after him. A noble Turkish lady
met him in a litter borne by four slaves; she was wrapped like a ghost in a
white veil, only that a pair of large, dark, threatening eyes flashed at the
merchant.
He smiled, for he thought that he had found favor in the eyes of an Eastern
houri, and that flattered him; but he soon lost sight of her in the crowd, and
forgot her almost immediately. The next morning however, a eunuch of the
pasha’s came to him, to his no small astonishment, and told him to come with
him. He took him to the Sultan’s most powerful deputy, who ruled as an
absolute despot in Damascus. They went through dark, narrow passages, and
curtains were pushed aside, which rustled behind them again. At last they
reached a large rotunda, the center of which was occupied by a beautiful
fountain, while scarlet divans ran all around it. Here the eunuch told the
merchant to wait, and left him. He was puzzling his brains what the meaning
of it all could be, when suddenly a tall, commanding woman came into the
apartment. Again a pair of large, threatening eyes looked at him through the
veil, while he knew from her green, gold-embroidered caftan, that if it was
not the pasha’s wife, it was at least one of his favorites, who was before him,
and so he hurriedly knelt down, and crossing his hands on his breast, he put
his head on to the ground before her. But a clear, diabolical laugh made him
look up, and when the beautiful Odalisque threw back her veil, he uttered a
cry of terror, for his wife, his deceived wife, whom he had sold, was
standing before him.
“Do you know me?” she asked with quiet dignity. “Viteska!” “Yes, that
was my name when I was your wife,” she replied quickly, in a contemptuous
voice; “but now that I am the pasha’s wife, my name is Sarema. I do not
suppose you ever expected to find me again, you wretch, when you sold me
in Varna to an old Jewish profligate, who was only half alive. You see I have
got into better hands, and I have made my fortune, as you said I should do.
Well? What do you expect of me; what thanks, what reward?”
The wretched man was lying overwhelmed, at the feet of the woman
whom he had so shamefully deceived, and could not find a word to say; he
had felt that he was lost, and had not even got the courage to beg for mercy.
“You deserve death, you miscreant,” Sarema continued. “You are in my
hands, and I can do whatever I please with you, for the pasha has left your
punishment to me alone. I ought to have you impaled, and to feast my eyes on
your death agonies. That would be the smallest compensation for all the
years of degradation that I have been through, and which I owe to you.”
“Mercy, Viteska! Mercy!” the wretched man cried, trembling all over, and
raising his hands to her in supplication.
The Odalisque’s only reply was a laugh, in which rang all the cruelty of
an insulted woman’s deceived heart. It seemed to give her pleasure to see the
man whom she had loved, and who had so shamefully trafficked in her
beauty, in his mortal agony, as he cringed before her, whining for his life, as
he clung to her knees, but at last she seemed to relent somewhat.
“I will give your life, you miserable wretch,” she said, “but you shall not
go unpunished.” So saying, she clapped her hands, and four black eunuchs
came in, and seized the favorite’s unfortunate husband and in a moment bound
his hands and feet.
“I have altered my mind, and he shall not be put to death,” Sarema said,
with a smile that made the traitor’s blood run cold in his veins; “but give him
a hundred blows with the bastinade, and I will stand by and count them.”
“For God’s sake,” the merchant screamed, “I can never endure it.” “We will
see about that,” the favorite said, coldly, “and if you die under it, it was
allotted you by fate; I am not going to retract my orders.”
She threw herself down on the cushions, and began to smoke a long pipe,
which a female slave handed to her on her knees. At a sign from her the
eunuchs tied the wretched man’s feet to the pole, by which the soles of the
culprit were raised, and began the terrible punishment. Already at the tenth
blow the merchant began to roar like a wild animal, but his wife whom he
had betrayed, remained unmoved, carelessly blowing the blue wreaths of
smoke into the air, and resting on her lovely arm, she watched his features,
which were distorted by pain, with merciless enjoyment.
During the last blows he only groaned gently, and then he fainted.

A year later the dealer was caught with his female merchandise by the
police in an Austrian town, and handed over to justice, when he made a full
confession, and by that means the parents of the Odalisque of Senichou heard
of their daughter’s position. As they knew that she was happy and surrounded
by luxury, they made no attempt to get her out of the Pasha’s hands, who, like
a thorough Mussulman, had become the slave of his slave.
 The unfortunate husband was sent over to the frontier when he was
released from prison. His shameful traffic, however, flourishes still, in spite
of all the precautions of the police and of the consuls, and every year he
provides the harems of the East with those voluptuous Boxclanas, especially
from Bohemia and Hungary, who, in the eyes of a Mussulman, vie for the
prize of beauty, with the slender Circassian women.
 A GOOD MATCH

Strauss’ band was playing in the saloons of the Horticultural Society, which
was so full that the young cadet Hussar-sergeant Max B., who had nothing
better to do on an afternoon when he was off duty than to drink a glass of
good beer and to listen to a new waltz tune, had already been looking about
for a seat for some time, when the head waiter, who knew him, quickly took
him to an unoccupied place, and without waiting for his orders, brought him a
glass of beer. A very gentlemanly-looking man, and three elegantly dressed
ladies were sitting at the table.
The cadet saluted them with military politeness, and sat down, but almost
before he could put the glass to his lips, he noticed that the two elder ladies,
who appeared to be married, turned up their noses very much at his taking a
seat at their table, and even said a few words which he could not catch, but
which no doubt referred unpleasantly to him. “I am afraid I am in the way
here,” the cadet said; and he got up to leave, when he felt a pull at his sabre-
tasch beneath the table, and at the same time the gentleman felt bound to say
with some embarrassment: “Oh! not at all; on the contrary, we are very
pleased that you have chosen this table.”
Thereupon the cadet resumed his seat, not so much because he took the
gentleman’s invitation as sincere, but because the silent request to remain,
which he had received under the table, and which was much more sincerely
meant, had raised in him one of those charming illusions, which are so
frequent in our youth, and which promised so much happiness, with electrical
rapidity. He could not doubt for a moment, that the daring invitation came
from the third, the youngest and prettiest of the ladies, into whose company a
fortunate accident had thrown him.
From the moment that he had sat down by her, however, she did not deign
to bestow even another look on him, much less a word, and to the young
hussar, who was still rather inexperienced in such matters, this seemed rather
strange; but he possessed enough natural tact not to expose himself to a rebuff
by any hasty advances, but quietly to wait further developments of the
adventure on the part of the heroine of it. This gave him the opportunity of
looking at her more closely, and for this he employed the moments when their
attention was diverted from him, and was taken up by conversation among
themselves.
The girl, whom the others called Angelica, was a thorough Viennese
beauty, not exactly regularly beautiful, for her features were not Roman or
Greek, and not even strictly German, and yet they possessed every female
charm, and were seductive, in the fullest sense of the word. Her strikingly
small nose, which in a lady’s-maid might have been called impudent, and her
little mouth with its voluptuously full lips, which would have been called
lustful in a street-walker, imparted an indescribable piquant charm to her
small head, which was surmounted by an imposing tower of that soft brown
hair which is so characteristic of Viennese women. Her bright eyes were full
of good sense, and a merry smile lurked continually in the most charming
little dimples near her mouth and on her chin.
In less than a quarter of an hour, our cadet was fettered, with no more will
of his own than a slave has, to the triumphal chariot of this delightful little
creature, and as he hoped and believed — for ever. And he was a man worth
capturing. He was tall and slim, but muscular, and looked like an athlete, and
at the time he had one of those handsome, open faces which women like so
much. His honest, dark eyes showed strength of will, courage and strong
passions, and that, women also like.
During an interval in the music, an elderly gentleman, with the ribbon of
an order in his button-hole, came up to the table, and from the manner in
which he greeted them, it was evident that he was an old friend. From their
conversation, which was carried on in a very loud tone of voice, and with
much animation, in the bad, Viennese fashion, the cadet gathered that the
gentleman who was with the ladies, was a Councilor of Legation, and that the
eldest lady was his wife, while the second lady was his married, and the
youngest his unmarried, sister-in-law. When they at last rose to go, the pretty
girl, evidently intentionally, put her velvet jacket, trimmed with valuable
sable, very loosely over her shoulders; then she remained standing at the exit,
and slowly put it on, so that the cadet had an opportunity to get close to her.
“Follow us,” she whispered to him, and then ran after the others.
The cadet was only too glad to obey her directions, and followed them at
a distance, without being observed, to the house where they lived. A week
passed without his seeing the pretty Angelica again, or without her giving
him any sign of life. The waiter in the Horticultural Society’s grounds, whom
he asked about them, could tell him nothing more than that they were people
of position, and a few days later the cadet saw them all again at a concert,
but he was satisfied with looking at his ideal from a distance. She, however,
when she could do so without danger, gave him one of those coquettish looks
which inexperienced young men imagine express the innermost feelings of a
pure, virgin heart. On that occasion she left the grounds with her sisters,
much earlier, and as she passed the handsome cadet, she let a small piece of
rolled-up paper fall, which only contained the words: “Come at ten o’clock
to-night, and ring the bell.”
He was outside the house at the stroke of ten and rang, but his
astonishment knew no bounds when, instead of Angelica or her confidential
maid, the housekeeper opened the door. She saw his confusion, and quickly
put an end to it by taking his hand, and pulling him into the house. “Come
with me,” she whispered; “I know all about it. The young lady will be here
directly, so come along.” Then she lead him through the kitchen into a room
which was shut off from the rest of the house, and which she had apparently
furnished for similar meetings, on her own account, and left him there by
himself, and the cadet was rather surprised to see the elegant furniture, a
wide, soft couch, and some rather obscene pictures in broad, gilt frames. In a
few minutes, the beautiful girl came, in, and without any further ceremony,
threw her arms round the young soldier’s neck. In her negligée, she appeared
to him much more beautiful than in her elegant outdoor dress, but the virginal
fragrance which then pervaded her, had given way to that voluptuous
atmosphere which surrounds a young newly-married woman.
Angelica, whose little feet were encased in blue velvet slippers lined
with ermine, and who was wrapped in a richly embroidered, white dressing-
gown, that was trimmed with lace, drew the handsome cadet down on to the
couch with graceful energy, and almost before he exactly knew what he had
come for, she was his, and the young soldier, who was half dazed at his
unexpected victory and good fortune, did not leave her until after twelve
o’clock. He returned every night at ten, rang the bell, and was admitted by the
girl’s slyly-smiling confidante, and a few moments later was clasping his
little goddess, who used to wrap her delicate, white limbs sometimes in dark
sable, and at others in princely ermine, in his arms. Every time they partook
of a delicious supper, laughed and joked and loved each other like only
young, good-looking people do love, and frequently they entertained one
another until morning.
 Once the cadet attempted diffidently to pay the housekeeper for her
services, and also for the supper, but she refused his money with a laugh, and
said that everything was already settled; and the young soldier had reveled in
this manner in boundless bliss for four months, when, by an unfortunate
accident, he met his mistress in the street one day. She was alone, but in spite
of this she contracted her delicate, finely-arched eyebrows angrily, when he
was about to speak to her, and turned her head away. This hurt the honest
young fellow’s feelings, and when that evening she drew him to her bosom,
that was rising and falling tempestuously under the black velvet that covered
it, he remonstrated with her quietly, but emphatically. — She made a little
grimace, and looking at him coldly and angrily, she at last said, shortly: “I
forbid you to take any notice of me out of doors. I do not choose to recognize
you; do you understand?”
The cadet was surprised and did not reply, but the harmony of his
pleasures was destroyed by a harsh discord. For some time he bore his
misery in silence and with resignation, but at last the situation became
unendurable; his mistress’s fiery kisses seemed to mock him, and the
pleasure which she gave him to degrade him, so at last he summoned up
courage, and in his open way, he came straight to the point.
“What do you think of our future, Angelica?” She wrinkled her brows a
little. “Do not let us talk about it; at any rate not to-day.” “Why not? We must
talk about it sooner or later,” he replied, “and I think it is high time for me to
explain my intentions to you, if I do not wish to appear as a dishonorable
scoundrel in your eyes.” She looked at him in surprise. “I look upon you as
one of the best and most honorable of men, Max,” she said, soothingly, after a
pause. “And do you trust me also?” “Of course I do.” “Are you convinced
that I love you honestly?” “Quite.” “Then do not hesitate any longer to
bestow your hand upon me,” her lover said, in conclusion. “What are you
thinking about?” she cried, quickly, in a tone of refusal. “What is to be the
end of our connection? What is at any rate not permissible with a woman, is
wrong and dishonorable with a girl. You yourself must feel lowered if you do
not become my wife as soon as possible.” “What a narrow-minded view,”
Angelica replied, angrily, “but as you wish it, I will give you my opinion on
the subject, but ... by letter.” “No, no; now, directly.”
The pretty girl did not speak for some time, and looked down, but
suddenly she looked at her lover, and a malicious, mocking smile lurked in
the corners of her mouth. “Well, I love you, Max, I love you really and
ardently,” she said, carelessly; “but I can never be your wife. If you were an
officer I might perhaps marry you; yes, I certainly would, but as it is, it is
impossible.” “Is that your last word?” the cadet said, in great excitement. She
only nodded, and then put her full, white arms round his neck, with all the
security of a mistress who is granting some favor to her slave; but on that
occasion she was mistaken. He sprang up, seized his sword and hurried out
of the room, and she let him go, for she felt certain that he would come back
again, but he did not do so, and when she wrote to him, he did not answer her
letters, and still did not come; so at last she gave him up.
It was a bad, a very bad, experience for the honorable young fellow; the
highborn, frivolous girl had trampled on all the ideals and illusions of his life
with her small feet, for he then saw only too clearly, that she had not loved
him, but that he had only served her pleasures and her lusts, while he, he had
loved her so truly!
About a year after the catastrophe with charming Angelica, the handsome
cadet happened to be in his captain’s quarters, and accidentally saw a large
photograph of a lady on his writing table, and on going up and looking at it,
he recognized — Angelica.
“What a beautiful girl,” he said, wishing to find out how the land lay.
“That is the lady I am going to marry,” the captain, whose vanity was
flattered, said, “and she is as pure and as good as an angel, just as she is as
beautiful as one, and into the bargain she comes of a very good and very rich
family; in short, in the fullest sense of the word, she is ‘a good match.’”
 A FASHIONABLE WOMAN

It can easily be proved that Austria is far richer in talented men in every
domain, than North Germany, but while men are systematically drilled there
for the vocation which they choose, like the Prussian soldiers are, with us
they lack the necessary training, especially technical training, and
consequently very few of them get beyond mere diletantism. Leo Wolfram
was one of those intellectual diletantes, and the more pleasure one took in his
materials and characters, which were usually boldly taken from real life, and
in a certain political, and what is still more, in a plastic plot, the more he
was obliged to regret that he had never learnt to compose or to mold his
characters, or to write; in one word, that he had never become a literary
artist, but how greatly he had in himself the materials for a master of
narration, his “Dissolving Views,” and still more his Goldkind, prove.
This Goldkind is a striking type of our modern society, and the novel of
that name contains all the elements of a classic novel, although of course in a
crude, unfinished state. What an exact reflection of our social circumstances
Leo Wolfram gave in that story our present reminiscences will show, in
which a lady of that race plays the principal part.
It may be ten years ago, that every day four very stylishly dressed persons
went to dine in a corner of the small dining-room of one of the best hotels in
Vienna, who, both there and elsewhere, gave occasion for a great amount of
talk. They were an Austrian landowner, his charming wife, and two young
diplomatists, one of whom came from the North, while the other was a pure
son of the South. There was no doubt that the lady came in for the greatest
share of the general interest in every respect.
The practiced observer and discerner of human nature easily recognized
in her one of those characters which Goethe has so aptly named
“problematical,” for she was one of those individuals who are always
dissatisfied and at variance with themselves and with the world, who are a
riddle to themselves, and who can never be relied on, and with the
interesting and captivating, though unfortunate contradictions in her nature,
she made a strong impression on everybody, even by her mere outward
appearance. She was one of those women who are called beautiful, without
their being really so. Her face, as well as her figure, was wanting in æsthetic
lines, but there was no doubt that, in spite of that, or perhaps on that very
account, she was the most dangerous, infatuating woman that one could
imagine.
She was tall and thin, and there was a certain hardness about her figure,
which became a charm through the vivacity and grace of her movements; her
features harmonized with her figure, for she had a high, clever, cold
forehead, a strong mouth with sensual lips, and an angular, sharp chin, the
effect of which was, however, diminished by her slightly turned-up, small
nose, her beautifully arched eyebrows, and her large, animated, swimming
blue eyes.
In her face, which was almost too full of expression for a woman, there
was as much feeling, kindness and candor as there was calculation, coolness
and deceit, and when she was angry and drew her upper lip up, so as to show
her dazzlingly white teeth, it had even a devilish look of wickedness and
cruelty, and at that time, when women still wore their own hair, the beauty of
her long, chestnut plaits, which she fastened on the top of her head like a
crown, was very striking. Besides this, she was remarkable for her elegant,
tasteful dresses, and a bearing which united to the dignity of a lady of rank
that undefinable something which makes actresses and women who belong to
the higher classes of the demi-monde so interesting to us.
In Paris she would have been taken for a kept woman, but in Vienna the
best drawing-rooms were open to her, and she was not looked upon as more
respectable or as less respectable than any other aristocratic beauties.
Her husband decidedly belonged to that class of men whom that witty
writer, Balzac, so delightfully calls les hommes prédestinés in his
Physiologie du Mariage. Without doubt, he was a very good-looking man,
but he bore that stamp of insignificance which so often conceals coarseness
and vulgarity, and was one of those men who, in the long run, become
unendurable to a woman of refined tastes. He had a good private income, but
his wife understood the art of enjoying life, and so a deficit in the yearly
accounts of the young couple became the rule, without causing the lively lady
to check her noble passion in the least on that account; she kept horses and
carriages, rode with the greatest boldness, had her box at the opera, and gave
beautiful little suppers, which at that time was the highest aim of a Viennese
woman of her class.
 One of the two young diplomats who accompanied her, a young Count,
belonging to a well-known family in North Germany, and who was a perfect
gentleman in the highest sense of the word, was looked upon as her adorer,
while the other, who was his most intimate friend, yet, in spite of his ancient
name and his position as attaché to a foreign legation, gave people that
distinct impression that he was an adventurer, which makes the police keep
such a careful eye on some persons, and he had the reputation of being an
unscrupulous and dangerous duellist. Short, thin, with a yellow complexion,
with strongly-marked but engaging features, an aquiline nose and bright, dark
eyes, he was the typical picture of a man who seduces women and kills men.
The handsome woman appeared to be in love with the Count, and to take
an interest in his friend; at least, that was the construction that the others in
the dining-room put upon the situation, as far as it could be made out from the
behavior and looks of the people concerned, and especially from their looks,
for it was strange how devotedly and ardently the beautiful woman’s blue
eyes rested on the Count, and with what wild, diabolical sympathy she gazed
at the Italian from time to time, and it was hard to guess whether there was
most love or hatred in that glance. None of the four, however, who were then
dining and chatting so gaily together, had any presentiment at the time that
they were amusing themselves over a mine, which might explode at any
moment, and bury them all.
It was the husband of the beautiful woman who provided the tinder. One
day he told her that she must make up her mind to the most rigid retrenchment,
give up her box at the opera, and sell her carriage and horses, if she did not
wish to risk her whole position in society. Her creditors had lost all
patience, and were threatening to distrain on her property, and even to put her
in prison. She made no reply to this revelation, but during dinner she said to
the Count, in a whisper, that she must speak to him later, and would,
therefore, come to see him at his house. When it was dark, she came thickly
veiled, and after she had responded to his demonstrations of affection for
some time, with more patience than amiableness, she began. Their
conversation is extracted from his diary.
“You are so unconcerned and happy, while misery and disgrace are
threatening me!” “Please explain what you mean!” “I have incurred some
debts.” “Again?” he said reproachfully, “why do you not come to me at once,
for you must do it in the end, and then at least you would avoid any
exposure?” “Please do not take me to task,” she replied; “you know it only
makes me angry. I want some money; can you give me some?” “How much do
you want?” She hesitated, for she had not the courage to name the real
amount, but at last she said, in a low voice: “Five thousand florins.” It was
evidently only a small portion of what she really required, so he replied: “I
am sure you want more than that!” “No.” “Really not?” “Do not make me
angry.”
He shrugged his shoulders, went to his strong box and gave her the money,
whereupon she nodded, and giving him her hand, she said: “You are always
kind, and as long as I have you, I am not afraid; but if I were to lose you, I
should be the most unhappy woman in the world.” “You always have the
same fears; but I shall never leave you; it would be impossible for me to
separate from you,” the Count exclaimed. “And if you die?” she interrupted
him hastily. “If I die?” the Count said, with a peculiar smile. “I have
provided for you in that eventuality also.” “Do you mean to say” ... she
stammered, flushed, and her large, lovely eyes rested on her lover with an
indescribable expression in them. He, however, opened a drawer in his
writing-table, and took out a document, which he gave her. It was his will.
She opened it with almost indecent haste, and when she saw the amount —
thirty thousand florins — she grew pale to her very lips.
It was a moment in which the germs of a crime were sown in her breast,
but one of those crimes which cannot be touched by the Criminal Code. A
few days after she had paid her visit to the Count, she herself received one
from the Italian. In the course of conversation he took a jewel case out of his
breast pocket and asked her opinion of the ornaments, as she was well-
known for her taste in such matters, telling her at the same time, that it was
intended as a present for an actress, with whom he was on intimate terms.—
“It is a magnificent set!” she said, as she looked at it. “You have made an
excellent selection.” Then she suddenly became absorbed in thought, while
her nostrils began to quiver, and that touch of cold cruelty played on her lips.
“Do you think that the lady for whom this ornament is intended will be
pleased with it?” the Italian asked. “Certainly,” she replied; “I myself would
give a great deal to have it.” “Then may I venture to offer it to you?” the
Italian said.
She blushed, but did not refuse it, but the same evening she rushed into her
lover’s room in a state of the greatest excitement. “I am beside myself,” she
stammered; “I have been most deeply insulted.” “By whom?” the Count
asked, excitedly. “By your friend, who has dared to send me some jewelry
to-day. I suppose he looks upon me as a lost woman; perhaps I am already
looked upon as belonging to the demi-monde, and this I owe to you, to you
alone, and to my mad love for you, to which I have sacrificed my honor and
everything. Everything!” She threw herself down and sobbed, and would not
be pacified until the Count gave her his word of honor that he would set
aside every consideration for his friend, and obtain satisfaction for her at any
price. He met the Italian the same evening at a card party and questioned him.
“I did not, in the first place, send the lady the jewelry, but I gave it to her
myself, not, however, until she had asked me to do so.” “That is a shameful
lie!” the Count shouted, furiously. Unfortunately, there were others present,
and his friend took the matter seriously, so the next morning he sent his
seconds to the Count.
Some of their real friends tried to settle the matter in another way, but his
bad angel, his mistress, who required thirty thousand florins, drove the Count
to his death. He was found in the Prater, with his friend’s bullet in his chest.
A letter in his pocket spoke of suicide, but the police did not doubt for a
moment that a duel had taken place. Suspicion soon fell on the Italian, but
when they went to arrest him, he had already made his escape.
The husband of the beautiful, problematical woman, called on the broken-
hearted father of the man who had been killed in the duel, and who had
hastened to Vienna on receipt of a telegraphic message, a few hours after his
arrival, and demanded the money. “My wife was your son’s most intimate
friend,” he stammered, in embarrassment, in order to justify his action as
well as he could. “Oh! I know that,” the old Count replied, “and female
friends of that kind want to be paid immediately, and in full. Here are the
thirty thousand florins.”
And our Goldkind? She paid her debts, and then withdrew from the scene
for a while. She had been compromised, certainly, but then, she had risen in
value in the eyes of those numerous men who can only adore and sacrifice
themselves for a woman when her foot is on the threshold of vice and crime.
I saw her last during the Franco-German war, in the beautiful Mirabell-
garden at Salzburg. She did not seem to feel any qualms of conscience, for
she had become considerably stouter, which made her more attractive, more
beautiful, and consequently, more dangerous, than she was before.
 THE CARNIVAL OF LOVE

The Princess Leonie was one of those beautiful, brilliant enigmas, who
irresistibly allure everyone like a Sphinx, for she was young, charming, and
singularly lovely, and understood how to heighten her charms not a little by
carefully-chosen dresses. She was a great lady of the right stamp, and was
very intellectual into the bargain, which is not the case with all aristocratic
ladies; she also took great interest in art and literature, and it was even said
that she patronized one of our poets in a manner which was worthy of the
Medicis, and that she strewed the beautiful roses of continual female
sympathy on to his thorny path. All this was evident to everybody, and had
nothing strange about it, but the world would have liked to know the history
of that woman, and to look into the depths of her soul, and because people
could not do this in Princess Leonie’s case, they thought it very strange.
No one could read that face, which was always beautiful, always
cheerful, and always the same; no one could fathom those large, dark,
unfathomable eyes, which hid their secrets under the unvarying brilliancy of
majestic repose, like a mountain lake, whose waters look black on account of
their depth. For everybody was agreed that the beautiful princess had her
secrets, interesting and precious secrets, like all other ladies of our
fashionable world.
Most people looked upon her as a flirt who had no heart, and even no
blood, and they asserted that she was only virtuous because the power of
loving was denied her, but that she took all the more pleasure in seeing that
she was loved, and that she set her trammels and enticed her victims, until
they surrendered at discretion at her feet, so that she might leave them to their
fate, and hurry off in pursuit of some fresh game.
Others declared that the beautiful woman had met with her romances in
life, and was still having them, but, as a thorough Messalina, she knew how
to conceal her adventures as cleverly as that French queen who had every
one of her lovers thrown into the cold waters of the Seine, as soon as he
quitted her soft, warm arms, and she was described thus to Count Otto F., a
handsome cavalry officer, who had made the acquaintance of the beautiful,
dangerous woman at that fashionable watering place, Karlsbad, and had
fallen deeply in love with her.
Even before he had been introduced to her, the Princess had already
exchanged fiery, encouraging glances with him, and when a brother officer
took him to call on her, she welcomed him with a smile which appeared to
promise him happiness, but after he had paid his court to her for a month, he
did not seem to have made any progress, and as she possessed in a high
degree the skill of being able to avoid even the shortest private interviews, it
appeared as if matters would go no further than that delightful promise.
Night after night, the enamored young officer walked along the garden
railings of her villa as close to her windows as possible, without being
noticed by any one, and at last fortune seemed to favor him. The moon, which
was nearly at the full, was shining brightly, and in its silvery light he saw a
tall, female figure, with large plaits round her head, coming along the grave
path; he stood still, as he thought he recognized the Princess, but as she came
nearer he saw a pretty girl, whom he did not know, and who came up to the
railings and said to him with a smile: “What can I do for you, Count?”
mentioning his name.
“You seem to know me, Fräulein.” “Oh! I am only the Princess’s lady’s-
maid.” ... “But you could do me a great favor.” “How?” she asked quickly:
“You might give the Princess a letter.” ... “I should not venture to do that,” the
girl replied with a peculiar, half-mocking, half-pitying smile, and with a deep
curtsey, she disappeared behind the raspberry bushes which formed a hedge
along the railings.
The next morning, as the Count, with several other ladies and gentlemen,
was accompanying the Princess home from the pump-room, the fair coquette
let her pocket-handkerchief fall just outside her house. The young officer took
this for a hint, so he picked it up, concealed the letter that he had written,
which he always kept about him so as to be prepared for any event, in the
folds of the soft cambric, and gave it back to the Princess, who quickly put it
into her pocket. That also seemed to him to be a good augury, and, in fact, in
the course of a few hours he received a note in disguised handwriting, by the
post, in which his bold wooing was graciously entertained, and an
appointment was made for the same night in the pavilion of the Princess’s
villa.
The happiness of the enamored young officer knew no bounds; he kissed
the letter a hundred times, thanked the Princess when he met her in the
afternoon where the band was playing by his animated looks, which she
either did not or could not understand, and at night was standing an hour
before the appointed time behind the wall at the bottom of the garden.
When the church clock struck eleven he climbed over it and jumped on to
the ground on the other side, and looked about him carefully; then he went up
to the small, white-washed summer-house, where the Princess had promised
to meet him, on tiptoe. He found the door ajar, went in, and at the same
moment he felt two soft arms thrown round him. “Is it you, Princess?” he
asked, in a whisper, for the pavilion was in total darkness, as the venetian
blinds were drawn. “Yes, Count, it is I.” ... “How cruel.” ... “I love you, but I
am obliged to conceal my passion under the mask of coldness because of my
social position.”
As she said this, the enamored woman, who was trembling on his breast
with excitement, drew him on to a couch that occupied one side of the
pavilion, and began to kiss him ardently. The lovers spent two blissful hours
in delightful conversation and intoxicating pleasures; then she bade him
farewell, and told him to remain where he was until she had gone back to the
house. He obeyed her, but could not resist looking at her through the venetian
blinds, and he saw her tall, slim figure as she went along the gravel path with
an undulating walk. She wore a white boumous, which he recognized as
having seen in the pump-room; her soft, black hair fell down over her
shoulders, and before she disappeared into the villa she stood for a moment
and looked back, but he could not see her face, as she wore a thick veil.
When Count F. met the Princess the next morning in company with other
ladies, when the band was playing, she showed an amount of unconstraint
which confused him, and while she was joking in the most unembarrassed
manner, he turned crimson and stammered out such a lot of nonsense that the
ladies noticed it, and made him the target for their wit. None of them was
bolder or more confident in their attacks on him than the Princess, so that at
last he looked upon the woman who concealed so much passion in her breast,
and who yet could command herself so thoroughly, as a kind of miracle, and
at last said to himself: “The world is right; woman is a riddle!”
The Princess remained there for some weeks longer, and always
maintained the same polite and friendly, but cool and sometimes ironical,
demeanor towards him, but he easily endured being looked upon as her
unfortunate adorer by the world, for at least every other day a small, scented
note, stamped with her arms and signed Leonie, summoned him to the
pavilion, and there he enjoyed the full, delightful possession of the beautiful
woman. It, however, struck him as strange that she would never let him see
her face. Her head was always covered with a thick black veil, through
which he could see her eyes, which sparkled with love, glistening; he passed
his fingers through her hair, he saw her well-known dresses, and once he
succeeded in getting possession of one of her pocket-handkerchiefs, on which
the name Leonie and the princely coronet were magnificently embroidered.
When she returned to Vienna for the winter, a note from her invited him to
follow her there, and as he had indefinite leave of absence from his regiment,
he could obey the commands of his divinity. As soon as he arrived there he
received another note, which forbade him to go to her house, but promised
him a speedy meeting in his rooms, and so the young officer had the furniture
elegantly renovated, and looked forward to a visit from the beautiful woman
with all a lover’s impatience.
At last she came, wrapped in a magnificent cloak of green velvet, trimmed
with ermine, but still thickly veiled, and before she came in she made it a
condition that the room in which he received her should be quite dark, and
after he had put out all the lights she threw off her fur, and her coldness gave
way to the most impetuous tenderness.
“What is the reason that you will never allow me to see your dear,
beautiful face?” the officer asked. “It is a whim of mine, and I suppose I have
the right to indulge in whims,” she said, hastily. “But I so long once more to
see your splendid figure and your lovely face in full daylight,” the Count
continued. “Very well then, you shall see me at the Opera this evening.”
She left him at six o’clock, after stopping barely an hour with him, and as
soon as her carriage had driven off he dressed and went to the opera. During
the overture, he saw the Princess enter her box and looking dazzlingly
beautiful; she was wearing the same green velvet cloak, trimmed with
ermine, that he had had in his hands a short time before, but almost
immediately she let it fall from her shoulders, and showed a bust which was
worthy of the Goddess of Love. She spoke with her husband with much
animation, and smiled with her usual cold smile, though she did not give her
adorer even a passing look, but, in spite of this, he felt the happiest of
mortals.
In Vienna, however, the Count was not as fortunate as he had been at
Karlsbad, where he had first met her, for his beautiful mistress only came to
see him once a week; often she only stopped a short time with him, and once
nearly six weeks passed without her favoring him at all, and she did not even
make any excuse for remaining away. Just then, however, Leonie’s husband
accidentally made the young officer’s acquaintance at the Jockey Club, took a
fancy to him, and asked him to go and see him at his house.
When he called and found the Princess alone his heart felt as if it would
burst with pleasure, and seizing her hand, he pressed it ardently to his lips.
“What are you doing, Count?” she said, drawing back. “You are behaving
very strangely.” “We are alone,” the young officer whispered, “so why this
mask of innocence? Your cruelty is driving me mad, for it is six weeks since
you came to see me last.” “I certainly think you are out of your mind,” the
Princess replied, with every sign of the highest indignation, and hastily left
the drawing-room. Nothing else remained for the Count but to do the same
thing, but his mind was in a perfect whirl, and he was quite incapable of
explaining to himself the Princess’s enigmatical behavior. He dined at an
hotel with some friends, and when he got home he found a note in which the
Princess begged him to pardon her, and promised to justify her conduct, for
which purpose she would see him at eight o’clock that evening.
Scarcely, however, had he read her note, when two of his brother-officers
came to see him, and asked him, with well-simulated anxiety, whether he
were ill. When he said that he was perfectly well, one of them continued,
laughing: “Then please explain the occurrence that is in everybody’s mouth
to-day, in which you play such a comical part.”— “I, a comical part?” the
Count shouted.— “Well, is it not very comical when you call on a lady like
Princess Leonie, whom you do not know, to upbraid her for her cruelty, and
most unceremoniously call her thou?”
That was too much; Count F. might pardon the Princess for pretending not
to know him in society, but that she should make him a common laughing-
stock, nearly drove him mad. “If I call the Princess thou,” he exclaimed, “it
is because I have the right to do so, as I will prove.” — His comrades
shrugged their shoulders, but he asked them to come again punctually at seven
o’clock, and then he made his preparations.
At eight o’clock his divinity made her appearance, still thickly veiled, but
on this occasion wearing a valuable sable cloak. As usual, Count F. took her
into the dark-room and locked the outer door; then he opened that which led
into his bedroom, and his two friends came in, each with a candle in his
hand. — The lady in the sable cloak cried out in terror when Count F. pulled
off her veil, but then it was his turn to be surprised, for it was not the
Princess Leonie who stood before him, but her pretty lady’s-maid, who, now
she was discovered, confessed that love had driven her to assume her
mistress’s part, in which she had succeeded perfectly, on account of the
similarity of their figure, eyes and hair. She had found the Count’s letter in the
Princess’s pocket-handkerchief when they were at Karlsbad and had
answered it. She had made him happy, and had heightened the illusion which
her figure gave rise to by borrowing the Princess’s dresses.
Of course the Count was made great fun of, and turned his back on Vienna
hastily that same evening, but the pretty lady’s-maid also disappeared soon
after the catastrophe, and only by those means escaped from her mistress’s
well-merited anger; for it turned out that that gallant little individual had
already played the part of her mistress more than once, and had made all
those hopeless adorers of the Princess, who had found favor in her own eyes,
happy in her stead.
Thus the enigma was solved which Princess Leonie seemed to have
proposed to the world.
 A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES

It is not very long ago that an Hungarian Prince, who was in an Austrian
cavalry regiment, was quartered in a wealthy Austrian garrison town. The
ladies of the local aristocracy naturally did everything they could to allure
the new comer, who was young, good-looking, animated and amusing, into
their nets, and at last one of the ripe beauties, who was now resting there on
her amorous laurels, after innumerable victories on the hot floors of Viennese
society, succeeded in taking him in her toils, but only for a short time, for she
had very nearly reached that limit in age where, on the man’s side, love
ceases and esteem begins. But she had more sense than most women, and she
recognized the fact in good time, and as she did not wish to give up the
principal character which she played in society there so easily, she reflected
as to what means she could employ to bind him to her in another manner. It is
well known that the notorious Marchioness de Pompadour, who was one of
the mistresses of Louis XV. of France, when her own charms did not suffice
to fetter that changeable monarch, conceived the idea of securing the chief
power in the State and in society for herself, by having a pavilion in the deer
park, which belonged to her, and where Louis XV. was in the habit of hunting,
fitted up with every accommodation of a harem, where she brought beautiful
women and girls of all ranks of life to the arms of her royal lover.
Inspired by that historical example, the baroness began to arrange evening
parties, balls, and private theatricals in the winter, and in the summer
excursions into the country, and thus she gave the Prince, who at that time
was still, so to say, at her feet, the opportunity of plucking fresh flowers. But
even this clever expedient did not avail in the long run, for beautiful women
were scarce in that provincial town, and the few which the local aristocracy
could produce were not able to offer the Prince any fresh attractions, when
he had made their closer acquaintance. At last, therefore, he turned his back
on the highly-born Messalinas, and began to bestow marked attention on the
pretty women and girls of the middle classes, either in the streets or when he
was in his box at the theater.
 There was one girl in particular, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant,
who was supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the capital, on to whom his
opera glass was constantly leveled, and whom he even followed
occasionally without being noticed. But Baroness Pompadour soon got wind
of this unprincely taste, and determined to do everything in her power to keep
her lover and the whole nobility, which was threatened, from such an
unheard-of disgrace, as an intrigue of a Prince with a girl of the middle
classes, would have been in her eyes. “It is really sad,” the outraged
baroness once said to me, “that in these days princes and monarchs choose
their mistresses only from the stage, or even from the scum of the people. But
it is the fault of our ladies themselves. They mistake their vocation! Ah!
Where are those delightful times when the daughters of the first families
looked upon it as an honor to become their princes’ mistresses?”
Consequently, the horror of the blue-blooded, aristocratic lady was
intense when the Prince, in his usual, amiable, careless manner, suggested to
her to people her deer park with girls of the lower orders.
“It is a ridiculous prejudice,” the Prince said on that occasion, “which
obliges us to shut ourselves off from the other ranks, and to confine ourselves
altogether to our own circle, for monotony and boredom are the inevitable
consequences of it. How many honorable men of sense and education, and
especially how many charming women and girls there are, who do not belong
to the aristocracy, who would infuse fresh life and a new charm into our dull,
listless society! I very much wish that a lady like you would make a
beginning, and would give up this exclusiveness, which cannot be maintained
in these days, and would enrich our circle with the charming daughters of
middle class families.”
A wish of the Prince’s was as good as a command; so the baroness made
a wry face, but she accommodated herself to the circumstances, and
promised to invite some of the prettiest girls of the plebs to a ball in a few
days. She really issued a number of invitations, and even condescended to
drive to the house of each of them in person. “But I must ask one thing of
you,” she said to each of the pretty girls, “and that is to come dressed as
simply as possible; washing muslins will be best. The Prince dislikes all
finery and ostentation and he would be very vexed with me if I were the
cause of any extravagance on your part.”
The great day arrived; it was quite an event for the little town, and all
classes of society were in a state of the greatest excitement. The pretty,
plebeian girls, with her whom the Prince had first noticed at their head,
appeared in all their innocence, in plain, washing dresses, according to the
Prince’s orders, with their hair plainly dressed, and without any ornaments,
except their own fresh, buxom charms. When they were all captives in the
den of the proud, aristocratic lioness, the poor little mice were very much
terrified when suddenly the aristocratic ladies came into the ball-room,
rustling in whole oceans of silks and lace, with their haughty heads changed
into so many hanging gardens of Semiramis, loaded with all the treasures of
India, and radiant as the sun.
At first the poor girls looked down in shame and confusion, and Baroness
Pompadour’s eyes glistened with all the joy of triumph, but her ill-natured
pleasure did not last long, for the intrigue, on which the Prince’s ignoble
passions were to make shipwreck, recoiled on the highly-born lady patroness
of the deer park.
It was not the aristocratic ladies in their magnificent toilettes that threw
the girls from the middle classes into the shade, but, on the contrary, those
pretty girls in their washing dresses, and with the plain but splendid
ornament of their abundant hair looked far more charming than they would
have done in silk dresses with long trains, and with flowers in their hair, and
the novelty and unwontedness of their appearance there allured not only the
Prince, but all the other gentlemen and officers, so that the proud grand-
daughters of the lions, griffins, and eagles, were quite neglected by the
gentlemen, who danced almost exclusively with the pretty girls of the middle
classes.
The faded lips of the baronesses and countesses uttered many a “For
Shame!” but all in vain, neither was it any good for the Baroness to make up
her mind that she would never again put a social medley before the Prince in
her drawing-room, for he had seen through her intrigue, and gave her up
altogether. Sic transit gloria mundi!
She, however, consoled herself as best she could.
 THE WHITE LADY

Fortuna, the goddess of chance and good luck, has always been Cupid’s best
ally and Arnold T., who was a lieutenant in a hussar regiment, was evidently
a special favorite of both those roguish deities.
This good-looking, well-bred young officer had been an enthusiastic
admirer of the two Countesses W., mother and daughter, during a tolerably
long leave of absence, which he spent with his relations in Vienna. He had
admired them from the Prater, and worshiped them at the opera, but he had
never had an opportunity of making their acquaintance, and when he was
back at his dull quarters in Galicia, he liked to think about those two
aristocratic beauties. Last summer his regiment was transferred to Bohemia,
to a wildly romantic district, that had been made illustrious by a talented
writer, which abounded in magnificent woods, lofty mountain-forests and
castles, and which was a favorite summer resort of the neighboring
aristocracy.
Who can describe his joyful surprise, when he and his men were
quartered in an old, weather-beaten castle in the middle of a wood, and he
learnt from the house-steward who received him that the owner of the castle
was the husband, and, consequently, also the father of his Viennese ideals. An
hour after he had taken possession of his old-fashioned, but beautifully
furnished, room in a side-wing of the castle, he put on his full-dress uniform,
and throwing his dolman over his shoulders, he went to pay his respects to
the Count and the ladies.
He was received with the greatest cordiality. The Count was delighted to
have a companion when he went out shooting, and the ladies were no less
pleased at having some one to accompany them on their walks in the forests,
or on their rides, so that he felt only half on the earth, and half in the seventh
heaven of Mohammedan bliss. Before supper he had time to inspect the house
more closely, and even to take a sketch of the large, gloomy building from a
favorable point. The ancient seat of the Counts of W. was really very gloomy;
in fact it created a sinister, uncomfortable feeling. The walls, which were
crumbling away here and there, and which were covered with dark ivy; the
round towers, which harbored jackdaws, owls, and hawks; the Æolian harp,
which complained and sighed and wept in the wind; the stones in the castle
yard, which were overgrown with grass; the cloisters, in which every
footstep re-echoed; the great ancestral portraits which hung on the walls,
coated as it were with dark, mysterious veils by the centuries which had
passed over them — all this recalled to him the legends and fairy tales of his
youth, and he involuntarily thought of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and
of Blue Beard, of the cruel mistress of the Kynast, and that aristocratic
tigress of the Carpathians, who obtained the unfading charms of eternal youth
by bathing in human blood.
He came in to supper where he found himself for the first time in company
with all the members of the family, just in the frame of mind that was suitable
for ghosts, and was not a little surprised when his host told him, half smiling
and half seriously, that the “White Lady” was disturbing the castle again, and
that she had latterly been seen very often. “Yes, indeed,” Countess Ida
exclaimed; “You must take care, Baron, for she haunts the very wing where
your room is.” The hussar was just in the frame of mind to take the matter
seriously, but, on the other hand, when he saw the dark, ardent eyes of the
Countess, and then the merry blue eyes of her daughter fixed on him, any real
fear of ghosts was quite out of the question with him. For Baron T. feared
nothing in this world, but he possessed a very lively imagination, which
could conjure up threatening forms from another world so plainly that
sometimes he felt very uncomfortable at his own fancies. But on the present
occasion that malicious apparition had no power over him; the ladies took
care of that, for both of them were beautiful and amiable.
The Countess was a mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with
the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and
beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light
hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress
of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace.
Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at
supper. It struck the hussar as strange that the tutor, who was a strongly-built
young man, with a winning face and those refined manners which the greatest
plebeian quickly acquires when brought into close and constant contact with
the aristocracy, was treated with great consideration by all the family except
the Countess, who treated him very haughtily. She assumed a particularly
imperious manner towards her son’s tutor, and she either found fault with, or
made fun of, everything that he did, while he put up with it all with smiling
humility.
Before supper was over their conversation again turned on to the ghost,
and Baron T. asked whether they did not possess a picture of the White Lady.
“Of course we have one,” they all replied at once; whereupon Baron T.
begged to be allowed to see it. “I will show it you to-morrow,” the Count
said. “No, Papa, now, immediately,” the younger lady said mockingly; “just
before the ghostly hour, such a thing creates a much greater impression.”
All who were present, not excepting the boy and his tutor, took a candle
and then they walked as if they had formed a torchlight procession, to the
wing of the house where the hussar’s room was. There was a life-size picture
of the White Lady hanging in a Gothic passage near his room, among other
ancestral portraits, and it by no means made a terrible impression on anyone
who looked at it, but rather the contrary. The ghost, dressed in stiff, gold
brocade and purple velvet, and with a hawk on her wrist, looked like one of
those seductive Amazons of the fifteenth century, who exercised the art of
laying men and game at their feet with equal skill.
“Don’t you think that the White Lady is very like mamma?” Countess Ida
said, interrupting the Baron’s silent contemplation of the picture. “There is no
doubt of it,” the hussar replied, while the Countess smiled and the tutor
turned red, and they were still standing before the picture, when a strong gust
of wind suddenly extinguished all the lights, and they all uttered a
simultaneous cry. The White Lady, the little Count whispered, but she did not
come, and as it was luckily a moonlight night, they soon recovered from their
momentary shock. The family retired to their apartments, while the hussar
and the tutor went to their own rooms, which were situated in the wing of the
castle which was haunted by the White Lady; the officer’s being scarcely
thirty yards from the portrait, while the tutor’s were rather further down the
corridor.
The hussar went to bed, and was soon fast asleep, and though he had
rather uneasy dreams nothing further happened. But while they were at
breakfast the next morning, the Count’s body-servant told them, with every
appearance of real terror, that as he was crossing the court-yard at midnight,
he had suddenly heard a noise like bats in the open cloisters, and when he
looked he distinctly saw the White Lady gliding slowly through them; but
they merely laughed at the poltroon, and though our hussar laughed also, he
fully made up his mind, without saying a word about it, to keep a look-out for
the ghost that night.
Again they had supper alone, without any company, had some music and
pleasant talk and separated at half-past eleven. The hussar, however, only
went to his room for form’s sake; he loaded his pistols, and when all was
quiet in the castle, he crept down into the court-yard and took up his position
behind a pillar which was quite hidden in the shade, while the moon, which
was nearly at the full, flooded the cloisters with its clear, pale light.
There were no lights to be seen in the castle except from two windows,
which were those of the Countess’s apartments, and soon they were also
extinguished. The clock struck twelve, and the hussar could scarcely breathe
from excitement; the next moment, however, he heard the noise which the
Count’s body-servant had compared to that of bats, and almost at the same
instant a white figure glided slowly through the open cloisters and passed so
close to him, that it almost made his blood curdle, and then it disappeared in
the wing of the castle which he and the tutor occupied.
The officer who was usually so brave, stood as though he was paralyzed
for a few moments, but then he took heart, and feeling determined to make the
nearer acquaintance of the spectral beauty, he crept softly up the broad
staircase and took up his position in a deep recess in the cloisters, where
nobody could see him.
He waited for a long time; he heard every quarter strike, and at last, just
before the close of the witching hour, he heard the same noise like the
rustling of bats, and then she came, he felt the flutter of her white dress, and
she stood before him — it was indeed the Countess.
He presented his pistol at her as he challenged her, but she raised her hand
menacingly. “Who are you?” he exclaimed. “If you are really a ghost, prove
it, for I am going to fire.” “For heaven’s sake!” the White Lady whispered,
and at the same instant two white arms were thrown round him, and he felt a
full, warm bosom heaving against his own.
After that night the ghost appeared more frequently still. Not only did the
White Lady make her appearance every night in the cloisters, only to
disappear in the proximity of the hussar’s rooms as long as the family
remained at the castle, but she even followed them to Vienna.
Baron T., who went to that capital on leave of absence during the
following winter, and who was the Count’s guest at the express wish of his
wife, was frequently told by the footman that although hitherto she had
seemed to be confined to the old castle in Bohemia, she had shown herself
now here, now there, in the mansion in Vienna, in a white dress and making a
noise like the wings of a bat, and bearing a striking resemblance to the
beautiful Countess.
 CAUGHT

A young and charming lady, who was a member of the Viennese aristocracy,
went last summer, like young and charming ladies usually do, to a
fashionable Austrian watering place, Carlsbad, which is much frequented by
foreigners, without her husband.
As is usually the case in their rank of life, she had married from family
considerations and for money; and the short spell of Love after Marriage
was not sufficient to take deep root, and after she had satisfied family
traditions and her husband’s wishes by giving birth to a son and heir, they
both went their way; the young, handsome and fascinating man to his clubs,
the race-course, and behind the scenes at the theaters, and his charming,
coquettish wife to her box at the opera, to the ice in winter, and to some
fashionable watering place in the summer.
On the present occasion she brought a young, very highly-connected Pole
with her from one of the latter resorts, who enjoyed all the rights and the
liberty of an avowed favorite, and who had to perform all the duties of a
slave.
As is usual in such cases, the lady rented a small house in one of the
suburbs of Vienna, had it beautifully furnished and received her lover there.
She was always dressed very attractively, sometimes as La Belle Hélène in
Offenbach’s Opera, only rather more after the ancient Greek fashion; another
time as an Odalisque in the Sultan’s harem, and another time as a lighthearted
Suabian girl, and so forth. In winter, however, she grew tired of such
meetings, and she wanted to have matters more comfortable, so she took it
into her head to receive her lover in her own house. But how was it to be
done? That, however, gave her no particular difficulty, as is the case with
every woman, when once she has made up her mind to a thing, and after
thinking it over for a day or two she went to the next rendez-vous, with a
fully prepared plan of war.
The Pole was one of those types of handsome men which are rare; he was
almost womanly in his delicate features, of the middle height, slim and well-
made, and he resembled a youthful Bacchus who might very easily be made
to pass for a Venus by the help of false locks; the more so as there was not
even the slightest down on his lips. The lady, therefore, who was very fertile
in resources, suggested to the handsome Pole that he might just as well
transform himself into a handsome Polish lady, so that he might, under the
cover of the ever feminine, be able to visit her undisturbed, and as it was
winter, the thick, heavy, capacious dress assisted the metamorphosis.
The lady, accordingly, bought a number of very beautiful costumes for her
lover, and in the course of a few days she told her husband that a charming
young Polish lady, whose acquaintance she had made in the summer at
Carlsbad, was going to spend the winter in Vienna, and would very
frequently come and see her. Her husband listened to her with the greatest
indifference, for it was one of his fundamental rules never to make love to
any of his wife’s female friends, and he went to his club as usual at night, and
the next day had forgotten all about the Polish lady.
And now, half an hour after the husband had left the house, a cab drove up
and a tall, slim, heavily veiled lady got out and went up the thickly carpeted
stairs, only to be metamorphosed into the most ardent lover in the young
woman’s boudoir. The young Pole grew accustomed to his female attire so
quickly that he even ventured to appear in the streets in it, and when he began
to make conquests, and aristocratic gentlemen and successful speculators on
the Stock Exchange looked at him significantly, and even followed him, he
took a real pleasure in the part he was playing, and began to understand the
pleasure a coquette feels in tormenting men.
The young Pole became more and more daring, until at last one evening he
went to a private box at the opera, wrapped in an ermine cloak, on to which
his dark, false curls fell in heavy waves.
A handsome young man in a box opposite to him ogled him incessantly
from the first moment, and the young Pole responded in a manner which made
the other bolder every minute. At the end of the third act, the box opener
brought the fictitious Venus a small bouquet with a card concealed in it, on
which was written in pencil: “You are the most lovely woman in the world,
and I implore you on my knees to grant me an interview.” The young Pole
read the name of the man who had been captivated so quickly, and, with a
peculiar smile, wrote on a card on which nothing but the name “Valeska” was
printed: “After the theater,” and sent Cupid’s messenger back with it.
When the spurious Venus was about to enter her carriage after the
performance, thickly veiled and wrapped in her ermine cloak, the handsome
young man was standing by it with his hat off, and he opened the door for her.
She was kind enough to allow him to get in with her and during their drive
she talked to him in the most charming manner, but she was cruel enough to
dismiss him without pity before they reached her house, and this she did
every time. For she went to the theater each night now, and every evening she
received an ardent note, and every evening she allowed the amorous swain to
accompany her as far as her house, and men were beginning to envy him on
account of his brilliant conquest, when a catastrophe happened which was
very surprising for all concerned.
The husband of the lady in whose eyes the Pole had found favor, surprised
the loving couple one day under circumstances which made any justification
impossible. But while he, trembling with rage and jealousy, was drawing a
small Circassian dagger which hung against the wall from its sheath, and as
his wife threw herself, half-fainting, on to a couch, the young Pole had hastily
put the false curls on to his head, and had slipped into the silk dress and the
sable cloak which he had been wearing when he came into his mistress’s
boudoir. “What does this mean,” the husband stammered, “Valeska?”— “Yes,
sir,” the young Pole replied; “Valeska, who has come here to show your wife
a few love letters, which.” ... “No, no,” the deceived, but nevertheless guilty,
husband said in imploring accents; “no, that is quite unnecessary.” And at the
same time he put the dagger back into its sheath. “Very well then, there is a
truce between us,” the Pole observed coolly, “but do not forget what
weapons I possess, and which I mean to retain against all contingencies.”
Then the gentlemen bowed politely to each other, and the unexpected
meeting came to an end.
From that time forward, the terms on which the young married couple
lived together assumed the character of that everlasting peace, which
President Grant once promised to the whole world in his message to all
nations. The young woman did not find it necessary to make her lover put on
petticoats, and the husband constantly accompanied the real Valeska a good
deal further than he did the false one on that memorable occasion.
 CHRISTMAS EVE

“The Christmas-eve supper! Oh! no, I shall never go in for that again!” Stout
Henri Templier said that in a furious voice, as if some one had proposed
some crime to him, while the others laughed and said:
“What are you flying into a rage about?”
“Because a Christmas-eve supper played me the dirtiest trick in the
world, and ever since I have felt an insurmountable horror for that night of
imbecile gayety.”
“Tell us what it is?”
“You want to know what it was? Very well then, just listen.
“You remember how cold it was two years ago at Christmas; cold enough
to kill poor people in the streets. The Seine was covered with ice; the
pavements froze one’s feet through the soles of one’s boots, and the whole
world seemed to be at the point of going to pot.
“I had a big piece of work on, and so I refused every invitation to supper,
as I preferred to spend the night at my writing table. I dined alone and then
began to work. But about ten o’clock I grew restless at the thought of the gay
and busy life all over Paris, at the noise in the streets which reached me in
spite of everything, at my neighbors’ preparations for supper, which I heard
through the walls. I hardly knew any longer what I was doing; I wrote
nonsense, and at last I came to the conclusion that I had better give up all
hope of producing any good work that night.
“I walked up and down my room; I sat down and got up again. I was
certainly under the mysterious influence of the enjoyment outside, and I
resigned myself to it. So I rang for my servant and said to her:
“‘Angela, go and get a good supper for two; some oysters, a cold
partridge, some crayfish, hams and some cakes. Put out two bottles of
champagne, lay the cloth and go to bed.’
“She obeyed in some surprise, and when all was ready, I put on my great
coat and went out. A great question was to be solved: ‘Whom was I going to
bring in to supper?’ My female friends had all been invited elsewhere, and if
I had wished to have one, I ought to have seen about it beforehand, so I
thought that I would do a good action at the same time, and I said to myself:
“‘Paris is full of poor and pretty girls who will have nothing on their table
to-night, and who are on the look out for some generous fellow. I will act the
part of Providence to one of them this evening; and I will find one if I have to
go into every pleasure resort, and have to question them and hunt for one till I
find one to my choice.’ And I started off on my search.
“I certainly found many poor girls, who were on the look-out for some
adventure, but they were ugly enough to give any man a fit of indigestion, or
thin enough to freeze as they stood if they had stopped, and you all know that
I have a weakness for stout women. The more flesh they have, the better I
like them, and a female colossus would drive me out of my senses with
pleasure.
“Suddenly, opposite the Théâtre des Variétés, I saw a face to my liking. A
good head, and then two protuberances, that on the chest very beautiful, and
that on the stomach simply surprising; it was the stomach of a fat goose. I
trembled with pleasure, and said:
“‘By Jove! What a fine girl!’
“It only remained for me to see her face. A woman’s face is the dessert,
while the rest is ... the joint.
“I hastened on, and overtook her, and turned round suddenly under a gas
lamp. She was charming, quite young, dark, with large, black eyes, and I
immediately made my proposition, which she accepted without any
hesitation, and a quarter of an hour later, we were sitting at supper in my
lodgings. ‘Oh! how comfortable it is here,’ she said as she came in, and she
looked about her with evident satisfaction at having found a supper and a
bed, on that bitter night. She was superb; so beautiful that she astonished me,
and so stout that she fairly captivated me.
“She took off her cloak and hat, sat down and began to eat; but she seemed
in low spirits, and sometimes her pale face twitched as if she were suffering
from some hidden sorrow.
“‘Have you anything troubling you?’ I asked her.
“‘Bah! Don’t let us think of troubles!’
“And she began to drink. She emptied her champagne glass at a draught,
filled it again, and emptied it again, without stopping, and soon a little color
came into her cheeks, and she began to laugh.
 “I adored her already, kissed her continually, and discovered that she was
neither stupid, nor common, nor coarse as ordinary street-walkers are. I
asked her for some details about her life, but she replied:
“‘My little fellow, that is no business of yours!’ Alas! an hour later....
“At last it was time to go to bed, and while I was clearing the table, which
had been laid in front of the fire, she undressed herself quickly, and got in.
My neighbors were making a terrible din, singing and laughing like lunatics,
and so I said to myself:
“‘I was quite right to go out and bring in this girl; I should never have
been able to do any work.’
“At that moment, however, a deep groan made me look round, and I said:
“‘What is the matter with you, my dear?’
“She did not reply, but continued to utter painful sighs, as if she were
suffering horribly, and I continued:
“‘Do you feel ill?’ And suddenly she uttered a cry, a heartrending cry, and
I rushed up to the bed, with a candle in my hand.
“Her face was distorted with pain, and she was wringing her hands,
panting and uttering long, deep groans, which sounded like a rattle in the
throat, and which are so painful to hear, and I asked her in consternation:
“‘What is the matter with you? Do tell me what is the matter.’
“‘Oh! my stomach! my stomach!’ she said. I pulled up the bed-clothes, and
I saw ... My friends, she was in labor.
“Then I lost my head, and I ran and knocked at the wall with my fists,
shouting: ‘Help! help!’
“My door was opened almost immediately, and a crowd of people came
in, men in evening dress, women in low necks, harlequins, Turks,
Musketeers, and this inroad startled me so, that I could not explain myself,
and they, who had thought that some accident had happened, or that a crime
had been committed, could not understand what was the matter. At last,
however, I managed to say:
“‘This ... this ... woman ... is being confined.’
“Then they looked at her, and gave their opinion, and a Friar, especially,
declared that he knew all about it, and wished to assist nature, but as they
were all as drunk as pigs, I was afraid that they would kill her, and I rushed
downstairs without my hat, to fetch an old doctor, who lived in the next
street. When I came back with him, the whole house was up; the gas on the
stairs had been relighted, the lodgers from every floor were in my room,
while four boatmen were finishing my champagne and lobsters.
“As soon as they saw me they raised a loud shout, and a milkmaid
presented me with a horrible little wrinkled specimen of humanity, that was
mewing like a cat, and said to me:
“‘It is a girl.’
“The doctor examined the woman, declared that she was in a dangerous
state, as the event had occurred immediately after supper, and he took his
leave, saying he would immediately send a sick nurse and a wet nurse, and
an hour later, the two women came, bringing all that was requisite with them.
“I spent the night in my armchair, too distracted to be able to think of the
consequences, and almost as soon as it was light, the doctor came again, who
found his patient very ill, and said to me:
“‘Your wife, Monsieur....’
“‘She is not my wife,’ I interrupted him.
“‘Very well then, your mistress; it does not matter to me.’
“He told me what must be done for her, what her diet must be, and then
wrote a prescription.
“What was I to do? Could I send the poor creature to the hospital? I
should have been looked upon as a brute in the house and in all the
neighborhood, and so I kept her in my rooms, and she had my bed for six
weeks.
“I sent the child to some peasants at Poissy to be taken care of, and she
still costs me fifty francs a month, for as I had paid at first, I shall be obliged
to go on paying as long as I live, and later on, she will believe that I am her
father. But to crown my misfortunes, when the girl had recovered ... I found
that she was in love with me, madly in love with me, the baggage!”
“Well?”
“Well, she had grown as thin as a homeless cat, and I turned the skeleton
out of doors, but she watches for me in the streets, hides herself, so that she
may see me pass, stops me in the evening when I go out, in order to kiss my
hand, and, in fact, worries me enough to drive me mad; and that is why I
never keep Christmas eve now.”
 WORDS OF LOVE

Sunday. —
You do not write to me, I never see you, you never come, so I must
suppose that you have ceased to love me. But why? What have I done? Pray
tell me, my own dear love. I love you so much, so dearly! I should like
always to have you near me, to kiss you all day while I called you every
tender name that I could think of. I adore you, I adore you, I adore you, my
beautiful cock. — Your affectionate hen,
SOPHIE.

Monday. —
My dear friend,
You will absolutely understand nothing of what I am going to say to you,
but that does not matter, and if my letter happens to be read by another
woman, it may be profitable to her.
Had you been deaf and dumb, I should no doubt have loved you for a very
long time, and the cause of what has happened is, that you can talk; that is all.
In love, you see, dreams are always made to sing, but in order that they
might do so, they must not be interrupted, and when one talks between two
kisses, one always interrupts that frenzied dream which our souls indulge in,
unless they utter sublime words; and sublime words do not come out of the
little mouths of pretty girls.
You do not understand me at all, do you? So much the better, and I will go
on. You are certainly one of the most charming and adorable women whom I
have ever seen.
Are there any eyes on earth that contain more dreams than yours, more
unknown promises, greater depths of love? I do not think so. And when that
mouth of yours, with its two round lips, smiles, and shows the glistening
white teeth, one is tempted to say that there issues from this ravishing mouth
ineffable music, something inexpressibly delicate, a sweetness which extorts
sighs.
 It is then that you quietly call out to me, my great and renowned “lady-
killer,” and it then seems to me as though I had suddenly found an entrance
into your thoughts, which I can see is ministering to your soul — that little
soul of a pretty, little creature, yes, pretty, but — and that is what troubles
me, don’t you see, troubles me more than tongue can tell. I would much
prefer never to see you at all.
You go on pretending not to understand anything, do you not? I calculate
on that.
Do you remember the first time you came to see me at my residence? How
gaily you stepped inside, an odor of violets, which clung to your skirts,
heralding your entrance; how we regarded each other, for ever so long,
without uttering a word, after which we embraced like two fools.... Then ...
then from that time to this, we have never exchanged a word.
But when we separated, did not our trembling hands and our eyes say
many things, things ... which cannot be expressed in any language. At least, I
thought so; and when you went away, you murmured:
“We shall meet again soon!”
That was all you said, and you will never guess what delightful dreams
you left me, all that I, as it were, caught a glimpse of, all that I fancied I could
guess in your thoughts.
You see, my poor child, for men who are not stupid, who are rather
refined and somewhat superior, love is such a complicated instrument, that
the merest trifle puts it out of order. You women never perceive the
ridiculous side of certain things when you love, and you fail to see the
grotesqueness of some expressions.
Why does a word which sounds quite right in the mouth of a small, dark
woman, seem quite wrong and funny in the mouth of a fat, light-haired
woman? Why are the wheedling ways of the one, altogether out of place in
the other?
Why is it that certain caresses which are delightful from the one, should
be wearisome from the other? Why? Because in everything, and especially in
love, perfect harmony, absolute agreement in motion, voice, words, and in
demonstrations of tenderness, are necessary, with the person who moves,
speaks and manifests affection; it is necessary in age, in height, in the color
of the hair, and in the style of beauty.
If a woman of thirty-five, who has arrived at the age of violent,
tempestuous passion, were to preserve the slightest traces of the caressing
archness of her love affairs at twenty, were not to understand that she ought to
express herself differently, look at her lover differently, and kiss him
differently were not to see that she ought to be Dido and not a Juliette, she
would infallibly disgust nine lovers out of ten, even if they could not account
to themselves for their estrangement. Do you understand me? No. I hoped so.
From the time that you turned on your tap of tenderness, it was all over for
me, my dear friend. Sometimes we would embrace for five minutes, in one
interminable kiss, one of those kisses which make lovers close their eyes, as
if part of it would escape through their looks, as if to preserve it entire in that
clouded soul which it is ravaging. And then, when our lips separated, you
would say to me:
“That was nice, you fat old dog.”
At such moments, I could have beaten you; for you gave me successively
all the names of animals and vegetables which you doubtless found in some
cookery book, or Gardener’s Manual. But that is nothing.
The caresses of love are brutal, bestial, and if one comes to think of it,
grotesque! ... Oh! My poor child, what joking elf, what perverse sprite could
have prompted the concluding words of your letter to me? I have made a
collection of them, but out of love for you, I will not show them to you.
And you really sometimes said things which were quite inopportune, and
you managed now and then to let out an exalted: I love you! on such singular
occasions, that I was obliged to restrain a strong desire to laugh. There are
times when the words: I love you! are so out of place, that they become
indecorous; let me tell you that.
But you do not understand me, and many other women will also not
understand me, and think me stupid, though that matters very little to me.
Hungry men eat like gluttons, but people of refinement are disgusted at it, and
they often feel an invincible dislike for a dish, on account of a mere trifle. It
is the same with love, as it is with cookery.
What I cannot comprehend, for example, is, that certain women who fully
understand the irresistible attraction of fine, embroidered stockings, the
exquisite charm of shades, the witchery of valuable lace concealed in the
depths of their underclothing, the exciting jest of hidden luxury, and all the
subtle delicacies of female elegance, never understand the invincible disgust
with which words that are out of place, or foolishly tender, inspire us.
At times coarse and brutal expressions work wonders, as they excite the
senses, and make the heart beat, and they are allowable at the hours of
combat. Is not that sentence of Cambronne’s sublime?
Nothing shocks us that comes at the right time; but then, we must also
know when to hold our tongue, and to avoid phrases à la Paul de Kock, at
certain moments.
And I embrace you passionately, on the condition that you say nothing,
RENE.
 A DIVORCE CASE

M. Chassel advocate, rises to speak: Mr. President and gentlemen of the jury.
The cause that I am charged to defend before you, requires medicine rather
than justice; and is much more a case of pathology than a case of ordinary
law. At first blush the facts seem very simple.
A young man, very rich, with a noble and cultivated mind, and a generous
heart, becomes enamored of a young lady, who is the perfection of beauty,
more than beautiful, in fact; she is adorable, besides being as gracious, as she
is charming, as good and true as she is tender and pretty, and he marries her.
For some time, he comports himself towards her not only as a devoted
husband, but as a man full of solicitude and tenderness. Then he neglects her,
misuses her, seems to entertain for her an insurmountable aversion, an
irresistible disgust. One day he even strikes her, not only without any cause,
but also without the faintest pretext. I am not going, gentlemen, to draw a
picture of silly allurements, which no one would comprehend. I shall not
paint to you the wretched life of those two beings, and the horrible grief of
this young woman. It will be sufficient to convince you, if I read some
fragments from a journal written up every day by that poor young man, by that
poor fool! For it is in the presence of a fool, gentlemen, that we now find
ourselves, and the case is all the more curious, all the more interesting,
seeing that, in many points, it recalls the insanity of the unfortunate prince
who recently died, of the witless king who reigned platonically over
Bavaria. I shall hence designate this case — poetic folly.
You will readily call to mind all that has been told of that most singular
prince. He caused to be erected amid the most magnificent scenery his
kingdom afforded, veritable fairy castles. The reality even of the beauty of
the things themselves, as well as of the places, did not satisfy him. He
invented, he created, in these improbable manors, factitious horizons,
obtained by means of theatrical artifices, changes of view, painted forests,
fabled empires, in which the leaves of the trees became precious stones. He
had the Alps, and glaciers, steppes, deserts of sand made hot by a blazing
sun; and at nights, under the rays of the real moon, lakes which sparkled from
below by means of fantastic electric lights. Swans floated on the lakes which
glistened with skiffs, while an orchestra, composed of the finest executants in
the world, inebriated with poetry the soul of the royal fool. That man was
chaste, that man was a virgin. He lived only to dream, his dream, his dream
divine. One evening he took out with him in his boat, a lady, young and
beautiful, a great artiste, and he begged her to sing. Intoxicated herself by the
magnificent scenery, by the languid softness of the air, by the perfume of
flowers, and by the ecstacy of that prince, both young and handsome, she
sang, she sang as women sing who have been touched by love; then,
overcome, trembling, she falls on the bosom of the king in order to seek out
his lips. But he throws her into the lake, and seizing his oars, rows back to
the shore, without concerning himself, whether anybody has saved her or not.
Gentlemen of the jury, we find ourselves in presence of a case similar in
every way to that. I shall say no more now, except to read some passages
from the journal which we unexpectedly came upon in the drawer of an old
secretary.
How sad and weary is everything; always the same, always hateful. How
I dream of a land more beautiful, more noble, more varied. What a poor
conception they have of their God, if their God existed, or if he had not
created other things, elsewhere. Always woods, little woods, waves which
resemble waves, plains which resemble plains, everything is sameness and
monotony. And Man? Man? What a horrible animal! wicked, haughty and
repugnant!

It is essential to love, to love perdition, without seeing that which one

loves. For, to see is to comprehend, and to comprehend is to embrace. It is
necessary to love, to become intoxicated by it, just as one gets drunk with
wine, even to the extent that one knows no longer what one is drinking. And
to drink, to drink, to drink, without drawing breath, day and night!

I have found her, I believe. She has about her something ideal which does
not belong to this world, and which furnishes wings to my dream. Ah! my
dream! How it reveals to me beings different from what they really are! She
is a blonde, a delicate blonde, with hair whose delicate shade is
inexpressible. Her eyes are blue! Only blue eyes can penetrate my soul. All
women, the woman who lives in my heart, reveal themselves to me in the
eye, only in the eyes. Oh! what a mystery, what a mystery is the eye! The
whole universe lives in it, inasmuch as it sees, inasmuch as it reflects. It
contains the universe, both things and beings, forests and oceans, men and
beasts, the settings of the sun, the stars, the arts — all, all, it sees; it collects
and absorbs all; and there is still more in it; the eye of itself has a soul; it has
in it the man who thinks, the man who loves, the man who laughs, the man
who suffers! Oh! regard the blue eyes of women, those eyes that are as deep
as the sea, as changeful as the sky, so sweet, so soft, soft as the breezes,
sweet as music, luscious as kisses; and transparent, so clear that one sees
behind them, discerns the soul, the blue soul which colors them, which
animates them, which electrifies them. Yes, the soul has the color of the
looks. The blue soul alone contains in itself that which dreams; it bears its
azure to the floods and into space. The eye! Think of it, the eye! It imbibes
the visible life, in order to nourish thought. It drinks in the world, color,
movement, books, pictures, all that is beautiful, all that is ugly, and weaves
ideas out of them. And when it regards us, it gives us the sensation of a
happiness that is not of this earth. It informs us of that of which we have
always been ignorant; it makes us comprehend that the realities of our dreams
are but noisome ordures.

I love her too for her walk. “Even when the bird walks one feels that it
has wings,” as the poet has said. When she passes one feels that she is of
another race from ordinary women, of a race more delicate, and more divine.
I shall marry her to-morrow. But I am afraid, I am afraid of so many things!

Two beasts, two dogs, two wolves, two foxes, cut their way through the
plantation and encounter one another. One of each two is male, the other
female. They couple. They couple in consequence of an animal instinct,
which forces them to continue the race, their race, the one from which they
have sprung, the hairy coat, the form, movements and habitudes. The whole
of the animal creation do the same without knowing why.
We human beings, also.
It is for this I have married; I have obeyed that insane passion which
throws us in the direction of the female.

She is my wife. In accordance with my ideal desires, she comes very

nearly to realize my unrealizable dream. But in separating from her, even for
a second, after I have held her in my arms, she becomes no more than the
being whom nature has made use of, to disappoint all my hopes.
Has she disappointed them? No. And why have I grown weary of her,
become loath even to touch her; she cannot graze even the palm of my hand,
or the tip of my lips, but my heart throbs with unutterable disgust, not perhaps
disgust of her, but a disgust more potent, more widespread, more loathsome;
the disgust, in a word, of carnal love so vile in itself that it has become for
all refined beings, a shameful thing, which is necessary to conceal, which
one never speaks of save in a whisper, nor without blushing.

I can no longer bear the idea of my wife coming near me, calling me by
name, with a smile; I cannot look at her, nor touch even her arm, I cannot do
it any more. At one time I thought to be kissed by her, would be to transport
me to St. Paul’s seventh heaven. One day, she was suffering from one of those
transient fevers, and I smelled in her breath, a subtle, slight almost
imperceptible puff of human putridity; I was completely overthrown.
Oh! the flesh, with its seductive and eager smell, a putrefaction which
walks, which thinks, which speaks, which looks, which laughs, in which
nourishment ferments and rots, which, nevertheless, is rose-colored, pretty,
tempting, deceitful as the soul itself.

Why flowers alone, which smell so sweet, those large flowers, glittering
or pale, whose tones and shades make my heart tremble and trouble my eyes.
They are so beautiful, their structure is so finished, so varied and sensual,
semi-opened like human organs, more tempting than mouths, and streaked
with turned up lips, teeth, flesh, seed of life powders, which, in each, gives
forth a distinct perfume.
They reproduce themselves, they alone, in the world, without polluting
their inviolable race, shedding around them the divine influence of their love,
the odoriferous incense of their caresses, the essence of their incomparable
body, of their body adorned with every grace, with every elegances of every
shape and form; who have likewise the coquetry of every hue of color, and
the inebriating seduction of every variety of perfume.

FRAGMENTS WHICH WERE SELECTED SIX MONTHS LATER.

 I love flowers, not as flowers, but as material and delicious beings; I pass
my days and my nights in beds of flowers, where they have been concealed
from the public view like the women of a harem.
Who knows, except myself, the sweetness, the infatuation, the quivering,
carnal, ideal, superhuman ecstacy of these tendernesses; and those kisses
upon the bare flesh of a rose, upon the blushing flesh, upon the white skin, so
miraculously different, delicate, rare, subtle, unctuous, of these adorable
flowers!
I have flower-beds that no one has seen except myself, and which I tend
myself.
I enter there as one would glide into a place of secret pleasure. In the lofty
glass gallery, I pass first through a collection of enclosed carollas, half open
or in full bloom, which incline towards the ground, or towards the roof. This
is the first kiss they have given me.
The flowers just mentioned, these flowers which adorn the vestibule of
my mysterious passions, are my servants and not my favorites.
They salute me by the change of their color and by their first inhalations.
They are darlings, coquettes, arranged in eight rows to the right, eight rows,
the left, and so laid out that they look like two gardens springing up from
under my feet.
My heart palpitates, my eyes flash at the sight of them; my blood rushes
through my veins, my soul is elated, and my hands tremble from desire as
soon as I touch them. I pass on. There are three closed doors at the bottom of
that gallery. I can make my choice of them. I have three harems.
But I enter most often the habitation of the orchids, my little wheedlers, by
preference. Their chamber is low, suffocating. The humid and hot air make
the skin moist, takes away the breath and causes the fingers to quiver. They
come, these strange girls, from a country marshy, burning and unhealthy. They
draw you towards them as do the sirens, are as deadly as poison, admirably
fantastic, enervating, dreadful. The butterflies here would also seem to have
enormous wings, tiny feet, and eyes! Yes! they have also eyes! They look at
me, they see me, prodigious, incomparable beings, fairies, daughters of the
sacred earth, of the impalpable air, and of hot sun rays, that mother bountiful
of the universe. Yes, they have wings, they have eyes, and nuances that no
painter could imitate, every charm, every grace, every form that one could
dream of. These wombs are transverse, odoriferous and transparent, ever
open for love and more tempting than all the flesh of women. The
unimaginable designs of their little bodies inebriates the soul, and transports
it to a paradise of images and of voluptuous ideals. They tremble upon their
stems as though they would fly. When they do fly do they come to me? No, it
is my heart that hovers o’er them, like a mystic male, tortured by love.
No wing of any animal can keep pace with them. We are alone, they and I,
in the lighted prison which I have constructed for them. I regard them, I
contemplate them, I admire them, I adore them, the one after the other.
How healthy, strong and rosy, a rosiness that moistens the lips of desire!
How I love them! The border is frizzled, paler than their throat, where the
carolla hides itself away; a mysterious mouth, seductive sugar under the
tongue, exhibiting and unveiling the delicate, admirable and sacred organs of
these divine little creatures which smell so exquisitely and do not speak.
I sometimes have a passion for some of them that lasts as long as their
existence, which only embraces a few days and nights. I then have them taken
away from the common gallery and enclosed in a pretty glass cabin, in which
there murmurs a jet of water over against a tropical gazon, which has been
brought from one of the Pacific Islands. And I remain close to it, ardent,
feverish and tormented, knowing that its death is near, and watch it fading
away, while that in thought, I possess it, aspire to its love, drink it in, and
then pluck its short life with an inexpressible caress.
When he had finished the reading of these fragments, the advocate
continued:
“Decency, gentlemen of the jury, hinders me from communicating to you
the extraordinary avowals of this shameless, idealistic fool. The fragments
that I have just submitted to you will be sufficient, in my opinion, to enable
you to appreciate this instance of mental malady, less rare in our epoch of
hysterical insanity and of corrupt decadence than most of us believe.
“I think, then, that my client is more entitled than any women whatever to
claim a divorce, in the exceptional circumstances in which the disordered
senses of her husband has placed her.”
 WHO KNOWS?

My God! My God! I am going to write down at last what has happened to me.
But how can I? How dare I? The thing is so bizarre, so inexplicable, so
incomprehensible, so silly!
If I were not perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there was not in
my reasoning any defect, no error in my declarations, no lacune in the
inflexible sequence of my observations, I should believe myself to be the
dupe of a simple hallucination, the sport of a singular vision. After all, who
knows?
Yesterday I was in a private asylum, but I went there voluntarily, out of
prudence and fear. Only one single human being knows my history, and that is
the doctor of the said asylum. I am going to write to him. I really do not know
why? To disembarrass myself? For I feel as though I were being weighed
down by an intolerable nightmare.
Let me explain.
I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher,
easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and
without even having a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone,
consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the
presence of others. How is this to be explained? I for one cannot. I am not
averse from going out into the world, from conversation, from dining with
friends, but when they are near me for any length of time, even the most
intimate friends, they bore me, fatigue me, enervate me, and I experience an
overwhelming torturing desire, to see them get up to depart, or to take
themselves away, and to leave me by myself.
That desire is more than a craving; it is an irresistible necessity. And if
the presence of people, with whom I find myself, were to be continued; if I
were compelled, not only to listen, but also to follow, for any length of time,
their conversation, a serious accident would assuredly take place. What kind
of accident? Ah! who knows? Perhaps a slight paralytic stroke? Yes,
probably!
I like so much to be alone that I cannot even endure the vicinage of other
beings sleeping under the same roof. I cannot live in Paris, because when
there I suffer the most acute agony. I lead a moral life, and am therefore
tortured in my body and in my nerves by that immense crowd which swarms,
which lives around even when it sleeps. Ah! the sleeping of others is more
painful still than their conversation. And I can never find repose when I
know, when I feel, that on the other side of a wall, several existences are
interrupted by these regular eclipses of reason.
Why am I thus? Who knows? The cause of it is perhaps very simple. I get
tired very soon with everything that does not emanate from me. And there are
many people in similar case.
We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others,
whom others distract, engage, soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains,
stupefies, like the forward movement of a terrible glacier, or the traversing of
the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently
torture, while isolation calms them, bathes them in the repose of
independency, and plunges them into the humors of their own thoughts. In
fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to
live a life without themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for
me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as
they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole
intelligence, an intolerable uneasiness.
As a result of this, I became attached, or rather, I had become much
attached to inanimate objects, which have for me the importance of beings,
and my house has become, had become, a world in which I lived an active
and solitary life, surrounded by all manner of things, furniture, familiar
knick-knacks, as sympathetic in my eyes as the visages of human beings. I had
filled my mansion with them, little by little, I had adorned it with them, and I
felt an inward content and satisfaction, was more happy than if I had been in
the arms of a desirable female, whose wonted caresses had become a
soothing and delightful necessity.
I had had this house constructed in the center of a beautiful garden, which
hid it from the public highways, and which was near the entrance to a city
where I could find, on occasion, the resources of society, for which, at
moments, I had a longing. All my domestics slept in a separate building
which was situated at some considerable distance from my house, at the far
end of the kitchen garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. The obscure
envelopment of the nights, in the silence of my invisible and concealed
habitation, buried under the leaves of the great trees, were so reposeful and
so delicious, that I hesitated every evening, for several hours, before I could
retire to my couch, in order to enjoy the solitude a little longer.
One day Signad had been played at one of the city theaters. It was the first
time that I had listened to that beautiful, musical, and fairy-like drama, and I
had derived from it the liveliest pleasures.
I returned home on foot, with a light step, my head full of sonorous
phrases, and my mind haunted by delightful visions. It was night, the dead of
night, and so dark that I could hardly distinguish the broad highway, and
whence I stumbled into the ditch more than once. From the custom’s-house, at
the barriers to my house, was about a mile, perhaps a little more, or a
leisurely walk of about twenty minutes. It was one o’clock in the morning,
one o’clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time cleared
somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomy crescent of the last quarter
of the moon. The crescent of the first quarter is, that which rises about five or
six o’clock in the evening; is clear, gay and fretted with silver; but the one
which rises after midnight is reddish, sad and desolating; it is the true
Sabbath crescent. Every prowler by night has made the same observation.
The first, though as slender as a thread, throws a faint joyous light which
rejoices the heart and lines the ground with distinct shadows; the last, sheds
hardly a dying glimmer, and is so wan that it occasions hardly any shadows.
In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and I know not
why I was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea of going inside. I
slowed my pace, and walked very softly, the thick cluster of trees having the
appearance of a tomb in which my house was buried.
I opened my outer gate, and I entered the long avenue of sycamores, which
ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like a high tunnel,
traversing opaque masses, and winding round the turf lawns, on which
baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness, could be indistinctly discerned.
In approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling, I could hear
nothing, I stood still. In the trees there was not even a breath of air. “What is
the matter with me then?” I said to myself. For ten years I had entered and re-
entered in the same way, without ever experiencing the least inquietude. I
never had any fear at nights. The sight of a man, a marauder, or a thief, would
have thrown me into a fit of anger, and I would have rushed at him without
any hesitation. Moreover, I was armed, I had my revolver. But I did not touch
it, for I was anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was
permeated.
What was it? Was it a presentiment? That mysterious presentiment which
takes hold of the senses of men who have witnessed something which, to
them, is inexplicable? Perhaps? Who knows?
In proportion as I advanced, I felt my skin quiver more and more, and
when I was close to the wall, near the outhouses of my vast residence, I felt
that it would be necessary for me to wait a few minutes before opening the
door and going inside. I sat down, then, on a bench, under the windows of my
drawing room. I rested there, a little fearful, with my head leaning against the
wall, my eyes wide open under the shade of the foliage. For the first few
minutes, I did not observe anything unusual around me; I had a humming noise
in my ears, but that happened often to me. Sometimes it seemed to me that I
heard trains passing, that I heard clocks striking, that I heard a multitude on
the march.
Very soon, those humming noises became more distinct, more
concentrated, more determinable, I was deceiving myself. It was not the
ordinary tingling of my arteries which transmitted to my ears these rumbling
sounds, but it was a very distinct, though very confused, noise which came,
without any doubt whatever, from the interior of my house. I distinguished
through the walls this continued noise, I should rather say agitation than
noise, an indistinct moving about of a pile of things, as if people were tossing
about, displacing, and carrying away surreptitiously all my furniture.
I doubted, however, for some considerable time yet, the evidence of my
ears. But having placed my ear against one of the outhouses, the better to
discover what this strange disturbance was that was inside my house, I
became convinced, certain, that something was taking place in my residence,
which was altogether abnormal and incomprehensible. I had no fear, but I
was — how shall I express it — paralyzed by astonishment. I did not draw
my revolver, knowing very well that there was no need of my doing so. I
listened.
I listened a long time, but could come to no resolution, my mind being
quite clear, though in myself I was naturally anxious. I got up and waited,
listening always to the noise, which gradually increased, and at intervals
grew very loud, and which seemed to become an impatient, angry
disturbance, a mysterious commotion.
Then, suddenly, ashamed of my timidity, I seized my bunch of keys, I
selected the one I wanted, I guided it into the lock, turned it twice, and,
pushing the door with all my might, sent it banging against the partition.
The collision sounded like the report of a gun, and there responded to that
explosive noise, from roof to basement of my residence, a formidable tumult.
It was so sudden, so terrible, so deafening, that I recoiled a few steps, and
though I knew it to be wholly useless, I pulled my revolver out of its case.
I continued to listen for some time longer. I could distinguish now an
extraordinary pattering upon the steps of my grand staircase, on the waxed
floors, on the carpets, not of boots, nor of naked feet, but of iron, and wooden
crutches, which resounded like cymbals. Then I suddenly discerned, on the
threshold of my door, an arm chair, my large reading easy chair, which set off
waddling. It went away through my garden. Others followed it, those of my
drawing-room, then my sofas, dragging themselves along like crocodiles on
their short paws; then all my chairs, bounding like goats, and the little
footstools, hopping like rabbits.
Oh! what a sensation! I slunk back into a clump of bushes where I
remained crouched up, watching, meanwhile, my furniture defile past, for
everything walked away, the one behind the other, briskly or slowly,
according to its weight or size. My piano, my grand piano, bounded past with
the gallop of a horse and a murmur of music in its sides; the smaller articles
slid along the gravel like snails, my brushes, crystal, cups and saucers, which
glistened in the moonlight. I saw my writing desk appear, a rare curiosity of
the last century, which contained all the letters I had ever received, all the
history of my heart, an old history from which I have suffered so much!
Besides, there was inside of it a great many cherished photographs.
Suddenly — I no longer had any fear — I threw myself on it, seized it as
one would seize a thief, as one would seize a wife about to run away; but it
pursued its irresistible course, and despite my efforts and despite my anger, I
could not even retard its pace. As I was resisting in desperation that
insuperable force, I was thrown to the ground in my struggle with it. It then
rolled me over, trailed me along the gravel, and the rest of my furniture
which followed it, began to march over me, tramping on my legs and injuring
them. When I loosed my hold, other articles passed over my body, just as a
charge of cavalry does over the body of a dismounted soldier.
 Seized at last with terror, I succeeded in dragging myself out of the main
avenue, and in concealing myself again among the shrubbery, so as to watch
the disappearance of the most cherished objects, the smallest, the least
striking, the least unknown which had once belonged to me.
I then heard, in the distance, noises which came from my apartments,
which sounded now as if the house were empty, a loud noise of shutting of
doors. They were being slammed from top to bottom of my dwelling, even
the door which I had just opened myself unconsciously, and which had closed
of itself, when the last thing had taken its departure. I took flight also, running
towards the city, and I only regained my self-composure on reaching the
boulevards, where I met belated people. I rang the bell of a hotel where I
was known. I had knocked the dust off my clothes with my hands, and I told
the porter how that I had lost my bunch of keys, which included also that of
the kitchen garden, where my servants slept in a house standing by itself, on
the other side of the wall of the enclosure, which protected my fruits and
vegetables from the raids of marauders.
I covered myself up to the eyes in the bed which was assigned to me; but I
could not sleep, and I waited for the dawn in listening to the throbbing of my
heart. I had given orders that my servants were to be summoned to the hotel
at daybreak, and my valet de chambre knocked at my door at seven o’clock
in the morning.
His countenance bore a woeful look.
“A great misfortune has happened during the night, monsieur,” said he.
“What is it?”
“Somebody has stolen the whole of monsieur’s furniture, all, everything,
even to the smallest articles.”
This news pleased me. Why? Who knows? I was complete master of
myself, bent on dissimulating, on telling no one of anything I had seen;
determined on concealing and in burying in my heart of hearts, a terrible
secret. I responded:
“They must then be the same people who have stolen my keys. The police
must be informed immediately. I am going to get up, and I will rejoin you in a
few moments.”
The investigation into the circumstances under which the robbery might
have been committed lasted for five months. Nothing was found, not even the
smallest of my knick-knacks, nor the least trace of the thieves. Good
gracious! If I had only told them what I knew.... If I had said ... I had been
locked up — I, not the thieves — and that I was the only person who had
seen everything from the first.
Yes I but I knew how to keep silence. I shall never refurnish my house.
That were indeed useless. The same thing would happen again. I had no
desire even to re-enter the house, and I did not re-enter it; I never visited it
again. I went to Paris, to the hotel, and I consulted doctors in regard to the
condition of my nerves, which had disquieted me a good deal ever since that
fatal night.
They advised me to travel, and I followed their council.

II

I began by making an excursion into Italy. The sunshine did me much good.
During six months I wandered about from Genoa to Venice, from Venice to
Florence, from Florence to Rome, from Rome to Naples. Then I traveled
over Sicily, a country celebrated for its scenery and its monuments, relics left
by the Greeks and the Normans. I passed over into Africa, I traversed at my
ease that immense desert, yellow and tranquil, in which the camels, the
gazelles, and the Arab vagabonds, roam about, where, in the rare and
transparent atmosphere, there hovers no vague hauntings, where there is
never any night, but always day.
I returned to France by Marseilles, and in spite of all the Provençal gaiety,
the diminished clearness of the sky made me sad. I experienced, in returning
to the continent, the peculiar sensation, of an illness which I believed had
been cured, and a dull pain which predicted that the seeds of the disease had
not been eradicated.
I then returned to Paris. At the end of a month, I was very dejected. It was
in the autumn, and I wished to make, before the approach of winter, an
excursion through Normandy, a country with which I was unacquainted.
I began my journey, in the best of spirits, at Rouen, and for eight days I
wandered about passive, ravished and enthusiastic, in that ancient city, in that
astonishing museum of extraordinary Gothic monuments.
But, one afternoon, about four o’clock, as I was sauntering slowly through
a seemingly unattractive street, by which there ran a stream as black as the
ink called “Eau de Robec,” my attention, fixed for the moment on the quaint,
antique appearance of some of the houses, was suddenly turned away by the
view of a series of second-hand furniture shops, which succeeded one
another, door after door.
Ah! they had carefully chosen their locality, these sordid traffickers in
antiquaries, in that quaint little street, overlooking that sinister stream of
water, under those tile and slate-pointed roofs in which still grinned the
vanes of byegone days.
At the end of these grim storehouses you saw piled up sculptured chests,
Rouen, Sévre, and Moustier’s pottery, painted statues, others of oak, Christs,
Virgins, Saints, church ornaments, chasubles, capes, even sacred vases, and
an old gilded wooden tabernacle, where a god had hidden himself away. Oh!
What singular caverns are in those lofty houses, crowded with objects of
every description, where the existence of things seems to be ended, things
which have survived their original possessors, their century, their times, their
fashions, in order to be bought as curiosities by new generations.
My affection for bibelots was awakened in that city of antiquaries. I went
from shop to shop crossing, in two strides, the four plank rotten bridges
thrown over the nauseous current of the Eau de Robec.
Heaven protect me! What a shock! One of my most beautiful wardrobes
was suddenly descried by me, at the end of a vault, which was crowded with
articles of every description and which seemed to be the entrance to some
catacombs of a cemetery of ancient furniture. I approached my wardrobe,
trembling in every limb, trembling to such an extent that I dare not touch it. I
put forth my hand, I hesitated. It was indeed my wardrobe, nevertheless; a
unique wardrobe of the time of Louis XIII., recognizable by anyone who had
only seen it once. Casting my eyes suddenly a little farther, towards the more
somber depths of the gallery, I perceived three of my tapestry covered chairs;
and farther on still, my two Henry II. tables, such rare treasures that people
came all the way from Paris to see them.
Think! only think in what a state of mind I now was! I advanced, haltingly,
quivering with emotion, but I advanced, for I am brave, I advanced like a
knight of the dark ages.
I found, at every step, something that belonged to me; my brushes, my
books, my tables, my silks, my arms, everything, except the bureau full of my
letters, and that I could not discover.
I walked on, descending to the dark galleries, in order to ascend next to
the floors above. I was alone, I called out, nobody answered, I was alone;
there was no one in that house — a house as vast and tortuous as a labyrinth.
 Night came on, and I was compelled to sit down in the darkness on one of
my own chairs, for I had no desire to go away. From time to time I shouted,
“Hullo, hullo, somebody.”
I had sat there, certainly, for more than an hour, when I heard steps, steps
soft and slow, I knew not where, I was unable to locate them, but bracing
myself up, I called out anew, whereupon I perceived a glimmer of light in the
next chamber.
“Who is there?” said a voice.
“A buyer,” I responded.
“It is too late to enter thus into a shop.”
“I have been waiting for you for more than an hour,” I answered.
“You can come back to-morrow.”
“To-morrow I must quit Rouen.”
I dared not advance, and he did not come to me. I saw always the glimmer
of his light, which was shining on a tapestry on which were two angels flying
over the dead on a field of battle. It belonged to me also. I said:
“Well, come here.”
“I am at your service,” he answered.
I got up and went towards him.
Standing in the center of a large room was a little man, very short and
very fat, phenomenally fat, a hideous phenomenon.
He had a singular beard, straggling hair, white and yellow, and not a hair
on his head. Not a hair!
As he held his candle aloft at arm’s length in order to see me, his cranium
appeared to me to resemble a little moon, in that vast chamber, encumbered
with old furniture. His features were wrinkled and blown, and his eyes could
not be seen.
I bought three chairs which belonged to myself, and paid at once a large
sum for them, giving him merely the number of my room at the hotel. They
were to be delivered the next day before nine o’clock.
I then started off. He conducted me, with much politeness, as far as the
door.
I immediately repaired to the commissaire’s office at the central police
depot, and I told the commissaire of the robbery which had been perpetrated
and of the discovery I had just made. He required time to communicate by
telegraph with the authorities who had originally charge of the case, for
information, and he begged me to wait in his office until an answer came
back. An hour later, an answer came back, which was in accord with my
statements.
“I am going to arrest and interrogate this man at once,” he said to me, “for
he may have conceived some sort of suspicion, and smuggled away out of
sight what belongs to you. Will you go and dine and return in two hours: I
shall then have the man here, and I shall subject him to a fresh interrogation
in your presence.”
“Most gladly, monsieur. I thank you with my whole heart.”
I went to dine at my hotel and I ate better than I could have believed. I
was quite happy now; “that man was in the hands of the police,” I thought.
Two hours later I returned to the office of the police functionary, who was
waiting for me.
“Well, monsieur,” said he, on perceiving me, “we have not been able to
find your man. My agents cannot put their hands on him.”
Ah! I felt myself sinking.
“But ... you have at least found his house?” I asked.
“Yes, certainly; and what is more, it is now being watched and guarded
until his return. As for him, he has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes, disappeared. He ordinarily passes his evenings at the house of a
female neighbor, who is also a furniture broker, a queer sort of sorceress, the
widow Bidoin. She has not seen him this evening and cannot give any
information in regard to him. We must wait until to-morrow.”
I went away. Ah! how sinister the streets of Rouen seemed to me, now
troubled and haunted!
I slept so badly that I had a fit of nightmare every time I went off to sleep.
As I did not wish to appear too restless or eager, I waited till 10 o’clock
the next day before reporting myself to the police.
The merchant had not reappeared. His shop remained closed.
The commissary said to me:
“I have taken all the necessary steps. The court has been made acquainted
with the affair. We shall go together to that shop and have it opened, and you
shall point out to me all that belongs to you.”
We drove there in a cab. Police agents were stationed round the building;
there was a locksmith, too, and the door of the shop was soon opened.
On entering, I could not discover my wardrobes, my chairs, my tables; I
saw nothing, nothing of that which had furnished my house, no, nothing,
although on the previous evening, I could not take a step without encountering
something that belonged to me.
The chief commissary, much astonished, regarded me at first with
suspicion.
“My God, monsieur,” said I to him, “the disappearance of these articles of
furniture coincides strangely with that of the merchant.”
He laughed.
“That is true. You did wrong in buying and paying for the articles which
were your own property, yesterday. It was that that gave him the cue.”
“What seems to me incomprehensible,” I replied, “is, that all the places
that were occupied by my furniture are now filled by other furniture.”
“Oh!” responded the commissary, “he has had all night, and has no doubt
been assisted by accomplices. This house must communicate with its
neighbors. But have no fear, monsieur; I will have the affair promptly and
thoroughly investigated. The brigand shall not escape us for long, seeing that
we are in charge of the den.”

Ah! My heart, my heart, my poor heart, how it beat!

I remained a fortnight at Rouen. The man did not return. Heavens! good
heavens! That man, what was it that could have frightened and surprised him!
But, on the sixteenth day, early in the morning, I received from my
gardener, now the keeper of my empty and pillaged house, the following
strange letter:
Monsieur:
I have the honor to inform monsieur, that there happened something, the
evening before last, which nobody can understand, and the police no more
than the rest of us. The whole of the furniture has been returned, not one piece
is missing — everything is in its place, up to the very smallest article. The
house is now the same in every respect as it was before the robbery took
place. It is enough to make one lose one’s head. The thing took place during
the night Friday — Saturday. The roads are dug up as though the whole
barrier had been dragged from its place up to the door. The same thing was
observed the day after the disappearance of the furniture.
We are anxiously expecting monsieur, whose very humble and obedient
servant, I am,
Raudin, Phillipe.
Ah! no, no, ah! never, never, ah! no. I shall never return there!
 I took the letter to the commissary of police.
“It is a very dexterous restitution,” said he. “Let us bury the hatchet. We
shall, however, nip the man one of these days.”
But he has never been nipped. No. They have not nipped him, and I am
afraid of him now, as though he were a ferocious animal that had been let
loose behind me.
Inexplicable! It is inexplicable, this monster of a moon-struck skull! We
shall never get to comprehend it. I shall not return to my former residence.
What does it matter to me? I am afraid of encountering that man again, and I
shall not run the risk.
I shall not risk it! I shall not risk it! I shall not risk it!
And if he returns, if he takes possession of his shop, who is to prove that
my furniture was on his premises? There is only my testimony against him;
and I feel that that is not above suspicion.
Ah! no! This kind of existence was no longer possible. I was not able to
guard the secret of what I had seen. I could not continue to live like the rest
of the world, with the fear upon me that those scenes might be re-enacted.
I have come to consult the doctor who directs this lunatic asylum, and I
have told him everything.
After he had interrogated me for a long time, he said to me:
“Will you consent, monsieur, to remain here for some time?”
“Most willingly, monsieur.”
“You have some means?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Will you have isolated apartments?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Would you care to receive any friends?”
“No, monsieur, no, nobody. The man from Rouen might take it into his
head to pursue me here to be revenged on me.”
And I have been alone, alone, all, all alone, for three months. I am
growing tranquil by degrees. I have no longer any fears. If the antiquary
should become mad ... and if he should be brought into this asylum! Even
prisons themselves are not places of security.
 PAUL’S MISTRESS

The Restaurant Grillon, a small commonwealth of boatmen, was slowly

emptying. In front of the door all was a tumult of cries and calls, while the
jolly dogs in white flannels gesticulated with oars on their shoulders.
The ladies in bright spring toilets stepped aboard the skiffs with care, and
seating themselves astern, arranged their dresses, while the landlord of the
establishment, a mighty individual with a red beard, of renowned strength,
offered his hand to the pretty dears, with great self-possession, keeping the
frail craft steady.
The rowers, bare-armed, with bulging chests, took their places in their
turn, posing for their gallery, as they did so, a gallery consisting of middle
class people dressed in their Sunday clothes, of workmen and soldiers
leaning upon their elbows on the parapet of the bridge, all taking a great
interest in the sight.
The boats one by one cast off from the landing stage. The oarsmen bent
themselves forward and then threw themselves backwards with an even
swing, and under the impetus of the long curved oars, the swift skiffs glided
along the river, got far away, grew smaller and finally disappeared under the
other bridge, that of the railway, as they descended the stream towards La
Grenouillère. One couple only remained behind. The young man, still almost
beardless, slender, and of pale countenance, held his mistress, a thin little
brunette, with the gait of a grasshopper, by the waist; and occasionally they
gazed into each others eyes. The landlord shouted:
“Come, Mr. Paul, make haste,” and they drew near.
Of all the guests of the house, Mr. Paul was the most liked and most
respected. He paid well and punctually, while the others hung back for a long
time, if indeed they did not vanish insolvent. Besides which he acted as a
sort of walking advertisement for the establishment, inasmuch as his father
was a senator. And when a stranger would inquire: “Who on earth is that
little chap who thinks so much of himself because of his girl?” some habituè
would reply, half-aloud, with a mysterious and important air: “Don’t you
know? That is Paul Baron, a senator’s son.”
 And invariably the other could not restrain himself from exclaiming:
“Poor devil! He is not half mashed.”
Mother Grillon, a worthy and good business woman, described the young
man and his companion as “her two turtle-doves,” and appeared quite moved
by this passion, profitable for her house.
The couple advanced at a slow pace; the skiff, Madeleine, was ready,
when at the moment of embarking therein they kissed each other, which
caused the public collected on the bridge to laugh, and Mr. Paul taking the
oars, they left also for La Grenonillère.
When they arrived it was just upon three o’clock and the large floating
café overflowed with people.
The immense raft, sheltered by a tarpaulin roof, is attached to the
charming island of Croissy by two narrow foot bridges, one of which leads
into the center of this aquatic establishment, while the other unites its end
with a tiny islet planted with a tree and surnamed “The Flower Pot,” and
thence leads to land near the bath office.
Mr. Paul made fast his boat alongside the establishment, climbed over the
railing of the café and then grasping his mistress’s hand assisted her out of
the boat and they both seated themselves at the end of a table opposite each
other.
On the opposite side of the river along the market road, a long string of
vehicles was drawn up. Fiacres alternated with the fine carriages of the
swells; the first, clumsy, with enormous bodies crushing the springs, drawn
by a broken down hack with hanging head and broken knees; the second,
slightly built on light wheels, with horses slender and straight, their heads
well up, their bits snowy with foam, while the coachman, solemn in his
livery, his head erect in his high collar, waited bolt upright, his whip resting
on his knee.
The bank was covered with people who came off in families, or in gangs,
or two by two, or alone. They plucked blades of grass, went down to the
water, remounted the path, and all having attained the same spot, stood still
awaiting the ferryman. The clumsy punt plied incessantly from bank to bank,
discharging its passengers on to the island. The arm of the river (named the
Dead Arm) upon which this refreshment wharf lay, appeared asleep, so
feeble was the current. Fleets of yawls, of skiffs, of canoes, of podoscaphs (a
light boat propelled by wheels set in motion by a treadle), of gigs, of craft of
all forms and of all kinds, crept about upon the motionless stream, crossing
each other, intermingling, running foul of one another, stopping abruptly under
a jerk of the arms to shoot off afresh under a sudden strain of the muscles
gliding swiftly along like great yellow or red fishes.
Others arrived incessantly; some from Chaton up the stream; others from
Bougival down it; laughter crossed the water from one boat to another, calls,
admonitions or imprecations. The boatmen exposed the bronzed and knotted
flesh of their biceps to the heat of the day; and similar to strange flowers,
which floated, the silk parasols, red, green, blue, or yellow, of the ladies
seated near the helm, bloomed in the sterns of the boats.
A July sun flamed high in the heavens; the atmosphere seemed full of
burning merriment: not a breath of air stirred the leaves of the willows or
poplars.
Down there the inevitable Mont-Valerien erected its fortified ramparts,
tier above tier, in the intense light; while on the right the divine slopes of
Louveniennes following the bend of the river disposed themselves in a semi-
circle, displaying in their order across the rich and shady lawns, of large
gardens, the white walls of country seats.
Upon the outskirts of La Grenonillère a crowd of promenaders moved
about beneath the giant trees which make this corner of the island the most
delightful park in the world.
Women and girls with breasts developed beyond all measurement, with
exaggerated bustles, their complexions plastered with rouge, their eyes
daubed with charcoal, their lips blood-red, laced up, rigged out in
outrageous dresses — trailed the crying bad taste of their toilets over the
fresh green sward; while beside them young men postured in their fashion-
plate accouterments with light gloves, varnished boots, canes, the size of a
thread, and single eye-glasses punctuating the insipidity of their smiles.
The island is narrow opposite La Grenonillère, and on its other side,
where also a ferry-boat plies, bringing people unceasingly across from
Croissy, the rapid branch of the river, full of whirlpools and eddies and
foam, rushes along with the strength of a torrent.
A detachment of pontoon-soldiers, in the uniform of artillerymen, is
encamped upon this bank, and the soldiers seated in a row on a long beam
watched the water flowing.
In the floating establishment there was a boisterous and uproarious crowd.
The wooden tables upon which the spilt refreshments made little sticky
streams, were covered with half empty glasses and surrounded by half tipsy
individuals. All this crowd shouted, sang and brawled. The men, their hats at
the backs of their heads, their faces red, with the brilliant eyes of drunkards,
moved about vociferously in need of a row natural to brutes. The women,
seeking their prey for the night, caused themselves to be treated, in the
meantime; and in the free space between the tables, the ordinary local public
predominated a whole regiment of boatmen, Rowkickersup, with their
companions in short flannel petticoats.
One of them carried on at the piano and appeared to play with his feet as
well as his hands; four couples bounded through a quadrille, and some young
men watched them, polished and correct, who would have looked proper, if
in spite of all, vice itself had appeared.
For there, one tastes in full all the pomp and vanity of the world, all its
well bred debauchery, all the seamy side of Parisian society; a mixture of
counter-jumpers, of strolling players, of the lowest journalists, of gentlemen
in tutelage, of rotten stock-jobbers, of ill-famed debauchées, of used-up old,
fast men; a doubtful crowd of suspicious characters, half-known, half gone
under, half-recognized, half-cut, pickpockets, rogues, procurers of women,
sharpers with dignified manners, and a bragging air, which seems to say: “I
shall rend the first who treats me as a scoundrel.”
This place reeks of folly, stinks of the scum and the gallantry of the shops.
Male and female there give themselves airs. There dwells an odor of love,
and there one fights for a yes, or for a no, in order to sustain a worm-eaten
reputation, which a stroke of the sword or a pistol bullet would destroy
further.
Some of the neighboring inhabitants looked in out of curiosity every
Sunday; some young men, very young, appeared there every year to learn
how to live, some promenaders lounging about showed themselves there;
some greenhorns wandered thither. It is with good reason named La
Grenonillère. At the side of the covered wharf where they drank, and quite
close to the Flower Pot, people bathed. Those among the women who
possessed the requisite roundness of form came there to display their wares
naked and to make clients. The rest, scornful, although well filled out with
wadding, shored up with springs, corrected here and altered there, watched
their sisters dabbling with disdain.
The swimmers crowded on to a little platform to dive thence head
foremost. They are either straight like vine poles, or round like pumpkins,
gnarled like olive branches, they are bowed over in front, or thrown
backwards by the size of their stomachs and are invariably ugly, they leap
into the water which splashes almost over the drinkers in the café.
Notwithstanding the great trees which overhang the floating-house, and
notwithstanding the vicinity of the water a suffocating heat fills the place.
The fumes of the spilt liquors mix with the effluvium of the bodies and with
that of the strong perfumes with which the skin of the traders in love is
saturated and which evaporate in this furnace. But beneath all these diverse
scents a slight aroma of vice-powder lingered, which now disappeared and
then reappeared, which one was perpetually encountering as though some
concealed hand had shaken an invisible powder-puff in the air. The show
was upon the river whither the perpetual coming and going of the boats
attracts the eyes. The boatwomen sprawled upon their seats opposite their
strong-wristed males, and contemplated with contempt the dinner hunters
prowling about the island.
Sometimes when a train of boats, just started, passed at full speed, the
friends who stayed ashore gave shouts, and all the people suddenly seized
with madness set to work yelling.
At the bend of the river towards Chaton fresh boats showed themselves
unceasingly. They came nearer and grew larger, and if only faces were
recognized, the vociferations broke out anew.
A canoe covered with an awning and manned by four women came slowly
down the current. She who rowed was little, thin, faded, in a cabin boy’s
costume, her hair drawn up under an oil-skin cap. Opposite her, a lusty
blonde, dressed as a man, with a white flannel jacket, lay upon her back at
the bottom of the boat, her legs in the air, on the seat at each side of the
rower, and she smoked a cigarette, while at each stroke of the oars, her chest
and stomach quivered, shaken by the shock. Quite at the back, under the
awning, two handsome girls, tall and slender, one dark and the other fair,
held each other by the waist as they unceasingly watched their companions.
A cry arose from La Grenonillère, “There is Lesbos,” and there became
all at once a furious clamor; a terrifying scramble took place; the glasses
were knocked down; people clambered on to the tables; all in a frenzy of
noise bawled: “Lesbos! Lesbos! Lesbos!” The shout rolled along, became
indistinct, was no longer more than a kind of tremendous howl, and then
suddenly it seemed to start anew, to rise into space, to cover the plain, to fill
the foliage of the great trees, to extend itself to the distant slopes, to go even
to the sun.
 The rower, in the face of this ovation, had quietly stopped. The handsome
blonde extended upon the bottom of the boat, turned her head with a careless
air, as she raised herself upon her elbows; and the two girls at the back
commenced laughing as they saluted the crowd.
Then the hullaballoo was doubled, making the floating establishment
tremble. The men took off their hats, the women waved their handkerchiefs,
and all voices, shrill or deep, together cried:
“Lesbos.”
One would have said that these people, this collection of the corrupt,
saluted a chief like the squadrons which fire guns when an admiral passes
along the line.
The numerous fleet of boats also acclaimed the women’s boat, which
awoke from its sleepy motion to land rather farther off.
Mr. Paul, contrary to the others, had drawn a key from his pocket and
whistled with all his might. His nervous mistress grew paler, caught him by
the arm to cause him to be quiet, and upon this occasion she looked at him
with fury in her eyes. But he appeared exasperated, as though borne away by
jealousy of some man by deep anger, instinctive and ungovernable. He
stammered, his lips quivering with indignation:
“It is shameful! They ought to be drowned like dogs with a stone about the
neck.”
But Madeleine instantly flew into a rage; her small and shrill voice
became hissing, and she spoke volubly, as though pleading her own cause:
“And what has it to do with you — you indeed? Are they not at liberty to
do what they wish since they owe nobody anything. A truce with your airs
and mind your own business....”
But he cut her speech short:
“It is the police whom it concerns, and I will have them marched off to St.
Lazare; so I will.”
She gave a start:
“You?”
“Yes, I! And in the meantime I forbid you to speak to them, you
understand, I forbid you to do so.”
Then she shrugged her shoulders and grew calm in a moment:
“My friend, I shall do as I please; if you are not satisfied, be off, and
instantly. I am not your wife, am I? Very well then, hold your tongue.”
 He made no reply and they stood face to face, their mouths tightly closed
and their breathing rapid.
At the other end of the great café of wood the four women made their
entry. The two in men’s costumes marched in front: the one thin like an oldish
tomboy, with yellow lines on her temples; the other filled out her white
flannel garments with her fat, swelling out her big trousers with her buttocks;
she swayed about like a fat goose with enormous legs and yielding knees.
Their two friends followed them, and the crowd of boatmen thronged about
to shake their hands.
They had all four hired a small cottage close to the water’s edge, and they
lived there as two households would have lived.
Their vice was public, recognized, patent. People talked of it as a natural
thing, which almost excited their sympathy, and whispered in very low tones
strange stories of dramas begotten of furious feminine jealousies, of the
stealthy visit of well-known women and of actresses to the little house close
to the water’s edge.
A neighbor, horrified by these scandalous rumors, apprised the police,
and the inspector, accompanied by a man, had come to make inquiry. The
mission was a delicate one; it was impossible, in short, to reproach these
women, who did not abandon themselves to prostitution with anything. The
inspector, very much puzzled, indeed, ignorant of the nature of the offenses
suspected, had asked questions at random, and made a lofty report conclusive
of their innocence.
They laughed about it all the way to St. Germain. They walked about La
Grenonillère establishment with stately steps like queens; and seemed to
glory in their fame, rejoicing in the gaze that was fixed on them, so superior
to this crowd, to this mob, to these plebeians.
Madeleine and her lover watched them approach and in the girl’s eyes a
fire lightened.
When the two first had reached the end of the table, Madeleine cried:
“Pauline!”
The large woman turned herself and stopped, continuing all the time to
hold the arm of her feminine cabin boy:
“Good gracious, Madeleine.... Do come and talk to me, my dear.”
Paul squeezed his fingers upon his mistress’s wrist; but she said to him,
with such an air:
 “You know, my fine fellow, you can be off;” he said nothing and remained
alone.
Then they chatted in low voices, standing all three of them. Many pleasant
jests passed their lips, they spoke quickly; and Pauline looked now and then
at Paul, by stealth, with a shrewd and malicious smile.
At last, putting up with it no longer, he suddenly raised himself and in a
single bound was at their side, trembling in every limb. He seized Madeleine
by the shoulders:
“Come. I wish it,” said he. “I have forbidden you to speak to these
scoundrels.”
Whereupon Pauline raised her voice and set to work blackguarding him
with her Billingsgate vocabulary. All the bystanders laughed; they drew near
him; they raised themselves on tiptoe in order the better to see him. He
remained dumbfounded under this downpour of filthy abuse. It appeared to
him that these words, which came from that mouth and fell upon him, defiled
him like dirt, and, in presence of the row which was beginning, he fell back,
retraced his steps, and rested his elbows on the railing towards the river,
turning his back upon the three victorious women.
There he stayed watching the water, and sometimes with rapid gesture as
though he plucked it out, he removed with his sinewy fingers the tear which
had formed in his eye.
The fact was that he was hopelessly in love, without knowing why,
notwithstanding his refined instincts, in spite of his reason, in spite, indeed,
of his will. He had fallen into this love as one falls into a sloughy hole. Of a
tender and delicate disposition, he had dreamed of liaisons, exquisite, ideal
and impassioned, and there that little bit of a woman, stupid like all girls,
with an exasperating stupidity, not even pretty, thin and a spitfire, had taken
him prisoner, possessing him from head to foot, body and soul. He underwent
this feminine bewitchery, mysterious and all powerful, this unknown power,
this prodigious domination, arising no one knows whence, from the demon of
the flesh, which casts the most sensible man at the feet of some girl or other
without there being anything in her to explain her fatal and sovereign power.
And there at his back he felt that some infamous thing was brewing.
Shouts of laughter cut him to the heart. What should he do? He knew well, but
he could not do it.
He steadily watched an angler upon the bank opposite him, and his
motionless line.
 Suddenly, the worthy man jerked a little silver fish, which wriggled at the
end of his line, out of the river. Then he endeavored to extract his hook,
hoisted and turned it, but in vain. At last, losing patience, he commenced to
pull it out, and all the bleeding gullet of the beast, with a portion of its
intestines, came out. Paul shuddered, rent himself to his heart-strings. It
seemed to him that the hook was his love and that if he should pluck it out, all
that he had in his breast would come out in the same way at the end of a
curved iron fixed in the depths of his being, of which Madeleine held the
line.
A hand was placed upon his shoulder; he started and turned; his mistress
was at his side. They did not speak to each other; and she rested, like him,
with her elbows upon the railing, her eyes fixed upon the river.
He sought for what he ought to say to her and could find nothing. He did
not even arrive at disentangling his own emotions; all that he was sensible of
was joy at feeling her there close to him, come back again, and a shameful
cowardice, a craving to pardon everything, to permit everything, provided
she never left him.
At last, at the end of some minutes, he asked her in a very gentle voice:
“Do you wish that we should leave? It will be nicer in the boat.”
She answered: “Yes, my puss.”
And he assisted her into the skiff, pressing her hands, all softened, with
some tears still in his eyes. Then she looked at him with a smile and they
kissed each other anew.
They re-ascended the river very slowly, skirting the bank planted with
willows, covered with grass, bathed and still in the afternoon warmth. When
they had returned to the Restaurant Grillon, it was barely six o’clock. Then
leaving their boat they set off on foot on the island towards Bezons, across
the fields and along the high poplars which bordered the river. The long
grass ready to be mowed was full of flowers. The sun, which was sinking,
showed himself from beneath a sheet of red light, and in the tempered heat of
the closing day the floating exhalations from the grass, mingled with the damp
scents from the river, filled the air with a soft languor, with a happy light, as
though with a vapor of well-being.
A soft weakness overtakes the heart, and a species of communion with
this splendid calm of evening, with this vague and mysterious chilliness of
outspread life, with the keen and melancholy poetry which seems to arise
from flowers and things, develops itself revealed at this sweet and pensive
time to the senses.
He felt all that; but she did not understand anything of it, for her part. They
walked side by side; and, suddenly tired of being silent, she sang. She sang
with her shrill and false voice, something which pervaded the streets, an air
catching the memory, which rudely destroyed the profound and serene
harmony of the evening.
Then he looked at her and he felt an unsurpassable abyss between them.
She beat the grass with her parasol, her head slightly inclined, contemplating
her feet and singing, spinning out the notes, attempting trills, and venturing on
shakes. Her smooth little brow, of which he was so fond, was at that time
absolutely empty! empty! There was nothing therein but this music of a bird-
organ; and the ideas which formed there by chance were like this music. She
did not understand anything of him; they were now separated as if they did
not live together. Did then his kisses never go any further than her lips?
Then she raised her eyes to him and laughed again. He was moved to the
quick and, extending his arms in a paroxysm of love, he embraced her
passionately.
As he was rumpling her dress she ended by disengaging herself,
murmuring by way of compensation as she did so:
“Go; I love you well, my puss.”
But he seized her by the waist and seized by madness, carried her rapidly
away. He kissed her on the cheek, on the temple, on the neck, all the while
dancing with joy. They threw themselves down panting at the edge of a
thicket, lit up by the rays of the setting sun, and before they had recovered
breath they became friends again without her understanding his transport.
They returned, holding each other by the hand, when suddenly, across the
trees, they perceived on the river, the canoe manned by the four women. The
large Pauline also saw them, for she drew herself up and blew kisses to
Madeleine. And then she cried:
“Until to-night!”
Madeleine replied:
“Until to-night!”
Paul believed he suddenly felt his heart enveloped in ice.
They re-entered the house for dinner.
They installed themselves in one of the arbors, close to the water, and set
about eating in silence. When night arrived, they brought a candle inclosed in
a glass globe, which lit them up with a feeble and glimmering light; and they
heard every moment the bursting out of the shouts of the boatmen in the great
saloon on the first floor.
Towards dessert, Paul, taking Madeleine’s hand, tenderly said to her:
“I feel very tired, my darling; unless you have any objection, we will go
to bed early.”
She, however, understood the ruse, and shot an enigmatical glance at him,
that glance of treachery which so readily appears at the bottom of a woman’s
eyes. Then having reflected she answered:
“You can go to bed if you wish, but I have promised to go to the ball at La
Grenonillère.”
He smiled in a piteous manner, one of those smiles with which one veils
the most horrible suffering, but he replied in a coaxing but agonized tone:
“If you were very kind, we should remain here, both of us.”
She indicated no with her head, without opening her mouth.
He insisted:
“I beg of you, my Bichette.”
Then she roughly broke out:
“You know what I said to you. If you are not satisfied the door is open. No
one wishes to keep you. As for myself, I have promised; I shall go.”
He placed his two elbows upon the table, covered his face with his hands
and remained there pondering sorrowfully.
The boat people came down again, bawling as usual. They set off in their
vessels for the ball at La Grenonillère.
Madeleine said to Paul:
“If you are not coming, say so, and I will ask one of these gentlemen to
take me.”
Paul rose:
“Let us go!” murmured he.
And they left.
The night was black, full of stars, overpowered by a burning air, by
oppressive breaths of wind, burdened with heat and emanations, with living
germs, which, mixed with the breeze, destroyed its freshness. It imparted to
the face a heated caress, made one breathe more quickly, gasp a little, so
thick and heavy did it seem. The boats started on their way bearing venetian
lanterns at the prow. It was not possible to distinguish the craft, but only
these little colored lights, swift and dancing up and down like glow-worms
in a fit; and voices sounded from all sides in the shade. The young people’s
skiff glided gently along. Now and then, when a fast boat passed near them,
they could, for a moment, see the white back of the rower, lit up by his
lantern.
When they turned the elbow of the river, La Grenonillère appeared to
them in the distance. The establishment, en fête, was decorated with sconces,
with colored garlands draped with clusters of lights. On the Seine some great
barges moved about slowly, representing domes, pyramids and elaborate
erections in fires of all colors. Illuminated festoons hung right down to the
water, and sometimes a red or blue lantern, at the end of an immense
invisible fishing-rod, seemed like a great swinging star.
All this illumination spread a light around the café, lit up the great trees on
the bank, from top to bottom, the trunks of which stood out in pale gray and
the leaves in a milky green upon the deep black of the fields and the heavens.
The orchestra, composed of five suburban artists, flung far its public-house
ball-music, poor and jerky, which caused Madeleine to sing anew.
She desired to enter at once. Paul desired first to take a turn on the island,
but he was obliged to give way. The attendance was more select. The
boatmen, always alone, remained with some thinly scattered citizens, and
some young men flanked by girls. The director and organizer of this can-can
majestic, in a jaded black suit, walked about in every direction, his head laid
waste by his old trade of purveyor of public amusements, at a cheap rate.
The large Pauline and her companions were not there; and Paul breathed
again.
They danced; couples opposite each other, capered in the most distracted
manner, throwing their legs in the air, until they were upon a level with the
noses of their partners.
The women, whose thighs were disjointed, skipped amid such a flying
upwards of their petticoats that the lower portions of their frames were
displayed. They kicked their feet up above their heads with astounding
facility, balanced their bodies, wagged their backs and shook their sides,
shedding around them a powerful scent of sweating womanhood.
The men were squatted like toads, some making obscene signs; some
turned and twisted themselves, grimacing and hideous; some turned like a
wheel on their hands, or, perhaps, trying to make themselves funny, sketched
the manners of the day with exaggerated gracefulness.
A fat servant-maid and two waiters served refreshments.
 This café-boat being only covered with a roof and having no wall
whatever, to shut it in, the hare-brained dance was displayed in the face of
the peaceful night and of the firmament powdered with stars.
Suddenly, Mount Valerien, yonder opposite, appears illumined, as if a
conflagration had been set ablaze behind it. The radiance spreads itself and
deepens upon the sky, describing a large luminous circle of wan and white
light. Then something or other red appeared, grew greater, shining with a
burning red, like that of hot metal upon the anvil. That gradually developed
into a round body which seemed to arise from the earth; and the moon,
freeing herself from the horizon, rose slowly into space. In proportion as she
ascended, the purple tint faded and became yellow, a shining bright yellow,
and the satellite appeared to grow smaller in proportion as her distance
increased.
Paul watched her for sometime, lost in contemplation, forgetting his
mistress, and when he returned to himself the latter had vanished.
He sought for her, but could not find her. He threw his anxious eye over
table after table, going to and fro unceasingly, inquiring after her from this
one and that one. No one had seen her. He was thus tormented with
disquietude, when one of the waiters said to him:
“You are looking for Madame Madeleine, are you not? She has left but a
few moments ago, in company with Madame Pauline.” And at the same
instant, Paul perceived the cabin-boy and the two pretty girls standing at the
other end of the café, all three holding each others’ waists and lying in wait
for him, whispering to one another. He understood, and, like a madman,
dashed off into the island.
He first ran towards Chatou, but having reached the plain, retraced his
steps. Then he began to search the dense coppices, occasionally roamed
about distractedly, halting to listen.
The toads all round about him poured out their metallic and short notes.
Towards Bougival, some unknown bird warbled some song which
reached him from the distance.
Over the large lawns the moon shed a soft light, resembling powdered
wool; it penetrated the foliage and shone upon the silvered bark of the
poplars, and riddled with its brilliant rays the waving tops of the great trees.
The entrancing poetry of this summer night had, in spite of himself, entered
into Paul, athwart his infatuated anguish, and stirred his heart with a
ferocious irony, increasing even to madness, his craving for an ideal
tenderness, for passionate outpourings of the bosom of an adored and faithful
woman. He was compelled to stop, choked by hurried and rending sobs.
The crisis over, he started anew.
Suddenly, he received what resembled the stab of a poignard. There,
behind that bush, some people were kissing. He ran thither; and found an
amorous couple whose faces were entwined, united in an endless kiss.
He dared not call, knowing well that she would not respond, and he had
also a frightful dread of discovering them all at once.
The flourishes of the quadrilles, with the ear-splitting solos of the cornet,
the false shriek of the flute, the shrill squeaking of the violin, irritated his
feelings, and exasperated his sufferings. Wild and limping music was floating
under the trees, now feeble, now stronger, wafted hither and thither by the
breeze.
Suddenly, he said to himself, that possibly she had returned. Yes, she had
returned! Why not? He had stupidly lost his head, without cause, carried
away by his fears, by the inordinate suspicions which had for some time
overwhelmed him.
Seized by one of these singular calms which will sometimes occur in
cases of the greatest despair, he returned towards the ball-room.
With a single glance of the eye, he took in the whole room. He made the
round of the tables, and abruptly again found himself face to face with the
three women. He must have had a doleful and queer expression of
countenance, for all three together burst into merriment.
He made off, returned into the island, threw himself across the coppice
panting. He listened again, listened a long time, for his ears were singing. At
last, however, he believed he heard a little farther off a little, sharp laugh,
which he recognized at once; and he advanced very quietly, on his knees,
removing the branches from his path, his heart beating so rapidly, that he
could no longer breathe.
Two voices murmured some words, the meaning of which he did not
understand, and then they were silent.
Next, he was possessed by a frightful longing to fly, to save himself, for
ever, from this furious passion which threatened his existence. He was about
to return to Chatou and take the train, resolved never to come back again,
never again to see her. But her likeness suddenly rushed in upon him, and he
mentally pictured that moment in the morning when she would wake in their
warm bed, and would press herself coaxingly against him, throwing her arms
around his neck, her hair disheveled, and a little entangled on the forehead,
her eyes still shut and her lips apart ready to receive the first kiss. The
sudden recollection of this morning caress filled him with frantic
recollection and the maddest desire.
The couple began to speak again; and he approached, doubled in two.
Then a faint cry rose from under the branches quite close to him. He
advanced again, always as though in spite of himself, invisibly attracted,
without being conscious of anything ... and he saw them.
And he stood there astounded and distracted, as though he had there
suddenly discovered a corpse, dead and mutilated. Then, in an involuntary
flash of thought, he remembered the little fish whose entrails he had felt being
torn out.... But Madeleine murmured to her companion, in the same tone in
which she had often called him by name, and he was seized by such a fit of
anguish that he fled with all his might.
He struck against two trees, fell over a root, set off again and suddenly
found himself near the river, opposite its rapid branch, which was lit up by
the moon. The torrent-like current made great eddies where the light played
upon it. The high bank dominated the river like a cliff, leaving a wide
obscure zone at its foot where the eddies made themselves heard in the
darkness.
On the other bank, the country seats of Croissy ranged themselves and
could be plainly seen.
Paul saw all this as though in a dream, he thought of nothing, understood
nothing, and all things, even his very existence, appeared vague, far-off,
forgotten, done with.
The river was there. Did he know what he was doing? Did he wish to
die? He was mad. He turned himself, however, towards the island, towards
her, and in the still air of the night, in which the faint and persistent burden of
the public house band was borne up and down, he uttered, in a voice frantic
with despair, bitter beyond measure, and superhuman, a frightful cry:
“Madeleine.”
His heartrending call shot across the great silence of the sky, and sped all
around the horizon.
Then, with a tremendous leap, with the bound of a wild animal, he jumped
into the river. The water rushed on, closed over him, and from the place
where he had disappeared a series of great circles started, enlarging their
brilliant undulations, until they finally reached the other bank. The two
women had heard the noise of the plunge. Madeleine drew herself up and
exclaimed:
“It is Paul,” a suspicion having arisen in her soul, “he has drowned
himself;” and she rushed towards the bank, where Pauline rejoined her.
A clumsy punt, propelled by two men, turned and returned on the spot.
One of the men rowed, the other plunged into the water a great pole and
appeared to be looking for something. Pauline cried:
“What are you doing? What is the matter?”
An unknown voice answered:
“It is a man who has just drowned himself.”
The two ghastly women, squeezing each other tightly, followed the
maneuvers of the boat. The music of La Grenonillère continued to sound in
the distance, and appeared with its cadences to accompany the movements of
the somber fisherman; and the river which now concealed a corpse, whirled
round and round, illuminated. The search was prolonged. The horrible
suspense made Madeleine shiver all over. At last, after at least half an hour,
one of the men announced:
“I have got it.”
And he pulled up his long pole very gently, very gently. Then something
large appeared upon the surface. The other mariner left his oars, and they
both uniting their strength and hauling upon the inert weight, caused it to
tumble over into their boat.
Then they made for the land, seeking a place well lighted and low. At the
moment when they landed, the women also arrived. The moment she saw
him, Madeleine fell back with horror. In the moonlight he already appeared
green, with his mouth, his eyes, his nose, his clothes full of slime. His fingers
closed and stiff, were hideous. A kind of black and liquid plaster covered his
whole body. The face appeared swollen, and from his hair, glued up by the
ooze, there ran a stream of dirty water.
“Do you know him?” asked one.
The other, the Croissy ferryman, hesitated:
“Yes, it certainly seems to me that I have seen that head; but you know
when like that one cannot recognize anyone easily.” And then, suddenly:
“Why, it’s Mr. Paul.”
“Who is Mr. Paul?” inquired his comrade.
The first answered:
 “Why, Mr. Paul Baron, the son of the senator, the little chap who was so
amorous.”
The other added, philosophically:
“Well, his fun is ended now; it is a pity, all the same, when one is so
rich!”
Madeleine sobbed and fell to the ground. Pauline approached the body
and asked:
“Is he indeed quite dead?”
“Quite?”
The men shrugged their shoulders.
“Oh! after that length of time for certain.”
Then one of them asked:
“Was it at the Grillon that he lodged?”
“Yes,” answered the other; “we had better take him back there, there will
be something to be made of it.”
They embarked again in their boat and set out, moving off slowly on
account of the rapid current; and yet, a long time after they were out of sight,
from the place where the women remained, the regular splash of the oars in
the water could be heard.
Then Pauline took the poor weeping Madeleine in her arms, petted her,
embraced her for a long while, consoled her.
“What would you have; it is not your fault, is it? It is impossible to
prevent men committing folly. He wished it, so much the worse for him, after
all!”
And then lifting her up:
“Come, my dear, come and sleep at the house; it is impossible for you to
go back to the Grillon to-night.”
And she embraced her again.
“Come, we will cure you,” said she.
Madeleine arose, and weeping all the while, but with fainter sobs, her
head upon Pauline’s shoulder, as though it had found a refuge in a closer and
more certain affection, more familiar and more confiding, set off with very
slow steps.
 THE TWENTY-FIVE FRANCS OF THE
MOTHER-SUPERIOR

He certainly looked very droll, did Daddy Pavilly, with his great, spider legs
and his little body, his long arms and his pointed head, surrounded by a flame
of red hair on the top of the crown.
He was a clown, a peasant clown by nature, born to play tricks, to act
parts, simple parts, as he was a peasant’s son and was himself a peasant,
who could scarcely read. Yes! God had certainly created him to amuse
others, the poor country devils who have neither theaters nor fêtes, and he
amused them conscientiously. In the café people treated him to drink in order
to keep him there, and he drank intrepidly, laughing and joking, hoaxing
everybody without vexing anyone, while the people were laughing heartily
around him.
He was so droll that the very girls could not resist him, ugly as he was,
because he made them laugh so. He would drag them about joking all the
while, and he tickled and squeezed them, saying such funny things that they
held their sides while they pushed him away.
Towards the end of June he engaged himself for the harvest to farmer Le
Harivan, near Rouville. For three whole weeks he amused the harvesters,
male and female, by his jokes, both by day and night. During the day, when he
was in the fields, he wore an old straw hat which hid his red shock head, and
one saw him gathering up the yellow grain and tying it into bundles with his
long, thin arms; and then suddenly stopping to make a funny movement which
made the laborers, who always kept their eyes on him, laugh all over the
field. At night he crept, like some crawling animal, in among the straw in the
barn where the women slept, causing screams and exciting a disturbance.
They drove him off with their wooden clogs, and he escaped on all fours,
like a fantastic monkey, amidst volleys of laughter from the whole place.
On the last day, as the wagon full of reapers, decked with ribbons and
playing bag-pipes, shouting and singing with pleasure and drink, went along
the white, high road, slowly drawn by six dapple-gray horses, driven by a
lad in a blouse, with a rosette in his cap, Pavilly, in the midst of the
sprawling women, danced like a drunken satyr, and kept the little dirty-faced
boys and astonished peasants, standing staring at him open-mouthed on the
way to the farm.
Suddenly, as they got to the gate of Le Harivan’s farm yard, he gave a leap
as he was lifting up his arms, but unfortunately, as he came down, he knocked
against the side of the long wagon, fell over it onto the wheel, and rebounded
into the road. His companions jumped out, but he did not move; one eye was
closed, while the other was open, and he was pale with fear, while his long
limbs were stretched out in the dust, and when they touched his right leg he
began to scream, and when they tried to make him stand up, he immediately
fell down.
“I think one of his legs is broken,” one of the men said.
And so it really was. Harivan, therefore, had him laid on a table and sent
off a man on horseback to Rouville to fetch the doctor, who came an hour
later.
The farmer was very generous and said that he would pay for the man’s
treatment in the hospital, so that the doctor carried Pavilly off in his carriage
to the hospital, and had him put into a white-washed ward, where his fracture
was reduced.
As soon as he knew that it would not kill him, and that he would be taken
care of, cuddled, cured, and fed without having anything to do except to lie
on his back between the sheets, Pavilly’s joy was unbounded, and he began
to laugh silently and continuously, so as to show his decayed teeth.
Whenever one of the Sisters of Mercy came near his bed he made
grimaces of satisfaction, winking, twisting his mouth awry and moving his
nose, which was very long and mobile. His neighbors in the ward, ill as they
were, could not help laughing, and the Mother-Superior often came to his
bedside, to be amused for a quarter of an hour, and he invented all kinds of
jokes and stories for her, and as he had all the makings of a strolling actor in
him, he would be devout in order to please her, and spoke of religion with
the serious air of a man who knows that there are times when jokes are out of
place.
One day, he took it into his head to sing to her. She was delighted and
came to see him more frequently, and then she brought him a hymn-book, so
as to utilize his voice. Then he might be seen sitting up in bed, for he was
beginning to be able to move, singing the praises of the Almighty and of
Mary, in a falsetto voice, while the kind, stout sister stood by him and beat
time with her finger. When he could walk, the Superior offered to keep him
for some time longer to sing in chapel, to serve at Mass and to fulfill the
duties of sacristan, and he accepted. For a whole month he might be seen in
his surplice, limping and singing the psalms and the responses, with such
movements of his head, that the number of the faithful increased, and that
people deserted the parish Church to attend Vespers at the hospital.
But as everything must come to an end in this world, they were obliged to
discharge him, when he was quite cured, and the Superior gave him twenty-
five francs in return for his services.
As soon as Pavilly found himself in the street with all that money in his
pocket, he asked himself what he was going to do. Should he return to the
village? Certainly not before having a drink, for he had not had one for a long
time, and so he went into a café. He did not go into the town more than two
or three times a year, and so he had a confused and intoxicating recollection
of an orgie, on one of those visits in particular, and so he asked for a glass of
the best brandy, which he swallowed at a gulp to grease the passage, and then
he had another to see how it tasted.
As soon as the strong and fiery brandy had touched his palate and tongue,
awakening more vividly than ever the sensation of alcohol which he was so
fond of, and so longed for, which caresses, and stings, and burns the mouth,
he knew that he should drink a whole bottle of it, and so he asked
immediately what it cost, so as to spare himself having it in detail. They
charged him three francs, which he paid, and then he began quietly to get
drunk.
However, he was methodical in it, as he wished to keep sober enough for
other pleasures, and so, as soon as he felt that he was on the point of seeing
the fireplace bow to him, he got up and went out with unsteady steps, with his
bottle under his arm, in search of a house where girls of easy virtue lived.
He found one, with some difficulty, after having asked a carter, who did
not know of one; a postman, who directed him wrong; a baker, who began to
swear and called him an old pig; and lastly, a soldier, who was obliging
enough to take him to it, advised him to choose La Reine.
Although it was barely twelve o’clock, Pavilly went into that palace of
delights, where he was received by a servant, who wanted to turn him out
again. But he made her laugh by making a grimace, showed her three francs,
the usual price of the special provisions of the place, and followed her with
difficulty up a dark staircase, which led to the first floor.
 When he had been shown into a room, he asked for la Reine, and had
another drink out of the bottle, while he waited. But very shortly, the door
opened and a girl came in. She was tall, fat, red-faced, enormous. She looked
at the drunken fellow, who had fallen into a seat, with the eye of a judge of
such matters, and said:
“Are you not ashamed of yourself, at this time of day?”
“Ashamed of what, Princess?” he stammered.
“Why, of disturbing a lady, before she has even had time to eat her
dinner.”
He wanted to have a joke, so he said:
“There is no such thing as time, for the brave.”
“And there ought to be no time for getting drunk, either, old guzzler.”
At this he got angry:
“I am not a guzzler, and I am not drunk.”
“Not drunk?”
“No, I am not.”
“Not drunk? Why, you could not even stand straight;” and she looked at
him angrily, thinking that all this time her companions were having their
dinner.
“I ... I could dance a polka,” he replied, getting up, and to prove his
stability he got onto the chair, made a pirouette and jumped onto the bed,
where his thick, muddy shoes made two great marks.
“Oh! you dirty brute!” the girl cried, and rushing at him, she struck him a
blow with her fist in the stomach, such a blow that Pavilly lost his balance,
fell and struck the foot of the bed, and making a complete somersault tumbled
onto the night-table, dragging the jug and basin with him, and then rolled onto
the ground, roaring.
The noise was so loud, and his cries so piercing, that everybody in the
house rushed in, the master, mistress, servant, and the staff.
The master picked him up, but as soon as he had put him on his legs, the
peasant lost his balance again, and then began to call out that his leg was
broken, the other leg, the sound one.
It was true, so they sent for a doctor, and it happened to be the same one
who had attended him at Le Harivan’s.
“What! Is it you again?” he said.
“Yes, M’sieu.”
“What is the matter with you?”
 “Somebody has broken my other leg for me, M’sieu.”
“Who did it, old fellow?”
“Why, a female.”
Everybody was listening. The girls in their dressing gowns, with their
mouths still greasy from their interrupted dinner, the mistress of the house
furious, the master nervous.
“This will be a bad job,” the doctor said. “You know that the municipal
authorities look upon you with very unfavorable eyes, so we must try and
hush the matter up.”
“How can it be managed?” the master of the place asked.
“Why the best way would be to send him back to the hospital, from which
he has just come out, and to pay for him there.”
“I would rather do that,” the master of the house replied, “than have any
fuss made about the matter.”
So half an hour later, Pavilly returned drunk and groaning to the ward
which he had left an hour before. The Superior lifted up her hands in sorrow,
for she liked him, and with a smile, for she was glad to have him back.
“Well, my good fellow, what is the matter with you now?”
“The other leg is broken, Madame.”
“So you have been getting onto another load of straw, you old joker?”
And Pavilly, in great confusion, but still sly, said, with hesitation:
“No... no.... Not this time, no ... not this time. No ... no.... It was not my
fault, not my fault ...A mattress caused this.”
She could get no other explanation out of him, and never knew that his
relapse was due to her twenty-five francs.
 THE VENUS OF BRANIZA

Some years ago there lived in Braniza, a celebrated Talmadist, who was
renowned no less on account of his beautiful wife, than of his wisdom, his
learning, and his fear of God. The Venus of Braniza deserved that name
thoroughly, for she deserved it for herself, on account of her singular beauty,
and even more as the wife of a man who was deeply versed in the Talmud;
for the wives of the Jewish philosophers are, as a rule, ugly, or even possess
some bodily defect.
The Talmud explains this, in the following manner. It is well known that
marriages are made in heaven, and at the birth of a boy a divine voice calls
out the name of his future wife, and vice versâ. But just as a good father tries
to get rid of his good wares out of doors, and only uses the damaged stuff at
home for his children, so God bestows those women whom other men would
not care to have, on the Talmudists.
Well, God made an exception in the case of our Talmudist, and had
bestowed a Venus on him, perhaps only in order to confirm the rule by means
of this exception, and to make it appear less hard. His wife was a woman
who would have done honor to any king’s throne, or to the pedestal in any
sculpture gallery. Tall, and with a wonderful, voluptuous figure, she carried a
strikingly beautiful head, surmounted by thick, black plaits, on her proud
shoulders, while two large, dark eyes languished and glowed beneath her
long lashes, and her beautiful hands looked as if they were carved out of
ivory.
This beautiful woman, who seemed to have been designed by nature to
rule, to see slaves at her feet, to provide occupation for the painter’s brush,
the sculptor’s chisel and the poet’s pen, lived the life of a rare and beautiful
flower, which is shut up in a hot house, for she sat the whole day long
wrapped up in her costly fur jacket and looked down dreamily into the street.
She had no children; her husband, the philosopher, studied, and prayed,
and studied again from early morning until late at night; his mistress was the
Veiled Beauty, as the Talmudists call the Kabbalah. She paid no attention to
her house, for she was rich and everything went of its own accord, just like a
clock, which has only to be wound up once a week; nobody came to see her,
and she never went out of the house; she sat and dreamed and brooded and —
yawned.

One day when a terrible storm of thunder and lightning had spent all its
fury over the town, and all windows had been opened in order to let the
Messiah in, the Jewish Venus was sitting as usual in her comfortable easy
chair, shivering in spite of her fur jacket, and was thinking, when suddenly
she fixed her glowing eyes on the man who was sitting before the Talmud,
swaying his body backwards and forwards, and said suddenly:
“Just tell me, when will Messias, the Son of David, come?”
“He will come,” the philosopher replied, “when all the Jews have
become either altogether virtuous or altogether vicious, says the Talmud.”
“Do you believe that all the Jews will ever become virtuous,” the Venus
continued.
“How am I to believe that!”
“So Messias will come, when all the Jews have become vicious?”
The philosopher shrugged his shoulders and lost himself again in the
labyrinth of the Talmud, out of which, so it is said, only one man returned
unscathed, and the beautiful woman at the window again looked dreamily out
onto the heavy rain, while her white fingers played unconsciously with the
dark fur of her splendid jacket.

One day the Jewish philosopher had gone to a neighboring town, where an
important question of ritual was to be decided. Thanks to his learning, the
question was settled sooner than he had expected, and instead of returning the
next morning, as he had intended, he came back the same evening with a
friend, who was no less learned than himself. He got out of the carriage at his
friend’s house, and went home on foot, and was not a little surprised when he
saw his windows brilliantly illuminated, and found an officer’s servant
comfortably smoking his pipe in front of his house.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a friendly manner, but with some
curiosity, nevertheless.
“I am looking out, in case the husband of the beautiful Jewess should
come home unexpectedly.”
“Indeed? Well, mind and keep a good look out.”
 Saying this, the philosopher pretended to go away, but went into the house
through the garden entrance at the back. When he got into the first room, he
found a table laid for two, which had evidently only been left a short time
previously. His wife was sitting as usual at her bed room window wrapped
in her fur jacket, but her cheeks were suspiciously red, and her dark eyes had
not got their usual languishing look, but now rested on her husband with a
gaze which expressed at the same time satisfaction and mockery. At that
moment he kicked against an object on the floor, which emitted a strange
sound, which he picked up and examined in the light. It was a pair of spurs.
“Who has been here with you?” the Talmudist said.
The Jewish Venus shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, but did not
reply.
“Shall I tell you? The Captain of Hussars has been with you.”
“And why should he not have been here with me?” she said, smoothing the
fur on her jacket with her white hand.
“Woman! are you out of your mind?”
“I am in full possession of my senses,” she replied, and a knowing smile
hovered round her red voluptuous lips. “But must I not also do my part, in
order that Messias may come and redeem us poor Jews?”
 LA MORILLONNE

They called her La Morillonne because of her black hair and of her
complexion, which resembled autumnal leaves, and because of her mouth
with thick purple lips, which were like blackberries, when she curled them.
That she should be born as dark as this in a district where everybody was
fair, and engendered by a father and mother with tow-colored hair and a
complexion like butter was one of the mysteries of atavism. One of her
female ancestors must have had an intimacy with one of those traveling
tinkers who, have gone about the country from time immemorial, with faces
the color of bistre and indigo, crowned by a wisp of light hair.
From that ancestor she derived, not only her dark complexion, but also her
dark soul, her deceitful eyes, whose depths were at times illuminated by
flashes of every vice, her eyes of an obstinate and malicious animal.
Handsome? Certainly not, nor even pretty. Ugly, with an absolute ugliness!
Such a false look! Her nose was flat, and had been smashed by a blow, while
her unwholesome looking mouth was always slobbering with greediness, or
uttering something vile. Her hair was thick and untidy, and a regular nest for
vermin, to which may be added a thin, feverish body, with a limping walk. In
short, she was a perfect monster, and yet all the young men of the
neighborhood had made love to her, and whoever had been so honored,
longed for her society again.
From the time that she was twelve, she had been the mistress of every
fellow in the village. She had corrupted boys of her own age in every
conceivable manner and place.
Young men at the risk of imprisonment, and even steady, old, notable and
venerable men, such as the farmer at Eclausiaux, Monsieur Martin, the ex-
mayor and other highly respectable men, had been taken by the manners of
that creature, and the reason why the rural policeman was not severe upon
them, in spite of his love for summoning people before the magistrates, was,
so people said, that he would have been obliged to take out a summons
against himself.
 The consequence was that she had grown up without being interfered
with, and was the mistress of every fellow in the village, as the school-
master said; who had himself been one of the fellows. But the most curious
part of the business was that no one was jealous. They handed her on from
one to the other, and when someone expressed his astonishment at this to her
one day, she said to this unintelligent stranger:
“Is everybody not satisfied?”
And then, how could any one of them, even if he had been jealous, have
monopolized her? They had no hold on her. She was not selfish, and though
she accepted all gifts, whether in kind or in money, she never asked for
anything and she even appeared to prefer paying herself after her own
fashion, by stealing. All she seemed to care about as her reward was
pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a
halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her
as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them,
no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it?
Some had tried to vanquish her, but in vain.
How then, could any of them claim to be her master? It would have been
the same as wishing to have the sole right of baking their bread in the
common oven, in which the whole village baked.
But there was one man who formed the exception, and that was Bru, the
shepherd.
He lived in the fields in his movable hut, on cakes made of unleavened
dough, which he kneaded on a stone and baked in the hot ashes, now here,
now there, is a hole dug out in the ground, and heated with dead wood.
Potatoes, milk, hard cheese, blackberries, and a small cask of old gin that he
had distilled himself, were his daily pittance; but he knew nothing about
love, although he was accused of all sorts of horrible things, and therefore
nobody dared abuse him to his face; in the first place, because Bru was a
spare and sinewy man, who handled his shepherd’s crook like a drum-major
does his staff; next, because of his three sheep dogs, who had teeth like
wolves, and who knew nobody except their master; and lastly, for fear of the
evil eye. For Bru, it appeared, knew spells which would blight the corn, give
the sheep foot rot, the cattle the rinder pest, make cows die in calving, and
set fire to the ricks and stacks.
But as Bru was the only one who did not loll out his tongue after La
Morillonne, naturally one day she began to think of him, and she declared that
she, at any rate, was not afraid of his evil eye, and so she went after him.
“What do you want?” he said, and she replied boldly:
“What do I want? I want you.”
“Very well,” he said, “but then you must belong to me alone.”
“All right,” was her answer, “if you think you can please me.”
He smiled and took her into his arms, and she was away from the village
for a whole week. She had, in fact, become entirely Bru’s exclusive property.
The village grew excited. They were not jealous of each other, but they
were of him. What! Could she not resist him. Of course he had charms and
spells against every imaginable thing. And they grew furious. Next they grew
bold, and watched from behind a tree. She was still as lively as ever, but he,
poor fellow, seemed to have become suddenly ill, and required the most
tender nursing at her hands. The villagers, however, felt no compassion for
the poor shepherd, and so, one of them, more courageous than the rest,
advanced towards the hut with his gun in his hand:
“Tie up your dogs,” he cried out from a distance; “fasten them up, Bru, or
I shall shoot them.”
“You need not be frightened of the dogs,” La Morillonne replied; “I will
be answerable for it that they will not hurt you;” and she smiled as the young
man with the gun went towards her.
“What do you want?” the shepherd said.
“I can tell you,” she replied. “He wants me and I am very willing. There!”
Bru began to cry, and she continued:
“You are a good for nothing.”
And she went off with the lad, while Bru seized his crook, seeing which
the young fellow raised his gun.
“Seize him! seize him!” the shepherd shouted, urging on his dogs, while
the other had already got his finger on the trigger to fire at them. But La
Morillonne pushed down the muzzle and called out:
“Here, dogs! here! Prr, prr, my beauties!”
And the three dogs rushed up to her, licked her hands and frisked about as
they followed her, while she called to the shepherd from the distance:
“You see, Bru, they are not at all jealous!”
And then, with a short and evil laugh, she added:
“They are my property now.”
 THE PORT

PART I

Having sailed from Havre on the 3rd of May, 1882, for a voyage in the China
seas, the square-rigged three-master, Notre Dame des Vents, made her way
back into the port of Marseilles, on the 8th of August, 1886, after an absence
of four years. When she had discharged her first cargo in the Chinese port for
which she was bound, she had immediately found a new freight for Buenos
Ayres, and from that place had conveyed goods to Brazil.
Other passages, then damage repairs, calms ranging over several months,
gales which knocked her out of her course — all the accidents, adventures,
and misadventures of the sea, in short — had kept far from her country, this
Norman three-master, which had come back to Marseilles with her hold full
of tin boxes containing American preserves.
At her departure, she had on board, besides the captain and the mate,
fourteen sailors, eight Normans and six Britons. On her return, there were left
only five Britons and four Normans; the other Briton had died while on the
way; the four Normans having disappeared under various circumstances, had
been replaced by two Americans, a negro, and a Norwegian carried off, one
evening, from a tavern in Singapore.
The big vessel, with reefed sails and yards crossed over her masts, drawn
by a tug from Marseilles, rocking over a sweep of rolling waves which
subsided gently on becoming calm, passed in front of the Château d’If, then
under all the gray rocks of the roadstead, which the setting sun covered with
a golden vapor; and she entered the ancient port, in which are packed
together, side by side, ships from every part of the world, pell mell, large
and small, of every shape and every variety of rigging, soaking like a
“bouillabaise” of boats in this basin too limited in extent, full of putrid water,
where shells touch each other, rub against each other, and seem to be pickled
in the juice of the vessels.
Notre Dame des Vents took up her station between an Italian brig and an
English schooner, which made way to let this comrade slip in between them;
then, when all the formalities of the custom-house and of the port had been
complied with, the captain authorized the two-thirds of his crew to spend the
night on shore.
It was already dark. Marseilles was lighted up. In the heat of this
summer’s evening a flavor of cooking with garlic floated over the noisy city,
filled with the clamor of voices, of rolling vehicles, of the crackling of
whips, and of southern mirth.
As soon as they felt themselves on shore, the ten men, whom the sea had
been tossing about for some months past, proceeded along quite slowly with
the hesitating steps of persons who are out of their element, unaccustomed to
cities, two by two, procession.
They swayed from one side to another as they walked, looked about them,
smelling out the lanes opening out on the harbor, rendered feverish by the
amorous appetite which had been growing to maturity in their bodies during
their last sixty-six days at sea. The Normans strode on in front, led by
Célestin Duclos, a tall young fellow, sturdy and waggish, who served as a
captain for the others every time they set forth on land. He divined the places
worth visiting, found out by-ways after a fashion of his own, and did not take
much part in the squabbles so frequent among sailors in seaport towns. But,
once he was caught in one, he was afraid of nobody.
After some hesitation as to which of the obscure streets which lead down
to the waterside, and from which arise heavy smells, a sort of exhalation
from closets, they ought to enter, Célestin gave the preference to a kind of
winding passage, where gleamed over the doors projecting lanterns bearing
enormous numbers on their rough colored glass. Under the narrow arches at
the entrance to the houses, women wearing aprons like servants, seated on
straw chairs, rose up on seeing them coming near, taking three steps towards
the gutter which separated the street into two halves, and which cut off the
path from this file of men, who sauntered along at their leisure, humming and
sneering, already getting excited by the vicinity of those dens of prostitutes.
Sometimes, at the end of a hall, appeared, behind a second open door,
which presented itself unexpectedly, covered over with dark leather, a big
wench, undressed, whose heavy thighs and fat calves abruptly outlined
themselves under her coarse white cotton wrapper. Her short petticoat had
the appearance of a puffed out girdle; and the soft flesh of her breast, her
shoulders, and her arms, made a rosy stain on a black velvet corsage with
edgings of gold lace. She kept calling out from her distant corner, “Will you
come here, my pretty boys?” and sometimes she would go out herself to catch
hold of one of them, and to drag him towards her door with all her strength,
fastening on to him like a spider drawing forward an insect bigger than itself.
The man, excited by the struggle, would offer a mild resistance, and the rest
would stop to look on, undecided between the longing to go in at once and
that of lengthening this appetizing promenade. Then when the woman, after
desperate efforts, had brought the sailor to the threshold of her abode, in
which the entire band would be swallowed up after him, Célestin Duclos,
who was a judge of houses of this sort, suddenly exclaimed: “Don’t go in
there, Marchand! That’s not the place.”
The man, thereupon, obeying this direction, freed himself with a brutal
shake; and the comrades formed themselves into a band once more, pursued
by the filthy insults of the exasperated wench, while other women, all along
the alley, in front of them, came out past their doors, attracted by the noise,
and in hoarse voices threw out to them invitations coupled with promises.
They went on, then, more and more stimulated, from the combined effects of
the coaxings and the seductions held out as baits to them by the choir of
portresses of love all over the upper part of the street, and the ignoble
maledictions hurled at them by the choir at the lower end — the despised
choir of disappointed wenches. From time to time, they met another band —
soldiers marching along with spurs jingling at their heels — sailors again —
isolated citizens — clerks in business houses. On all sides might be seen
fresh streets, narrow, and studded all over with those equivocal lanterns.
They pursued their way still through this labyrinth of squalid habitation, over
those greasy pavements through which putrid water was oozing, between
those walls filled with women’s flesh.
At last, Duclos made up his mind, and, drawing up before a house of
rather attractive exterior, made all his companions follow him in there.

PART II

Then followed a scene of thorough going revelry. For four hours the six
sailors gorged themselves with love and wine. Six months’ pay was thus
wasted.
In the principal room in the tavern they were installed as masters, gazing
with malignant glances at the ordinary customers, who were seated at the
little tables in the corners, where one of the girls, who was left free to come
and go, dressed like a big baby or a singer at a café-concert, went about
serving them, and then seated herself near them. Each man, on coming in, had
selected his partner, whom he kept all the evening, for the vulgar taste is not
changeable. They had drawn three tables close up to them; and, after the first
bumper, the procession divided into two parts, increased by as many women
as there were seamen, had formed itself anew on the staircase. On the
wooden steps, the four feet of each couple kept tramping for some time,
while this long file of lovers got swallowed up behind the narrow doors
leading into the different rooms.
Then they came down again to have a drink, and, after they had returned to
the rooms descended the stairs once more.
Now, almost intoxicated, they began to howl. Each of them, with
bloodshot eyes, and his chosen female companion on his knee, sang or
bawled, struck the table with his fist, shouted while swilling wine down his
throat, set free the human brute. In the midst of them, Célestin Duclos,
pressing close to him, a big damsel with red cheeks, who sat astride over his
legs, gazed at her ardently. Less tipsy than the others, not that he had taken
less drink, he was as yet occupied with other thoughts, and, more tender than
his comrades, he tried to get up a chat. His thoughts wandered a little,
escaped him, and then came back, and disappeared again, without allowing
him to recollect exactly what he meant to say.
“What time — what time — how long are you here?”
“Six months,” the girl answered.
He seemed to be satisfied with her, as if this were a proof of good
conduct, and he went on questioning her:
“Do you like this life?”
She hesitated, then in a tone of resignation.
“One gets used to it. It is not more worrying than any other kind of life. To
be a servant-girl or else a scrub is always a nasty occupation.”
He looked as if he also approved of the truthful remark.
“You are not from this place?” said he.
She answered merely by shaking her head.
“Do you come from a distance?”
She nodded, still without opening her lips.
“Where is it you come from?”
She appeared to be thinking, to be searching her memory, then said
falteringly:
 “From Perpignan.”
He was once more perfectly satisfied, and said:
“Ah! yes.”
In her turn she asked:
“And you, are you a sailor?”
“Yes, my beauty.”
“Do you come from a distance?”
“Ah! yes. I have seen countries, ports, and everything.”
“You have been round the world, perhaps?”
“I believe you, twice rather than once.”
Again she seemed to hesitate, to search in her brain for something that she
had forgotten, then, in a tone somewhat different, more serious:
“Have you met many ships in your voyages?”
“I believe you, my beauty.”
“You did not happen to see the Notre Dame des Vents?”
He chuckled:
“No later than last week.”
She turned pale, all the blood leaving her cheeks, and asked:
“Is that true, perfectly true?”
“’Tis true as I tell you.”
“Honor bright! you are not telling me a lie?”
He raised his hand.
“Before God, I’m not!” said he.
“Then do you know whether Célestin Duclos is still on her?”
He was astonished, uneasy, and wished, before answering, to learn
something further.
“Do you know him?”
She became distrustful in turn.
“Oh! ’tis not myself— ’tis a woman who is acquainted with him.”
“A woman from this place?”
“No, from a place not far off.”
“In the street?”
“What sort of a woman?”
“Why, then, a woman — a woman like myself.”
“What has she to say to him, this woman?”
“I believe she is a country-woman of his.”
 They stared into one another’s hand, watching one another, feeling,
divining that something of a grave nature was going to arise between them.
He resumed:
“I could see her there, this woman.”
“What would you say to her?”
“I would say to her — I would say to her — that I had seen Célestin
Duclos.”
“He is quite well — isn’t he?”
“As well as you or me — he is a strapping young fellow.”
She became silent again, trying to collect her ideas; then slowly:
“Where has the Notre Dame des Vents gone to?”
“Why, just to Marseilles.”
She could not repress a start.
“Is that really true?”
“’Tis really true.”
“Do you know Duclos?”
“Yes, I do know him.”
She still hesitated; then in a very gentle tone:
“Good! That’s good!”
“What do you want with him?”
“Listen! — you will tell him — nothing!”
He stared at her, more and more perplexed. At last, he put this question to
her:
“Do you know him, too, yourself?”
“No,” said she.
“Then what do you want with him?”
Suddenly, she made up her mind what to do, left her seat, rushed over to
the bar where the landlady of the tavern presided, seized a lemon, which she
tore open, and shed its juice into a glass, then she filled this glass with pure
water, and carrying it across to him:
“Drink this!”
“Why?”
“To make it pass for wine. I will talk to you afterwards.”
He drank it without further protest, wiped his lips with the back of his
hand, then observed:
“That’s all right. I am listening to you.”
 “You will promise not to tell him you have seen me, or from whom you
learned what I am going to tell you. You must swear not to do so.”
He raised his hand.
“All right. I swear I will not.”
“Before God?”
“Before God.”
“Well, you will tell him that his father died, that his mother died, that his
brother died, the whole three in one month, of typhoid fever, in January, 1883
— three years and a half ago.”
In his turn, he felt all his blood set in motion through his entire body, and
for a few seconds he was so much overpowered that he could make no reply;
then he began to doubt what she had told him, and asked:
“Are you sure?”
“I am sure.”
“Who told it to you?”
She laid her hands on his shoulders, and looking at him out of the depths
of her eyes:
“You swear not to blab?”
“I swear that I will not.”
“I am his sister!”
He uttered that name in spite of himself:
“Francoise?”
She contemplated him once more with a fixed stare, then, excited by a
wild feeling of terror, a sense of profound horror, she faltered in a very low
tone, almost speaking into his mouth:
“Oh! oh! it is you, Célestin.”
They no longer stirred, their eyes riveted in one another.
Around them, his comrades were still yelling. The sounds made by
glasses, by fists, by heels keeping time to the choruses, and the shrill cries of
the women, mingled with the roar of their songs.
He felt her leaning on him, clasping him, ashamed and frightened, his
sister. Then, in a whisper, lest anyone might hear him, so hushed that she
could scarcely catch his words:
“What a misfortune! I have made a nice piece of work of it!”
The next moment, her eyes filled with tears, and she faltered:
“Is that my fault?”
But, all of a sudden, he said:
 “So then, they are dead?”
“They are dead.”
“The father, the mother, and the brother?”
“The three in one month, and I told you. I was left by myself with nothing
but my clothes, for I was in debt to the apothecary and the doctor and for the
funeral of the three, and had to pay what I owed with the furniture.”
“After that I went as a servant to the house of Mait’e Cacheux — you
know him well — the cripple. I was just fifteen at the time, for you went
away when I was not quite fourteen. I tripped with him. One is so senseless
when one is young. Then I went as a nursery-maid to the notary who
debauched me also, and brought me to Havre, where he took a room for me.
After a little while, he gave up coming to see me. For three days I lived
without eating a morsel of food; and then, not being able to get employment, I
went to a house, like many others. I, too, have seen different places — ah!
and dirty places! Rouen, Evreux, Lille, Bordeaux, Perpignan, Nice, and then
Marseilles, where I am now!”
The tears started from her eyes, flowed over her nose, wet her cheeks, and
trickled into her mouth.
She went on:
“I thought you were dead, too? — my poor Cèlestin.”
He said:
“I would not have recognized you myself — you were such a little thing
then, and here you are so big! — but how is it that you did not recognize
me?”
She answered with a despairing movement of her hands:
“I see so many men that they all seem to me alike.”
He kept his eyes still fixed on her intently, oppressed by an emotion that
dazed him, and filled him with such pain as to make him long to cry like a
little child that has been whipped. He still held her in his arms, while she sat
astride on his knees, with his open hands against the girl’s back; and now by
sheer dint of looking continually at her, he at length recognized her, the little
sister left behind in the country with all those whom she had seen die, while
he had been tossing on the seas. Then, suddenly taking between his big
seaman’s paws this head found once more, he began to kiss her, as one kisses
kindred flesh. And after that, sobs, a man’s deep sobs, heaving like great
billows, rose up in his throat, resembling the hiccoughs of drunkenness.
He stammered:
 “And this is you — this is you, Francoise — my little Francoise!” —
Then, all at once, he sprang up, began swearing in an awful voice, and
struck the table such a blow with his fists that the glasses were knocked
down and smashed. After that, he advanced three steps, staggered, stretched
out his arms, and fell on his face. And he rolled on the ground, crying out,
beating the floor with his hands and feet, and uttering such groans that they
seemed like a death-rattle.
All those comrades of his stared at him, and laughed.
“He’s not a bit drunk,” said one.
“He ought to be put to bed,” said another. “If he goes out, we’ll all be run
in together.”
Then, as he had money in his pockets, the landlady offered to let him have
a bed, and his comrades, themselves so much intoxicated that they could not
stand upright, hoisted him up the narrow stairs to the apartment of the woman
who had just been in his company, and who remained sitting on a chair, at the
foot of that bed of crime, weeping quite as freely as he had wept, until the
morning dawned.
 THE HERMIT

We had gone to see, with some friends, the old hermit installed on an antique
mound covered with tall trees, in the midst of the vast plain which extends
from Cannes to La Napoule.
On our return we spoke of those strange lay solitaries, numerous in former
times, but now a vanished race. We sought to find out the moral causes, and
endeavored to determine the nature of the griefs which in bygone days had
driven men into solitudes.
All of a sudden one of our companions said:
“I have known two solitaries — a man and a woman. The woman must be
living still. She dwelt, five years ago, on the ruins of a mountain top
absolutely deserted on the coast of Corsica, fifteen or twenty kilometers
away from every house. She lived there with a maid-servant. I went to see
her. She had certainly been a distinguished woman of the world. She
received me with politeness and even in a gracious manner, but I know
nothing about her, and I could find out nothing about her.
“As for the man, I am going to relate to you his ill-omened adventure:

Look round! You see over there that peaked woody mountain which stands
by itself behind La Napoule in front of the summits of the Esterel; it is called
in the district Snake Mountain. There is where my solitary lived within the
walls of a little antique temple about a dozen years ago.
Having heard about him, I resolved to make his acquaintance, and I set out
for Cannes on horseback one March morning. Leaving my steed at the inn at
La Napoule, I commenced climbing on foot that singular cave, about one
hundred and fifty perhaps, or two hundred meters in height, and covered with
aromatic plants, especially cysti, whose odor is so sharp and penetrating that
it irritates you and causes you discomfort. The soil is stony, and you can see
gliding over the pebbles long adders which disappear in the grass. Hence
this well-deserved appellation of Snake Mountain. On certain days, the
reptiles seem to spring into existence under your feet when you climb the
declivity exposed to the rays of the sun. They are so numerous that you no
longer venture to go on, and experience a strange sense of uneasiness, not
fear, for those creatures are harmless, but a sort of mysterious terror. I had
several times the peculiar sensation of climbing a sacred mountain of
antiquity, a fantastic hill perfumed and mysterious, covered with cysti and
inhabited by serpents and crowned with a temple.
This temple still exists. They told me, at any rate, that it was a temple; for
I did not seek to know more about it so as not to destroy the illusion.
So then, one March morning, I climbed up there under the pretext of
admiring the country. On reaching the top, I perceived, in fact, walls and a
man sitting on a stone. He was scarcely more than forty years of age, though
his hair was quite white; but his beard was still almost black. He was
fondling a cat which had cuddled itself upon his knees, and did not seem to
mind me. I took a walk around the ruins, one portion of which covered over
and shut in by means of branches, straw, grass and stones, was inhabited by
him, and I made my way towards the place which he occupied.
The view here is splendid. On the right is the Esterel with its peaked
summit strangely carved, then the boundless sea stretching as far as the
distant coast of Italy with its numerous capes, facing Cannes, the Lerins
Islands green and flat, which look as if they were floating, and the last of
which shows in the direction of the open sea an old castellated fortress with
battlemented towers built in the very waves.
Then, commanding a view of green mountain-side where you could see, at
an equal distance, like innumerable eggs laid on the edge of the shore the
long chaplet of villas and white villages built among the trees rose the Alps,
whose summits are still shrouded in a hood of snow.
I murmured:
“Good heavens, this is beautiful!”
The man raised his head, and said:
“Yes, but when you see it every day, it is monstrous.”
Then he spoke, he chatted, and tired himself with talking — my solitary, I
detained him.
I did not tarry long that day, and only endeavored to ascertain the color of
misanthropy. He created on me especially the impression of being bored with
other people, weary of everything, hopelessly disillusioned and disgusted
with himself as well as the rest.
I left him after a half-hour’s conversation. But I came back, eight hours
later, and once again in the following week, then every week, so that before
two months we were friends.
Now, one evening at the close of May, I decided that the moment had
arrived, and I brought provisions in order to dine with him on Snake
Mountain.
It was one of those evenings of the South so odorous in that country where
flowers are cultivated just as wheat is in the North, in that country where
every essence that perfumes the flesh and the dress of women is
manufactured, one of those evenings when the breath of the innumerable
orange-trees with which the gardens and all the recesses of the dales are
planted, excite and cause languor so that old men have dreams of love.
My solitary received me with manifest pleasure. He willingly consented
to share in my dinner.
I made him drink a little wine, to which he had ceased to be accustomed.
He brightened up and began to talk about his past life. He had always resided
in Paris, and had, it seemed to me, lived a gay bachelor’s life.
I asked him abruptly:
“What put into your head this funny notion of going to live on the top of a
mountain?”
He answered immediately:
“Her! it was because I got the most painful shock that a man can
experience. But why hide from you this misfortune of mine? It will make you
pity me, perhaps! And then — I have never told anyone — never — and I
would like to know, for once, what another thinks of it, and how he judges
it.”
“Born in Paris, brought up in Paris, I grew to manhood and spent my life
in that city. My parents had left me an income of some thousands of francs a
year, and I procured as a shelter, a modest and tranquil place which enabled
me to pass as wealthy for a bachelor.
“I had, since my youth, led a bachelor’s life. You know what that is. Free
and without family, resolved not to take a legitimate wife, I passed at one
time three months with one, at another time six months with another, then a
year without a companion, taking as my prey the mass of women who are
either to be had for the asking or bought.
“This every day, or, if you like the phrase better, commonplace, existence
agreed with me, satisfied my natural tastes for changes and silliness. I lived
on the boulevard, in theaters and cafés, always out of doors, always without
a regular home, though I was comfortably housed. I was one of those
thousands of beings who let themselves float like corks, through life, for
whom the walls of Paris are the walls of the world, and who have no care
about anything, having no passion for anything. I was what is called a good
fellow, without accomplishments and without defects. That is all. And I judge
myself correctly.
“Then, from twenty to forty years, my existence flowed along slowly or
rapidly without any remarkable event. How quickly they pass, the monstrous
years of Paris, when none of those memories worth fixing the date of find
way into the soul, these long and yet hurried years, trivial and gay, when you
eat, drink and laugh without knowing why, your lips stretched out towards all
they can taste and all they can kiss, without having a longing for anything.
You are young, and you grow old without doing any of the things that others
do, without any attachment, any root, any bond, almost without friends,
without family, without wife, without children.
“So, gently and quickly, I reached my fortieth year; and in order to
celebrate this anniversary, I invited myself to take a good dinner all alone in
one of the principal cafés.
“After dinner, I was in doubt as to what I would do. I felt disposed to go
to a theater; and then the idea came into my head to make a pilgrimage to the
Latin quarters, where I had in former days lived as a law-student. So I made
my way across Paris, and without premeditation went in to one of those
public-houses where you are served by girls.
“The one who attended at my table was quite young, pretty, and merry-
looking. I asked her to take a drink, and she at once consented. She sat down
opposite me, and gazed at me with a practiced eye, without knowing with
what kind of a male she had to do. She was a fair-haired woman, or rather a
fair-haired girl, a fresh, quite fresh young creature, whom you guessed to be
rosy and plump under her swelling bodice. I talked to her in that flattering
and idiotic style which we always adopt with girls of this sort; and as she
was truly charming, the idea suddenly occurred to me to take her with me —
always with a view to celebrating my fortieth year. It was neither a long nor
difficult task. She was free, she told me, for the past fortnight, and she
forthwith accepted my invitation to come and sup with me in the Halles when
her work would be finished.
“As I was afraid lest she might give me the slip — you never can tell what
may happen, or who may come into those drink-shops, or what wind may
blow into a woman’s head — I remained there all the evening waiting for
her.
“I, too, had been free for the past month or two, and watching this pretty
debutante of love going from table to table, I asked myself the question
whether it would not be worth my while to make a bargain with her to live
with me for some time. I am here relating to you one of those ordinary
adventures which occur every day in the lives of men in Paris.
“Excuse me for such gross details. Those who have not loved in a poetic
fashion take and choose women, as you choose a chop in a butcher’s shop
without caring about anything save the quality of their flesh.
“Accordingly, I took her to her own house — for I had a regard for my
own sheets. It was a little working-girl’s lodgings in the fifth story, clean and
poor, and I spent two delightful hours there. This little girl had a certain
grace and a rare attractiveness.
“When I was about to leave the room, I advanced towards the mantelpiece
in order to place there the stipulated present, after having agreed on a day for
a second meeting with the girl, who remained in bed, I got a vague glimpse of
a clock without a globe, two flower-vases and two photographs, one of them
very old, one of those proofs on glass called daguerreo-types. I carelessly
bent forward towards this portrait, and I remained speechless at the sight, too
amazed to comprehend.... It was my own, the first portrait of myself, which I
had got taken in the days when I was a student in the Latin Quarter.
“I abruptly snatched it up to examine it more closely. I did not deceive
myself — and I felt a desire to burst out laughing, so unexpected and queer
did the thing appear to me.
“I asked:
“‘Who is this gentleman?’
“She replied:
“’Tis my father, whom I did not know. Mamma left it to me, telling me to
keep it, as it might be useful to me, perhaps, one day— ‘
“She hesitated, began to laugh, and went on:
“‘I don’t know in what way, upon my word. I don’t think he’ll care to
acknowledge me.’
“My heart went beating wildly, like the mad gallop of a runaway horse. I
replaced the portrait, laying it down flat on the mantelpiece. On top of it I
placed, without even knowing what I was doing, two notes for a hundred
francs, which I had in my pocket, and I rushed away, exclaiming:
 “‘We’ll meet again soon — by-bye, darling — by-bye.’
“I heard her answering:
“‘Till Tuesday.’
“I was on the dark staircase, which I descended, groping my way down.
“When I got into the open air, I saw that it was raining, and I started at a
great pace down some street or other.
“I walked straight on, stupefied, distracted, trying to jog my memory! Was
this possible? Yes. I remembered all of a sudden a girl who had written to
me, about a month after our rupture, that she was going to have a child by me.
I had torn or burned the letter, and had forgotten all about the matter. I should
have looked at the woman’s photograph over the girl’s mantelpiece. But
would I have recognized it? It was the photograph of an old woman, it
seemed to me.
“I reached the quay. I saw a bench, and sat down on it. It went on raining.
People passed from time to time under umbrellas. Life appeared to me
odious and revolting, full of miseries, of shames, of infamies deliberate or
unconscious. My daughter!... I had just perhaps possessed my own daughter!
And Paris, this vast Paris, somber, mournful, dirty, sad, black, with all those
houses shut up, was full of such things, adulteries, incests, violated children,
I recalled to mind what I had been told about bridges haunted by the infamous
votaries of vice.
“I had acted, without wishing it, without being aware of it, in a worse
fashion than these ignoble beings. I had entered my own daughter’s bed!
“I was on the point of throwing myself into the water. I was mad! I
wandered about till dawn, then I came back to my own house to think.
“I thereupon did what appeared to me the wisest thing. I desired a notary
to send for this little girl, and to ask her under what conditions her mother
had given her the portrait of him whom she supposed to be her father, stating
that he was intrusted with this duty by a friend.
“The notary executed my commands. It was on her death-bed that this
woman had designated the father of her daughter, and in the presence of a
priest, whose name was given to me.
“Then, still in the name of this unknown friend, I got half of my fortune
sent to this child, about one hundred and forty thousand francs, of which she
could only get the income. Then I resigned my employment — and here I am.
“While wandering along this shore, I found this mountain, and I stopped
there — up to what time I am unable to say!
 “What do you think of me, and of what I have done?”
I replied as I extended my hand towards him:
“You have done what you ought to do. Many others would have attached
less importance to this odious fatality.”
He went on:
“I know that, but I was nearly going mad on account of it. It seems I had a
sensitive soul without ever suspecting it. And now I am afraid of Paris, as
believers are bound to be afraid of Hell. I have received a blow on the head
— that is all — a blow resembling the fall of a tile when one is passing
through the street. I am getting better for some time past.”
I quitted my solitary. I was much disturbed by his narrative.
I saw him again twice, then I went away, for I never remain in the South
after the month of May.
When I came back in the following year the man was no longer on Snake
Mountain; and I have never since heard anything about him.
This is the history of my hermit.
 THE ORDERLY

The cemetery, filled with officers, looked like a field covered with flowers.
The kepis and the red trousers, the stripes and the gold buttons, the shoulder-
knots of the staff, the braid of the chasseurs and the hussars, passed through
the midst of the tombs, whose crosses, white or black, opened their mournful
arms — their arms of iron, marble, or wood — over the vanished race of the
dead.
Colonel Limousin’s wife had just been buried. She had been drowned,
two days before, while taking a bath. It was over. The clergy had left; but the
colonel, supported by two brother-officers, remained standing in front of the
pit, at the bottom of which he saw still the oaken coffin, wherein lay, already
decomposed, the body of his young wife.
He was almost an old man, tall and thin, with white moustache; and, three
years ago, he had married the daughter of a comrade, left an orphan on the
death of her father, Colonel Sortis.
The captain and the lieutenant, on whom their commanding officer was
leaning, attempted to lead him away. He resisted, his eyes full of tears, which
he heroically held back, and murmuring, “No, no, a little while longer!” he
persisted in remaining there, his legs bending under him, at the side of that
pit, which seemed to him bottomless, an abyss into which had fallen his heart
and his life, all that he held dear on earth.
Suddenly, General Ormont came up, seized the colonel by the arm, and
dragging him from the spot almost by force said: “Come, come, my old
comrade! you must not remain here.”
The colonel thereupon obeyed, and went back to his quarters. As he
opened the door of his study, he saw a letter on the table. When he took it in
his hands, he was near falling with surprise and emotion; he recognized his
wife’s handwriting. And the letter bore the post-mark and the date of the
same day. He tore open the envelope and read:
“Father,
“Permit me to call you still father, as in days gone by. When you receive
this letter, I shall be dead and under the clay. Therefore, perhaps, you may
forgive me.
“I do not want to excite your pity or to extenuate my sin. I only want to tell
the entire and complete truth, with all the sincerity of a woman who, in an
hour’s time, is going to kill herself.
“When you married me through generosity, I gave myself to you through
gratitude, and I loved you with all my girlish heart. I loved you as I loved my
own father — almost as much; and one day, while I sat on your knee, and you
were kissing me, I called you ‘Father’ in spite of myself. It was a cry of the
heart, instinctive, spontaneous. Indeed, you were to me a father, nothing but a
father. You laughed, and you said to me, ‘Address me always in that way, my
child; it gives me pleasure.’
“We came to the city; and — forgive me, father — I fell in love. Ah! I
resisted long, well, nearly two years — and then I yielded, I sinned, I
became a fallen woman.
“And as to him? You will never guess who he is. I am easy enough about
that matter, since there were a dozen officers always around me and with me,
whom you called my twelve constellations.
“Father, do not seek to know him, and do not hate him. He only did what
any man, no matter whom, would have done in his place, and then I am sure
that he loved me, too, with all his heart.
“But listen! One day we had an appointment in the isle of Becasses — you
know the little isle, close to the mill. I had to get there by swimming, and he
had to wait for me in a thicket, and then to remain there till nightfall, so that
nobody should see him going away. I had just met him when the branches
opened, and we saw Philippe, your orderly, who had surprised us. I felt that
we were lost, and I uttered a great cry. Thereupon he said to me — he, my
lover— ‘Go, swim back quietly, my darling, and leave me here with this
man.’
“I went away so excited that I was near drowning myself, and I came back
to you expecting that something dreadful was about to happen.
“An hour later, Philippe said to me in a low tone, in the lobby outside the
drawing-room where I met him: ‘I am at madame’s orders, if she has any
letters to give me.’ Then I knew that he had sold himself, and that my lover
had bought him.
“I gave him some letters, in fact — all my letters — he took them away,
and brought me back the answers.
 “This lasted about two months. We had confidence in him, as you had
confidence in him yourself.
“Now, father, here is what happened. One day, in the same isle which I
had to reach by swimming, but this time alone, I found your orderly. This man
had been waiting for me; and he informed me that he was going to reveal
everything about us to you, and deliver to you the letters which he had kept,
stolen, if I did not yield to his desires.
“Oh! father, father, I was filled with fear — a cowardly fear, an unworthy
fear, a fear above all of you who had been so good to me, and whom I had
deceived — fear on his account too — you would have killed him — for
myself also perhaps! I cannot tell; I was mad, desperate; I thought of once
more buying this wretch who loved me, too — how shameful!
“We are so weak, we women, we lose our heads more easily than you do.
And then, when a woman once falls, she always falls lower and lower. Did I
know what I was doing? I understood only that one of you two and I were
going to die — and I gave myself to this brute.
“You see, father, that I do not seek to excuse myself.
“Then, then — then what I should have foreseen happened — he had the
better of me again and again, when he wished, by terrifying me. He, too, has
been my lover, like the other, every day. Is not this abominable? And what
punishment, father?
“So then it is all over with me. I must die. While I lived, I could not
confess such a crime to you. Dead, I dare everything. I could not do
otherwise than die — nothing could have washed me clean — I was too
polluted. I could no longer love or be loved. It seemed to me that I stained
everyone by merely allowing my hand to be touched.
“Presently I am going to take my bath, and I will never come back.
“This letter for you will go to my lover. It will reach him when I am dead,
and without anyone knowing anything about it, he will forward it to you,
accomplishing my last wishes. And you shall read it on your return from the
cemetery.
“Adieu, father! I have no more to tell you. Do whatever you wish, and
forgive me.”
The colonel wiped his forehead, which was covered with perspiration.
His coolness; the coolness of days when he had stood on the field of battle,
suddenly came back to him. He rang.
 A man-servant made his appearance. “Send in Philippe to me,” said he.
Then, he opened the drawer of his table.
The man entered almost immediately — a big soldier with red moustache,
a malignant look, and a cunning eye.
The colonel looked him straight in the face.
“You are going to tell me the name of my wife’s lover.”
“But, my colonel— “
The officer snatched his revolver out of the half-open drawer.
“Come! quick! You know I do not jest!”
“Well — my colonel — it is Captain Saint-Albert.”
Scarcely had he pronounced this name when a flame flashed between his
eyes, and he fell on his face, his forehead pierced by a ball.
 DUCHOUX

While descending the wide staircase of the club heated like a conservatory
by the stove the Baron de Mordiane had left his fur-coat open; therefore,
when the huge street-door closed behind him he felt a shiver of intense cold
run through him, one of those sudden and painful shivers which make us feel
sad, as if we were stricken with grief. Moreover, he had lost some money,
and his stomach for some time past had troubled him, no longer permitting
him to eat as he liked.
He went back to his own residence; and, all of a sudden, the thought of his
great, empty apartment, of his footman asleep in the ante-chamber, of the
dressing-room in which the water kept tepid for the evening toilet simmered
pleasantly under the chafing-dish heated by gas, and the bed, spacious,
antique, and solemn-looking, like a mortuary couch, caused another chill,
more mournful still than that of the icy atmosphere, to penetrate to the bottom
of his heart, the inmost core of his flesh.
For some years past he had felt weighing down on him that load of
solitude which sometimes crushes old bachelors. Formerly, he had been
strong, lively, and gay, giving all his days to sport and all his nights to festive
gatherings. Now, he had grown dull, and no longer took pleasure in anything.
Exercise fatigued him; suppers and even dinners made him ill; women
annoyed him as much as they had formerly amused him.
The monotony of evenings all like each other, of the same friends met
again in the same place, at the club, of the same game with a good hand and a
run of luck, of the same talk on the same topics, of the same witty remarks by
the same lips, of the same jokes on the same themes, of the same scandals
about the same women, disgusted him so much as to make him feel at times a
veritable inclination to commit suicide. He could no longer lead this life
regular and inane, so commonplace, so frivolous and so dull at the same
time, and he felt a longing for something tranquil, restful, comfortable,
without knowing what.
He certainly did not think of getting married, for he did not feel in himself
sufficient fortitude to submit to the melancholy, the conjugal servitude, to that
hateful existence of two beings, who, always together, knew one another so
well that one could not utter a word which the other would not anticipate,
could not make a single movement which would not be foreseen, could not
have any thought or desire or opinion which would not be divined. He
considered that a woman could only be agreeable to see again when you
know her but slightly, when there is something mysterious and unexplored
attached to her, when she remains disquieting, hidden behind a veil.
Therefore, what he would require was a family without family-life, wherein
he might spend only a portion of his existence; and, again, he was haunted by
the recollection of his son.
For the past year he had been constantly thinking of this, feeling an
irritating desire springing up within him to see him, to renew acquaintance
with him. He had become the father of this child, while still a young man, in
the midst of dramatic and touching incidents. The boy dispatched to the
South, had been brought up near Marseilles without ever hearing his father’s
name.
The latter had at first paid from month to month for the nurture, then for the
education and the expense of holidays for the lad, and finally had provided
an allowance for him on making a sensible match. A discreet notary had
acted as an intermediary without ever disclosing anything.
The Baron de Mordiane accordingly knew merely that a child of his was
living somewhere in the neighborhood of Marseilles, that he was looked
upon as intelligent and well-educated, that he had married the daughter of an
architect and contractor, to whose business he had succeeded. He was also
believed to be worth a lot of money.
Why should he not go and see this unknown son without telling his name,
in order to form a judgment about him at first and to assure himself that he
would be able, in case of necessity, to find an agreeable refuge in this
family?
He had acted handsomely towards the young man, had settled a good
fortune on him, which had been thankfully accepted. He was, therefore,
certain that he would not find himself clashing against any inordinate sense of
self-importance; and this thought, this desire, which every day returned to
him afresh, of setting out for the South, tantalized him like a kind of itching
sensation. A strange self-regarding feeling of affection also attracted him,
bringing before his mental vision this pleasant, warm abode by the seaside,
where he would meet his young and pretty daughter-in-law, his
grandchildren, with outstretched arms, and his son, who would recall to his
memory the charming and short-lived adventure of bygone years. He
regretted only having given so much money, and that this money had
prospered in the young man’s hands, thus preventing him from any longer
presenting himself in the character of a benefactor.
He hurried along, with all these thoughts running through his brain, and the
collar of his fur-coat wrapped round his head. Suddenly he made up his
mind. A cab was passing; he hailed it, drove home, and, when his valet, just
roused from a nap, had opened the door.
“Louis,” said he, “we start to-morrow evening for Marseilles. We’ll
remain there perhaps a fortnight. You will make all the necessary
preparations.”
The train rushed on past the Rhone with its sandbanks, then through
yellow plains, bright villages, and a wide expanse of country, shut in by bare
mountains, which rose on the distant horizon.
The Baron de Mordiane, waking up after a night spent in a sleeping
compartment of the train, looked at himself, in a melancholy fashion, in the
little mirror of his dressing-case. The glaring sun of the South showed him
some wrinkles which he had not observed before — a condition of
decrepitude unnoticed in the imperfect light of Parisian rooms. He thought, as
he examined the corners of his eyes, and saw the rumpled lids, the temples,
the skinny forehead:
“Damn it, I’ve not merely got the gloss taken off — I’ve become quite an
old fogy.”
And his desire for rest suddenly increased, with a vague yearning, born in
him for the first time, to take his grandchildren on his knees.
About one o’clock in the afternoon, he arrived in a landau which he had
hired at Marseilles, in front of one of those houses of Southern France so
white, at the end of their avenues of plane-trees that they dazzle us and make
our eyes droop. He smiled as he pursued his way along the walk before the
house, and reflected:
“Deuce take it! this is a nice place.”
Suddenly, a young rogue of five or six made his appearance, starting out of
a shrubbery, and remained standing at the side of the path, staring at the
gentleman with eyes wide open.
Mordiane came over to him:
“Good morrow, my boy.”
 The brat made no reply.
The baron, then, stooping down, took him up in his arms to kiss him, but,
the next moment, suffocated by the smell of garlic with which the child
seemed impregnated all over, he put him back again on the ground, muttering:
“Oh! it is the gardener’s son.”
And he proceeded towards the house.
The linen was hanging out to dry on a cord before the door — shirts and
chemises, napkins, dish-cloths, aprons, and sheets, while a row of socks,
hanging from strings one above the other, filled up an entire window, like
sausages exposed for sale in front of a pork-butcher’s shop.
The baron announced his arrival. A servant-girl appeared, a true servant
of the South, dirty and untidy, with her hair hanging in wisps and falling over
her face, while her petticoat under the accumulation of stains which had
soiled it had retained only a certain uncouth remnant of its old color, a hue
suitable for a country fair or a mountebank’s tights.
He asked:
“Is M. Duchoux at home?”
He had many years ago, in the mocking spirit of a skeptical man of
pleasure, given this name to the foundling, in order that it might not be
forgotten that he had been picked up under a cabbage.
The servant-girl asked:
“Do you want M. Duchoux?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he is in the big room drawing up his plans.”
“Tell him that M. Merlin wishes to speak to him.”
She replied, in amazement:
“Hey! go inside then, if you want to see him.”
And she bawled out:
“Monsieur Duchoux — a call.”
The baron entered, and in a spacious apartment, rendered dark by the
windows being half-closed, he indistinctly traced out persons and things,
which appeared to him very slovenly looking.
Standing in front of a table laden with articles of every sort, a little bald
man was tracing lines on a large sheet of paper.
He interrupted his work, and advanced two steps. His waistcoat left open,
his unbuttoned breeches, and his turned-up shirt-sleeves, indicated that he felt
hot, and his muddy shoes showed that it had rained hard some days before.
 He asked with a very pronounced southern accent:
“Whom have I the honor of — ?”
“Monsieur Merlin — I came to consult you about a purchase of building-
ground.”
“Ha! ha! very well!”
And Duchoux, turning towards his wife, who was knitting in the shade:
“Clear off a chair, Josephine.”
Mordiane then saw a young woman, who appeared already old, as women
look old at twenty-five in the provinces, for want of attention to their
persons, regular washing, and all the little cares bestowed on feminine toilet
which make them fresh, and preserve, till the age of fifty, the charm and
beauty of the sex. With a neckerchief over her shoulders, her hair clumsily
braided — though it was lovely hair, thick and black, you could see that it
was badly brushed — she stretched out towards a chair hands like those of a
servant, and removed an infant’s robe, a knife, a fag-end of packe-bread, an
empty flower-pot, and a greasy plate left on the seat, which she then moved
over towards the visitor.
He sat down, and presently noticed that Duchoux’s work-table had on it,
in addition to the books and papers, two salads recently gathered, a wash-
hand basin, a hair-brush, a napkin, a revolver, and a number of cups which
had not been cleaned.
The architect perceived this look, and said with a smile:
“Excuse us! there is a little disorder in the room — it is owing to the
children.”
And he drew across his chair, in order to chat with his client.
“So then you are looking out for a piece of ground in the neighborhood of
Marseilles?”
His breath, though not close to the baron, carried towards the latter that
odor of garlic which the people of the South exhale as flowers do their
perfume.
Mordiane asked:
“Is it your son that I met under the plane-trees?”
“Yes. Yes, the second.”
“You have two of them?”
“Three, monsieur; one a year.”
And Duchoux looked full of pride.
The baron was thinking:
 “If they all have the same perfume, their nursery must be a real
conservatory.”
He continued:
“Yes, I would like a nice piece of ground near the sea, on a little solitary
strip of beach— “
Thereupon Duchoux proceeded to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a
hundred, or more, pieces of ground of the kind required, at different prices
and suited to different tastes. He talked just as a fountain flows, smiling, self-
satisfied, wagging his bald round head.
And Mordiane was reminded of a little woman, fair-haired, slight, with a
somewhat melancholy look, and a tender fashion of murmuring, “My
darling,” of which the mere remembrance made the blood stir in his veins.
She had loved him passionately, madly, for three months; then, becoming
pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was a governor of a colony, she
had run away and concealed herself, distracted with despair and terror, till
the birth of the child, which Mordiane carried off one summer’s evening, and
which they had not laid eyes on afterwards.
She died of consumption three years later, over there, in the colony of
which her husband was governor, and to which she had gone across to join
him. And here, in front of him, was their son, who was saying, in the metallic
tones with which he rang out his closing words:
“This piece of ground, monsieur, is a rare chance— “
And Mordiane recalled the other voice, light as the touch of a gentle
breeze, as it used to murmur:
“My darling, we shall never part— “
And he remembered that soft, deep, devoted glance in those eyes of blue,
as he watched the round eye, also blue, but vacant, of this ridiculous little
man, who, for all that, bore a resemblance to his mother.
Yes, he looked more and more like her every moment — like her in
accent, in movement, in his entire deportment — he was like her in the way
an ape is like a man; but still he was hers; he displayed a thousand external
characteristics peculiar to her, though in an unspeakably distorted, irritating,
and revolting form.
The baron was galled, haunted as he was all of a sudden by this
resemblance, horrible, each instant growing stronger, exasperating,
maddening, torturing him like a nightmare, like a weight of remorse.
He stammered out:
 “When can we look at this piece of ground together?”
“Why, to-morrow, if you like.”
“Yes, to-morrow. At what hour?”
“One o’clock.”
“All right.”
The child he had met in the avenue appeared before the open door,
exclaiming:
“Dada!”
There was no answer.
Mordiane had risen up with a longing to escape, to run off, which made
his legs tremble. This “dada” had hit him like a bullet. It was to him that it
was addressed, it was intended for him, this “dada,” smelling of garlic —
this “dada” of the South.
Oh! how sweet had been the perfume exhaled by her, his sweetheart of
bygone days!
Duchoux saw him to the door.
“This house is your own?” said the baron.
“Yes, monsieur; I bought it recently. And I am proud of it. I am a child of
accident, monsieur, and I don’t want to hide it; I am proud of it. I owe nothing
to anyone; I am the son of my own efforts; I owe everything to myself.”
The little boy, who remained on the threshold, kept still exclaiming,
though at some distance away from them:
“Dada!”
Mordiane, shaking with a shivering fit, seized with panic, fled as one flies
away from a great danger.
“He is going to guess who I am, to recognize me,” he thought. “He is going
to take me in his arms, and to call out to me, ‘Dada,’ while giving me a kiss
perfumed with garlic.”
“To-morrow, monsieur.”
“To-morrow, at one o’clock.”
The landau rolled over the white road.
“Coachman! to the railway-station!”
And he heard two voices, one far away and sweet, the faint, sad voice of
the dead, saying: “My darling,” and the other sonorous, sing-song, frightful,
bawling out, “Dada,” just as people bawl out, “Stop him!” when a thief is
flying through the street.
Next evening, as he entered the club, the Count d’Etreillis said to him:
“We have not seen you for the last three days. Have you been ill?”
“Yes, a little unwell. I get headaches from time to time.”
 RELICS OF THE PAST

My dear Colette, — I do not know whether you remember a verse of M.

Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed in
my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very often
reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it is:
“To be born, to live, and die in the same house.”
I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I have lived,
and where I hope to die. It is not gay every day, but it is pleasant; for there I
have souvenirs all around me.
My son Henri is a barrister; he comes to see me twice a year. Jeanne is
living with her husband at the other end of France, and it is I who go to see
her each autumn. So here I am, all, all alone, but surrounded by familiar
objects which incessantly speak to me about my own people, the dead, and
the living separated from me by distance.
I no longer read much; I am too old for that; but I am constantly thinking,
or rather dreaming. I do not dream as I used to do long ago. You may recall to
mind any wild fancies, the adventures our brains concocted when we were
twenty, and all the horizons of happiness that dawned upon us!
Nothing out of all our dreaming has been realized, or rather it is quite a
different thing that has happened, less charming, less poetic, but sufficient for
those who know how to accept their lot in this world bravely.
Do you know why we women are so often unhappy? It is because we are
taught in our youth to believe too much in happiness! We are never brought up
with the idea of fighting, of striving, of suffering. And, at the first shock, our
hearts are broken; we look forward, with blind faith, to cascades of fortunate
events. What does happen is at best but a partial happiness, and thereupon
we burst out sobbing. Happiness, the real happiness that we dream of, I have
come to know what that is. It does not consist in the arrival of great bliss, for
any great bliss that falls to our share is to be found in the infinite expectation
of a succession of joys to which we never attain. Happiness is happy
expectation; it is the horizon of hope; it is, therefore, endless illusion; and,
old as I am, I create illusions for myself still, in fact, every day I live; only
their object is changed, my desires being no longer the same. I have told you
that I spend my brightest hours in dreaming. What else should I do?
I have two ways of doing this. I am going to tell you what they are; they
may perhaps prove useful to you.
Oh! the first is very simple; it consists in sitting down before my fire in a
low armchair made soft for my old bones, and looking back at the things that
have been put aside.
One life is so short, especially a life entirely spent in the same spot:
“To be born, to live, and die in the same house.”
The things that bring back the past to our recollection are heaped, pressed
together; and, we are old, it sometimes seems no more than ten days since we
were young. Yes; everything slips away from us, as if life itself were but a
single day: morning, evening, and then comes night — a night without a
dawn!
When I gaze into the fire, for hours and hours, the past rises up before me
as though it were but yesterday. I no longer think of my present existence;
reverie carries me away; once more I pass through all the changes of my life.
And I often am possessed by the illusion that I am a young girl, so many
breaths of bygone days are wafted back to me, so many youthful sensations
and even impulses, so many throbbings of my young heart — all the
passionate ardor of eighteen; and I have clear, as fresh realities, visions of
forgotten things. Oh! how vividly, above all, do the memories of my walks as
a young girl come back to me! There, in the armchair of mine, before the fire,
I saw once more, a few nights since, a sunset on Mont Saint-Michel, and
immediately afterwards I was riding on horseback through the forest of
Uville with the odors of the damp sand and of the flowers steeped in dew,
and the evening star sending its burning reflection through the water and
bathing my face in its rays as I galloped through the copse. And all I thought
of then, my poetic enthusiasm at the sight of the boundless sea, my keen
delight at the rustling of the branches as I passed, my most trivial
impressions, every fragment of thought, desire, or feeling, all, all came back
to me as if I were there still, as if fifty years had not glided by since then, to
chill my blood and moderate my hopes. But my other way of reviving the
long ago is much better.
You know, or you do not know, my dear Colette, that we destroy nothing in
the house. We have upstairs, under the roof, a large room for cast-off things
which we call “the lumber-room.” Everything which is no longer used is
thrown there. I often go up there, and gaze around me. Then I find once more
a heap of nothings that I had ceased to think about, and that recalled a heap of
things to my mind. They are not those beloved articles of furniture which we
have known since our childhood and to which are attached recollections of
events of joys or sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being
intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a
physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house, the
only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones that will
not die, like the others — those whose features, whose loving eyes, whose
lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find instead among the
medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old insignificant objects which
have hung on by our side for forty years without ever having been noticed by
us, and which, when we suddenly lay eyes on them again, have somehow the
importance, the significance of relics of the past. They produce on my mind
the effect of those people — whom we have known for a very long time
without ever having seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden,
some evening, quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable
talk, and tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of
which we had never even suspected the existence.
And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in my
heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself: “See there! I
broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;” or else, “Ah! there is mamma’s
little lantern, which she used to carry with her going to her evening devotions
on dark winter nights.” There are even things in this room which have no
story to tell me, which have come down from my grandparents, things
therefore, whose history and adventures are utterly unknown to those who are
living to-day, and whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen
the hands that used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These
are the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my
mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear
Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my
simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and you
Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal echoes of one’s
own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your thoughts in the open.
Living alone as I do, I can only speak about myself. When you are answering
this letter, tell me a little about yourself, that I may also be able to put myself
in your place, as you will be able to put yourself in mine to-morrow.
But you will never completely understand M. de Sainte Beuve’s verse:
“To be born, to live, and to die in one house.”
A thousand kisses, my old friend,
Adelaide.
 THE PEDDLER

How many trifling occurrences, things which have left only a passing
impression on our minds, humble dramas of which we have got a mere
glimpse so that we have to guess at or suspect their real nature, are, while we
are still young and inexperienced, threads, so to speak, guiding us, step by
step, towards a knowledge of the painful truth!
Every moment, when I am retracing my steps during the long wandering
reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I saunter at
random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little incidents of a gay or
sinister character which, emerging from the shades of the past, flit before my
memory as the birds flit through the bushes before my eyes.
This summer, I wandered along a road in Savoy which commands a view
of the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, and, while my glance floated over
that mass of water, mirror-like and blue, with a unique blue, pale, tinted with
glittering beams by the setting sun, I felt my heart stirred by that attachment
which I have had since my childhood for the surface of lakes, for rivers, and
for the sea. On the opposite bank of the vast liquid plate, so wide that you did
not see the ends of it, one vanishing in the Rhone, and the other in the
Bourget, rose the high mountain, jagged like a crest up to the topmast peak of
the “Cats’s Tooth.” On either side of the road, vines, trailing from tree to
tree, choked under their leaves their slender supporting branches, and they
extended in garlands through the fields, green, yellow, and red garlands,
festooning from one trunk to the other, and spotted with clusters of dark
grapes.
The road was deserted, white, and dusty. All of a sudden, a man emerged
out of the thicket of large trees which shuts in the village of Saint-Innocent,
and, bending under a load, he came towards me, leaning on a stick.
When he had come closer to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one
of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door, selling
paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long ago arose up in
my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection simply of an accidental
meeting I had one night between Argenteuil and Paris when I was twenty-
one.
All the happiness of my life, at this period, was derived from boating. I
had taken a room in an obscure inn at Argenteuil, and, every evening, I took
the Government clerks’ train, that long slow train which, in its course, sets
down at different stations a crowd of men with little parcels, fat and heavy,
for they scarcely walk at all, so that their trousers are always baggy owing to
their constant occupation of the office-stool. This train, in which it seemed to
me I could even sniff the odor of the writing-desk, of official documents and
boxes, deposited me at Argenteuil. My boat was waiting for me, ready to
glide over the water. And I rapidly plied my oar so that I might get out and
dine at Bezons or Chatou or Epinay or Saint-Ouen. Then I came back, put up
my boat, and made my way back on foot to Paris with the moon shining down
on me.
Well, one night on the white road I perceived just in front of me a man
walking. Oh! I was constantly meeting those night travelers of the Parisian
suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went on slowly
before me with a heavy load on his shoulders.
I came right up to him by quickening my pace so much that my footsteps
rang on the road. He stopped and turned round; then, as I kept approaching
nearer and nearer, he crossed to the opposite side of the road.
As I rapidly passed him, he called out to me:
“Hallo! good evening, monsieur.”
I responded:
“Good evening, mate.”
He went on:
“Are you going far?”
“I am going to Paris.”
“You won’t be long getting there; you’re going at a good pace. As for me,
I have too big a load on my shoulders to walk so quickly.”
I slackened my pace. Why had this man spoken to me? What was he
carrying in this big pack? Vague suspicions of crime sprang up in my mind,
and rendered me curious. The columns of the newspapers every morning
contain so many accounts of crimes committed in this place, the peninsula of
Gennevilliers, that some of them must be true. Such things are not invented
merely to amuse readers — all this catalogue of arrests and varied misdeeds
with which the reports of the law courts are filled.
 However, this man’s voice seemed rather timid than bold, and up to the
present his manner had been more discreet than aggressive.
In my turn I began to question him:
“And you — are you going far?”
“Not farther than Asnieres.”
“Is Asnieres your place of abode?”
“Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres.”
He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the daytime
under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle of the road. I
followed his example. We kept staring at each other suspiciously, each of us
holding his stick in his hand. When I was sufficiently close to him, I felt less
distrustful. He evidently was disposed to assume the same attitude towards
me, for he asked:
“Would you mind going a little more slowly?”
“Why do you say this?”
“Because I don’t care for this road by night. I have goods on my back, and
two are always better than one. When two men are together, people don’t
attack them.”
I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I yielded to his
wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side, this stranger and I, at one
o’clock in the morning, along the road leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.
“Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?” I asked my
companion.
He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this evening, as
he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods to last him three
or four days. But he had been so fortunate in disposing of them that he found
it necessary to get back to his abode without delay in order to deliver next
day a number of things which had been bought on credit.
He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the
business very well, having a tendency to talk confidentially, and that the
knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid, while gossiping,
of other things which he could not easily sell.
He added:
“I have a shop in Asnieres. ’Tis my wife keeps it.”
“Ah! So you’re married?”
“Yes, m’sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice wife.
She’ll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night.”
 He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this young
girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.
She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a street,
where she sold all sorts of things — ribbons, flowers in summer, and
principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other gewgaws, in which,
owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a speciality. She was well-
known in Asnieres as “La Bluette.” This name was given to her because she
often dressed in blue. And she made money, as she was very skillful in
everything she did. His impression was that she was not very well at the
present moment; he believed she was in the family way, but he was not quite
sure. Their business was prospering; and he traveled about exhibiting
samples to all the small traders in the adjoining districts. He had become a
sort of traveling commission-agent for some of the manufacturers, working at
the same time for them and for himself.
“And you — what are you,” he said.
I answered him with an air of embarrassment. I explained that I had a
sailing-boat and two yawls in Argenteuil, that I came for a row every
evening, and that, as I was fond of exercise, I sometimes walked back to
Paris, where I had a profession, which — I led him to infer — was a
lucrative one.
He remarked:
“Faith, if I had spondulics like you, I wouldn’t amuse myself by trudging
that way along the roads at night— ’Tisn’t safe along here.”
He gave me a sidelong glance, and I asked myself whether he might not all
the same, be a criminal of the sneaking type who did not want to run any
fruitless risk.
Then he restored my confidence when he murmured:
“A little less quickly, if you please. This pack of mine is heavy.”
The sight of a group of houses showed that we had reached Asnieres.
“I am nearly at home,” he said. “We don’t sleep in the shop; it is watched
at night by a dog, but a dog who is worth four men. And then it costs too
much to live in the center of the town. But listen to me, monsieur! You have
rendered me a precious service, for I don’t feel my mind at ease when I’m
traveling with my pack along the roads. Well, now you must come in with me,
and drink a glass of mulled wine with my wife if she hasn’t gone to bed, for
she is a sound sleeper, and doesn’t like to be waked up. Besides, I’m not a
bit afraid without my pack, and so I’ll see you to the gates of the city with a
cudgel in my hand.”
I declined the invitation; he insisted on my coming in; I still held back; he
pressed me with so much eagerness, with such an air of real disappointment,
such expressions of deep regret — for he had the art of expressing himself
very forcibly — asking me in the tone of one who felt wounded “whether I
objected to have a drink with a man like him,” that I finally gave way and
followed him up a lonely road towards one of those big dilapidated houses
which are to be found on the outskirts of suburbs.
In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster looked
like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands. But he
pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go in before
him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound darkness,
towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands and feet, with
a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some gaping cellar.
When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: “Go on up! ’Tis the
sixth story.”
I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted the way
up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack, repeating:
“Tis high! ’tis high!”
When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his
inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he made me
enter.
It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six chairs, and
a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.
“I am going to wake up my wife,” he said; “then I am going down to the
cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn’t keep here.”
He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment,
and exclaimed:
“Bluette! Bluette!” Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder tone:
“Bluette! Bluette!”
Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: “Will you wake
up in God’s name?”
He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer tone:
“Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I’ll go and get the wine: wait a
couple of minutes for me.”
He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.
 What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start, for I
heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly, almost
noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.
Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this woman —
this Bluette — not been awakened by the loud knocking of her husband at the
doorway leading into her room; could it have been merely a signal conveying
to accomplices: “There’s a mouse in the trap! I’m going to look out to
prevent him escaping. ’Tis for you to do the rest!”
Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I heard
the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated towards the
further end of the apartment, saying to myself: “I must make a fight of it!” and,
catching hold of the back of a chair with both hands, I prepared for a
desperate struggle.
The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a
head, a man’s head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the folding-
doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly that I had not
time to make a single movement by way of defense, the individual, the
supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare feet with his shoes in his
hands, a good looking chap, I must admit — half a gentleman, in fact, made a
dash for the outer door, and rushed down the stairs.
I resumed my seat. The adventure was assuming a humorous aspect. And I
waited for the husband, who took a long time fetching the wine. At last I
heard him coming up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps made me laugh,
with one of those solitary laughs which it is hard to restrain.
He entered with two bottles in his hands. Then he asked me:
“Is my wife still asleep? You didn’t hear her stirring — did you?”
I knew instinctively that there was an ear pasted against the other side of
the partition-door, and I said: “No, not at all.”
And now he again called out:
“Pauline!”
She made no reply, and did not even move.
He came back to me, and explained:
“You see, she doesn’t like me to come home at night, and take a drop with
a friend.”
“So then you believe she was not asleep?”
He wore an air of dissatisfaction.
“Well, at any rate,” he said, “let us have a drink together.”
 And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one
after the other without more ado.
This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I
rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen
scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute
whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife’s sleeping
apartment, he muttered:
“She’ll have to open that door when you’ve gone.”
I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without
knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the
deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to
me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going to beat her.
He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
“Pauline!”
A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from behind
the partition:
“Eh! what?”
“Didn’t you hear me coming in?”
“No, I was asleep! Let me rest.”
“Open the door!”
“Yes, when you’re alone. I don’t like you to be bringing home fellows at
night to drink with you.”
Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man, of
whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my journey
toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that wretched abode a
scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every day, under every form,
and among every class.
 THE OLIVE GROVE

WHEN the ‘longshoremen of Garandou, a little port of Provence, situated

in the bay of Pisca, between Marseilles and Toulon, perceived the boat of the
Abbé Vilbois entering the harbor, they went down to the beach to help him
pull her ashore.
The priest was alone in the boat. In spite of his fifty-eight years, he rowed
with all the energy of a real sailor. He had placed his hat on the bench beside
him, his sleeves were rolled up, disclosing his powerful arms, his cassock
was open at the neck and turned over his knees, and he wore a round hat of
heavy, white canvas. His whole appearance bespoke an odd and strenuous
priest of southern climes, better fitted for adventures than for clerical duties.
He rowed with strong and measured strokes, as if to show the southern
sailors how the men of the north handle the oars, and from time to time he
turned around to look at the landing point.
The skiff struck the beach and slid far up, the bow plowing through the
sand; then it stopped abruptly. The five men watching for the abbé drew near,
jovial and smiling.
“Well!” said one, with the strong accent of Provence, “have you been
successful, Monsieur le Curé?’ The abbé drew in the oars, removed his
canvas head-covering, put on his hat, pulled down his sleeves, and buttoned
his coat. Then having assumed the usual appearance of a village priest, he
replied proudly: “Yes, I have caught three red-snappers, two eels, and five
sunfish.”
The fishermen gathered around the boat to examine, with the air of
experts, the dead fish, the fat red-snappers, the flat-headed eels, those
hideous sea-serpents, and the violet sunfish, streaked with bright orange-
colored stripes.
Said one: “I’ll carry them up to your house, Monsieur le Curé.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Having shaken hands all around, the priest started homeward, followed by
the man with the fish; the others took charge of the boat.
 The Abbé Vilbois walked along slowly with an air of dignity. The
exertion of rowing had brought beads of perspiration to his brow and he
uncovered his head each time that he passed through the shade of an olive
grove. The warm evening air, freshened by a slight breeze from the sea,
cooled his high forehead covered with short, white hair, a forehead far more
suggestive of an officer than of a priest.
The village appeared, built on a hill rising from a large valley which
descended toward the sea.
It was a summer evening. The dazzling sun, traveling toward the ragged
crests of the distant hills, outlined on the white, dusty road the figure of the
priest, the shadow of whose three-cornered hat bobbed merrily over the
fields, sometimes apparently climbing the trunks of the olive-trees, only to
fall immediately to the ground and creep among them.
With every step he took, he raised a cloud of fine, white dust, the invisible
powder which, in summer, covers the roads of Provence; it clung to the edge
of his cassock turning it grayish white. Completely refreshed, his hands deep
in his pockets, he strode along slowly and ponderously, like a mountaineer.
His eyes were fixed on the distant village where he had lived twenty years,
and where he hoped to die. Its church — his church — rose above the houses
clustered around it; the square turrets of gray stone, of unequal proportions
and quaint design, stood outlined against the beautiful southern valley; and
their architecture suggested the fortifications of some old château rather than
the steeples of a place of worship.
The abbé was happy; for he had caught three red-snappers, two eels, and
five sunfish. It would enable him to triumph again over his flock, which
respected him, no doubt, because he was one of the most powerful men of the
place, despite his years. These little innocent vanities were his greatest
pleasures. He was a fine marksman; sometimes he practiced with his
neighbor, a retired army provost who kept a tobacco shop; he could also
swim better than anyone along the coast.
In his day he had been a well-known society man, the Baron de Vilbois,
but had entered the priesthood after an unfortunate love-affair. Being the
scion of an old family of Picardy, devout and royal istic, whose sons for
centuries had entered the army, the magistracy, or the Church, his first thought
was to follow his mother’s advice and become a priest. But he yielded to his
father’s suggestion that he should study law in Paris and seek some high
office.
 While he was completing his studies his father was carried off by
pneumonia; his mother, who was greatly affected by the loss, died soon
afterward. He came into a fortune, and consequently gave up the idea of
following a profession to live a life of idleness. He was handsome and
intelligent, but somewhat prejudiced by the traditions and principles which
he had inherited, along with his muscular frame, from a long line of
ancestors.
Society gladly welcomed him and he enjoyed himself after the fashion of a
well-to-do and seriously inclined young man. But it happened that a friend
introduced him to a young actress, a pupil of the Conservatoire, who was
appearing with great success at the Odéon. It was a case of love at first sight.
His sentiment had all the violence, the passion of a man born to believe in
absolute ideas. He saw her act the romantic rôle in which she had achieved a
triumph the first night of her appearance. She was pretty, and, though
naturally perverse, possessed the face of an angel.
She conquered him completely; she transformed him into a delirious fool,
into one of those ecstatic idiots whom a woman’s look will forever chain to
the pyre of fatal passions. She became his mistress and left the stage. They
lived together four years, his love for her increasing during the time. He
would have married her in spite of his proud name and family traditions, had
he not discovered that for a long time she had been unfaithful to him with the
friend who had introduced them.
The awakening was terrible, for she was about to become a mother, and
he was awaiting the birth of the child to make her his wife.
When he held the proof of her transgressions, — some letters found in a
drawer, — he confronted her with his knowledge and reproached her with all
the savageness of his uncouth nature for her unfaithfulness and deceit. But
she, a child of the people, being as sure of this man as of the other, braved
and insulted him with the inherited daring of those women, who, in times of
war, mounted with the men on the barricades.
He would have struck her to the ground — but she showed him her form.
As white as death, he checked himself, remembering that a child of his would
soon be born to this vile, polluted creature. He rushed at her to crush them
both, to obliterate this double shame. Reeling under his blows, and seeing
that he was about to stamp out the life of her unborn babe, she realized that
she was lost. Throwing out her hands to parry the blows, she cried:
“Do not kill me! It is his, not yours!”
 He fell back, so stunned with surprise that for a moment his rage subsided.
He stammered:
“What? What did you say?”
Crazed with fright, having read her doom in his eyes and gestures, she
repeated: “It’s not yours, it’s his.”
Through his clenched teeth he stammered:
“The child?”
“Yes.”
“You lie!”
And again he lifted his foot as if to crush her, while she struggled to her
knees in a vain attempt to rise. “I tell you it’s his. If it was yours, wouldn’t it
have come much sooner?”
He was struck by the truth of this argument. In a moment of strange
lucidity, his mind evolved precise, conclusive, irresistible reasons to
disclaim the child of this miserable woman, and he felt so appeased, so
happy at the thought, that he decided to let her live.
He then spoke in a calmer voice: “Get up and leave, and never let me see
you again.”
Quite cowed, she obeyed him and went. He never saw her again.
Then he left Paris and came south. He stopped in a village situated in a
valley, near the coast of the Mediterranean. Selecting for his abode an inn
facing the sea, he lived there eighteen months in complete seclusion, nursing
his sorrow and despair. The memory of the unfaithful one tortured him; her
grace, her charm, her perversity haunted him, and withal came the regret of
her caresses.
He wandered aimlessly in those beautiful vales of Provence, baring his
head, filled with the thoughts of that woman, to the sun that filtered through
the grayish-green leaves of the olive-trees.
His former ideas of religion, the abated ardor of his faith, returned to him
during his sorrowful retreat. Religion had formerlv seemed a refuge from the
unknown temptations of life, now it appeared as a refuge from its snares and
tortures. He had never given up the habit of prayer. In his sorrow, he turned
anew to its consolations, and often at dusk he would wander into the little
village church, where in the darkness gleamed the light of the lamp hung
above the altar, to guard the sanctuary and symbolize the Divine Presence.
He confided his sorrow to his God, told Him of his misery, asking advice,
pity, help, and consolation. Each day, his fervid prayers disclosed stronger
faith.
The bleeding heart of this man, crushed by love for a woman, still longed
for affection; and soon his prayers, his seclusion, his constant communion
with the Savior who consoles and cheers the weary, wrought a change in him,
and the mystic love of God entered his soul, casting out the love of the flesh.
He then decided to take up his former plans and to devote his life to the
Church.
He became a priest. Through family connections he succeeded in
obtaining a call to the parish of this village which he had come across by
chance. Devoting a large part of his fortune to the maintenance of charitable
institutions, and keeping only enough to enable him to help the poor as long
as he lived, he sought refuge in a quiet life filled with prayer and acts of
kindness toward his fellow-men.
Narrow-minded but kind-hearted, a priest with a soldier’s temperament,
he guided his blind, erring flock forcibly through the mazes of this life in
which every taste, instinct, and desire is a pitfall. But the old man in him
never disappeared entirely. He continued to love out-of-door exercise and
noble sports, but he hated every woman, having an almost childish fear of
their dangerous fascination.

II.

The sailor who followed the priest, being a southerner, found it difficult to
refrain from talking. But he did not dare start a conversation, for the abbé
exerted a great prestige over his flock. At last he ventured a remark: “So you
like your lodge, do you, Monsieur le Curé?”
This lodge was one of the tiny constructions that are inhabited during the
summer by the villagers and the town people alike. It was situated in a field
not far from the parish-house, and the abbé had hired it because the latter was
very small and built in the heart of the village next to the church.
During the summer time, he did not live altogether at the lodge, but would
remain a few days at a time to practice pistol-shooting and be close to nature.
“Yes, my friend,” said the priest, “I like it very well.”
The low structure could now be seen; it was painted pink, and the walls
were almost hidden under the leaves and branches of the olive-trees that
grew in the open field. A tall woman was passing in and out of the door,
setting a small table at which she placed, at each trip, a knife and fork, a
glass, a plate, a napkin, and a piece of bread. She wore the small cap of the
women of Arles, a pointed cone of silk or black velvet, decorated with a
white rosette.
When the abbé was near enough to make himself heard, he shouted:
“Eh! Marguerite!”
She stopped to ascertain whence the voice came, and recognizing her
master: “Oh! it’s you, Monsieur le Curé!”
“Yes. I have caught some fine fish, and want you to broil this sunfish
immediately, do you hear?”
The servant examined, with a critical and approving glance, the fish that
the sailor carried.
“Yes, but we are going to have a chicken for dinner,” she said.
“Well, it cannot be helped. To-morrow the fish will not be as fresh as it is
now. I mean to enjoy a little feast — it does not happen often — and the sin
is not great.”
The woman picked out a sunfish and prepared to go into the house. “Ah!”
she said, “a man came to see you three times while you were out, Monsieur
le Curé.”
Indifferently he inquired: “A man! What kind of man?”
“Why, a man whose appearance was not in his favor.”
“What! a beggar?”
“Perhaps — I don’t know. But I think he is more of a ‘maoufatan.’”
The abbé smiled at this word, which, in the language of Provence means a
highwayman, a tramp, for he was well aware of Marguerite’s timidity, and
knew that every day and especially every night she fancied they would be
murdered.
He handed a few sous to the sailor, who departed. And just as he was
saying: “I am going to wash my hands,” — for his past dainty habits still
clung to him, — Marguerite called to him from the kitchen where she was
scraping the fish with a knife, thereby detaching its blood-stained, silvery
scales:
“There he comes!”
The abbé looked down the road and saw a man coming slowly toward the
house; he seemed poorly dressed, indeed, so far as he could distinguish. He
could not help smiling at his servant’s anxiety, and thought, while he waited
for the stranger: “I think, after all, she is right; he does look like a
‘maoufatan.’”
 The man walked slowly, with his eyes on the priest and his hands buried
deep in his pockets. He was young and wore a full, blond beard; strands of
curly hair escaped from his soft felt hat, which was so dirty and battered that
it was impossible to imagine its former color and appearance. He was
clothed in a long, dark overcoat, from which emerged the frayed edge of his
trousers; on his feet were bathing shoes that deadened his steps, giving him
the stealthy walk of a sneak thief.
When he had come within a few steps of the priest, he doffed, with a
sweeping motion, the ragged hat that shaded his brow. He was not bad
looking, though his face showed signs of dissipation and the top of his head
was bald, an indication of premature fatigue and debauch, for he certainly
was not over twenty-five years old.
The priest responded at once to his bow, feeling that this fellow was not
an ordinary tramp, a mechanic out of work, or a jail-bird, hardly able to
speak any other tongue but the mysterious language of prisons.
“How do you do, Monsieur le Curé?” said the man. The priest answered
simply, “I salute you,” unwilling to address this ragged stranger as
“Monsieur.” They considered each other attentively; the abbé felt
uncomfortable under the gaze of the tramp, invaded by a feeling of unrest
unknown to him.
At last the vagabond continued: “Well, do you recognize me?”
Greatly surprised, the priest answered: “Why, no, you are a stranger to
me.”
“Ah! you do not know me? Look at me well.”
“I have never seen you before.”
“Well, that may be true,” replied the man sarcastically, “but let me show
you some one whom you will know better.”
He put on his hat and unbuttoned his coat, revealing his bare chest. A red
sash wound around his spare frame held his trousers in place. He drew an
envelope from his coat pocket, one of those soiled wrappers destined to
protect the sundry papers of the tramp, whether they be stolen or legitimate
property, those papers which he guards jealously and uses to protect himself
against the too zealous gendarmes. He pulled out a photograph about the size
of a folded letter, one of those pictures which were popular long ago; it was
yellow and dim with age, for he had carried it around with him everywhere
and the heat of his body had faded it.
Pushing it under the abbé’s eyes, he demanded: “Do you know him?”
 The priest took a step forward to look and grew pale, for it was his own
likeness that he had given Her years ago.
Failing to grasp the meaning of the situation ha remained silent.
The tramp repeated:
“Do you recognize him?”
And the priest stammered: “Yes.”
“Who is it?”
“It is I.”
“It is you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, look at us both, — at me and at your picture!”
Already the unhappy man had seen that these two beings, the one in the
picture and the one by his side, resembled each other like brothers; yet he did
not understand, and muttered: “Well, what is it you wish?”
Then in an ugly voice, the tramp replied: “What do I wish? Why, first I
wish you to recognize me.”
“Who are you?”
“Who am I? Ask anybody by the roadside, ask your servant, let’s go and
ask the mayor and show him this; and he will laugh, I tell you that! Ah! you
will not recognize me as your son, papa curé?” The old man raised his arms
above his head, with a patriarchal gesture, and muttered despairingly: “It
cannot be true!”
The young fellow drew quite close to him.
“Ah! It cannot be true, you say! You must stop lying, do you hear?” His
clenched fists and threatening face, and the violence with which he spoke,
made the priest retreat a few steps, while he asked himself anxiously which
one of them was laboring under a mistake.
Again he asserted: “I never had a child.”
The other man replied: “And no mistress, either?’’ The aged priest
resolutely uttered one word, a proud admission:
“Yes.”
“And was not this mistress about to give birth to a child when you left
her?”
Suddenly the anger which had been quelled twenty-five years ago, not
quelled, but buried in the heart of the lover, burst through the wall of faith,
resignation, and renunciation he had built around it. Almost beside himself,
he shouted:
 “I left her because she was unfaithful to me and was carrying the child of
another man; had it not been for this, I should have killed both you and her,
sir!”
The young man hesitated, taken aback at the sincerity of this outburst. Then
he replied in a gentler voice:
“Who told you that it was another man’s child?”
“She told me herself and braved me.”
Without contesting this assertion the vagabond assumed the indifferent
tone of a loafer judging a case: “Well, then, mother made a mistake, that’s
all!” After his outburst of rage, the priest had succeeded in mastering himself
sufficiently to be able to inquire: “And who told you that you were my son?”
“My mother, on her deathbed, M’sieur le Curé. And then — this!” And he
held the picture under the eyes of the priest.
The old man took it from him; and slowly, with a heart bursting with
anguish, he compared this stranger with his faded likeness and doubted no
longer — it was his son.
An awful distress wrung his very soul, a terrible, inexpressible emotion
invaded him; it was like the remorse of some ancient crime. He began to
understand a little, he guessed the rest. He lived over the brutal scene of the
parting. It was to save her life, then, that the wretched and deceitful woman
had lied to him, her outraged lover. And he had believed her. And a son of
his had been brought into the world and had grown up to be this sordid
tramp, who exhaled the very odor of vice as a goat exhales its animal smell.
He whispered: “Will you take a little walk with me, so that we can
discuss these matters?”
The young man sneered: “Why, certainly! Isn’t that what I came for?”
They walked side by side through the olive grove. The sun had gone down
and the coolness of southern twilights spread an invisible cloak over the
country. The priest shivered, and raising his eyes with a familiar motion,
perceived the trembling gray foliage of the holy tree which had spread its
frail shadow over the Son of Man in His great trouble and despondency.
A short, despairing prayer rose within him, uttered by his soul’s voice, a
prayer by which Christians implore the Savior’s aid: “O Lord! have mercy
on me.”
Turning to his son he said: “So your mother is dead?”
These words, “Your mother is dead,” awakened a new sorrow; it was the
torment of the flesh which cannot forget, the cruel echo of past sufferings; but
mostly the thrill of the fleeting, delirious bliss of his youthful passion.
The young man replied: “Yes, Monsieur le Curé, my mother is dead.”
“Has she been dead a long while?”
“Yes, three years.”
A new doubt entered the priest’s mind. “And why did you not find me out
before?”
The other man hesitated.
“I was unable to, I was prevented. But excuse me for interrupting these
recollections — I will enter into more details later — for I have not had
anything to eat since yesterday morning.”
A tremor of pity shook the old man and holding forth both hands: “Oh! my
poor child!” he said.
The young fellow took those big, powerful hands in’his own slender and
feverish palms.
Then he replied, with that air of sarcasm which hardly ever left his lips:
“Ah! I’m beginning to think that we shall get along very well together, after
alll.”
The curé started toward the lodge.
“Let us go to dinner,” he said.
He suddenly remembered, with a vague and instinctive pleasure, the fine
fish he had caught, which, with the chicken, would make a good meal for the
poor fellow.
The servant was in front of the door, watching their approach with an
anxious and forbidding face.
“Marguerite,” shouted the abbé, “take the table and put it into the dining-
room, right away; and set two places, as quick as you can.”
The woman seemed stunned at the idea that her master was going to dine
with this tramp.
But the abbé, without waiting for her, removed the plate and napkin and
carried the little table into the dining-room.
A few minutes later he was sitting opposite the beggar, in front of a soup-
tureen filled with savory cabbage soup, which sent up a cloud of fragrant
steam.

III.
When the plates were filled, the tramp fell to with ravenous avidity. The
abbé had lost his appetite and ate slowly, leaving the bread in the bottom of
his plate. Suddenly he inquired:
“What is your name?”
The man smiled; he was delighted to satisfy his hunger.
“Father unknown,” he said, “and no other name but my mother’s, which
you probably remember. But I possess two Christian names, which, by the
way, are quite unsuited to me — Philippe-Auguste.”
The priest whitened.
“Why were you named thus?” he asked.
The tramp shrugged his shoulders. “I fancy you ought to know. After
mother left you, she wished to make your rival believe that I was his child.
He did believe it until I was about fifteen. Then I began to look too much like
you. And he disclaimed me, the scoundrel. I had been christened Philippe-
Auguste; now, if I had not resembled a soul, or if I had been the son of a third
person, who had stayed in the background, to-day I should be the Vicomte
Philippe-Auguste de Pravallon, son of the count and senator bearing this
name. I have christened myself ‘No-luck.’”
“How did you learn all this?”
“They discussed it before me, you know; pretty lively discussions they
were, too. I tell you, that’s what shows you the seamy side of life!”
Something more distressing than all he had suffered during the last half
hour now oppressed the priest. It was a sort of suffocation which seemed as
if it would grow and grow till it killed him; it was not due so much to the
things he heard as to the manner in which they were uttered by this wayside
tramp. Between himself and this beggar, between his son and himself, he was
discovering the existence of those moral divergencies which are as fatal
poisons to certain souls. Was this his son? He could not yet believe it. He
wanted all the proofs, every one of them. He wanted to hear all, to listen to
all. Again he thought of the olive-trees that shaded his little lodge, and for the
second time he prayed: “O Lord! have mercy upon me.”
Philippe-Auguste had finished his soup. He inquired: “Is there nothing
else, abbé?”
The kitchen was built in an annex. Marguerite could not hear her master’s
voice. He always called her by striking a Chinese gong hung on the wall
behind his chair. He took the brass hammer and struck the round metal plate.
It gave a feeble sound, which grew and vibrated, becoming sharper and
louder till it finally died away on the evening breeze.
The servant appeared with a frowning face and cast angry glances at the
tramp, as if her faithful instinct had warned her of the misfortune th:it had
befallen her master. She held a platter on which was the sunfish, spreading a
savory odor of melted butter through the room. The abbé divided the fish
lengthwise, helping his son to the better half: “I caught it a little while ago,”
he said, with a touch of pride in spite of his keen distress.
Marguerite had not left the room.
The priest added: “Bring us some wine, the white wine of Cape Corse.”
She almost rebelled, and the priest, assuming a severe expression was
obliged to repeat: “Now, go, and bring two bottles, remember,” for, when he
drank with anybody, a very rare pleasure, indeed, he always opened one
bottle for himself.
Beaming, Philippe-Auguste remarked: “Fine! A splendid ideal M: has
been a long time since I’ve had such a dinner,” The servant came back after a
few minutes. The abbé thought it an eternity, for now a thirst for information
burned his blood like infernal fire.
After the bottles had been opened, the woman still remained, her eyes
glued on the tramp.
“Leave us,” said the curé.
She intentionally ignored his command.
He repeated almost roughly: “I have ordered you to leave us.”
Then she left the room.
Philippe-Auguste devoured the fish voraciously, while his father sat
watching him, more and more surprised and saddened at all the baseness
stamped on the face that was so like his own. The morsels the abbé raised to
his lips remained in his mouth, for his throat could not swallow; so he ate
slowly, trying to choose, from the host of questions which besieged his mind,
the one he wished his son to answer first. At last he spoke:
“What was the cause of her death?”
“Consumption.”
“Was she ill a long time?”
“About eighteen months.”
“How did she contract it?”
“We could not tell.”
 Both men were silent. The priest was reflecting. He was oppressed by the
multitude of things he wished to know and to hear, for since the rupture, since
the day he had tried to kill her, he had heard nothing. Certainly, he had not
cared to know, because he had buried her, along with his happiest days, in
forgetfulness; but now, knowing that she was dead and gone, he felt within
himself the almost jealous desire of a lover to hear all.
He continued: “She was not alone, was she?”
“No, she lived with him.”
The old man started: “With him? With Pravallon?”
“Why, yes.”
And the betrayed man rapidly calculated that the woman who had
deceived him, had lived over thirty years with his rival.
Almost unconsciously he asked: “Were they happy?”
The young man sneered. “Why, yes, with ups and downs! It would have
been better had I not been there. I always spoiled everything.”
“How, and why?” inquired the priest.
“I have already told you. Because he thought I was his son up to my
fifteenth year. But the old fellow wasn’t a fool, and soon discovered the
likeness. That created scenes. I used to listen behind the door. He accused
mother of having deceived him. Mother would answer: ‘Is it my fault? you
knew quite well when you took me that I was the mistress of that other man.’
You were that other man.”
“Ah! They spoke of me sometimes?”
“Yes, but never mentioned your name before me, excepting toward the
end, when mother knew she was lost. I think they distrusted me.”
“And you — and you learned quite early the irregularity of your mother’s
position?”
“Why, certainly. I am not innocent and I never was. Those things are easy
to guess as soon as one begins to know life.”
Philippe-Auguste had been filling his glass repeatedly. His eyes now
were beginning to sparkle, for his long fast was favorable to the intoxicating
effects of the wine. The priest noticed it and wished to caution him. But
suddenly the thought that a drunkard is imprudent and loquacious flashed
through him, and lifting the bottle he again filled the young man’s glass.
Meanwhile Marguerite had brought the chicken.
Having set it on the table, she again fastened her eyes on the tramp, saying
in an indignant voice: “Can’t you see that he’s drunk, Monsieur le Curé?”
 “Leave us,” replied the priest, “and return to the kitchen.”
She went out, slamming the door.
He then inquired: “What did your mother say about me?”
“Why, what a woman usually says of a man she has jilted: that you were
hard to get along with, very strange, and that you would have made her life
miserable with your peculiar ideas.”
“Did she say that often?”
“Yes, but sometimes only in allusions, for fear I would understand; but
nevertheless I guessed all.”
“And how did they treat you in that house?”
“Me? They treated me very well at first and very badly afterward. When
mother saw that I was interfering with her, she shook me.”
“How?”
“How? very easily. When I was about sixteen years old, I got into various
scrapes, and those blackguards put me into a reformatory to get rid of me.”
He put his elbows on the table and rested his cheeks in his palms. He was
hopelessly intoxicated, and felt the unconquerable desire of all drunkards to
talk and boast about themselves.
He smiled sweetly, with a feminine grace, an arch grace the priest knew
and recognized as the hated charm that had won him long ago, and had also
wrought his undoing. Now it was his mother whom the boy resembled, not so
much because of his features, but because of his fascinating and deceptive
glance, and the seductiveness of the false smile that played around his lips,
the outlet of his inner ignominy.
Philippe-Auguste began to relate: “Ah! Ah! Ah!
—— I’ve had a fine life since I left the reformatory! A great writer
would pay a large sum for it! Why, old Père Dumas’s Monte Cristo has had
no strangei adventures than mine.”
He paused to reflect with the philosophical gravity of the drunkard, then
he continued slowly:
“When you wish a boy to turn out well, no matter what he has done, never
send him to a reformatory. The associations are too bad. Now, I got into a
bad scrape. One night about nine o’clock, I, with three companions — we
were all a little drunk —— was walking along the road near the ford of
Folac. All at once a wagon hove in sight, with the driver and his family
asleep in it. They were people from Martinon on their way home from town.
I caught hold of the bridle, led the horse to the ferryboat, made him walk into
it, and pushed the boat into the middle of the stream. This created some noise
and the driver awoke. He could not see in the dark, but whipped up the horse,
which started on a run and landed in the water with the whole load. All were
drowned! My companions denounced me to the authorities, though they
thought it was a good joke when they saw me do it. Really, we didn’t think
that it would turn out that way. We only wanted to give the people a ducking,
just for fun. After that I committed worse offenses to revenge myself for the
first one, which did not, on my honor, warrant the reformatory. But what’s the
use of telling them? I will speak only of the latest one, because I am sure it
will please you. Papa, I avenged you!”
The abbé was watching his son with terrified eyes; he had stopped eating.
Philippe-Auguste was preparing to begin. “No, not yet,” said the priest,
“in a little while.”
And he turned to strike the Chinese gong. Marguerite appeared almost
instantly. Her master addressed her in such a rough tone that she hung her
head, thoroughly frightened and obedient: “Bring in the lamp and the dessert,
and then do not appear until I summon you.”
She went out and returned with a porcelain lamp covered with a green
shade, and bringing also a large piece of cheese and some fruit.
After she had gone, the abbé turned resolutely to his son.
“Now I am ready to hear you.”
Philippe-Auguste calmly filled his plate with dessert and poured wine
into his glass. The second bottle was nearly empty, though the priest had not
touched it.
His mouth and tongue, thick with food and wine, the man stuttered: “Well,
now for the last job. And it’s a good one. I was home again, — stayed there
in spite of them, because they feared me, — yes, feared me. Ah! you can’t
fool with me, you know, — I’ll do anything, when I’m roused. They lived
together on and off. The old man had two residences. One official, for the
senator, the other clandestine, for the lover. Still, he lived more in the latter
than in the former, as he could not get along without mother. Mother was a
sharp one — she knew how to hold a man! She had taken him body and soul,
and kept him to the last! Well, I had come back and I kept them down by
fright. I am resourceful at times — nobody can match me for sharpness and
for strength, too — I’m afraid of no one. Well, mother got sick and the old
man took her to a fine place in the country, near Meulan, situated in a park as
big as a wood. She lasted about eighteen months, as I told you. Then we felt
the end to be near. He came from Paris every day — he was very miserable
— really.
“One morning they chatted a long time, over an hour, I think, and I could
not imagine what they were talking about. Suddenly mother called me in and
said:
“‘I am going to die, and there is something I want to tell you beforehand,
in spite of the Count’s advice.’ In speaking of him she always said ‘the
Count.’
‘It is the name of your father, who is alive.’ I had asked her this more than
fifty times — more than fifty times — my father’s name — more than fifty
times — and she always refused to tell. I think I even beat her one day to
make her talk, but it was of no use. Then, to get rid of me, she told me that
you had died penniless, that you were worthless and that she had made a
mistake in her youth, an innocent girl’s mistake. She lied so well, I really
believed you had died.
“Finally she said: ‘It is your father’s name.’
“The old man, who was sitting in an armchair, repeated three times, like
this: ‘You do wrong, you do wrong, you do wrong, Rosette.’
“Mother sat up in bed. I can see her now, with her flushed cheeks and
shining eyes; she loved me, in spite of everything; and she said: ‘Then you do
something for him, Philippe!’ In speaking to him she called him ‘Philippe’
and me ‘Auguste.’
“He began to shout like a madman: ‘Do something for that loafer — that
blackguard, that convict? never!’
“And he continued to call me names, as if he had done nothing else all his
life but collect them.
“I was angry, but mother told me to hold my tongue, and she resumed:
‘Then you must want him to starve, for you know that I leave no money.’
“Without being deterred, he continued: ‘Rosette, I have given you thirty-
five thousand francs a year for thirty years, — that makes more than a
million. I have enabled you to live like a wealthy, a beloved, and I may say, a
happy woman. I owe nothing to that fellow, who has spoiled our late years,
and he will not get a cent from me. It is useless to insist. Tell him the name of
his father, if you wish. I am sorry, but I wash my hands of him.’
“Then mother turned toward me. I thought: ‘Good! now I’m going to find
my real father — if he has money, I’m saved.’
 “She went on: ‘Your father, the Baron de Vilbois, is to-day the Abbé
Vilbois, curé of Garandou, near Toulon. He was my lover before I left him
for the Count!’
“And she told me all, excepting that she had deceived you about her
pregnancy. But women, you know, never tell the whole truth.”
Sneeringly, unconsciously, he was revealing the depths of his foul nature.
With beaming face he raised the glass to his lips and continued:
“Mother died two days — two days later. We followed her remains to the
grave, he and I — say — wasn’t it funny? — he and I — and three servants
— that was all. He cried like a calf — we were side by side — we looked
like father and son.
“Then he went back to the house alone. I was thinking to myself: ‘I’ll have
to clear out now and without a penny, too.’ I owned only fifty francs. What
could I do to revenge myself?
“He touched me on the arm and said: ‘I wish to speak to you.’ I followed
him into his office. He sat down in front of the desk and, wiping away his
tears, he told me that he would not be as hard on me as he had said he would
to mother. He begged me to leave you alone. That — that concerns only you
and me. He offered me a thousand-franc note —— a thousand — a thousand
francs. What could a fellow like me do with a thousand francs? — I saw that
there were very many bills in the drawer. The sight of the money made me
wild. I put out my hand as if to take the note he offered me, but instead of
doing so, I sprang at him, threw him to the ground and choked him till he
grew purple. When I saw that he was going to give up the ghost, I gagged and
bound him. Then I undressed him, laid him on his stomach and — ah! ah! ah!
— I avenged you in a funny way!”
He stopped to cough, for he was choking with merriment. His ferocious,
mirthful smile reminded the priest once more of the woman who had wrought
his undoing.
“And then?” he inquired.
“Then, — ah! ah! ah! — There was a bright fire in the fireplace — it was
in the winter — in December — mother died — a bright coal fire — I took
the poker — I let it get red-hot — and I made crosses on his back, eight or
more, I cannot remember how many — then I turned him over and repeated
them on his stomach. Say, wasn’t it funny, papa? Formerly they marked
convicts in this way. He wriggled like an eel — but I had gagged him so that
he couldn’t scream. I gathered up the bills — twelve in all — with mine it
made thirteen — an unlucky number. I left the house, after telling the servants
not to bother their master until dinner-time, because he was asleep.
I thought that he would hush the matter up because he was a senator and
would fear the scandal. I was mistaken. Four days later I was arrested in a
Paris restaurant. I got three years for the job. That is the reason why I did not
come to you sooner.” He drank again, and stuttering so as to render his words
almost unintelligible, continued:
“Now — papa — isn’t it funny to have one’s papa a curé? You must be
nice to me, very nice, because, you know, I am not commonplace, — and I
did a good job — didn’t I — on the old man?”
The anger which years ago had driven the Abbé Vilbois to desperation
rose within him at the sight of this miserable man.
He, who in the name of the Lord, had so often pardoned the infamous
secrets whispered to him under the seal of confession, was now merciless in
his own behalf. No longer did he implore the help of a merciful God, for he
realized that no power on earth or in the sky could save those who had been
visited by such a terrible disaster.
All the ardor of his passionate heart and of his violent blood, which long
years of resignation had tempered, awoke against the miserable creature who
was his son. He protested against the likeness he bore to him and to his
mother, the wretched mother who had formed him so like herself; and he
rebelled against the destiny that had chained this criminal to him, like an iron
ball to a galley-slave.
The shock roused him from the peaceful and pious slumber which had
lasted twenty-five years; with a wonderful lucidity he saw all that would
inevitably ensue.
Convinced that he must talk loud so as to intimidate this man from the
first, he spoke with his teeth clenched with fury:
“Now that you have told all, listen to me. You will leave here to-morrow
morning. You will go to a country that I shall designate, and never leave it
without my permission. I will give you a small income, for I am poor. If you
disobey me once, it will be withdrawn and you will learn to know me.”
Though Philippe-Auguste was half dazed with wine, he understood the threat.
Instantly the criminal within him rebelled. Between hiccoughs he sputtered:
“Ah! papa, be careful what you say — you’re a curé, remember — I hold you
— and you have to walk straight, like the rest!”
 The abbé started. Through his whole muscular frame crept the
unconquerable desire to seize this monster, to bend him like a twig, so as to
show him that he would have to yield.
Shaking the table, he shouted: “Take care, take care — I am afraid of
nobody.”
The drunkard lost his balance and seeing that he was going to fall and
would forthwith be in the priest’s power, he reached with a murderous look
for one of the knives lying on the table. The abbé perceived his motion, and
he gave the table a terrible shove; his son toppled over and landed on his
back. The lamp fell with a crash and went out.
During a moment the clinking of broken glass was heard in the darkness,
then the muffled sound of a soft body creeping on the floor, and then all was
silent.
With the crashing of the lamp a complete darkness spread over them; it
was so prompt and unexpected that they were stunned by it as by some
terrible event. The drunkard, pressed against the wall, did not move; the
priest remained on his chair in the midst of the night which had quelled his
rage. The somber veil that had descended so rapidly, arresting his anger, also
quieted the furious impulses of his soul; new ideas, as dark and dreary as the
obscurity, beset him.
The room was perfectly silent, like a tomb where nothing draws the breath
of life. Not a sound came from outside, neither the rumbling of a distant
wagon, nor the bark of a dog, nor even the sigh of the wind passing through
the trees.
This lasted a long time, perhaps an hour. Then suddenly the gong vibrated!
It rang once, as if it had been struck a short, sharp blow, and was instantly
followed by the noise of a falling body and an overturned chair.
Marguerite came running out of the kitchen, but as soon as she opened the
door she fell back, frightened by the intense darkness. Trembling, her heart
beating as if it would burst, she called in a low, hoarse voice: “M’sieur le
Curé! M’sieur le Curé!” Nobody answered, nothing stirred.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu,” she thought, “what has happened, what have they
done?”
She did not dare enter the room, yet feared to go back to fetch a light. She
felt as if she would like to run away, to screech at the top of her voice, though
she knew her legs would refuse to carry her. She repeated: “M’sieur le Curé!
M’sieur le Curé! it is me, Marguerite.”
 But, notwithstanding her terror, the instinctive desire of helping her master
and a woman’s courage, which is sometimes heroic, filled her soul with a
terrified audacity, and running back to the kitchen she fetched a lamp.
She stopped at the doorsill. First, she caught sight of the tramp lying
against the wall, asleep, or simulating slumber; then she saw the broken
lamp, and then, under the table, the feet and black-stockinged legs of the
priest, who must have fallen backward, striking his head on the gong.
Her teeth chattering and her hands trembling with fright, she kept on
repeating: “My God! My God! what is this?”
She advanced slowly, taking small steps, till she slid on something slimy
and almost fell.
Stooping, she saw that the floor was red and that a red liquid was
spreading around her feet toward the door. She guessed that it was blood.
She threw down her light so as to hide the sight of it, and fled from the room
out into the fields, running half crazed toward the village. She ran screaming
at the top of her voice, and bumping against the trees she did not heed, her
eyes fastened on the gleaming lights of the distant town.
Her shrill voice rang out like the gloomy cry of the night-owl, repeating
continuously, “The maoufa tan — the maoufatan — the maoufatan” —
When she reached the first house, some excited men came out and
surrounded her; but she could not answer them and struggled to escape, for
the fright had turned her head.
After a while they guessed that something must have happened to the curé,
and a little rescuing party started for the lodge.
The little pink house standing in the middle of the olive grove had grown
black and invisible in the dark, silent night. Since the gleam of the solitary
window had faded, the cabin was plunged in darkness, lost in the grove, and
unrecognizable for anyone but a native of the place.
Soon lights began to gleam near the ground, between the trees, streaking
the dried grass with long, yellow reflections. The twisted trunks of the olive-
trees assumed fantastic shapes under the moving lights, looking like monsters
or infernal serpents. The projected reflections suddenly revealed a vague,
white mass, and soon the low, square wall of the lodge grew pink from the
light of the lanterns. Several peasants were carrying the latter, escorting two
gendarmes with revolvers, the mayor, the garde-champêtre, and Marguerite,
supported by the men, for she was almost unable to walk.
 The rescuing party hesitated a moment in front of the open, grewsome
door. But the brigadier, snatching a lantern from one of the men, entered,
followed by the rest.
The servant had not lied, blood covered the floor like a carpet. It had
spread to the place where the tramp was lying, bathing one of his hands and
legs.
The father and son were asleep, the one with a severed throat, the other in
a drunken stupor. The two gendarmes seized the latter and before he awoke
they had him handcuffed. He rubbed his eyes, stunned, stupefied with liquor,
and when he saw the body of the priest, he appeared terrified, unable to
understand what had happened.
“Why did he not escape?” said the mayor.
“He was too drunk,” replied the officer.
And every man agreed with him, for nobody ever thought that perhaps the
Abbé Vilbois had taken his own life.
 A WARNING NOTE

I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be profitable to

many readers, I make it my business to communicate it to them:
“Paris, November 15th, 1886.
“Monsieur, — You often treat either in the shape of short stories or
chronicles, of subjects which have relation to what I may describe as
‘current morals.’ I am going to submit to you some reflections which ought, it
seems to me, to furnish you with the materials for one of your tales.
“I am not married; I am a bachelor, and, as it seems to me, a rather simple
man. But I fancy that many men, the greater part of men, are simple in the way
that I am. As I am always, or nearly always, a plain dealer, I am not well
able to see through the natural cunning of my neighbors, and I go straight
ahead, with my eyes open, without sufficiently looking out for what is behind
things and behind people’s external behavior.
“We are nearly all accustomed, as a rule, to take appearances for realities,
and to look on people as what they pretend to be; and very few possess that
scent which enables certain men to divine the real and hidden nature of
others. From this peculiar and conventional method of regarding life come
the result that we pass, like moles, through the midst of events; and that we
never believe in what is, but in what seems to be, that we declare a thing to
be improbable as soon as we are shown the fact behind the veil, and that
everything which displeases our idealistic morality is classed by us an
exception, without taking into account that these exceptions all brought
together constitute nearly the total number of cases. There further results from
it that credulous good people like me are deceived by everybody and
especially by women, who have a talent in this direction.
“I have started far afield in order to come to the particular fact which
interests me. I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many others, I
imagined (do you understand?) that I had chanced on an exception, on an
unhappy little woman who was deceiving her husband for the first time. I had
paid attentions to her, or rather I had looked on myself as having paid
attention to her for a long time, as having overcome her virtue by dint of
kindness and love, and as having triumphed by the sheer force of
perseverance. In fact, I had made use of a thousand precautions, a thousand
devices, and a thousand subtle dallyings in order to succeed in getting the
better of her.
“Now here is what happened last week: Her husband being absent for
some days, she suggested that we should both dine together, and that I should
attend on myself so as to avoid the presence of a man-servant. She had a
fixed idea which had haunted her for the last four or five months: She wanted
to get tipsy, but to get tipsy altogether without being afraid of consequences,
without having to go back home, speak to her chambermaid, and walk before
witnesses. She had often obtained what she called ‘a gay agitation’ without
going farther, and she had found it delightful. So then she promised herself
that she would get tipsy once, only once, but thoroughly so. She pretended at
her own house that she was going to spend twenty-four hours with some
friends near Paris, and she reached my abode just about dinner-hour.
“A woman naturally ought not to get fuddled except when she has had too
much champagne. She drinks a big glass of it fasting, and before the oysters
arrive, she begins to ramble in her talk.
“We had a cold dinner prepared on a table behind me. It was enough for
me to stretch out my arms to take the dishes or the plates, and I attended on
myself as best I could while I listened to her chattering.
“She kept swallowing glass after glass, haunted by her fixed idea. She
began by making me the recipient of meaningless and interminable
confidences with regard to her sensations as a young girl. She went on and
on, her eyes rather wandering, brilliant, her tongue untied, and her light ideas
rolling themselves out endlessly like the blue telegraph-paper which is
moved on without stopping by the bobbin and which keeps extending its
length to the click of the electric apparatus which covers it with unknown
words.
“From time to time she asked me:
“‘Am I tipsy?’
“‘No, not yet.’
“And she went on drinking.
“She was so in a little while, not so tipsy as to lose her senses, but tipsy
enough to tell the truth, as it seemed to me.
“To her confidences as to her emotions while a young girl succeeded
more intimate confidences as to her relations with her husband. She made
them to me without restraint till she wearied me with them, under this pretext,
which she repeated a hundred times: ‘I can surely tell everything to you. To
whom could I tell everything if it were not to you?’ So I was made
acquainted with all the habits, all the defects, all the fads and the most secret
fancies of her husband.
“And by way of claiming my approval she asked: ‘Isn’t he a flat? Do you
think he has taken a feather out of me? eh? So, the first time I saw you, I said
to myself: “Let me see! I like him, and I’ll take him for my lover.” It was then
you began mashing me.’
“I must have presented an odd face to her eyes at that moment, for she
could see it, tipsy though she was; and with great outbursts of laughter, she
exclaimed: ‘Ah! you big simpleton, you did go about it cautiously; but, when
men pay attention to us, you dear blockhead, you see we like it, and then they
must make quick work of it, and not keep us waiting. A man must be a ninny
not to understand, by a mere glance at us, that we mean “Yes.” Ah! I believe I
was waiting for you, you stupid! I did not know what to do in order to make
you see that I was in a hurry. Oh! yes, flowers, verses, compliments, more
verses, and nothing else at all! I was very near letting you go, my fine fellow,
you were so long in making up your mind. And only to think that half the men
in the world are like you, while the other half, ha! ha! ha!’
“This laugh of hers sent a cold shiver down my back. I stammered: ‘The
other half — what about the other half?’
“She still went on drinking, her eyes steeped in the fumes of sparkling
wine, her mind impelled by the imperious necessity for telling the truth which
sometimes takes possession of drunkards.
“She replied: ‘Ah! the other half makes quick work of it — too quick; but,
all the same, they are right. There are days when we don’t hit it off with
them; but there are days, too, when it all goes right, in spite of everything....
My dear, if you only knew how funny it is — the way the two kinds of men
act! You see, the timid ones, such as you, you never could imagine what sort
the others are and what they do, immediately, as soon as they find themselves
alone with us. They are regular dare-devils! They get many a slap in the face
from us, no doubt of that, but what does that matter? They know we’re the
sort that kiss and don’t tell! They know us well, they do!’
“I stared at her with the eyes of an Inquisitor, and with a mad desire to
make her speak, to learn everything from her. How often had I put this
question to myself: ‘How do the other men behave towards the women who
belong to us?’ I was fully conscious of the fact that, from the way I saw two
men talking to the same woman publicly in a drawing-room, these two men,
if they found themselves, one after the other, all alone with her, would
conduct themselves quite differently, although they were both equally well
acquainted with her. We can guess at the first glance of the eye that certain
beings, naturally endowed with the power of seduction, or only more lively,
more daring than we are, reach after an hour’s chat with a woman who
pleases them, to a degree of intimacy to which we would not attain in a year.
Well, do these men, these seducers, these bold adventurers, take, when the
occasion presents itself to them, liberties with their hands and lips which to
us, the timid ones, would appear odious outrages, but which women perhaps
look on merely as pardonable effrontery, as indecent homages to their
irresistible grace!
“So I asked her: ‘There are women, though, who think these men very
improper?’
“She threw herself back on her chair in order to laugh more at her ease,
but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which ends in
nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: ‘Ha! ha! my dear,
improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at once, all, you
understand, and many other things, too.’
“I felt myself horrified as if she had just revealed to me a monstrous thing.
“‘And you permit this, you women?’
“‘No, we don’t permit it; we slap them in the face, but, for all that, they
amuse us! And then with them one is always afraid, one is never easy. You
must keep watching them the whole time; it is like fighting a duel. You have
to keep staring into their eyes to see what they are thinking of or where they
are putting their hands. They are blackguards, if you like, but they love us
better than you do.’
“A singular and unexpected sensation stole over me. Although a bachelor,
and determined to remain a bachelor, I suddenly felt in my breast the spirit of
a husband in the face of this impudent confidence. I felt myself the friend, the
ally, the brother of all these confiding men who are, if not robbed, at least
defrauded by all the rufflers of woman’s waists.
“It is this strange emotion, monsieur, that I am obeying at this moment, in
writing to you, and in begging of you to address a warning note to the great
army of easy-going husbands.
 “However, I had still some lingering doubts. This woman was drunk and
must be lying.
“I went on to inquire: ‘How is it that you never relate these adventures to
anyone, you women?’
“She gazed at me with profound pity, and with such an air of sincerity that,
for the moment, I thought she had been soberized by astonishment.
“‘We — But, my dear fellow, you are very foolish. Why do we never talk
to you about these things? Ha! ha! ha! Does your valet tell you about his tips,
his odd sous? Well, this is our little tip. The husband ought not to complain
when we don’t go farther. But how dull you are! To talk of these things would
be to give the alarm to all ninnies! Ah! how dull you are!... And then what
harm does it do as long as we don’t yield?’
“I felt myself in a great state of great confusion as I put this question to
her:
“‘So then you have often been embraced by men?’
“She answered, with an air of sovereign contempt for the man who could
have any doubt on the subject:
“‘Faith! — Why, every woman has been often embraced.... Try it on with
any of them, no matter whom, in order to see for yourself, you great goose!
Look here! embrace Mme. de X! She is quite young, and quite virtuous.
Embrace, my friend — embrace, and touch, you shall see. Ha! ha! ha!’

“All of a sudden she flung her glass straight at the chandelier. The
champagne fell down in a shower, extinguished three wax-candles, stained
the hangings, and deluged the table, while the broken glass was scattered
about the dining-room. Then, she made an effort to seize the bottle to do the
same with it, but I prevented her. After that, she burst out crying in a very
loud tone — the nervous fit had come on, as I had anticipated....

“Some days later, I had almost forgotten this avowal of a tipsy woman
when I chanced to find myself at an evening party with this Mme. de X ——
whom my mistress had advised me to embrace. As I lived in the same
direction as she did, I offered to drive her to her own door, for she was alone
this evening. She accepted my offer.
“As soon as we were in the carriage, I said to myself: ‘Come! I must try it
on!’ But I had not the courage. I did not know how to make a start, how to
begin the attack.
 “Then suddenly, the desperate courage of cowards came to my aid. I said
to her: ‘How pretty you were, this evening.’
“She replied with a laugh: ‘So then, this evening was an exception, since
you only remarked it for the first time.’
“I did not know what rejoinder to make. Certainly my gallantry was not
making progress. After a little reflection, however, I managed to say:
“‘No, but I never dared to tell you.’
“She was astonished:
“‘Why?’
“‘Because it is — it is a little difficult.’
“‘Difficult to tell a woman that she’s pretty? Why, where did you come
from? You should always tell us so, even when you only half think it ...
because it always gives us pleasure to hear.”...
“I felt myself suddenly animated by a fantastic audacity, and, catching her
round the waist, I raised my lips towards her mouth.
“Nevertheless I seemed to be rather nervous about it, and not to appear so
terrible to her. I must also have arranged and executed my movement very
badly, for she managed to turn her head aside so as to avoid contact with my
face, saying:
“‘Oh no — this is rather too much — too much.... You are too quick! Take
care of my hair. You cannot embrace a woman who has her hair dressed like
mine!’...
“I resumed my former position in the carriage, disconcerted, unnerved by
this repulse. But the carriage drew up before her gate; and she, as she
stepped out of it, held out her hand to me, saying in her most gracious tones:
“‘Thanks, dear monsieur, for having seen me home ... and don’t forget my
advice!’
“I saw her three days later. She had forgotten everything.
“And I, monsieur, I am incessantly thinking of the other sort of men — the
sort of men to whom a lady’s hair is no obstacle, and who know how to seize
every opportunity.”...
 AFTER

“My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you might go to bed.”

The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their grandmother.
Then they said good-night to M. le Cure, who had dined at the chateau, as
was his custom every Thursday.
The Abbe Mauduit lifted two of the children on his knees, passing his long
arms clad in black round their necks, and kissing them tenderly on the
forehead as he drew their heads toward him as a father might.
Then he set them down on the ground, and the little beings went off, the
boy ahead, and the girls following.
“You are fond of children, M. le Cure,” said the comtesse.
“Very fond, madame.”
The old woman raised her bright eyes toward the priest.
“And — has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
He became silent, hesitated, and then added: “But I was never made for
ordinary life.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest; I followed my
vocation.”
The comtesse kept staring at him:
“Come now, M. le Cure, tell me this — tell me how it was you resolved
to renounce forever all that makes the rest of us love life — all that consoles
and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to separate yourself
from the great natural path of marriage and the family? You are neither an
enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy person nor a sad person. Was it
some incident, some sorrow, that led you to take life vows?”
The Abbe Mauduit rose and approached the fire, then, holding toward the
flame his big shoes, such as country priests generally wear, he seemed still
hesitating as to what reply he should make.
He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years had
been pastor of the parish of Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher. The peasants said of
him: “There’s a good man for you!” And indeed he was a good man,
benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all, generous. Like Saint
Martin, he would have cut his cloak in two. He laughed readily, and wept
also, on slight provocation, just like a woman — which prejudiced him more
or less in the hard minds of the country folk.
The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of
Rocher, in order to bring up her grandchildren, after the successive deaths of
her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to her cure, and
used to say of him: “What a heart he has!”
He came every Thursday to spend the evening with the comtesse, and they
were close friends, with the frank and honest friendship of old people.
She persisted:
“Look here, M. le Cure! it is your turn now to make a confession!”
He repeated: “I was not made for ordinary life. I saw it fortunately in
time, and I have had many proofs since that I made no mistake on the point:
“My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and were quite well to do,
had great ambitions for me. They sent me to a boarding school while I was
very young. No one knows what a boy may suffer at school through the mere
fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without affection is
good for some, and detestable for others. Young people are often more
sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too soon, far from
those they love, we may develop to an exaggerated extent a sensitiveness
which is overwrought and may become sickly and dangerous.
“I scarcely ever played; I had no companions; I passed my hours in
homesickness; I spent the whole night weeping in my bed. I sought to bring
before my mind recollections of home, trifling memories of little things, little
events. I thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost
imperceptibly an over-sensitive youth to whom the slightest annoyances were
terrible griefs.
“In this way I remained taciturn, self-absorbed, without expansion,
without confidants. This mental excitement was going on secretly and surely.
The nerves of children are quickly affected, and one should see to it that they
live a tranquil life until they are almost fully developed. But who ever
reflects that, for certain boys, an unjust imposition may be as great a pang as
the death of a friend in later years? Who can explain why certain young
temperaments are liable to terrible emotions for the slightest cause, and may
eventually become morbid and incurable?
 “This was my case. This faculty of regret developed in me to such an
extent that my existence became a martyrdom.
“I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I became so
sensitive that my soul resembled an open wound. Everything that affected me
gave me painful twitchings, frightful shocks, and consequently impaired my
health. Happy are the men whom nature has buttressed with indifference and
armed with stoicism.
“I reached my sixteenth year. An excessive timidity had arisen from this
abnormal sensitiveness. Feeling myself unprotected from all the attacks of
chance or fate, I feared every contact, every approach, every current. I lived
as though I were threatened by an unknown and always expected misfortune. I
did not venture either to speak or do anything in public. I had, indeed, the
feeling that life, is a battle, a dreadful conflict in which one receives terrible
blows, grievous, mortal wounds. In place of cherishing, like all men, a
cheerful anticipation of the morrow, I had only a confused fear of it, and felt
in my own mind a desire to conceal myself to avoid that combat in which I
would be vanquished and slain.
“As soon as my studies were finished, they gave me six months’ time to
choose a career. A very simple occurrence showed me clearly, all of a
sudden, the diseased condition of my mind, made me understand the danger,
and determined me to flee from it.
“Verdiers is a little town surrounded with plains and woods. In the central
street stands my parents’ house. I now passed my days far from this dwelling
which I had so much regretted, so much desired. Dreams had reawakened in
me, and I walked alone in the fields in order to let them escape and fly away.
My father and mother, quite occupied with business, and anxious about my
future, talked to me only about their profits or about my possible plans. They
were fond of me after the manner of hardheaded, practical people; they had
more reason than heart in their affection for me. I lived imprisoned in my
thoughts, and vibrating with my eternal sensitiveness.
“Now, one evening, after a long walk, as I was making my way home with
great strides so as not to be late, I saw a dog trotting toward me. He was a
species of red spaniel, very lean, with long curly ears.
“When he was ten paces away from me he stopped. I did the same. Then
he began wagging his tail, and came over to me with short steps and nervous
movements of his whole body, bending down on his paws as if appealing to
me, and softly shaking his head. I spoke to him. He then began to crawl along
in such a sad, humble, suppliant manner that I felt the tears coming into my
eyes. I approached him; he ran away, then he came back again; and I bent
down on one knee trying to coax him to approach me, with soft words. At
last, he was within reach of my hands, and I gently and very carefully stroked
him.
“He gained courage, gradually rose and, placing his paws on my
shoulders, began to lick my face. He followed me to the house.
“This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because he
returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way that we
were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated and without
defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted my side. He slept at
the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of the objections of my parents,
and followed me in my solitary walks.
“I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass. Sam
immediately rushed up, lay down at my feet, and lifted up my hand with his
muzzle that I might caress him.
“One day toward the end of June, as we were on the road from Saint-
Pierre de Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming along. Its four
horses were going at a gallop, with its yellow body, and its imperial with the
black leather hood. The coachman cracked his whip; a cloud of dust rose up
under the wheels of the heavy vehicle, then floated behind, just as a cloud
would do.
“Suddenly, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps frightened by
the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it. A horse’s hoof
knocked him down. I saw him roll over, turn round, fall back again beneath
the horses’ feet, then the coach gave two jolts, and behind it I saw something
quivering in the dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines
were hanging out and blood was spurting from the wound. He tried to get up,
to walk, but he could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground
with them, as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he
howled dreadfully, mad with pain.
“He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and suffered.
I was confined to my room for a month.
“One night, my father, enraged at seeing me so affected by such a trifling
occurrence, exclaimed:
 “‘How will it be when you have real griefs — if you lose your wife or
children?’
“His words haunted me and I began to see my condition clearly. I
understood why all the small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the
importance of a catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a way that I
suffered dreadfully from everything, that every painful impression was
multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious fear of life took
possession of me. I was without passions, without ambitions; I resolved to
sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure sorrows. Existence is short, but
I made up my mind to spend it in the service of others, in relieving their
troubles and enjoying their happiness. Having no direct experience of either
one or the other, I should only experience a milder form of emotion.
“And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me, ravages
me! But what would formerly have been an intolerable affliction has become
commiseration, pity.
“These sorrows which cross my path at every moment, I could not endure
if they affected me directly. I could not have seen one of my children die
without dying myself. And I have, in spite of everything, preserved such a
mysterious, overwhelming fear of events that the sight of the postman entering
my house makes a shiver pass every day through my veins, and yet I have
nothing to be afraid of now.”
The Abbe Mauduit ceased speaking. He stared into the fire in the huge
grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown of the existence
he might have passed had he been more fearless in the face of suffering.
He added, then, in a subdued tone:
“I was right. I was not made for this world.”
The comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long silence, she
remarked:
“For my part, if I had not my grandchildren, I believe I would not have the
courage to live.”
And the cure rose up without saying another word.
As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she accompanied him herself
to the door, which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall shadow, lit
up by the reflection of the lamp, disappearing through the gloom of night.
Then she came back and sat down before the fire, and pondered over
many things we never think of when we are young.
 TIMBUCTOO

The boulevard, that river of humanity, was alive with people in the golden
light of the setting sun. The whole sky was red, blinding, and behind the
Madeleine an immense bank of flaming clouds cast a shower of light the
whole length of the boulevard, vibrant as the heat from a brazier.
The gay, animated crowd went by in this golden mist and seemed to be
glorified. Their faces were gilded, their black hats and clothes took on
purple tints, the patent leather of their shoes cast bright reflections on the
asphalt of the sidewalk.
Before the cafes a mass of men were drinking opalescent liquids that
looked like precious stones dissolved in the glasses.
In the midst of the drinkers two officers in full uniform dazzled all eyes
with their glittering gold lace. They chatted, happy without asking why, in
this glory of life, in this radiant light of sunset, and they looked at the crowd,
the leisurely men and the hurrying women who left a bewildering odor of
perfume as they passed by.
All at once an enormous negro, dressed in black, with a paunch beneath
his jean waistcoat, which was covered with charms, his face shining as if it
had been polished, passed before them with a triumphant air. He laughed at
the passers-by, at the news venders, at the dazzling sky, at the whole of Paris.
He was so tall that he overtopped everyone else, and when he passed all the
loungers turned round to look at his back.
But he suddenly perceived the officers and darted towards them, jostling
the drinkers in his path. As soon as he reached their table he fixed his
gleaming and delighted eyes upon them and the corners of his mouth
expanded to his ears, showing his dazzling white teeth like a crescent moon
in a black sky. The two men looked in astonishment at this ebony giant,
unable to understand his delight.
With a voice that made all the guests laugh, he said:
“Good-day, my lieutenant.”
One of the officers was commander of a battalion, the other was a
colonel. The former said:
 “I do not know you, sir. I am at a loss to know what you want of me.”
“Me like you much, Lieutenant Vedie, siege of Bezi, much grapes, find
me.”
The officer, utterly bewildered, looked at the man intently, trying to
refresh his memory. Then he cried abruptly:
“Timbuctoo?”
The negro, radiant, slapped his thigh as he uttered a tremendous laugh and
roared:
“Yes, yes, my lieutenant; you remember Timbuctoo, ya. How do you do?”
The commandant held out his hand, laughing heartily as he did so. Then
Timbuctoo became serious. He seized the officer’s hand and, before the other
could prevent it, he kissed it, according to negro and Arab custom. The
officer embarrassed, said in a severe tone:
“Come now, Timbuctoo, we are not in Africa. Sit down there and tell me
how it is I find you here.”
Timbuctoo swelled himself out and, his words falling over one another,
replied hurriedly:
“Make much money, much, big restaurant, good food; Prussians, me, much
steal, much, French cooking; Timbuctoo cook to the emperor; two thousand
francs mine. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
And he laughed, doubling himself up, roaring, with wild delight in his
glances.
When the officer, who understood his strange manner of expressing
himself, had questioned him he said:
“Well, au revoir, Timbuctoo. I will see you again.”
The negro rose, this time shaking the hand that was extended to him and,
smiling still, cried:
“Good-day, good-day, my lieutenant!”
He went off so happy that he gesticulated as he walked, and people
thought he was crazy.
“Who is that brute?” asked the colonel.
“A fine fellow and a brave soldier. I will tell you what I know about him.
It is funny enough.
“You know that at the commencement of the war of 1870 I was shut up in
Bezieres, that this negro calls Bezi. We were not besieged, but blockaded.
The Prussian lines surrounded us on all sides, outside the reach of cannon,
not firing on us, but slowly starving us out.
 “I was then lieutenant. Our garrison consisted of soldier of all
descriptions, fragments of slaughtered regiments, some that had run away,
freebooters separated from the main army, etc. We had all kinds, in fact even
eleven Turcos [Algerian soldiers in the service of France], who arrived one
evening no one knew whence or how. They appeared at the gates of the city,
exhausted, in rags, starving and dirty. They were handed over to me.
“I saw very soon that they were absolutely undisciplined, always in the
street and always drunk. I tried putting them in the police station, even in
prison, but nothing was of any use. They would disappear, sometimes for
days at a time, as if they had been swallowed up by the earth, and then come
back staggering drunk. They had no money. Where did they buy drink and
how and with what?
“This began to worry me greatly, all the more as these savages interested
me with their everlasting laugh and their characteristics of overgrown
frolicsome children.
“I then noticed that they blindly obeyed the largest among them, the one
you have just seen. He made them do as he pleased, planned their mysterious
expeditions with the all-powerful and undisputed authority of a leader. I sent
for him and questioned him. Our conversation lasted fully three hours, for it
was hard for me to understand his remarkable gibberish. As for him, poor
devil, he made unheard-of efforts to make himself intelligible, invented
words, gesticulated, perspired in his anxiety, mopping his forehead, puffing,
stopping and abruptly beginning again when he thought he had found a new
method of explaining what he wanted to say.
“I gathered finally that he was the son of a big chief, a sort of negro king
of the region around Timbuctoo. I asked him his name. He repeated
something like ‘Chavaharibouhalikranafotapolara.’ It seemed simpler to me
to give him the name of his native place, ‘Timbuctoo.’ And a week later he
was known by no other name in the garrison.
“But we were all wildly anxious to find out where this African ex-prince
procured his drinks. I discovered it in a singular manner.
“I was on the ramparts one morning, watching the horizon, when I
perceived something moving about in a vineyard. It was near the time of
vintage, the grapes were ripe, but I was not thinking of that. I thought that a
spy was approaching the town, and I organized a complete expedition to
catch the prowler. I took command myself, after obtaining permission from
the general.
 “I sent out by three different gates three little companies, which were to
meet at the suspected vineyard and form a cordon round it. In order to cut off
the spy’s retreat, one of these detachments had to make at least an hour’s
march. A watch on the walls signalled to me that the person I had seen had
not left the place. We went along in profound silence, creeping, almost
crawling, along the ditches. At last we reached the spot assigned.
“I abruptly disbanded my soldiers, who darted into the vineyard and found
Timbuctoo on hands and knees travelling around among the vines and eating
grapes, or rather devouring them as a dog eats his sop, snatching them in
mouthfuls from the vine with his teeth.
“I wanted him to get up, but he could not think of it. I then understood why
he was crawling on his hands and knees. As soon as we stood him on his feet
he began to wabble, then stretched out his arms and fell down on his nose.
He was more drunk than I have ever seen anyone.
“They brought him home on two poles. He never stopped laughing all the
way back, gesticulating with his arms and legs.
“This explained the mystery. My men also drank the juice of the grapes,
and when they were so intoxicated they could not stir they went to sleep in
the vineyard. As for Timbuctoo, his love of the vineyard was beyond all
belief and all bounds. He lived in it as did the thrushes, whom he hated with
the jealous hate of a rival. He repeated incessantly: ‘The thrushes eat all the
grapes, captain!’
“One evening I was sent for. Something had been seen on the plain coming
in our direction. I had not brought my field-glass and I could not distinguish
things clearly. It looked like a great serpent uncoiling itself — a convoy.
How could I tell?
“I sent some men to meet this strange caravan, which presently made its
triumphal entry. Timbuctoo and nine of his comrades were carrying on a sort
of altar made of camp stools eight severed, grinning and bleeding heads. The
African was dragging along a horse to whose tail another head was fastened,
and six other animals followed, adorned in the same manner.
“This is what I learned: Having started out to the vineyard, my Africans
had suddenly perceived a detachment of Prussians approaching a village.
Instead of taking to their heels, they hid themselves, and as soon as the
Prussian officers dismounted at an inn to refresh themselves, the eleven
rascals rushed on them, put to flight the lancers, who thought they were being
attacked by the main army, killed the two sentries, then the colonel and the
five officers of his escort.
“That day I kissed Timbuctoo. I saw, however, that he walked with
difficulty and thought he was wounded. He laughed and said:
“‘Me provisions for my country.’
“Timbuctoo was not fighting for glory, but for gain. Everything he found
that seemed to him to be of the slightest value, especially anything that
glistened, he put in his pocket. What a pocket! An abyss that began at his hips
and reached to his ankles. He had retained an old term used by the troopers
and called it his ‘profonde,’ and it was his ‘profonde’ in fact.
“He had taken the gold lace off the Prussian uniforms, the brass off their
helmets, detached their buttons, etc., and had thrown them all into his
‘profonde,’ which was full to overflowing.
“Each day he pocketed every glistening object that came beneath his
observation, pieces of tin or pieces of silver, and sometimes his contour was
very comical.
“He intended to carry all that back to the land of ostriches, whose brother
he might have been, this son of a king, tormented with the longing to gobble
up all objects that glistened. If he had not had his ‘profonde’ what would he
have done? He doubtless would have swallowed them.
“Each morning his pocket was empty. He had, then, some general store
where his riches were piled up. But where? I could not discover it.
“The general, on being informed of Timbuctoo’s mighty act of valor, had
the headless bodies that had been left in the neighboring village interred at
once, that it might not be discovered that they were decapitated. The
Prussians returned thither the following day. The mayor and seven prominent
inhabitants were shot on the spot, by way of reprisal, as having denounced
the Prussians.
“Winter was here. We were exhausted and desperate. There were
skirmishes now every day. The famished men could no longer march. The
eight ‘Turcos’ alone (three had been killed) remained fat and shiny, vigorous
and always ready to fight. Timbuctoo was even getting fatter. He said to me
one day:
“‘You much hungry; me good meat.’
“And he brought me an excellent filet. But of what? We had no more
cattle, nor sheep, nor goats, nor donkeys, nor pigs. It was impossible to get a
horse. I thought of all this after I had devoured my meat. Then a horrible idea
came to me. These negroes were born close to a country where they eat
human beings! And each day such a number of soldiers were killed around
the town! I questioned Timbuctoo. He would not answer. I did not insist, but
from that time on I declined his presents.
“He worshipped me. One night snow took us by surprise at the outposts.
We were seated, on the ground. I looked with pity at those poor negroes
shivering beneath this white frozen shower. I was very cold and began to
cough. At once I felt something fall on me like a large warm quilt. It was
Timbuctoo’s cape that he had thrown on my shoulders.
“I rose and returned his garment, saying:
“‘Keep it, my boy; you need it more than I do.’
“‘Non, my lieutenant, for you; me no need. Me hot, hot!’
“And he looked at me entreatingly.
“‘Come, obey orders. Keep your cape; I insist,’ I replied.
“He then stood up, drew his sword, which he had sharpened to an edge
like a scythe, and holding in his other hand the large cape which I had
refused, said:
“‘If you not keep cape, me cut. No one cape.’
“And he would have done it. So I yielded.
“Eight days later we capitulated. Some of us had been able to escape, the
rest were to march out of the town and give themselves up to the conquerors.
“I went towards the exercising ground, where we were all to meet, when I
was dumfounded at the sight of a gigantic negro dressed in white duck and
wearing a straw hat. It was Timbuctoo. He was beaming and was walking
with his hands in his pockets in front of a little shop where two plates and
two glasses were displayed.
“‘What are you doing?’ I said.
“‘Me not go. Me good cook; me make food for Colonel Algeria. Me eat
Prussians; much steal, much.’
“There were ten degrees of frost. I shivered at sight of this negro in white
duck. He took me by the arm and made me go inside. I noticed an immense
flag that he was going to place outside his door as soon as we had left, for he
had some shame.”
I read this sign, traced by the hand of some accomplice
“‘ARMY KITCHEN OF M. TIMBUCTOO,
“‘Formerly Cook to H. M. the Emperor.
“‘A Parisian Artist. Moderate Prices.’
 “In spite of the despair that was gnawing at my heart, I could not help
laughing, and I left my negro to his new enterprise.
“Was not that better than taking him prisoner?
“You have just seen that he made a success of it, the rascal.
“Bezieres to-day belongs to the Germans. The ‘Restaurant Timbuctoo’ is
the beginning of a retaliation.”
 TOMBSTONES

The five friends had finished dinner, five men of the world, mature, rich,
three married, the two others bachelors. They met like this every month in
memory of their youth, and after dinner they chatted until two o’clock in the
morning. Having remained intimate friends, and enjoying each other’s
society, they probably considered these the pleasantest evenings of their
lives. They talked on every subject, especially of what interested and amused
Parisians. Their conversation was, as in the majority of salons elsewhere, a
verbal rehash of what they had read in the morning papers.
One of the most lively of them was Joseph de Bardon, a celibate living the
Parisian life in its fullest and most whimsical manner. He was not a debauche
nor depraved, but a singular, happy fellow, still young, for he was scarcely
forty. A man of the world in its widest and best sense, gifted with a brilliant,
but not profound, mind, with much varied knowledge, but no true erudition,
ready comprehension without true understanding, he drew from his
observations, his adventures, from everything he saw, met with and found,
anecdotes at once comical and philosophical, and made humorous remarks
that gave him a great reputation for cleverness in society.
He was the after dinner speaker and had his own story each time, upon
which they counted, and he talked without having to be coaxed.
As he sat smoking, his elbows on the table, a petit verre half full beside
his plate, half torpid in an atmosphere of tobacco blended with steaming
coffee, he seemed to be perfectly at home. He said between two whiffs:
“A curious thing happened to me some time ago.”
“Tell it to us,” they all exclaimed at once.
“With pleasure. You know that I wander about Paris a great deal, like
book collectors who ransack book stalls. I just look at the sights, at the
people, at all that is passing by and all that is going on.
“Toward the middle of September — it was beautiful weather — I went
out one afternoon, not knowing where I was going. One always has a vague
wish to call on some pretty woman or other. One chooses among them in
one’s mental picture gallery, compares them in one’s mind, weighs the
interest with which they inspire you, their comparative charms and finally
decides according to the influence of the day. But when the sun is very bright
and the air warm, it takes away from you all desire to make calls.
“The sun was bright, the air warm. I lighted a cigar and sauntered
aimlessly along the outer boulevard. Then, as I strolled on, it occurred to me
to walk as far as Montmartre and go into the cemetery.
“I am very fond of cemeteries. They rest me and give me a feeling of
sadness; I need it. And, besides, I have good friends in there, those that one
no longer goes to call on, and I go there from time to time.
“It is in this cemetery of Montmartre that is buried a romance of my life, a
sweetheart who made a great impression on me, a very emotional, charming
little woman whose memory, although it causes me great sorrow, also fills
me with regrets — regrets of all kinds. And I go to dream beside her grave.
She has finished with life.
“And then I like cemeteries because they are immense cities filled to
overflowing with inhabitants. Think how many dead people there are in this
small space, think of all the generations of Parisians who are housed there
forever, veritable troglodytes enclosed in their little vaults, in their little
graves covered with a stone or marked by a cross, while living beings take
up so much room and make so much noise — imbeciles that they are!
“Then, again, in cemeteries there are monuments almost as interesting as
in museums. The tomb of Cavaignac reminded me, I must confess without
making any comparison, of the chef d’oeuvre of Jean Goujon: the recumbent
statue of Louis de Breze in the subterranean chapel of the Cathedral of
Rouen. All modern and realistic art has originated there, messieurs. This
dead man, Louis de Breze, is more real, more terrible, more like inanimate
flesh still convulsed with the death agony than all the tortured corpses that
are distorted to-day in funeral monuments.
“But in Montmartre one can yet admire Baudin’s monument, which has a
degree of grandeur; that of Gautier, of Murger, on which I saw the other day a
simple, paltry wreath of immortelles, yellow immortelles, brought thither by
whom? Possibly by the last grisette, very old and now janitress in the
neighborhood. It is a pretty little statue by Millet, but ruined by dirt and
neglect. Sing of youth, O Murger!
“Well, there I was in Montmartre Cemetery, and was all at once filled
with sadness, a sadness that is not all pain, a kind of sadness that makes you
think when you are in good health, ‘This place is not amusing, but my time
has not come yet.’
“The feeling of autumn, of the warm moisture which is redolent of the
death of the leaves, and the weakened, weary, anaemic sun increased, while
rendering it poetical, the sensation of solitude and of finality that hovered
over this spot which savors of human mortality.
“I walked along slowly amid these streets of tombs, where the neighbors
do not visit each other, do not sleep together and do not read the newspapers.
And I began to read the epitaphs. That is the most amusing thing in the world.
Never did Labiche or Meilhac make me laugh as I have laughed at the
comical inscriptions on tombstones. Oh, how much superior to the books of
Paul de Kock for getting rid of the spleen are these marble slabs and these
crosses where the relatives of the deceased have unburdened their sorrow,
their desires for the happiness of the vanished ones and their hope of
rejoining them — humbugs!
“But I love above all in this cemetery the deserted portion, solitary, full of
great yews and cypresses, the older portion, belonging to those dead long
since, and which will soon be taken into use again; the growing trees
nourished by the human corpses cut down in order to bury in rows beneath
little slabs of marble those who have died more recently.
“When I had sauntered about long enough to refresh my mind I felt that I
would soon have had enough of it and that I must place the faithful homage of
my remembrance on my little friend’s last resting place. I felt a tightening of
the heart as I reached her grave. Poor dear, she was so dainty, so loving and
so white and fresh — and now — if one should open the grave —
“Leaning over the iron grating, I told her of my sorrow in a low tone,
which she doubtless did not hear, and was moving away when I saw a
woman in black, in deep mourning, kneeling on the next grave. Her crape veil
was turned back, uncovering a pretty fair head, the hair in Madonna bands
looking like rays of dawn beneath her sombre headdress. I stayed.
“Surely she must be in profound grief. She had covered her face with her
hands and, standing there in meditation, rigid as a statue, given up to her
grief, telling the sad rosary of her remembrances within the shadow of her
concealed and closed eyes, she herself seemed like a dead person mourning
another who was dead. All at once a little motion of her back, like a flutter of
wind through a willow, led me to suppose that she was going to cry. She
wept softly at first, then louder, with quick motions of her neck and
shoulders. Suddenly she uncovered her eyes. They were full of tears and
charming, the eyes of a bewildered woman, with which she glanced about
her as if awaking from a nightmare. She looked at me, seemed abashed and
hid her face completely in her hands. Then she sobbed convulsively, and her
head slowly bent down toward the marble. She leaned her forehead on it, and
her veil spreading around her, covered the white corners of the beloved
tomb, like a fresh token of mourning. I heard her sigh, then she sank down
with her cheek on the marble slab and remained motionless, unconscious.
“I darted toward her, slapped her hands, blew on her eyelids, while I read
this simple epitaph: ‘Here lies Louis-Theodore Carrel, Captain of Marine
Infantry, killed by the enemy at Tonquin. Pray for him.’
“He had died some months before. I was affected to tears and redoubled
my attentions. They were successful. She regained consciousness. I appeared
very much moved. I am not bad looking, I am not forty. I saw by her first
glance that she would be polite and grateful. She was, and amid more tears
she told me her history in detached fragments as well as her gasping breath
would allow, how the officer was killed at Tonquin when they had been
married a year, how she had married him for love, and being an orphan, she
had only the usual dowry.
“I consoled her, I comforted her, raised her and lifted her on her feet. Then
I said:
“‘Do not stay here. Come.’
“‘I am unable to walk,’ she murmured.
“‘I will support you.’
“‘Thank you, sir; you are good. Did you also come to mourn for some
one?’
“‘Yes, madame.’
“‘A dead friend?’
“‘Yes, madame.’
“‘Your wife?’
“‘A friend.’
“‘One may love a friend as much as they love their wife. Love has no
law.’
“‘Yes, madame.’
“And we set off together, she leaning on my arm, while I almost carried
her along the paths of the cemetery. When we got outside she faltered:
“‘I feel as if I were going to be ill.’
 “‘Would you like to go in anywhere, to take something?’
“‘Yes, monsieur.’
“I perceived a restaurant, one of those places where the mourners of the
dead go to celebrate the funeral. We went in. I made her drink a cup of hot
tea, which seemed to revive her. A faint smile came to her lips. She began to
talk about herself. It was sad, so sad to be always alone in life, alone in
one’s home, night and day, to have no one on whom one can bestow affection,
confidence, intimacy.
“That sounded sincere. It sounded pretty from her mouth. I was touched.
She was very young, perhaps twenty. I paid her compliments, which she took
in good part. Then, as time was passing, I suggested taking her home in a
carriage. She accepted, and in the cab we sat so close that our shoulders
touched.
“When the cab stopped at her house she murmured: ‘I do not feel equal to
going upstairs alone, for I live on the fourth floor. You have been so good.
Will you let me take your arm as far as my own door?’
“I agreed with eagerness. She ascended the stairs slowly, breathing hard.
Then, as we stood at her door, she said:
“‘Come in a few moments so that I may thank you.’
“And, by Jove, I went in. Everything was modest, even rather poor, but
simple and in good taste.
“We sat down side by side on a little sofa and she began to talk again
about her loneliness. She rang for her maid, in order to offer me some wine.
The maid did not come. I was delighted, thinking that this maid probably
came in the morning only, what one calls a charwoman.
“She had taken off her hat. She was really pretty, and she gazed at me with
her clear eyes, gazed so hard and her eyes were so clear that I was terribly
tempted. I caught her in my arms and rained kisses on her eyelids, which she
closed suddenly.
“She freed herself and pushed me away, saying:
“‘Have done, have done.’
“But I next kissed her on the mouth and she did not resist, and as our
glances met after thus outraging the memory of the captain killed in Tonquin, I
saw that she had a languid, resigned expression that set my mind at rest.
“I became very attentive and, after chatting for some time, I said:
“‘Where do you dine?’
“‘In a little restaurant in the neighborhood:
 “‘All alone?’
“‘Why, yes.’
“‘Will you dine with me?’
“‘Where?’
“‘In a good restaurant on the Boulevard.’
“She demurred a little. I insisted. She yielded, saying by way of apology
to herself: ‘I am so lonely — so lonely.’ Then she added:
“‘I must put on something less sombre, and went into her bedroom. When
she reappeared she was dressed in half-mourning, charming, dainty and
slender in a very simple gray dress. She evidently had a costume for the
cemetery and one for the town.
“The dinner was very enjoyable. She drank some champagne, brightened
up, grew lively and I went home with her.
“This friendship, begun amid the tombs, lasted about three weeks. But one
gets tired of everything, especially of women. I left her under pretext of an
imperative journey. She made me promise that I would come and see her on
my return. She seemed to be really rather attached to me.
“Other things occupied my attention, and it was about a month before I
thought much about this little cemetery friend. However, I did not forget her.
The recollection of her haunted me like a mystery, like a psychological
problem, one of those inexplicable questions whose solution baffles us.
“I do not know why, but one day I thought I might possibly meet her in the
Montmartre Cemetery, and I went there.
“I walked about a long time without meeting any but the ordinary visitors
to this spot, those who have not yet broken off all relations with their dead.
The grave of the captain killed at Tonquin had no mourner on its marble slab,
no flowers, no wreath.
“But as I wandered in another direction of this great city of the dead I
perceived suddenly, at the end of a narrow avenue of crosses, a couple in
deep mourning walking toward me, a man and a woman. Oh, horrors! As they
approached I recognized her. It was she!
“She saw me, blushed, and as I brushed past her she gave me a little
signal, a tiny little signal with her eye, which meant: ‘Do not recognize me!’
and also seemed to say, ‘Come back to see me again, my dear!’
“The man was a gentleman, distingue, chic, an officer of the Legion of
Honor, about fifty years old. He was supporting her as I had supported her
myself when we were leaving the cemetery.
 “I went my way, filled with amazement, asking myself what this all meant,
to what race of beings belonged this huntress of the tombs? Was she just a
common girl, one who went to seek among the tombs for men who were in
sorrow, haunted by the recollection of some woman, a wife or a sweetheart,
and still troubled by the memory of vanished caresses? Was she unique? Are
there many such? Is it a profession? Do they parade the cemetery as they
parade the street? Or else was she only impressed with the admirable,
profoundly philosophical idea of exploiting love recollections, which are
revived in these funereal places?
“And I would have liked to know whose widow she was on that special
day.”
 LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

A-D E-H I-L M-O P-S T-V W-Z

A COCK CROWED
A COUNTRY EXCURSION
A COUP D’ETAT
A CREMATION
A DEER PARK IN THE PROVINCES
A DIVORCE CASE
A DUEL
A FAMILY
A FAMILY AFFAIR
A FASHIONABLE WOMAN
A FATHER’S CONFESSION
A GOOD MATCH
A HUMBLE DRAMA
A LIVELY FRIEND
A MEETING
A MESALLIANCE
A MOTHER OF MONSTERS
A NEW YEAR’S GIFT
A NIGHT IN PARIS (A NIGHTMARE)
A NIGHT IN WHITECHAPEL
A NORMANDY JOKE
A PARRICIDE
A PHILOSOPHER
A PORTRAIT
A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
A RECOLLECTION
A RUPTURE
A SALE
A SISTER’S CONFESSION
A STROLL
A TRESS OF HAIR
A USEFUL HOUSE
A VAGABOND
A VENDETTA
A WARNING NOTE
A WEDDING GIFT
A WIDOW
ABANDONED
AFTER
ALEXANDRE
ALL OVER
ALLOUMA
ALWAYS LOCK THE DOOR!
AM I INSANE?
AN ADVENTURE
AN ADVENTURE IN PARIS
AN ARTIFICE
AN ARTIST
AN EXOTIC PRINCE
AN HONEST IDEAL
AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS
AT SEA
BABETTE
BELHOMME’S BEAST
BERTHA
BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER’S CORPSE
BOITELLE
BOULE DE SUIF
CAUGHT
CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT
CHÂLI
CHRISTMAS EVE
CLAIR DE LUNE
CLOCHETTE
COCO
COUNTESS SATAN
COWARD
CRASH
DEAD WOMAN’S SECRET
DELILA
DENIS
DISCOVERY
DREAMS
DUCHOUX
EPIPHANY
FALSE ALARM
FAREWELL!
FASCINATION
FATHER MATTHEW
FATHER MILON
FEAR
FLY
FORGIVENESS
FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
FRIEND JOSEPH
FRIEND PATIENCE
GHOSTS
GROWING OLD
HAPPINESS
HAUTOT SENIOR AND HAUTOT JUNIOR (1889)
HE?
HIS AVENGER
IN HIS SWEETHEART’S LIVERY
IN THE SPRING
IN THE WOOD
INDISCRETION
IS HE MAD?
JADIS, OR, THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
JEROBOAM
JULIE ROMAIN
JULOT’S OPINION
KIND GIRLS
LA MORILLONNE
LASTING LOVE
LEGEND OF MONT ST. MICHEL
LIEUTENANT LARE’S MARRIAGE
LILIE LALA
LITTLE LOUISE ROQUE
LOVE. THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN’S BOOK
MAD
MADAME BAPTISTE
MADAME HERMET
MADAME HUSSON’S “ROSIER”
MADAME PARISSE
MADEMOISELLE
MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE
MADEMOISELLE FIFI
MADEMOISELLE PEARL
MAGNETISM
MAMMA STIRLING
MARGOT’S TAPERS
MARROCA
MARTINE
MINUET
MISS HARRIET
MISTI
MOHAMMED FRIPOULI
MOIRON
MONSIEUR PARENT
MOONLIGHT
MOTHER AND SON
MOTHER SAUVAGE
MY LANDLADY
MY TWENTY-FIVE DAYS
MY UNCLE JULES
MY UNCLE SOSTHENES
MY WIFE
NIGHT. A NIGHTMARE
NO QUARTER
OLD AMABLE
OLD JUDAS
OLD MILON
OLD MONGILET
ON THE RIVER
ONE EVENING
OUR LETTERS
PAUL’S MISTRESS
PIERROT
PROFITABLE BUSINESS
QUEEN HORTENSE
REGRET
RELICS OF THE PAST
ROSALIE PRUDENT
ROSE
RUST
SAINT ANTHONY
SAINT-ANTOINE
SAVED
SIMON’S PAPA
STABLE PERFUME
SUICIDES
SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS
SYMPATHY
THAT COSTLY RIDE
THAT PIG OF A MORIN
THE ACCENT
THE ACCURSED BREAD
THE ADOPTED SON
THE APPARITION
THE ASSIGNATION
THE AWAKENING
THE BANDMASTER’S SISTER
THE BARONESS
THE BED
THE BEGGAR
THE BLIND MAN
THE CAKE
THE CARNIVAL OF LOVE
THE CARTER’S WENCH
THE CASE OF LOUISE ROQUE
THE CHILD
THE CHRISTENING
THE CLOWN
THE COLONEL’S IDEAS
THE CONFESSION
THE CORSICAN BANDIT
THE CRIPPLE
THE DEAD GIRL
THE DEBT
THE DEVIL
THE DIAMOND NECKLACE
THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
THE DISPENSER OF HOLY WATER
THE DONKEY
THE DOOR
THE DOUBLE PINS
THE DOWRY
THE DROWNED MAN
THE DRUNKARD
THE EFFEMINATES
THE ENGLISHMAN OF ETRETAT
THE FALSE GEMS
THE FARMER’S WIFE
THE FATHER
THE FIRST SNOWFALL
THE FISHING HOLE
THE GAMEKEEPER
THE GRAVE
THE HAND
THE HEAD OF HAIR
THE HERMAPHRODITE
THE HERMIT
THE HORLA
THE HORRIBLE
THE ILL-OMENED GROOM
THE IMPOLITE SEX
THE INN
THE JENNET
THE KISS
THE LANCER’S WIFE
THE LAST STEP
THE LEGION OF HONOR
THE LITTLE CASK
THE LOG
THE MAD WOMAN
THE MAGIC COUCH
THE MAISON TELLIER
THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
THE MAN WITH THE DOGS
THE MANNERISM
THE MARQUIS
THE MARQUIS DE FUMEROL
THE MASK
THE MODEL
THE MORIBUND
THE MOUNTAIN POOL
THE MOUNTEBANKS
THE MUSTACHE
THE NEW SENSATION
THE ODALISQUE OF SENICHOU
THE OLD MAID
THE OLIVE GROVE
THE ORDERLY
THE ORPHAN
THE PARROT
THE PATRON
THE PEDDLER
THE PENGUINS’ ROCK
THE PIECE OF STRING
THE PORT
THE PRISONERS
THE QUESTION OF LATIN
THE RABBIT
THE READ ONE AND THE OTHER
THE RELIC
THE RELICS
THE RONDOLI SISTERS
THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE
THE SIGNAL
THE SMILE OF SCHOPENHAUER
THE SNIPE
THE SON
THE SPASM
THE STORY OF A FARM GIRL
THE SUBSTITUTE
THE TERROR
THE TEST
THE THIEF
THE TRIP OF LE HORLA
THE TWENTY-FIVE FRANCS OF THE MOTHER-SUPERIOR
THE UMBRELLA
THE UNKNOWN
THE UPSTART
THE VENUS OF BRANIZA
THE VIATICUM
THE WARDROBE
THE WHITE LADY
THE WILL
THE WOLF
THE WOODEN SHOES
THE WRECK
THE WRONG HOUSE
THEODULE SABOT’S CONFESSION
TIMBUCTOO
TOINE
TOMBSTONES
TWO FRIENDS
TWO LITTLE SOLDIERS
UGLY
UNDER THE YOKE
USELESS BEAUTY
VIOLATED
VIRTUE IN THE BALLET
WAITER, A “BOCK”
WALTER SCHNAFFS’ ADVENTURE
WAS IT A DREAM?
WHAT WAS REALLY THE MATTER WITH ANDREW
WHO KNOWS?
WIFE AND MISTRESS
WOMAN’S WILES
WORDS OF LOVE
YVETTE
YVETTE SAMORIS
 The Plays

Maupassant was harshly opposed to the building of the Eiffel Tower. He often ate lunch in the
restaurant at its base simply to avoid seeing its otherwise inescapable profile. He and forty-six
other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to an elaborately irate letter of
protest against the tower’s construction, which was sent to the Minister of Public Works.
 The Delphi Classics Catalogue

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Series Contents

Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
 Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray

Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare

Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
 Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving

Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
 Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey

Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
 Series Six
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson

Series Seven
Adam Smith
Benjamin Disraeli
Confucius
David Hume
E. M. Delafield
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edmund Burke
Ernest Hemingway
Frances Trollope
Galileo Galilei
Guy Boothby
Hans Christian Andersen
Ian Fleming
Immanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Kenneth Grahame
Lytton Strachey
 Mary Wollstonecraft
Michel de Montaigne
René Descartes
Richard Marsh
Sax Rohmer
Sir Richard Burton
Talbot Mundy
Thomas Babington Macaulay
W. W. Jacobs

Series Eight
Anna Katharine Green
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Brothers Grimm
C. S. Lewis
Charles and Mary Lamb
Elizabeth von Arnim
Ernest Bramah
Francis Bacon
Gilbert and Sullivan
Grant Allen
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Hugh Walpole
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
John Muir
Joseph Addison
Lafcadio Hearn
Lord Dunsany
Marie Corelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Ouida
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Sigmund Freud
Theodore Dreiser
Walter Pater
W. Somerset Maugham
 Series Nine
Aldous Huxley
August Strindberg
Booth Tarkington
C. S. Forester
Erasmus
Eugene Sue
Fergus Hume
Franz Kafka
Gertrude Stein
Giovanni Boccaccio
Izaak Walton
J. M. Synge
Johanna Spyri
John Galt
Maurice Leblanc
Max Brand
Molière
Norse Sagas
R. D. Blackmore
R. S. Surtees
Sir Thomas More
Stephen Leacock
The Harvard Classics
Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Paine
William James

Ancient Classics
Achilles Tatius
Aeschylus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Apollodorus
Appian
 pp
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
Athenaeus
Augustine
Aulus Gellius
Bede
Cassius Dio
Cato
Catullus
Cicero
Claudian
Clement of Alexandria
Cornelius Nepos
Demosthenes
Dio Chrysostom
Diodorus Siculus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Diogenes Laërtius
Euripides
Frontius
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippocrates
Homer
Horace
Isocrates
Josephus
Julian
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
Petronius
Pindar
Plato
Plautus
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Polybius
Procopius
Propertius
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Septuagint
Sextus Empiricus
 Sidonius
Sophocles
Statius
Strabo
Suetonius
Tacitus
Terence
Theocritus
Thucydides
Tibullus
Varro
Virgil
Xenophon

Delphi Poets Series

A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Epic of Gilgamesh
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Chapman
George Herbert
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gertrude Stein
Hafez
Heinrich Heine
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Isaac Rosenberg
James Russell Lowell
 Johan Ludvig Runeberg
John Clare
John Donne
John Dryden
John Gower
John Keats
John Milton
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Joseph Addison
Kahlil Gibran
Leigh Hunt
Lord Byron
Ludovico Ariosto
Luís de Camões
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Prior
Michael Drayton
Nikolai Nekrasov
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Petrarch
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert Frost
Robert Southey
Rumi
Rupert Brooke
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
Thomas Hood
Thomas Moore
Torquato Tasso
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Walter Savage Landor
Walt Whitman
Wilfred Owen
William Blake
William Cowper
William Wordsworth

Masters of Art
 Albrecht Dürer
Amedeo Modigliani
Artemisia Gentileschi
Camille Pissarro
Canaletto
Caravaggio
Caspar David Friedrich
Claude Lorrain
Claude Monet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Diego Velázquez
Donatello
Edgar Degas
Édouard Manet
Edvard Munch
El Greco
Eugène Delacroix
Francisco Goya
Giotto
Giovanni Bellini
Gustave Courbet
Gustav Klimt
Hieronymus Bosch
Jacques-Louis David
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
J. M. W. Turner
Johannes Vermeer
John Constable
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Paul Cézanne
Paul Gauguin
Paul Klee
Peter Paul Rubens
Piero della Francesca
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Sandro Botticelli
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
Thomas Gainsborough
Tintoretto
Titian
Vincent van Gogh
Wassily Kandinsky

Great Composers
 Antonín Dvořák
Franz Schubert
Johann Sebastian Bach
Joseph Haydn
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piotr Illitch Tchaïkovsky
Richard Wagner
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Alphabetical List of Titles

A. E. Housman
Achilles Tatius
Adam Smith
Aeschylus
Albrecht Dürer
Aldous Huxley
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ambrose Bierce
Amedeo Modigliani
Ammianus Marcellinus
Anatole France
Andrew Lang
Andrew Marvell
Ann Radcliffe
Anna Katharine Green
Anthony Hope
Anthony Trollope
Anton Chekhov
Antonín Dvořák
Aphra Behn
Apollodorus
Apollonius of Rhodes
Appian
Apuleius
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arnold Bennett
Arrian
Artemisia Gentileschi
Arthur Machen
Arthur Morrison
Arthur Schopenhauer
Athenaeus
August Strindberg
 Augustine
Aulus Gellius
Baroness Emma Orczy
Beatrix Potter
Beaumont and Fletcher
Bede
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Disraeli
Beowulf
Booth Tarkington
Bram Stoker
Bret Harte
C. S. Forester
C. S. Lewis
Camille Pissarro
Canaletto
Captain Frederick Marryat
Captain Mayne Reid
Caravaggio
Caspar David Friedrich
Cassius Dio
Cato
Catullus
Charles and Mary Lamb
Charles Darwin
Charles Dickens
Charles Kingsley
Charles Lever
Charles Reade
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
Christopher Marlowe
Cicero
Claude Lorrain
Claude Monet
Claudian
Clement of Alexandria
Confucius
Cornelius Nepos
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
D.H. Lawrence
Daniel Defoe
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
David Hume
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Demosthenes
Dickensiana Volume I
Diego Velázquez
Dio Chrysostom
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes Laërtius
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Donatello
E. F. Benson
E. M. Delafield
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
 E. Phillips Oppenheim
E. W. Hornung
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edgar Degas
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
Edith Wharton
Edmund Burke
Edmund Spenser
Édouard Manet
Edvard Munch
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
El Greco
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth von Arnim
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ellen Wood
Émile Zola
Emily Dickinson
Epic of Gilgamesh
Erasmus
Ernest Bramah
Ernest Hemingway
Eugène Delacroix
Eugene Sue
Euripides
Ezra Pound
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fergus Hume
Ford Madox Ford
Frances Burney
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Trollope
Francis Bacon
Francisco Goya
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Franz Kafka
Franz Schubert
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Schiller (English)
Frontius
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
G. A. Henty
G. K. Chesterton
Galileo Galilei
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Bernard Shaw
George Chapman
George Eliot
George Gissing
George Herbert
George MacDonald
George Meredith
George Orwell
 Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gilbert and Sullivan
Giotto
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Boccaccio
Grant Allen
Gustav Klimt
Gustave Courbet
Gustave Flaubert (English)
Guy Boothby
Guy de Maupassant
H. G. Wells
H. P. Lovecraft
H. Rider Haggard
Hafez
Hall Caine
Hans Christian Andersen
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Heinrich Heine
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry James
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Herman Melville
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hieronymus Bosch
Hilaire Belloc
Hippocrates
Homer
Honoré de Balzac (English)
Horace
Horace Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Ian Fleming
Immanuel Kant
Isaac Rosenberg
Isocrates
Ivan Turgenev
Izaak Walton
J. M. Barrie
J. M. Synge
J. M. W. Turner
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jack London
Jacques-Louis David
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
James Fenimore Cooper
James Joyce
James Russell Lowell
Jane Austen
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jerome K. Jerome
Johan Ludvig Runeberg
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johanna Spyri
 Johannes Vermeer
John Buchan
John Bunyan
John Clare
John Constable
John Donne
John Dryden
John Galsworthy
John Galt
John Gower
John Keats
John Locke
John Milton
John Muir
John Ruskin
John Webster
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Jonathan Swift
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Haydn
Josephus
Jules Verne
Julian
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Kahlil Gibran
Karl Marx
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
Kenneth Grahame
L. Frank Baum
L. M. Montgomery
Lafcadio Hearn
Laurence Sterne
Leigh Hunt
Leo Tolstoy
Leonardo da Vinci
Lewis Carroll
Livy
Longus
Lord Byron
Lord Dunsany
Louisa May Alcott
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludwig van Beethoven
Luís de Camões
Lytton Strachey
M. E. Braddon
M. R. James
Marcel Proust (English)
Marcus Aurelius
Margaret Oliphant
Maria Edgeworth
Marie Corelli
Mark Twain
Martial
 Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Prior
Maurice Leblanc
Max Brand
Maxim Gorky
Michael Drayton
Michel de Montaigne
Michelangelo
Miguel de Cervantes
Molière
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Niccolò Machiavelli
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Nekrasov
Nonnus
Norse Sagas
O. Henry
Oliver Goldsmith
One Thousand and One Nights
Oscar Wilde
Ouida
Ovid
Paul Cézanne
Paul Gauguin
Paul Klee
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Pausanias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Peter Paul Rubens
Petrarch
Petronius
Piero della Francesca
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pindar
Piotr Illitch Tchaïkovsky
Plato
Plautus
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Polybius
Procopius
Propertius
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Smyrnaeus
R. Austin Freeman
R. D. Blackmore
R. M. Ballantyne
R. S. Surtees
Radclyffe Hall
Rafael Sabatini
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
René Descartes
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Marsh
 Richard Wagner
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert E. Howard
Robert Frost
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Southey
Robert W. Chambers
Rudyard Kipling
Rumi
Rupert Brooke
Saki
Sallust
Samuel Butler
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sandro Botticelli
Sappho
Sax Rohmer
Seneca the Younger
Septuagint
Sextus Empiricus
Sheridan Le Fanu
Sidonius
Sigmund Freud
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Issac Newton
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Richard Burton
Sir Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas More
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Scott
Sophocles
Stanley J. Weyman
Statius
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Stephen Leacock
Strabo
Suetonius
T. S. Eliot
Tacitus
Talbot Mundy
Terence
The Brontës
The Brothers Grimm
The Harvard Classics
Theocritus
Theodore Dreiser
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
 Thomas Hood
Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Moore
Thomas Paine
Thucydides
Tibullus
Tintoretto
Titian
Tobias Smollett
Torquato Tasso
Varro
Victor Hugo
Vincent van Gogh
Virgil
Virginia Woolf
Voltaire
W. B. Yeats
W. Somerset Maugham
W. W. Jacobs
Walt Whitman
Walter Pater
Walter Savage Landor
Washington Irving
Wassily Kandinsky
Wilfred Owen
Wilkie Collins
William Blake
William Cowper
William Dean Howells
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
William James
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Morris
William Shakespeare
William Wordsworth
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Xenophon
Zane Grey

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