I fogKsfr (tes ta FRENCH SHORT STORIES SCHWEIKERT IteartiiriMMttlMltmi Class VQ I &79 Book.. S 4- CopightN°J_?^Q CDEXRIGHT WEPOSrr. Etjc lafee Cngltsf) Classics REVISED EDITION WITH HELPS TO STUDY FRENCH SHORT STORIES EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE BV HARRY C: SCHWEIKERT CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, ST. LOUIS, MO. SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK Copyright 1913, 1920 By oCott^ Foresman and Company OEC -8 1920 ROBERT O. LAW COMPANY EDITION BOOK MANUFACTURERS CHICAGO. U.S.A. ©CU604634 PREFACE w In late years constantly increasing attention has been given to the study of the short story in our schools and colleges. Numerous texts have been prepared to meet this new tendency, but in all of them there has been a prepon- derance of English and American stories. The few foreign stories included in some of the collections implied a scant recognition of the fact that there were excellent stories in literatures other than those in the English language. The present war has greatly stimulated interest in con- tinental literature, especially in that of our Allies. Of all these none is richer in its fiction than France. The high artistic excellence of the French short story has long been recognized and the more important French writers are well known everywhere ; but up to the present no representative collection of French short stories has been made for school use. This volume aims to present such a collection. The editor wishes to make a general acknowledgment of his indebtedness to all previous editors of collections of short stories which included the French. He has also re- ceived much help and stimulation from the many recent books on the art of the short story. Special acknowledgments are due to Mr. C. E. Miller and Mr. R..A. Alpiser, both of the Mercantile Library of St. Louis, for their many courte- sies, and to the editor's friend and colleague, Mr. Louis LaCroix. Acknowledgments to publishers will be found in connec- tion with the stories themselves. St. Louis, Mo., April, 1918. H.C.S. 3 CONTEXTS PAGE Preface 3 Introduction • I. The Short -Story Today 7 II. The Short Story of Antiquity 12 III. The Short Stpry in Modem France 15 Pronouncing Glossary IS Balzac 19 An Episode of the Eeign of Terror 21 The Atheist 's Mass 45 Colonel Chabert 67 Merimee 143 Mateo Falcone 144 Musset • 159 Croisilles 160 Maupassant 192 The Necklace 194 The Wreck 205 Fright 219 Two Friends 227 The Hand 235 Daudet 243 The Last Lesson 247 The Pope 's Mule 251 The Reverend Father Gaucher 's Elixir 262 Coppee 273 A Piece of Bread . 274 Fraxce 2S2 The Juggler of Notre Dame , . \ 84 5 6 CONTENTS PAGE Bazin 291 The Birds in the Letter-Box 292 Claretie 300 Boum-Boum 301 Lemaitre 309 The Siren 310 Appendix Helps to Study The Short Story Form ' '320 Plan for the Study of a Short Story 321 Stories in This Volume ^ 321 Chronological Table of Short Stories 329 INTRODUCTION The Short Story Today Fiction in its most comprehensive sense is coeval with the beginnings of literature, and the short story is as old as the art of narration itself. However, it has been left to comparatively modern times to give close attention to the definition of the literary forms now included in the general term prose fiction, until today the terms novel, romance, and short story have come to mean something fairly distinc- tive. For many centuries looseness in the matter of con- struction was characteristic of the long story and the short, both in poetry and prose. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the modern novel began to shape itself, more care was bestowed on the question of form, and, as the art of fiction progressed, the short story gradually began to emerge as a separate variety. But looseness of structure was not definitely attacked until about the middle of the last century when Poe, by precept and practice, proclaimed the short story as something new and distinct in fiction, sub- ject to special laws of its own. He published Berenice, his first story, in 1835, and in 1842 he wrote his famous review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales. Both the Tales and the critique are landmarks in the development of the short story. Poe's influence in this development can hardly be over-emphasized. In France his stories had the good for- tune to be translated by Baudelaire (1856-1865), and with such remarkable fidelity and exquisite style did the French- man perforin his task that the stories ranked practically as original work. Poe became equally popular in other coun- tries, especially in England, Germany, and Russia. 7 8 FRENCH SHORT STORIES It is an ancient truism to say that literature is a reflection of life., but the idea has special application in a consideration of the development of the short story. In the last fifty years life has become more complicated, the field of human thought and endeavor has widened, action has become more and more specialized, education is almost common property, and reading a universal habit. These very conditions, however, have imposed restrictions on leisure for reading, so that to- day a hundred readers find time for a short story to one who can devote himself to a long novel. The short story, therefore, fills a natural want created in large part by the conditions of modern life, and writers have not been slow in taking advantage of this demand for brevity. A concomitant factor in the popularization of the short story is the stupendous growth of the magazine as a medium of jDublication, especially in America. In the earlier maga- zine^ more particularly in England, short stories were used mainly as "fillers," while today the bookstands everywhere fairly groan with magazines which loudly proclaim them- selves as containing short stories only. Even the more con- servative of the older periodicals do not hesitate to call special attention to their short stories. Besides, a surpris- ingly large number of these stories find their way into book form, assuring them a greater degree of permanency. This insistent and constantly growing demand has not only stimu- lated production; it has also been responsible for greater merit in the stories themselves. A study of the short story- inevitably suggests a contrast with the novel. In a general way the material is the same for both, as well as the fundamental elements of construction. "The subject-matter with which prose fiction deals." says Prof. Bliss Perry, "is human life itself; the experience of the race, under countless conditions of existence." And again, fiction writers "all have something to say about life." That INTRODUCTION 9 surely is broad enough to include both novel and short story. Yet there are differences. In general, the novel is more expansive in theme and more elastic in treatment; it can, and usually does, reproduce a larger phase of life than the short story, one involving more characters and greater variety of incident, and affording a more extended range for the portrayal of human emotion. In the novel there is an elaborate plot, frequently supported by one or more sub-plots which help to create the complication in which much of the interest of the story is embodied. Opportunity is given for leisurely narration, often relieved by incidental description — only such, however, as will not obscure the effect which the writer wishes to create. In order to achieve his purpose artistically the novelist arranges the incidents and episodes in the lives of his characters in such a way as to lead up to the climax which permanently affects the destiny of the important characters at least, or involves them in a definite catastrophe. In some such way the ideals of the novel may be sum- marized, and, of course, some of the points just made apply to the short story as well, especially the older variety. But it has become the fashion to discriminate between the novel and the short story and much has been written in this connection. Rules have been formulated as to what is and what is not a short story, with considerable emphasis on the idea that a short story is more than a story that simply happens to be brief. In order to bring out these distinguishing features of the short story as it is now concerned it may not be irrelevant to give a brief synopsis of the fundamental elements of prose fiction. ♦ In every story, long or short, there are characters, setting, and plot. In other words, there are certain persons or characters who do something amid certain surroundings. The characters are described by direct statement of the author. 10 FRENCH SHORT STORIES or by what they do and say as the story progresses. The setting of a story includes its location in time and place. The plot gives life to the story; it implies action, the incidents and episodes in which the characters are involved being artistically arranged to lead to some certain end. The novel employs these elements with greater elaboration, as suggested in a previous paragraph, while the short story of necessity is of simple form. Many attempts have been made in recent years to give more precise and exact definition to the term short story as distinguished from the mere tale or sketch, but it does not seem essential to the present purpose to contribute to this discussion, for in this book all three forms are represented. The one trait common to all is singleness of effect, secured by repression in the use of material and by concentrating the interest upon some one character or some one incident; by compactness of construction and swiftness of movement. The contrast with the looser and more leisurely manner of the novel is obvious. In the ideal short story there is little room for description. Action is the word. The rest is usually quite secondary, although in the short story there has always been a marked fondness for local color effects because of the air of realism which they impart. The field of the short story is almost unlimited, both in range of subject-matter and method of treatment. The most successful stories of all times have always been those which appealed to the deep-seated emotions common to humanity, such as love, hate, jealousy, revenge, friendship, courage, devotion, self-sacrifice; or again, the appeal may lie in the type of character, the soldier, the beggar, the criminal, the athlete; and sometimes the appeal is in the effect only, rbr example, humor, pathos, or horror. It is not unusual for writers to combine two or more of these motives. In the present volume nearly all of the elements just mentioned INTRODUCTION 11 may easily be detected, and readers will find it a pleasant exercise to note, after they have read a story, what effect has been produced upon them and how the author managed his material in order to secure it. At the present moment no form of writing is more in" vogue than the short story. There is more and more of a tendency to place the emphasis on the short. Several reasons for this have already been indicated, but at least one other may be mentioned, imitation. Two of the foremost modern writers of the short story practiced the very short form — Maupassant and O Henry — and they did it sur- passingly well. They followed Poe in pointing the way for the type of stoiy that limited itself to the sharply-drawn photographic detail, and so successful were they that all the world seems inclined to follow them. Narrative art with them meant the focussing of the attention on some one character or some one trait or some one incident, by means of which they created the single impression sought. The modern devotion to hurry and speed has helped to popularize the very short form, and the newspapers and magazines are doing their best to foster this type. They prefer to print half a dozen stories by different authors rather than one or two longer ones which might actually have a higher claim to literary distinction. It is natural that an author can build better if he is not cramped for elbow-room, and this is exemplified by some of the older writers born before brevity became an altar on which all else must be sacrificed. Among them are such writers as Balzac, Turgenev, and Tolstoi. Readers who have not already done so should not fail to read Turgenev's A Lear of the Steppes, as well as the longer of the short stories by Balzac. Among the few more recent writers who wrote as they pleased rather than fit their stories into the space allotted by the magazines was Henry James. Some day. 12 FRENCH SHORT STORIES when it is no longer a popular literary sport to cast slurs upon that great literary figure, the reading public will wake up to the fact that it has been most unjustly neglecting one of the foremost writers of the short story in English. II The Short Story of Antiquity Of all the arts that of story-telling is surely the oldest. Long before the dawn of history primitive man must have found delight in talking about his success in the hunt or his prowess in the fight. His imagination soon taught him when to drop superfluous facts and when to add details in order to make a good story. These early tales of adventure, doubt- less, were enriched by that element of wonder instilled in the savage breast by the mysteries of a world which he could not explain but of which he nevertheless felt himself a part. In the course of time narratives of personal adventure tended to be combined with attempts to explain the powerful forces of nature, thereby helping to create the myth, the hero-tale, the legend, and the folk tale. These stories no doubt were crude and formless enough at first, but eventually were given some sort of rude shape by the professional story-teller who seems to have been common to all peoples and all literatures at some early stage in their development. Stories were told, re-told, added to. remolded, handed down orally from one generation to another, until at last the art of writing made it possible to preserve them with a certain degree of per- manency. In some such way as this we may imagine the art of story-telling in its beginnings. Perhaps the oldest known short stories arc those which have been preserved on the papyri of ancient Egypt, some of which have lately become accessible to English readers. One of these, The Shipwrecked Sailor, printed in Canby's Book of the Short Story, dates back to the twenty-fifth INTRODUCTION 13 century before our era, and may be the oldest short story in existence. The stories contained in the Arabian Nights are also very old, although their present form is compara- tively modern. In ancient Hebrew Literature a number of short stories may be found, including such fine examples as the Book of Ruth, and the Prodigal Son. In Greek and Roman literature there is very little that can properly be called prose fiction. In the history of Herodotus a number of anecdotes and stories are introduced, one of which at least might be called a short story. This is the story of Polycrates and his ring, in the third book. -The existing synopses of the so-called lost Tales of Miletus indicate that these were stories written primarily to enter- tain, and the fact that they seem to have been popular sug- gests that there may have been other collections of which no trace exists. Of extant Greek stories the Fables of Aesop (sixth century, b. c.) are popular to this day. In Roman literature some of the best short stories are found among the poets, notably Ovid, who, in his Meta- morphoses, re-tells in sprightly fashion many of the old stories, the myths and legends, of both Greece and Rome, as well as stories whose origin was less remote. The more important Roman prose writers rarely introduced anything resembling the short story. Of the minor writers at least three may be mentioned, all of them belonging to the first century of our era. The first is Petronius Arbiter, whose Trimalchio's Dinner is readily accessible in Professor Peck's admirable translation. In the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius is found that charming story, Androcles and the Lion. Probably the best short story in Latin is Cupid and Psyche, in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. With the barbarian invasions of the fifth century and the consequent disintegration of the Roman Empire classical literature came to an end. For almost a thousand years the 14 FRENCH SHORT STORIES civilization of Europe was adjusting and readjusting itself to different modes and ideals of life, and it was not until about the end of the thirteenth century that forms of the short story began once more to receive special attention. As far as the history of the short story is concerned the most significant work of the new era was the Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans), a collection of tales of all sorts from every imaginable source, written in Latin. This work became ex- ceedingly popular and was used as a source-book by the story-writers of the Middle Age and after. It also served to make more widespread the idea of gathering stories into collections. Often an added interest was given to these col- lections by linking the stories into a more or less connected series. This was especially true in Italy, the most famous example being the Decameron of Boccaccio (1313-1375). The scheme was also frequently employed in France, while in England it was adopted by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, and in America Longfellow used it in his Tales of a Wayside Inn. One of the most fascinating chapters in the history of story-telling is that which pertains to the literature of the Age of Romance. This connects itself particularly with France. There, as elsewhere, the earliest writing. was in poetic form. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the troubadours went from place to place chanting their chan- sons de gestes, or songs of great deeds. Side by side with these were the fabliaux and the contes devots, both highly important in the rise and development of the short story. In the fabliaux of the Middle Ages the story is commonly of a humorous nature, depending upon a trick for its point. Their greatest significance lies in their realistic portrayal of the life of that day. The contes devots, as the name indicates, were of a religious nature, obviously didactic, and closely related to the allegories so popular at that time. INTRODUCTION 15 But the importance of all these pales when placed in juxtaposition with the metrical romance proper. The chansons de gestes made at least some pretense to actual fact, and that constitutes their chief difference as far as the material is concerned. The outstanding special char- acteristic of the metrical romance was the element of wonder. Absolutely nothing seems to have been barred which might help to secure the desired effect, in character, setting, and plot. There were stories of grim giants, horrible dragons, beautiful enchantresses, imprisoned damsels to be rescued, enchanted castles, magicians, magic swords, and marvelous deeds involving superhuman strength and endurance. Ana- logues to this type of story may be found in nearly every great literature, but in the metrical romance there was some- thing more. This was the general attitude of chivalry — an unselfish devotion to ideals. Ill The Short Story in Modern France Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries there was nothing of note in the development of the French short story. The French novel had enjoyed its first period of popularity in the age of Louis XIV. In the eighteentli century it became essentially a reflection of the manners of the time, that is to say, highly artificial. During the period of the French Revolution and the years immedi- ately following much fiction was produced and a new note was struck. This new note was Romanticism. It was indi- cated not so much in the form and material used as in the attitude of the writer, and this attitude was largely the result of the influence of Rousseau. Its special feature was revolt, a breaking away from tradition and the hard, set mannerisms of an earlier day. As representative of this changed spirit Chateaubriand became the first important 16 FRENCH SHORT STORIES name,in modern French fiction. His Atala (1801), based upon his experiences with the American Indians, marked the turning-point for the new movement. The Romantic movement of the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries was the natural outcome of the general social unrest in all the highly civilized countries of Europe. Among the French novelists of this period who won distinction in. the short story are Balzac and Merimee. It was Victor Hugo, however, who became the great champion of Romanticism, first in poetry and the drama, then in fiction. In a literary movement, as in a politi- cal, there is a tendency to go to extremes. This is generally true of the period under discussion; but the short story, which developed rapidly during the years surrounding 1850, showed a marked inclination to moderate the eccentricities and extravagancies of the Romantic school. The Romantic idea was paramount, and, while men like Balzac and Meri- mee scoffed at it, they nevertheless used much of its material and adopted its methods, especially in their local color effects. This effort at local color struck the keynote for a new realism quite different from the artificialities thought realistic m the preceding century. It will be noted then that at the height of the Romantic movement there was already a swaying in the opposite direction due mainly to the conditions of life after the middle of the century. For at least two decades there was compara- tive political quiet and a general material prosperity. It was also an age of unexampled advance in all the phases of human endeavor, more particularly in science, and all this tended to produce a satisfaction witli life as it was. Flaubert and Gautier are the two pioneers of this new Realism which, nevertheless, retained many of the earmarks of Romanticism. They were both intimately connected with the short story, the one chiefly through his disciple. Maupas- INTRODUCTION 17 sant, the other by stories of his own. In this movement also there were extremists, especially those who tried to carry scientific method over into fiction. This phase of Realism be- came known as Naturalism, with Zola its greatest exponent. These various tendencies just sketched may be summa- rized as follows: The Romanticist tried to see life as he would like it to be; the Realist tried to portray life as it was ; the Naturalist saw life as something to dissect and analyze, giving us thereby the psychological novel. The introductory sketches to the various authors indicate the important landmarks in the development of the French short story. In no other literature has the short story at- tained such high artistic excellence as it has in that of France. This is due to several reasons. In the first place, the French are an art-loving people, with a keen sense for the beautiful. Furthermore, the French are conventional in their art as well as in their life. Form counts for a great deal with them, and that helps to account for the technical perfection of their short stories. The French language likewise is an important factor in the creation of an un- rivaled technique. It lends itself to a precision and con- ciseness of statement that is positively unique. In conse- quence, the French have always been conspicuous for style, and their critics have openly maintained that style is per- haps the most essential feature in a work of art. Outside of France this view is not always accepted, and one of the criticisms made by those who do not share the French point of view is that in French stories there is often too much art and too little matter. The writers of the short story in France have consciously given much attention to the way their stories are told, and the selections in this volume will enable the reader to judge for himself whether or not the contention can be upheld that the French have written the best short stories ever produced. PRONOUNCING GLOSSARY Arnaud, iir-no' Balzac, bal-zak', or bal'zak Bazin, ba-zan' Beluguet, be-lii-ge' Bermutier, ber-mu-tya' Bianchon, be-an-shon' Boucard, boo-caV Bourgeat, boo-zha' Boutin, boo-tan' Broussais, broo-se' Brunetiere, briin-tyar' Chabert, cha-bar' Chelles, shel Claretie, klar-te' Coppee, k5-pa' Crebillon, kra-be-yon' Croisilles, krwii-zeT Crottat, kru-ta' Cuvier, kii-vya' D'Assoucy, da-soo-ei' Daudet, do-de' Delbecq, del-bek' Desplein, de-plan' Desroches, da-rush' Du Guesclin, du-g<~-klfin' Faguet, fa-ge' Ferraud, fer-ro' Flaubert, flo'bar' Forestier, f3-res-tya/ Francois, fran-swii' Gaucher, go-she' Gautier, eo-tya' Giuseppa, joo-sep'pa Godeau, go-do' Godeschal, god'shal Langeais, lan-zhe' Lemaitre, le-ma'tr' Loisel, lwa-zel' Marquis de Beauseant, mar- ke' de bo-se-an' Mateo Falcone, ma-ta'o fal- co'ne Mathilde, ma'teld Maupassant de, mo-pa-san' de Merimee, ma're-ma' Moliere, mo-lyar' Morissot, mo-ris-so' Murat, mii-ra' Musset, mii-se' Quinquet, kan-ke' Ramponneau, ran-pon-no' Robespierre de, ro'bes-per' de or ro'bs-pyar Sauvage, so-viigh' Simonnin, se-mon-an' Talleyrand, tal-e-ran' Thibault, ti-bo' Tistet Vedene, tis'te ve-den' Tolstoi, tol-stoi' Turgenev, toor-gen'yef Vauquer, vo-ke' Vergniaud, varn-yo', or vor- BALZAC (1799-1850) Honore de Balzac was born at Tours in 1799. He was sent to school first at Vendome and completed his education at Paris. His parents intended him to be a lawyer, and he dutifully followed the course prescribed for entrance to that profession. But when he was offered an excellent oppor- tunity to practice he refused to consider it, having early in life determined to be a writer. Thoroughly disgusted, his father withdrew all support, and Balzac entered upon a career of struggle and poverty while endeavoring to make his way as a novelist. His rugged perseverance enabled him to leave his garret af ten ten years ; but he never achieved any great financial success because of his erratic ideas on the subject of money. Balzac was a man of tremendous physical vigor and boundless energy. He worked steadily and according to fixed methods, retiring at six in the evening and rising at midnight ; then, by drinking coffee excessively, he kept him- self at work until noon of the following day, and often longer. His afternoons he spent walking about Paris, always with an eye to possible material for stories, observing people, their modes of dress and habits of living, the houses in which they lived, the streets ; everything, in fact, which might be of use in the devising of his stories. He took a very serious view of his work, and the indefatigable energy which he employed in original creation was equaled by the painstaking method with which he prepared his copy for publication, re-writing and revising up to the final proofs. By basing his stories on actual observations of real life Balzac made himself the father of modern realism. He 19 20 FRENCH SHORT STORIES had the trick of being able to create the effect of truth by sheer mass of small things in the environment of the char- acters. In fact, he carried out this idea with such prolixity that in some passages the reader tends to be bored. It is interesting to note the contrast in method between Balzac and Maupassant in this connection. Almost as prominent as Balzac's love of actuality is his love of the exceptional situation. This led him frequently into extravaganza and melodrama. He said of himself: "I love exceptional be- ings; I am one of them." He had a passion for the shadowy, the mystic, the chicanery of secret societies, any- thing, in fact, which would add color to his stories. One must indeed recognize in the great realist a highly romantic strand of temperament. In the twenty years of his literary career Balzac wrote over a hundred stories, of which a few are short stories, but the great bulk novels. His purpose always was to present a detailed picture of the French life of his day in all its phases. He himself grouped his stories as follows : Scenes of (1) Private Life; (2) Provincial Life; (3) Parisian Life; (4) Political Life; (5) Military Life; (6) Country Life; these, with (7) Philosophical Studies, comprise nearly all of his stories, and to the whole he gave the title La Come die Humaine. Balzac's style is forceful and vigorous, quite in character with himself and his subject matter. Often it is somewhat rough and lacks the artistic finish of many later French writers. At times he loved to revel in the grim and sordid, and in such stories his method of detail is apt to make the result brutal and revolting to English readers. But he rarely failed to make his story interesting, solid, and pro- found, no small distinction in a writer who produced as much as Balzac. The Atheist's Mass, Colonel Chabert, and An Episode of the Reign of Terror, the stories selected for this volume, show Balzac at his very best. He classified the first two as Scenes of Private Life, the other as Political. Most of his AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 21 short stories are scattered through volumes containing longer stories, so that it is difficult to locate them. However., several volumes of them may now be had in the Everyman Library. Balzac remained a bachelor for fifty years, but in 1850 he went to Russia and there married Madame Hanska, with whom he had been acquainted for many years. He returned to Paris and to his work, but the feverish activity with which he had worked so many years at last wore him out and he died August 18, 1850. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 1 By HONORE DE BALZAC About eight o'clock on the evening of January 22nd, 1793, an aged woman was coming down the sharp descent of the Faubourg Saint-Martin that ends in front of the church of Saint-Laurent. Snow had fallen so heavily all day long that hardly a footfall could be heard. The streets were deserted. Fears that the silence around naturally enough inspired were increased by all the terror under which France was then groaning. So the old lady had thus far met with no one else. Her sight, which had long been failing, did not enable her to distinguish far off by the light of the street lamps some passers-by, moving like scattered shadows in the huge thor- oughfare of the Faubourg. She went on bravely all alone in the midst of this solitude, as if her age were a talisman that could be relied on to preserve her from any mishap. When she had passed the Rue des Morts she thought she perceived the heavy, firm tread of a man walking behind her. It occurred to her that it was not the first time she had heard this sound. She was alarmed at the idea that she was being 1. That period of the French Revolution when the faction in power made it a principle to execute every one considered hostile to their rule. It lasted from March. 1793, to the fall of Robespierre in July, 1794. 22 FRENCH SHORT STORIES followed, and she tried to walk faster in order to reach a fairly well-lighted shop, in the hope that, in the light it gave, she would be able to put to the test the suspicions that had taken possession of her. As soon as she was within the circle of light projected horizontally by the shop-front, she quickly turned her head and caught glimpse of a human form in the foggy darkness. This vague glimpse was enough for her. She tottered for a moment under the shock of terror that overwhelmed her. for she no longer doubted that she had been followed by the stranger from the first step she had taken outside her lodging. The longing to escape from a spy gave her strength. Without being able to think of what she was doing, she began to run — as if she could possibly get away from a man who must necessarily be much more agile than herself. After running for a few minutes she reached a confec- tioner's shop, entered it, and fell, rather than sat, down upon a chair that stood in front of the counter. Even while she was raising the creaking latch, a young woman, who was busy with some embroidery, raised her eyes, and through the small panes of the half-window in the shop door recog- nized the old-fashioned violet silk mantle, in which the old lady was wrapped. She hurriedly opened a drawer as if looking for something she was to hand over to her. It was not only by her manner and the look on her face that the young woman showed she was anxious to get rid of the stranger without delay, as if her visitor were one of those there was no pleasure in seeing; but, besides this, she allowed an expression of impatience to escape her on finding that the drawer was empty. Then, without looking at the lady, she turned suddenly from the counter, went toward the back shop, and called her husband, who at once made his appearance. "Wherever have you put away . . . ?" she asked of AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 23 him, with an air of m} r stery without finishing her question, but calling his attention to the old lady with a glance of her eyes. Although the confectioner could see nothing but the immense black silk bonnet, trimmed with bows of violet ribbon, that formed the strange visitor's headgear, he left the shop again, after having cast at his wife a look that seemed. to say, "Do you think that I would leave that in your counter . . . ?" Surprised at the motionless silence of the old lady, the * shopwoman turned and approached her, and as she looked at her she felt herself inspired with an impulse of compassion, perhaps not unmingled with curiosity. Although the woman's complexion showed an habitual pallor, like that of one who makes a practice of secret austerities, it was easy to see that a recent emotion had brought an unusual paleness to her face. Her headdress was so arranged as to conceal her hair. No doubt it was white with age, for there were no marks on the upper part of her dress to show that she used hair powder. The complete absence of ornament lent to her person an air of religious severity. Her features had a grave, stately look. In these old times the manners and habits of people of quality were so different from those of other classes of society, that it was easy to distinguish one of noble birth. So the young woman felt convinced that the stranger was a ci-devant, an ex-aristocrat, and that she had belonged to the court. "Madame . . ." she said to her with involuntary respect, forgetting that such a title was now forbidden. The old lady did not reply. She kept her eyes fixed on the window of the shop, as if she could distinguish some fearful object in that direction. "What is the matter, citizeness ?" asked the shopkeeper, who had returned almost immediately. 24 FRENCH SHORT STORIES And the citizen-confectioner roused the lady from her reverie by offering her a little cardboard box wrapped in blue paper. "Nothing, nothing, my friends/' she answered in a sweet voice. She raised her eyes to the confectioner's face as if to give him a look of thanks, but seeing the red cap 2 on his head, she uttered a cry: "Ah, you have betrayed me!" The young woman and her husband replied by a gesture of horror at the thought, which made the stranger blush, perhaps at having suspected them, perhaps with pleasure. "Pardon me," she said, with childlike gentleness. Then, taking a lonis d'or 3 from her pocket, she offered it to the confectioner: "Here is the price we agreed on," she added. There is a poverty that the poor readily recognize. The confectioner and his wife looked at one another, silently turning each other's attention to the old lad}', while both formed one common thought. This lonis d'or must be her last. The lady's hands trembled as she offered the piece of money, she looked at it with a sadness that had no avarice in it, but she seemed to realize the full extent of the sacrifice she made. Starvation and misery were as plainly marked on her face as the lines that told of fear and of habits of asceticism. In her dress there were traces of old magnifi- cence. It was of worn-out silk. Her mantle was neat though threadbare, with some carefully mended lace upon it. In a word, it was a case of wealth the worse for wear. The people of the shop, hesitating between sympathy and self-interest, began by trying to satisfy their consciences with words: "But, citizeness, you seem to be very weak " "Would Madame like to take something?'* said the woman, cutting her husband short. •_'. The red cap was tin- symbol of revolution anil was worn l»y the radicals. ::. a gold <(»in worth .*4.oo. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 2h "We have some very good soup/' added the confectioner, "It is so cold tonight. Perhaps Madame has had a chili while walking? But you can rest here and warm yourself for a while." "We are not as black as the devil!" exclaimed the con- fectioner. Won by the tone of kindness that found expression in the words of the charitable shopkeepers, the lady let them know she had been followed by a stranger, and that she was afraid to go back alone to her lodgings. "Is that all?" replied the man in the red cap, "wait a little, citizeness." He gave the louis d'or to his wife. . . . Then moved by that sort of gratitude that finds its way into the heart of a dealer when he has got an exorbitant price for some merchandise of trifling value, he went and put on his National Guard's uniform, took his hat, belted on his sword, and reappeared as an armed man. But his wife had had time to reflect. In her heart, as in so many more, reflection closed the open hand of benevolence. Anxious and fearful of seeing her husband involved in some bad business, the confectioner's wife tried to pull him by the skirt of his coat and stop him. But obeying his own charitable feelings, the good fellow offered at once to escort the old lady. "It seems that the man the citizeness is afraid of is still prowling about in front of our shop," said the young woman excitedly. "I am afraid he is," put in the lady naively. "What if he were a spy? ... if there were some plot? . . . Don't go, and take back that box from her. These words, whispered in the ear of the confectioner by his wife, froze the sudden courage that had inspired him. "Well, I'll just say a few words to him, and rid you 26 FRENCH SHORT STORIES of him soon enough," exclaimed the shopkeeper, as he opened the door and slipped hurriedly out. The old lady, passive as a child and almost stupefied by her fear, sat down again on the chair. The good shopkeeper was soon back. His face, naturally ruddy enough and further reddened by his oven fire, had suddenly become pallid. He was a prey to such terror that his legs shook and his eves looked like those of a drunken man. "Do you want to get our heads cut off, you wretch of an aristocrat?" he cried out in a fury. "Come, show us your heels, and don't let us see you again, and don't reckon on my supplying you with materials for your plots !" As he ended, the confectioner made an attempt to take back from the old lady the little box which she had put into one of her pockets. But hardly had his bold hands touched her dress, than the stranger — preferring to risk herself amid the perils of the street without any other protector but God, rather than to lose what she had just bought, regained all the agility of youth. She rushed to the door, opened it briskly, and vanished from the sight of wife and husband as they stood trembling and astonished. As soon as the stranger was outside she started off at a rapid walk. But her strength soon began to desert her. and she heard the spy, who had so pitilessly followed her, making the snow crackle as he crushed it with his heavy tread. She had to stop. He stopped. She did not dare to address him, or even to look at him — it might be on account of the fear that had seized upon her, or because she could not think what to say. Then she went on again walking slowly. The man also slackened his pace so as to remain always just at the distance that enabled him to keep her in sight. He seemed to be the very shadow of the old woman. Nine o'clock struck as the silent pair once more passed by the church of Saint-Laurent. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 27 It is a part of the nature of all minds, even of the weakest, to find a feeling of calm succeed to any violent agitation, for if our feelings are infinite, our organism has its limits. So the stranger, finding that her supposed persecutor did her no harm, was inclined to see in him some unknown friend who was anxious to protect her. She summed up in her mind all the circumstances that had attended the appearance of the stranger, as if seeking for some plausible motives for this consoling opinion, and was then satisfied to recognize on his part a friendly rather than an evil purpose. Forgetful of the alarm, which this man had so short a time ago caused the confectioner, she now went on with a firm step into the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Martin. After walking for half an hour she came to a house situated near the point where the street, which leads to the Pantin barrier, branches off from the main line of the I'aubourg. Even at the present day the neighborhood is still one of the loneliest in all Paris. A northeast wind blowing over the Buttes Chaumont and Belleville whistled between the houses, or rather the cottages, scattered about this almost uninhabited valley, in which the enclosures were formed of fences built up of earth and old bones. The desolate place seemed to be the natural refuge of misery and despair. The man, all eagerness in the pursuit of this poor creature, who was so bold as to traverse these silent streets in the night, seemed struck by the spectacle that presented itself to his gaze. He stood still, full of thought, in a hesitating attitude, in the feeble light of a street lamp, the struggling rays of which could hardly penetrate the fog. Fear seemed to sharpen the sight of the old lady, who thought she saw something of evil omen in the looks of the stranger. She felt her terror reawakening, and took advantage of the seeming hesitation that had brought the man to a standstill 28 FRENCH SHORT STORIES to slip through a shadow to the door of a solitary house, she pushed back a spring latch and disappeared in an instant like a ghost upon the stage. The unknown man, without moving from where he stood, kept his eyes fixed on the house, the appearance of which was fairly typical of that of the wretched dwelling places of this suburb of Paris. The tumble-down hovel was built of bricks covered with a coat of yellow plaster, so full of cracks that one feared to see the whole fall down in a heap of ruins before the least effort of the wind. There were three windows to each floor, and their frames, rotten with damp and warped by the action of the sun, suggested that the cold must penetrate freely into the rooms. The lonely house looked like some old tower that time has forgotten to destroy. A feeble gleam lit up the warped and crooked window-sashes of the garret window, that showed up the roof of this poor edifice, while all the rest of the house was in complete darkness. Not without difficulty the old woman climbed the rough and clumsy stair, in ascending which one had to lean on a rope that took the place of a handrail. She gave a low knock at the door of the garret room and hurriedly took her seat on a chair, which an old man offered to her. "Hide yourself ! Hide yourself !" she said to him, "though we so seldom go out, our doings are known, our steps art- spied upon. "Is there anything new then?" asked another old woman who was seated near the fire. "That man, who has been prowling round the house si net \ t sterda} 7 , followed me this evening. At these words the three inmates of the hovel looked at each other, while they showed on their faces signs of serious alarm. Of the three the old man was the least agitated, AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 29 perhaps because he was the most in danger. Under the weight of a great misfortune,, or under the pressure of perse- cution, a brave man begins, so to say, by making the complete sacrifice of himself. He counts each day as one more victory won over fate. The looks of the two women fixed upon this old man made it easy to see that he was the one object of their keen anxiety. "Why lose our trust in God, my sisters ?" he said in a voice low, but full of fervor; "we sang His praises in the midst of the cries of the murderers and of the dying at the convent of the Carmelites. 4 If He willed that I should be saved from that butchery, it was no doubt to preserve me for some destiny that I must accept without a murmur. God guards His own, and He can dispose of them according to His will. It is of yourselves, and not of me, that we must think." "No," said one of the old women, "what are our lives compared to that of a priest?" "Once I saw myself outside of the Abbey of Chelles/ I considered myself as a dead woman," said one of the two nuns — the one who had remained in the house. "Here are the altar breads," said the other, who had just come in, offering the little box to the priest. "But ..." she cried out, "I hear footsteps on the stairs !" All three listened. . . . The sound ceased. "Do not be alarmed," said the priest, "if some one tries to get to see you. A person on whose good faith we can depend must by this time have taken all necessary steps to cross the frontier, in order to come here for the letters I have written to the Due de Langeais and the Marquis de Beauseant, asking them to see what can be done to take you 4. An order of monks originally organized on Mt. Carmel in Pales- tine. 5. An abbey founded in 660. It was pillaged and the inmates dispersed in the early days of the Revolution. 30 FRENCH SHORT STORIES away from this wretched country, and the suffering and death that await you here." "You are not going with us then?" exclaimed the two nuns in gentle protest, and with a look of something like despair. "My place is where there are still victims/' was the priest's simple reply. They were silent and gazed at their protector with reverent admiration. "Sister Martha/' he said, addressing the nun who had gone to get the altar breads, "this envoy of ours should answer 'Fiat voluntas* to the password 'Hosanna.' '' "There is some one on the stair !" exclaimed the other nun ; and she opened a hiding-place constructed in the roof. This time, in the deep silence, it was easy to catch the sound of the footsteps of some man, re-echoing on the stairs that were rough with lumps of hardened mud. The priest with some difficulty huddled himself into a kind of cupboard, and the nun threw some old clothes over him. "You can shut the door," he said in a smothered voice. The priest was hardly hidden away, when three knocks at the door made both the good women start. They were exchanging looks of inquiry without daring to utter a word. Both seemed to be about sixty years of age. Separated from the world for some forty years, they were like plants, that are so used to the air of a hothouse, that they die if one takes them out. Accustomed as they were to the life of the convent they had no idea of anything else. One morning their cloister had been broken open, and they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the state of nervous weakness the events of the Revolution had produced in their innocent minds. Unable to reconcile the mental habits of the cloister with the difficulties of life, and not fully under- G. "Thy will ho done," from the Lord's Prayer. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 31 standing the circumstances in which they were placed, they were like children of whom every care had been taken till now, and who, suddenly deprived of their mother's care, pray instead of weeping. So face to face with the danger which they now saw before them, they remained silent and passive, knowing of no other defense but Christian resignation. The man who had asked for admittance interpreted this silence in his own way. He opened the door and suddenly appeared in the room. The two nuns shuddered as they recognized the man, who for some time had been prowling around their house, and making inquiries about them. They remained motionless, looking at him with the anxious curi- osity of untaught children who stare in silence at a stranger. The man was tall in stature and heavily built. But there was nothing in his attitude, his general appearance, or the expression of his face, to suggest that he was a bad character. Like the nuns, he kept quite still, and slowly cast his eyes round the room he had entered. Two straw mats unrolled on the floor served for beds for the nuns. There was a table in the middle of the room, and there stood on it a brass candlestick, some plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread. There was a very small fire in the grate. A few pieces of wood heaped up in a corner were a further sign of the poverty of these two recluses. One could see that the roof was in a bad state, for the walls, covered with a coat of very old paint, were stained with brown streaks that showed where the rain had leaked through. A reliquary, rescued no doubt from the sack of the Abbey of Chelles, served as an ornament to the mantelpiece. Three chairs, two boxes, and a shabby chest of drawers com- pleted the furniture of the room. A door near the fireplace suggested that there was a second room beyond. The individual, who had in such an alarming way intro- duced himself to this poor household, had soon taken mental 32 FRENCH SHORT STORIES note of all the contents of the little room. A feeling of pity could be traced upon his countenance;, and he cast a kindly look upon the two women, and appeared to be at least as much embarrassed as they were. The strange silence that all three had kept so far did not long continue, for at last the stranger realized the timidity and inexperience of the two poor creatures, and said to them in a voice that he tried to make as gentle as possible: "I do not come here as an enemy, citizenesses . He stopped, as if recovering himself, and went on: "Sisters, if any misfortune comes your way, believe me I have no part in it. . . .1 have a favor to ask of you." They still kept silence. "If I am troubling you, if . . . if I am causing you pain, say so freely . . . and I will go away; but be assured that I am entirely devoted to you; that if there is any kindness I can do to you, you can claim it from me without fear; and that I am perhaps the only one who is above the law, now that there is no longer a king. . There was such an air of truth in his words, that Sister Agatha, she of the two nuns who belonged to the noble family of Langeais, and whose manners seemed to indicate that in old times she had known the splendors of festive society and had breathed the air of the court — pointed with an alert movement to one of the chairs as if asking the visitor to be seated. The stranger showed something of pleasure mingled with sadness, as he understood this gesture, but before taking the chair he waited till both the worthy ladies were seated. "You have given a refuge here," he continued, "to a venerable priest, one of those who refused the oath, 7 and who had a miraculous escape from the massacrr at the 7. A decree in 1790 compelled .ill the clergy t<« take an oath to support the Revolutionary government. Many refused and became refugees. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 33 Carmelites. . . ." "Hosanna!" . . . said Sister Agatha, interrupting the stranger, and looking at him with anxious curiosity. "I don't think that is his name/' he replied. "But, sir, we have no priest here," said Sister Martha, eagerly. "If that is so, you ought to be more careful and prudent.'' answered the stranger in a gentle tone, as he stretched out his hand to the table and took a breviary from it. "I don't suppose you know Latin, and He said no more, for the extraordinary emotion depicted on the faces of the two poor nuns made him fear that he had gone too far. They were trembling, and their eyes filled with tears. "Don't be alarmed," he said in a voice that seemed all sincerity, "I know the name of your guest, and your own names, too, and for the last three days I have been aware of your distress and of your devoted care for the venerable Abbe de . "Hush!" said Sister Agatha, in her simplicity, putting a finger to her lips. "You see, Sister, that if I had had in my mind the horrible idea of betraying you, I could have done so already, again and again. Hearing these words, the priest extricated himself from his prison, and came out again into the room. "I could not possibly believe, sir," he said to the stranger, "that you were one of our persecutors, and I trust myself to you. What do you want of me?" The holy confidence of the priest, the nobility of mind that showed itself in his every look, would have disarmed even assassins. The mysterious man, whose coming had caused such excitement in this scene of resigned misery, gazed for a moment at the group formed by the three others ; 34 FRENCH SHORT STORIES then, taking a tone in which there was no longer any hesi- tation, he addressed the priest in these words: "Father, I came to ask you to say a mass for the dead, for the repose of the soul ... of one . . . of a sacred personage, whose body will never be laid to rest in consecrated ground. The priest gave an involuntary shudder. The nuns, who did not yet understand to whom it was the stranger alluded, sat in an attitude of curiosity, their heads stretched forward, their faces turned toward the two who were speaking together. The priest looked closely at the stranger, on whose face there was an unmistakable expression of anxiety, and also of earnest entreaty. "Well," replied the priest, "come back this evening at midnight, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only rites for the dead that we may be able to offer up in expiation for the crime of which you speak. . The stranger started, but it seemed that some deep and soothing satisfaction was triumphing over his secret sorrow. After having respectfully saluted the priest and the two holy women, he took his departure, showing a kind of silent gratitude, which was understood by these three generous souls. About two hours after this scene the stranger returned, knocked softly at the door of the garret, and was admitted by Mademoiselle de Beauseant, who led him into the inner room of this poor place of refuge, where everything had been made ready for the ceremony. Between two chimney shafts that passed up through the room, the nuns had placed the old chest of drawers, the antiquated outlines of which were hidden by a magnificent altar frontal of green watered silk. A large crucifix of ivory and ebony hung on the yellow-washed wall contrasting so strongly with surrounding bareness, that the eye could AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 35 not fail to be drawn to it. Four slender little tapers, which the Sisters had succeeded in fixing on this improvised altar by attaching them to it with sealing wax, threw out a dim light that was hardly reflected by the wall. This feeble illumination barely gave light to the rest of the room; but, as it thus shone only on the sacred objects, it seemed like a light sent down from heaven on this unadorned altar. The floor was damp. The roof, which slanted down sharply on two sides, as is usual in garret rooms, had some cracks in it through which came the night wind — icy cold. Nothing could be more devoid of all pomp, and nevertheless there was perhaps never anything more solemn than this mournful ceremony. A .profound silence, in which one could have heard the least sound uttered on the highway outside, lent a kind of somber majesty to the midnight scene. Finally the greatness of the action itself contrasted so strongly with the poverty of its surroundings that the result was a feeling of religious awe. On each side of the altar the two aged nuns knelt on the tiled floor without taking any notice of its deadly dampness, and united their prayers with those of the priest, who, robed in his sacerdotal vestments, placed on the altar a chalice of gold adorned with precious stones, a consecrated vessel that had been saved, no doubt, from the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles. Beside this chalice, a token of royal munificence, the wine and water destined for the Holy Sacrifice stood ready in two glasses, such as one would hardly have found in the poorest inn. For want of a missal the priest had placed a small prayer-book on the corner of the altar. An ordinary plate had been prepared for the washing of the hands, in this case hands all innocent and free from blood. There was the contrast of littleness with immensity; of poverty with noble sublimity ; of what was meant for profane uses with what .was consecrated to God. 36 FRENCH SHORT STORIES The stranger knelt devoutly between the two nuns. But suddenly., as he noticed that, having no other means of marking that this was a mass offered for the dead, the priest had placed a knot of crape on the crucifix and on the base of the chalice, thus putting holy things in mourning, the stranger's mind was so mastered by some recollection that drops of sweat stood out upon his broad forehead. The four silent actors in the scene looked at each other mysteri- ously. Then their souls, acting and reacting on each other, inspired with one common thought, united them in devout sympathy. It seemed as if their minds had evoked the presence of the martyr whose remains the quicklime had burned away, and that his shade was present with them in all its kingly majesty. They were celebrating a requiem without the presence of the body of the departed. Under the disjointed laths and tiles of the roof four Christians were about to intercede with God for a King of Franee, 8 and perform his obsequies though there was no coffin before the altar. There was the purest of devoted love, an act of wondrous loyalty performed without a touch of self-con- sciousness. No doubt, in the eyes of God, it was like the gift of the glass of water that ranks with the highest of virtues. All the monarchy was there, finding voice in the prayers of a priest and two poor women; but perhaps the Revolution, too, was represented by that man, whose face showed too much remorse to leave any doubt that he was fulfilling a duty inspired by deep repentance. Before lie pronounced the Latin words, Introlbo ad altare Dei, 9 the priest, as if by an inspiration from on high, turned to the three who were with him as the representatives of Christian France, and said to them, as though to banish from their sight all the misery of the garret room: 8. Louis XVI, beheaded Jan, 21. 1793. !t. "I will ?;'<> null. Hie altar of God." AN EPISODE OF THE REIGX OF TERROR 37 "We are about to enter into the sanctuary of God!" At these words, uttered with deep devotion, a holy awe took possession of the stranger and the two nuns. Under the vast arches of St. Peter's at Rome these Christians could not have realized the majesty of God's Presence more plainly than in that refuge of misery; so true is it that between Him and man all outward things seem useless, and His greatness comes from Himself alone. The stranger showed a really fervent devotion. So the same feelings united the prayers of these four servants of God and the king. The sacred words sounded like a heavenly music in the midst of the silence. There was a moment when the unknown man could not restrain his tears. It was at the Pater Noster, 10 when the priest added this prayer in Latin which, no doubt, the stranger understood: "Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse." (And forgive their crime to the regicides, as Louis himself forgave them.) The nuns saw two large tear-drops making lines of mois- ture down the strong face of the unknown, and falling to the floor. The Office for the Dead was recited. The Domine salvum fac regem, 11 chanted in a low voice, touched the hearts of these faithful Royalists, who thought how the child king, for whom at that moment they were imploring the help of the Most High, was a captive in the hands of his enemies. The stranger shuddered as he remembered that perhaps a fresh crime might be committed, in which he would no doubt be forced to have a share. When the Office for the Dead was ended, the priest made a sign to the two nuns, and they withdrew. As soon as he found himself alone with the stranger, he went toward him 10. ''Our Father." the opening words in the Lord's Prayer in Latin. 11. "O Lord, save the king,'' part of the mass said for the king. 38 FRENCH SHORT STORIES with a sad and gentle air, and said to him in a fatherly voice : "My son, if you have imbrued your hands in the blood of the martyr king, confide in me. There is no fault that is not blotted out in God's eyes by a repentance as sincere and as touching as yours appears to be." At the first words uttered by the priest the stranger gave way to an involuntary movement of alarm. But he recovered his self-control and looked calmly at the astonished priest. "Father," he said to him, in a voice that showed evident signs of emotion, "no one is more innocent than I am of the blood that has been shed. . "It is my duty to take your word for it," said the priest. There was a pause, during which once more he looked closely at his penitent. Then, persisting in taking him for one of those timid members of the National Convention 12 who abandoned to the executioner a sacred and inviolable head in order to save their own, he spoke once more in a grave tone: "Consider, my son, that in order to be guiltless of this great crime it does not suffice merely to have had no direct co-operation in it. Those who, although they could have defended the king, left their swords in their scabbards, will have a very heavy account to render to the King of Heaven. . Oh, yes !" added the old priest, shaking his head expressively from side to side. "Yes, very heavy ! for in standing idle, they have made themselves the involun- tary accomplices of this awful misdeed." "Do you think," asked the man, as if struck with horror, "that even an indirect participation in it will be punished? 12. The revolutionary government of France between Sept. 21, 1702, and Oct. 2(5. 1795. This Convention declared France a republic. There were thre<> factions : the moderates or Girondists, the radicals or Jacobins, and those who were undecided, waiting for developments. The reference in th«» text is to this last group, many of whom finally voted with the radicals tor the executiou of the king. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 39 Are we then to take it that, say, a soldier who was ordered to keep the ground at the scaffold is guilty? The priest hesitated. Pleased at the dilemma in which he had put this Puritan of Royalism by placing him between the doctrine of passive obedience, which, according to the partisans of the monarchy, must be the essence of the military code, and the equally important doctrine which was the sanction of the respect due to the person of the king, the stranger eagerly accepted the priest's hesitation as indicating a favorable solution of the doubts that seemed to harass him. Then, in order not to give the venerable theo- logian further time for reflection, he said to him : "I would be ashamed to offer you any honorarium for the funeral service you have just celebrated for the repose of the soul of the king, and to satisfy my own conscience. One can only pay the price of what is inestimable by offering that which is also beyond price. Will you therefore conde- scend, sir, to accept the gift I make you of a sacred relic. . Perhaps the day will come when you will under- stand its value." As he ceased speaking, the stranger held out to the priest a little box that was extremely light. The latter took it in his hands automatically, so to say, for the solemnity of the words of this man, the tone in which he spoke, the reverence with which he handled the box, had plunged him into a reverie of deep astonishment. Then they returned to the room where the two nuns were waiting for them. "You are," said the stranger to them, "in a house, the proprietor of which, the plasterer, Mucius Scaevola, who lives in the first story, is famous in the quarter for his patriotism. But all the same he is secretly attached to the Bourbons. 13 Formerly he was a huntsman to Monseigneur 13. The name of the royal house of France. 40 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the Prince de Conti, and he owes his fortune to him. By staying here you are safer than anywhere else in France. Remain here, therefore. Certain pious souls will provide for your needs, and j^ou can wait without danger for less evil times. A year hence, on January 21st" (as he pro- nounced these last words he could not conceal an involuntary start), "if this poor place is still your refuge, I shall come back to assist once more with you at a mass of expiation." He stopped without further explanation. He saluted the silent inhabitants of the garret, took in with a last look the signs that told of their poverty, and left the room. F'or the two simple nuns such an adventure had all the interest of a romance. So when the venerable abbe had told them of the mysterious present so solemnly made to him by this man, they placed the box on the table, and the feeble light of the candle, shining on the three anxious faces, showed on all of them a look of indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box and found in it a handkerchief of fine cambric soiled with perspiration. As they unfolded it they saw spots on it : 'They are blood stains," said the priest. "It is marked with the royal crown!" exclaimed the other Sister. With a feeling of horror the two Sisters dropped the precious relic. For these two simple souls the mystery that surrounded the stranger had become something inexplicable. And, as for the priest, from that day he did not even attempt to rind an explanation of it in his own mind. It was not long before the three prisoners realized that notwithstanding the Terror an invisible hand was stretched out to protect them. At first firewood and provisions were sent in for them. Then the two nuns guessed that a woman was associated with their protector, for they were sent linen and clothes that would make it possible tor them to go out AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 41 without attracting attention by the aristocratic fashion of the dress they had been forced to wear till then. Finally Mucius Scaevola provided them with two "civic cards/' certificates of good citizenship. Often by roundabout ways they received warnings that were necessary for the safety of the priest^ and tfyey recognized that these friendly hints came so opportunely that they could only emanate from some one who was initiated into the secrets of the state. Notwith- standing the famine from which Paris was suffering, the refugees found rations of white bread left regularly at their garret door by invisible hands. However, they thought they could identify in Mucius Scaevola the mysterious agent of this beneficence, which was always as ingenious as it was well directed. The noble refugees in the garret could have no doubt but that their protector was the same person who had come to assist at the mass of expiation on the night of January 22nd, 1793: He thus became the object of a very special regard on the part of all three. They hoped in him only, lived only thanks to him. They had added special prayers for him to their devotions ; morning and night these pious souls . offered up petitions for his welfare, for his prosperity, for his salvation. They begged God to remove all temptations from him, to deliver him from his enemies, and to give him a long and peaceful life. Their gratitude was thus, so to say, daily renewed, but was inevitably associated with a feeling of curiosity that became keener as day after day went by. The circumstances that had attended the appearance of the stranger were the subject of their conversations. They formed a thousand conjectures with regard to him, and* it was a fresh benefit to them of another kind that he thus served to distract their minds from other thoughts. They were quite determined that on the night, when, according to his promise, he would come back to celebrate the mournful anniversarv of 42 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the death of Louis XVI, they would not let him go without establishing more friendly relations with him. The night to which they had looked forward so impatiently came at last. At midnight the heavy footsteps of the un- known resounded on the old wooden stair. The room had been made ready to receive him; the altar was prepared. This time the Sisters opened the door before he reached it, and both hastened to show a light on the staircase. Made- moiselle de Langeais even went down a few steps in order the sooner to see their benefactor. "Come/' she said to him in a voice trembling with affection, "come . . . you are expected." The man raised his head, and without replying cast a gloomy look at the nun. She felt as if a mantle of ice had fallen around her, and kept silence. At the sight of him the feeling of gratitude and of curiosity died out in all their hearts. He was perhaps less cold, less taciturn, less terrible than he appeared to these souls, whom the excitement of their feelings disposed to a warm and friendly welcome. The three poor prisoners realized that the man wished to remain a stranger to them, and they accepted the situation. The priest thought that he noticed a smile, that was at once repressed, play upon the lips of the unknown, when he remarked the preparations that had been made for his reception. He heard mass and prayed. But then he went away after having declined, with a few words of polite refusal, the invitation that Mademoiselle de Langeais offered liim to share with them the little supper that had been made ready. After the 9th Thermidor 14 — (the fall of Robespierre) both the nuns and the Abbe de Marolles were able to go 14. The National Convention made ov^er the calendar. Sept. 22 1792, was declared the beginning of the year 1. There were twelve months, their names being supposed to correspond to the time of the year in which they came. Thermidor was the eleventh. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 43 about in Paris without incurring the least danger. The old priest's first excursion was to a perfumer's shop at the sign of the Heine des Fleurs, kept by Citizen Ragon and his wif e, formerly perfumers to the court, who had remained faithful to the royal family. The Vendeans 15 made use of them as their agents for corresponding with the exiled princes and the royalist committee at Paris. The abbe, dressed as the times required, was standing on the doorstep of the shop, which was situated between the Church of Saint Roch and the Rue des Frondeurs, when a crowd, which filled all the i Rue Saint-Honore, prevented him from going out. "What is the matter?" he asked Madame Ragon. "It's nothing," she replied. "It's the cart with the execu- te tioner on the way to the Place Louis XV. Ah ! we saw it often enough last year. But today, four days after the anni- versary of January 21st, one can watch that terrible proces- sion go by without feeling displeasure." "Why?" said the abbe, "it is not Christian of you to talk thus." "But it's the execution of the accomplices of Robespierre. They did their best to save themselves, but they are going in their turn where they sent so many innocent people !" The crowd was pouring past like a flood. The Abbe de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, saw, standing erect on the cart, the man who three days before had come to hear his mass. "Who is that?" he said, "the man who ..." "It's the hangman," replied Monsieur Ragon, giving the executioner the name he bore under the monarchy. "My dear, my dear," cried out Madame Ragon, "Monsieur l'Abbe is dying !" 15. The Vendeans, in southwestern France, were staunch Catholics and remained devoted to the monarchy, which upheld their church. A serious revolt took place in the "Vendee when the National Convention tried to enforce its conscription act, demanding at the same time the oath of loyalty to the republican government from the priests. 44 FRENCH SHORT STORIES And the old lady seized a bottle of smelling salts with which to revive the aged priest from a fainting fit. ''No doubt." he said., "what he gave me was the handker- chief with which the Eang wiped his forehead as he went to martyrdom. . . . Poor man ! . . . The steel blade had a heart when all France was heartless ! The perfumers thought that the poor priest was raving. THE ATHEIST'S MASS By HONORE DE BALZAC Doctor Bianchon — a physician to whom science owes a beautiful physiological theory, and who, though still a young man, has won himself a place among the celebrities of the Paris School, a center of light to which all the doctors of Europe pay homage — had practiced surgery before de- voting himself to medicine. His early studies were directed by one of the greatest surgeons in France, the celebrated Desplein, who was regarded as a luminary of science. Even his enemies admitted that with him was buried a technical skill that he could not bequeath to any successor. Like all men of genius he left no heirs. All that was peculiarly his own he carried to the grave with him. The glory of great surgeons is like that of actors whose work exists only so long as they live, and of whose talent no adequate idea can be formed when they are gone. Actors and surgeons, and also great singers like those artists who increase tenfold the power of music by the way in which they perform it — all these are the heroes of a moment. Desplein is a striking instance of the similarity of the desti- nies of such transitory geniuses. His name, yesterday so famous, today almost forgotten, will live among the special- ists of his own branch of science without being known be- yond it. But is not an unheard-of combination of circumstances required for the name of a learned man to pass from the domain of science into the general history of mankind ? Had Desplein that universality of acquirements that makes of a man the expression, the type of a century? He was gifted 45 46 FRENCH SHORT STORIES with a magnificent power of diagnosis. He could see into the patient and his malady by an acquired or natural intui- tion, that enabled him to grasp the peculiar characteristics of the individual/ and determine the precise moment, the hour, the minute, when he should operate, taking into ac- count both atmospheric conditions and the special tempera- ment of his patient. In order thus to be able to work hand in hand with Nature, had he studied the ceaseless union of organized and elementary substances contained in the atmos- phere, or supplied by the earth to man, who absorbs and modifies them so as to derive from them an individual result ? Or did he proceed by that power of deduction and analogy to which the genius of Cuvier * owed so much ? However that may be, this man had made himself master of all the secrets of the. body. He knew it in its past as in its future, taking the present for his point of departure. But did he embody in his own person all the science of his time, as was the case with Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle ? 2 Did he lead a whole school towards new worlds of knowl- edge ? No. And while it is impossible to deny to this inde- fatigable observer of the chemistry of the human body the possession of something like the ancient science of Magism — that is to say the knowledge of principles in combination, of the causes of life, of life as the antecedent of life, and what it will be through the action of causes preceding its exist- ence — it must be acknowledged that all this was entirely personal to him. Isolated during his life by egotism, this egotism was the suicide of his fame. His tomb is not sur- mounted by a pretentious statue proclaiming to the future the mysteries that genius has unveiled for it. But perhaps the talents of Desplein were linked with his beliefs, and therefore mortal. For him the earth's atmos- 1. A famous French naturalist. '2. The linst two were Greek physicians, the third a Greek philoso- pher. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 47 phere was a kind of envelope generating all things. He regarded the earth as an egg in its shell and unable to solve the old riddle as to whether the egg or the hen came firsts he admitted neither the hen nor the egg. He believed neither in a mere animal nature giving origin to the race of man., nor in a spirit surviving him. Desplein was not in doubt. He asserted his theories. His plain open atheism was like that of many men, some of the best fellows in the world, ; but invincibly atheistic — atheists of a type of which reli- I gious people do not admit the existence. This opinion could • hardly be otherwise with a man accustomed from his youth ; to dissect the highest of beings, before, during, and after life, without finding therein that one soul that is so neces- i sary to religious theories. He recognized there a cerebral j center, a nervous center, and a center for the respiratory and | circulatory system, and the two former so completely sup- I plemented each other, that during the last part of his life he had the conviction that the sense of hearing was not abso- lutely necessary for one to hear, nor the sense of vision abso- lutely necessary for sight, and that the solar plexus could re- place them without one being aware of the fact. Desplein, recognizing these two souls in man, made it an argument for his atheism, without however assuming anything as to the belief in God. This man was said to have died in final impenitence, as many great geniuses have unfortunately died, whom may God forgive. Great as the man was, his life had in it many "little- nesses" (to adopt the expression used by his enemies, who were eager to diminish his fame), though it would perhaps be more fitting to call them "apparent contradictions." Fail- ing to understand the motives on which high minds act, envious and stupid people at once seize hold of any surface discrepancies to base upon them an indictment, on which they straightway ask for judgment. If, after all, success 48 FRENCH SHORT STORIES crowns the methods they have attacked, and shows the co- ordination of preparation and result, all the same some- thing will remain of these charges flung out in advance. Thus in our time Napoleon was condemned by his contem- poraries for having spread the wings of the eagle towards England. They had to wait till 1822- for the explanation of 1804, and of the flat-bottomed boats of Boulogne. In the case of Desplein, his fame and his scientific knowl- edge not being open to attack, his enemies found fault with his strange whims, his singular character. For he possessed in no small degree that quality which the English call "eccen- tricity." Now he would be attired with a splendor that sug- gested Crebillon's s stately tragedy; and then he would sud- denly affect a strange indifference in the matter of dress. One saw him now in a carriage, now on foot. By turns sharp-spoken and kindly ; assuming an air of closeness and stinginess, but at the same time ready to put his fortune at the disposal of exiled professors of his science, who would do him the honor of accepting his help for a few days — no one ever gave occasion for more contradictory judgments. Although for the sake of obtaining a decoration that doctors were not allowed to canvass for, he was quite capable of let- ting a prayer-book slip out of his pocket when at court, you may take it that in his own mind he made a mockery of everything. Fie had a deep disdain for men, after having caught glimpses of their true character in the midst of the most solemn and the most trivial acts of their existence. In a great man all his characteristics are generally in keeping with each other. If one of these giants has more talent than wit. it is all the same true that his wit is something deeper than that of one of whom all that can be said is that "He is a witty fellow." Genius always implies a certain insight into I he moral side of things. This insight may be applied to one .".. A French writer of tragedies. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 49 special line of thought, but one cannot see the flower with- out at the same time seeing the sun that produces it. The man who, hearing a diplomatist whom he was saving from death ask, "How is the Emperor?" remarked, "The courtier is recovering, and the man will recover with him !" was not merely a doctor or a surgeon, but was also not without a considerable amount of wit. Thus the patient, unwearying observation of mankind might do something to j ustif y the exorbitant pretensions of Desplein, and make one admit that, as he himself believed, he was capable of winning as much distinction as a Minister of State, as he had gained as a surgeon. Amongst the problems that the life of Desplein presented to the minds of his contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting, because the key to it will be found in the ending of the story, and will serve to clear him of many stupid accusations made against him. Among all Desplein's pupils at the hospital, Horace Bian- chon was one of those to whom he was most strongly at- tached. Before becoming a resident student at the Hotel Dieu, 4 Horace Bianchon was a medical student, living in the Quartier Latin 5 in a wretched lodging-house, known by the name of the Maison Vauquer. There the poor young fellow experienced the pressure of that acute poverty, which is a kind of crucible, whence men of great talent are ex- pected to come forth pure and incorruptible, like a diamond that can be subjected to blows of all kinds without breaking. Though the fierce fire of passion has been aroused, they ac- quire a probity that it cannot alter, and they become used to struggles that are the lot of genius, in the midst of the ceaseless toil, in which they curb desires that are not to be satisfied. Horace was an upright young man, incapable of taking any crooked course in matters where honor was in- 4. A famous Paris hospital. 5. The student quarter of Paris. 50 FRENCH SHORT STORIES volved ; going straight to the point ; ready to pawn his over- coat for his friends, as he was to give them his time and his long vigils. In a word, Horace was one of those friends who do not trouble themselves as to what they are to receive in return for what they bestow, taking it for granted that, when it comes to their turn, they will get more than they give. Most of his friends had for him that heartfelt respect which is inspired by unostentatious worth, and many of them would have been afraid to provoke his censure. But Horace mani- fested these good qualities without any pedantic display. Neither a puritan nor a preacher, he would in his simplicity enforce a word of good advice with any oath, and was ready for a bit of good cheer when the occasion offered. A pleas- ant comrade, with no more shyness than a trooper, frank and outspoken — not as a sailor, for the sailor of today is a wily diplomatist — but as a fine young fellow, who has noth- ing in his life to be ashamed of, he went his way with head erect and with a cheerful mind. To sum it all up in one word, Horace was the Pylades of more than one Orestes, 6 creditors nowadays playing most realistically the part of the Furies. 7 He bore his poverty with that gaiety which is perhaps one of the chief elements of courage, and, like all those who have nothing, he contracted very few debts. As enduring as a camel, as alert as a wild deer, he was stead- fast in his ideas and in his conduct. The happiness of Bianchon's life began on the day when the famous surgeon became acquainted with the good quali- ties and the defects, which, each as well as the other, make Dr. Horace Bianchon doubly dear to his friends. When the teacher of a hospital class receives a young man into his inner circle, that young man has, as the saying goes, his 6. See Gayley's Classic Myths, page 315, for the story of a friend- ship which has become proverbial. 7. Avenging deities. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 51 foot in the stirrup. Desplein did not fail to take Bianchon with him as his assistant to wealthy houses, where nearly always a gratuity slipped into the purse of the student, and where, all unconsciously, the young provincial had revealed to him some of the mysteries of Parisian life. Desplein would have him in his study during consultations, and found work for him there. Sometimes he would send him to a watering place, as companion to a rich invalid, — in a word, he was preparing a professional connection for him. The result of all this was that after a certain time the tyrant of the operating theater had his right-hand man. These two — one of them at the summit of professional honors and sci- ence, and in the enjoyment of an immense fortune and an equal renown, the other a modest cipher without fortune or fame — became intimate friends. The great Desplein told everything to his pupil. Bianchon came to know the mys- teries of this temperament, half lion, half bull, that in the end caused an abnormal expansion of the great man's chest and killed him by enlargement of the heart. He studied the odd whims of this busy life, the schemes of its sordid avarice, the projects of this politician disguised as a man of science. He was able to forecast the disappointments that awaited the one touch of sentiment that was buried in a heart not of stone though made to seem like stone. One day Bianchon told Desplein that a poor water-carrier in the Quartier Saint-Jacques was suffering from a horrible illness caused by overwork and poverty. This poor native of Auvergne had only potatoes to eat during the hard win- ter of 1821. Desplein left all his patients. At the risk of breaking down his horse, he drove at full speed, accom- panied by Bianchon, to the poor man's lodging, and himself superintended his removal to a private nursing home estab- lished by the celebrated Dubois in the Faubourg Saint- Denis. He went to attend to the man himself, and gave him, 52 FRENCH SHORT STORIES when he had recovered, money enough to buy a horse and a water-cart. The Auvergnat distinguished himself by an un- conventional proceeding. One of his friends fell sick, and he at once brought him to Desplein, and said to his bene- factor : — "I would not think of allowing him to go to anyone else." Overwhelmed with work as he was, Desplein grasped the water-carrier's hand and said to him: — "Bring them all to me." He had this poor* fellow from the Cantal 8 admitted to the Hotel Dieu, where he took the greatest care of him. Bianchon had on many occasions remarked that his chief had a particular liking for people from Auvergne, and especially for the water-carriers ; but as Desplein took a kind of pride in his treatment of his poor patients at the Hotel Dieu, his pupil did not see anything very strange in this. One day when Bianchon was crossing the Place Saint- Sulpice he caught sight of his teacher going into the church about nine o'clock in the morning. Desplein, who at this period would not go a step without calling for his carriage, was on foot, and slipped in quietly by the side door in the Rue du Petit Lion, as if he was going into some doubtful place. The student was naturally seized by a great curi- osity, for he knew the opinions of his master; so Bianchon too slipped into Saint-Sulpice and was not a little surprised to see the famous Desplein, this atheist, who thought very little of angels, as beings who give no scope for surgery, this scoffer, humbly kneeling, and where? ... in the Lady Chapel, where he heard a mass, gave an alms for the church expenses and for the poor, and remained throughout as serious as if he wen: engaged in an operation. Bianchon's astonishment knew no bounds. "If," he said to himself, "I had seen him holding one of the cords of the 8. Auvergne, central France. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 53 canopy at a public procession on Corpus Christi I might just laugh at him ; but at this time of day, all alone, without any one to see him, this is certainly something to set one think- ing!" Bianchon had no wish to appear to be playing the spy on the chief surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, so he went away. It so happened that Desplein asked him to dine with him that day, not at his house but at a restaurant. Between the cheese and the dessert Bianchon, by cleverly leading up to it, managed to say something about the mass, and spoke of it as a mummery and a farce. "A farce," said Desplein, "that has cost Christendom more bloodshed than all the battles of Napoleon, all the leeches of Broussais. It is a papal invention, that only dates from the sixth century. What torrents of blood were not shed to establish the feast of Corpus Christi, by which the Court of Rome sought to mark its victory in the ques- tion of the real presence, and the schism that has troubled the church for three centuries ! The wars of the Count of Toulouse and the Albigenses were the sequel of that affair. The Vaudois and the Albigenses refused to recognize the innovation." In a word Desplein took a pleasure in giving vent to all his atheistic ardor, and there was a torrent of Voltairian witticisms, or to describe it more accurately, a detestable imitation of the style of the Citateur. 9 "Hum!" said Bianchon to himself, "what has become of my devotee of this morning?" He kept silent. He began to doubt if it was really his chief that he had seen at Saint-Sulpice. Desplein would not have taken the trouble to lie to Bianchon. They knew each other too well. They had already exchanged ideas on points quite as serious, and. discussed systems of the nature of 9. A book attacking orthodox Catholicism. 54 FRENCH SHORT STORIES things, exploring and dissecting them With the knives and scalpels of incredulity. Three months went by. Bianchon took no further step in connection with the incident, though it remained graven in his memory. One day that year one of the doctors of the Hotel Dieu took Desplein by the arm in Bianchon's pres- ence, as if he had a question to put to him. "Whatever do you go to Saint-Sulpice for, my dear master ?" he said to him. / "To see one of the priests there, who has caries in the knee, and whom Madame the Duchess of Angouleme did me the honor to recommend to my care," said Desplein. The doctor was satisfied with this evasion, but not so Bianchon. "Ah, he goes to see diseased knees in the church ! Why, he went to hear mass !" said the student to himself. Bianchon made up his mind to keep a watch on Desplein. He remembered the day, the hour, when he had caught him going into Saint-Sulpice, and he promised himself that he would be there next year on the same day and at the same hour, to see if he would catch him again. In this case the recurring date of his devotions would give ground for a sci- entific investigation, for one ought not to expect to find in such a man a direct contradiction between thought and action. Next year, on the day and at the hour, Bianchon, who by this time was no longer one of Desplein's resident stu- dents, saw the surgeon's carriage stop at the corner of the Rue de Tournon and the Rue du Petit Lion. His friend got out, passed stealthily along by the wall of Saint-Sulpice, and once more heard his mass at the Lady altar. It was in- deed Desplein, the chief surgeon of the hospital, the atheist at heart, the devotee at haphazard. The problem was get- ting to be a puzzle. The persistence of the illustrious man THE ATHEIST'S MASS 55 of science made it all very complicated. When Desplein had gone out Bianchon went up to the sacristan, who came to do his work in the chapel, and asked him if that gentle- man was a regular attendant there. "Well, I have been here twenty years," said the sacristan, "and all that time M. Desplein has come four times a year to be present at this mass. He founded it." "A foundation made by him !" said Bianchon, as he went away. "Well, it is more wonderful than all the mysteries." Some time passed by before Dr. Bianchon, although the friend of Desplein, found an opportunity to talk to him of this singular incident in his life. Though they met in con- sultation or in society, it was difficult to get that moment of confidential chat alone together, when two men sit with their feet on the fender, and their heads resting on the backs of their arm-chairs, and tell each other their secrets. At last, after a lapse of seven years, and after the Revolu- tion of 1830, when the people had stormed the Archbishop's house, when Republican zeal led them to destroy the gilded crosses that shone like rays of light above the immense sea of housetops, when unbelief side by side with revolt paraded the streets, Bianchon again came upon Desplein as he en- tered the church of Saint-Sulpice. The doctor followed him in, and took his place beside him, without his friend taking any notice of him, or showing the least surprise. Together they heard the mass he had founded. "Will yoti tell me, my dear friend," said Bianchon to Desplein, when they left the church, "the reason for this monkish proceeding of yours? I have already caught you going to mass three times, you of all men ! You must tell me the meaning of this mystery, and explain to me this flagrant contradiction between your opinions and your con- duct. You don't believe in God and you go to mass ! My dear master, you are bound to give me an answer." 56 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "I am like a good many devotees, men deeply religious to all appearance, but quite as much atheists as we can be. you and I." And then there was a torrent of epigrams referring to certain political personages, the best known of whom pre- sents us in our own time with a new edition of the Tartuffe of Moliere. "I am not asking you about all that/' said Bianchon. "But I do want to know the reason for what you have just been doing here. Why have you founded this mass?" "My word ! my dear friend/' said Desplein, "I am on the brink of the grave, and I may just as well talk to you about the early days of my life." Just then Bianchon and the great man were in the Rue des Quatre Vents, one of the most horrible streets in Paris. Desplein pointed to the sixth story of one of those high, narrow-fronted houses that stand like obelisks. The outer door opens on a passage, at the end of which is a crooked stair, lighted by those small inner windows that are aptly called jours de souffrance. w It was a house with a green- ish-colored front, with a furniture dealer installed on the ground floor, and apparently a different type of wretched- ness lodging in every story. As he raised his arm with a gesture that was full of energy, Desplein said to Bianchon— "I lived up there for two years!" "I know that. D'Arthez used to live there. I came there nearly every day when I was quite a young fellow, and in those days we used to call it 'the store bottle of great men!' Well, what comes next?" "The mass that I have just heard is connected with events that occurred when I was living in that garret in which you tell me I) Arthez once lived, the room from the 10. Literally, "days .if durance." THE ATHEIST'S MASS 57 window of which there is a line hanging with clothes drying on it, just above the flower-pot. I had such a rough start in life, my dear Bianchon, that I could dispute with any one you like the palm for suffering endured here in Paris. I bore it all, hunger, thirst, want of money, lack of clothes, boots, linen — all that is hardest in poverty. I have tried to warm my frozen fingers with my breath in that 'store bottle of great men,' which I should like to revisit with you. As I worked in the winter a vapor would rise from my head, and I could see the steam of perspiration like we see it about the horses on a frosty day. I don't know where one finds the foothold to stand up against such a life. I was all alone, without help, without a penny to buy books or to pay the expenses of my medical education: without a friend, for my irritable, gloomy, nervous character did me harm. No one would recognize in my fits of irritation the distress, the struggles of a man who is striving to rise to the surface from his place in the very depths of the social system. But I can say to you, in whose presence I have no need to cloak myself in any way, that I had that basis of sound ideas and impressionable feelings, which will always be part of the endowment of men strong enough to climb up to some summit, after having long plodded through the morass of misery. I could not look for any help from my faniity or my native place beyond the insufficient allowance that was made to me. To sum it all up, at that time my breakfast in the morning was a roll that a baker in the Rue du Petit Lion sold cheaply to me because it was from the baking of yesterday or the day before, and which I broke up into some milk; thus my morning meal did not cost me more than a penny. I dined only every second day, in a boarding-house where one could get a dinner for eightpence. Thus I spent only fourpence-halfpenny a day. You know as well as I do what care I would take of such things as clothes 58 FRENCH SHORT STORIES and boots ! I am not sure that in later life we feel more trouble at the treachery of a colleague than we have felt, you and I, at discovering the mocking grimace of a boot sole that is coming away from the sewing, or at hearing the rending noise of a torn coat cuff. I drank only water. I looked at the cafes with the greatest respect. The Cafe Zoppi seemed to me like a promised land, where the Luculluses of the Quartier Latin had the exclusive right of entry. 'Shall I ever,' I used sometimes to ask myself, 'shall I ever be able to go in there to take a cup of coffee and hot milk, or to play a game of dominoes ?' "Well, I brought to my work the furious energy that my poverty inspired. I tried rapidly to get a grasp of exact knowledge so as to acquire an immense personal worth in order to deserve the position I hoped to reach in the days when I would have come forth from my nothingness. I con- sumed more oil than bread. The lamp that lighted me during these nights of persistent toil cost me more than my food. The struggle was long, obstinate, without encouragement. I had won no sympathy from those around me. To have friends must one not associate with other young fellows, and have a few pence to take a drink with them, and go with them wherever students are to be found ? I had nothing. And no one in Paris quite realizes that nothing is really nothing. If I ever had any occasion to reveal my misery I felt in my throat that nervous contraction that makes our patients sometimes imagine there is a round mass coming up the gullet into the larynx. Later on I have come across people who, having been born in wealth and never wanting for anything, knew nothing of that problem of the Rule of Three: A young man is to a crime as a five franc 11 piece is to the unknown quantity x. These gilded fools would say to me : — 11. A franc is worth twenty cents. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 59 "'But why do you get into debt? Why ever do you contract serious obligations?' "They remind me of that princess, who, on hearing that the people were in want of bread, said: — 'Why don't they buy sponge cakes?' I should like very much to see one of those rich men, who complains that I ask him for too high a fee when there has to bean operation — yes, I should like to see him all alone in Paris, without a penny, without lug- gage, without a friend, without credit, and forced to work his five fingers to the bone to get a living. What would he do? Where would he go to satisfy his hunger? Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me bitter and hard, it was because I was then thinking at once of my early troubles and of the heartlessness, the selfishness of which I have seen a thousand instances in the highest circles; or else I was thinking of the obstacles that hatred, envy, jealousy, calumny have raised up between me and success. In Paris when certain people see you ready to put your foot in the stirrup, some of them pull at the skirt of your coat, others loosen the saddle girth; this one knocks a shoe off your horse, that one steals your whip; the least treacherous of the lot is the one you see coming to fire a pistol at you point blank. You have talent enough, my dear fellow, to know soon enough the horrible, the unceasing warfare that medi- ocrity carries on against the man that is its superior. If one evening you lose twenty-five louts, 12 next morning you will be accused of being a gambler, and your best friends will say that you have lost twenty-five thousand francs last night. If you have a headache, you will be set down as a lunatic. If you are not lively, you will be set down as unsociable. If to oppose this battalion of pygmies, you call up your own superior powers, your best friends will cry out that you wish to devour everything, that you claim to lord it 12. A golrl coin worth $4.00. 60 FRENCH SHORT STORIES and play the tyrant. In a word, your good qualities will be turned into defects, your defects will be turned into vices. and your virtues will be crimes. If you have saved some one, it will be said that you have killed him. If your patient reappears, it will be agreed that you have made sure of the present at the expense of his future; though he is not dead, he will die. If you stumble, it will be a fall! Invent any- thing whatever, and assert your rights, and you will be a difficult man to deal with, a sharp fellow, who does not like to see young men succeed. So, my dear friend, if I do not believe in God, I believe even less in man. Do you not recognize in me a Desplein that is quite different from the Desplein about whom every one speaks ill? But we need not dig into that heap of mud. "Well, I was living in that house, I had to work to be ready to pass my first examination, and I had not a farthing. You know what it is ! I had come to one of those crises of utter extremity when one says to one's self: — 'I will enlist!' I had one hope. I was expecting from my native place a trunk full of linen, a present from some old aunts, who. knowing nothing of Paris, think about providing one with dress shirts, because they imagine that with thirty francs a month their nephew dines on ortolans. The trunk arrived while I was away at the Medical School. It had cost forty francs, carriage to be paid. The concierge of the house, e German cobbler, who lived in a loft, had paid the money and held the trunk. I took a walk in the Rue des Fosse- Saint-Germain-des-Pres and in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medi- cine, without being able to invent a stratagem which Mould put the trunk in my possession, without my being obliged to pay down the forty francs, which of course I meant to pay alter selling the linen. My, stupidity seemed a very fair sign to me that I was tit for no vocation but surgery. My dear friend, delicately organized natures, whose powers THE ATHEIST'S MASS 61 are exercised in some higher sphere, are wanting in that spirit of intrigue which is fertile in resources and shifts. Genius such as theirs depends on chance. They do not seek out things, they come upon them. "At last, after dark, I went back to the house, just at the moment when my next room neighbor was coming in, a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a -man from Saint-Flour in Auvergne. We knew each other in the way in which two lodgers come to know each other, when both have their rooms on the same landing, and they can hear each other going to bed, coughing, getting up, and end by becoming quite used to each other. My neighbor informed me that the landlord, to whom I owed three months' rent, had sent me notice to quit. I must clear out next day. He himself was to be evicted on account of his business. I passed the most sorrow- ful night of my life. "Where was I to find a porter to remove my poor belong- ings, my books ? How was I to pay the porter and the concierge? Where could I go? With tears in my eyes I repeated these insoluble questions, as lunatics repeat their catchwords. I fell asleep. For the wretched there is a divine sleep full of beautiful dreams. Next morning, while I was eating my porringer full of bread crumbled into milk, Bourgeat came in, and said to me in bad French : — " 'Mister Student, I'm a poor man, a foundling of the hospice of Saint-Flour, without father or mother, and not rich enough to marry. You are not much better off for rela- tions, or better provided with what counts ? Now, see here, I have down below a hand-cart that I have hired at a penny an hour. All our things can be packed on it. If you agree, we will look for a place where we can lodge together, since we are turned out of this. And after all it's not the earthly paradise.' " 'I know it well, my good Bourgeat,' said I to him, 'but 62 FRENCH SHORT STORIES I am in a great difficulty. There's a trunk for me downstairs that contains linen worth a hundred crowns, with which I could pay the landlord and what I owe to the concierge, and I have not got as much as a hundred sous.' 13 " 'Bah ! I have some bits of coin/ Bourgeat answered me joyfully, showing me an old purse of greasy leather. 'Keep 3 7 our linen.' "Bourgeat paid my three months, and his own rent, and settled with the concierge. Then he put our furniture and my box of linen on his hand-cart and drew it through the streets, stopping at every house that showed a 'Lodgings to Let' card. As for me I would go upstairs to see if the place to let would suit us. At noon we were still wandering about the Quartier Latin without having found anything. The rent was the great obstacle. Bourgeat proposed to me to have lunch at a wine-shop, at the door of which we left the hand-cart. Towards evening, in the Cour de Rohan off the Passage du Commerce, I found, under the roof at the top of a house, two rooms, one on each side of the staircase. We got them for a rent of sixty francs a year each. So there we were housed, myself and my humble friend. "We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned some fifty sous a day, had saved about a hundred crowns. . . . He would soon be in a position to realize his ambition and buy a water-cart and a horse. When he found out how I was situated — and he wormed out my secrets with a depth of cunning and at the same time with a kindly good nature that still moves my heart today when I think of it — he renounced for some time to come the ambition of his life. Bourgeat had been a street seller for twenty-two years. He sacrificed his hundred crowns for my future. " At this point Desplein took a firm grip of Bianchon's arm. "He gave me the money required for my examinations ! 13. A sou Is worth one cent. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 63 This man understood, my friend, that I had a mission, that the needs of my intelligence came before his. He busied himself with me, he called me his 'little one,' he lent me the money I wanted to buy books; he came in sometimes quite quietly to watch me at my work ; finally he took quite a motherly care to see that I substituted a wholesome and abundant diet for the bad and insufficient fare to which I had been condemned. Bourgeat, a man of" about forty, had the features of a burgess of the middle ages, a full rounded forehead, a head that a painter might have posed as the model for a Lycurgus. 14 The poor man felt his heart big with affection seeking for some object. He had never been loved by anything but a poodle, that had died a short time before, and about which he was always talking to me, asking if by any possibility the church would consent to have prayers for its soul. His dog, he said, had been really like a Christian, and for twelve years it had gone to church with him, without ever barking, listening to the organ without so much as opening its mouth, and remaining crouched beside him with a look that made one think it was praying with him. This man transferred all his affection to me. He took me up as a lonely, suffering creature. He became for me like a most watchful mother, the most delicately thought- ful of benefactors, in a word the ideal of that virtue that rejoices in its own good work. When I met him in the street he gave me an intelligent look, full of a nobility that you cannot imagine; he would then assume a gait like that of a man who was carrying no burden; he seemed delighted at seeing me in good health and well dressed. It was such devoted affection as one finds among the common people, the love of the little shop girl, raised to a higher level. Bourgeat ran my errands. He woke me up in the night at the appointed hour. He trimmed my lamp, scrubbed 14. A Greek law-giver. 64 FRENCH SHORT STORIES .our landing. He was a good servant as well as a good father to me, and as cleanly in his work as an English maid. He looked after our housekeeping. Like Philopoemen 15 he sawed up our firewood, and he set about all his actions with a simplicity in performing them that at the same time pre- served his dignity, for he seemed to realize that the end in view ennobled it all. "When I left this fine fellow to enter the Hotel Dieu as a resident student, he felt a kind of sorrowful gloom come over him at the thought that he could no longer live with me. But he consoled himself by looking forward to getting together the monejr that would be necessary for the expenses of my final examination, and he made me promise to come to see him on all my holidays. Bourgeat was proud of me. He loved me for my own sake and for his own. If you look up my essay for the doctorate you will see that it was dedi- cated to him. In the last year of my indoor course, I had made enough money to be able to repay all that I owed to this worthy Auvergnat, by buying him a horse and a water- cart. He was exceedingly angry at finding that I was thus depriving myself of my money, and nevertheless he was delighted at seeing his desires realized. He laughed and he scolded me. He looked at his water-barrel and his horse, and he wiped away a tear as he said to me : — "'It's a pity! Oh, what a fine water-cart! You have done wrong! . . . The horse is as strong as if he came from Auvergne !' "I have never seen anything more touching than this scene. Bourgeat absolutely insisted on buying for me that pocket-case of instruments mounted with silver that you have seen in my study, and which is for me the most valued 15. A Greek general, second century B. ('., noted for his simple habits, once, arriving at a house to which he had been invited to dinner, he was mistaken tor one of his own retainers. The hostess, being late with the dinner, requested his help in the preparation, lie threw ofl l.is clonk and began to cut fire-wood, when his host arrived and expressed dismay Philopoemen explained thai he was only paying the penult v tor his plainness. THE ATHEIST'S MASS 65 of my possessions. Although he was enraptured with my first successes, he never let slip a word or a gesture that could be taken to mean, 'It is to me that this man's success is due !' And nevertheless, but for him, I should have been killed by my misery. The poor man broke himself down for my sake. He had eaten nothing but bread seasoned with garlic, in order that I might have coffee while I sat up at my work. He fell sick. You may imagine how I passed whole nights at his bedside. I pulled him through it the first time, but two years after there was a relapse, and notwithstanding the most assiduous care, notwithstanding the greatest efforts of science, he had to succumb. No king was ever cared for as he was. Yes, Bianchon, to snatch this life from death I tried unheard-of things. I wanted to make him live long enough to allow him to see the results of his work, to realize all his wishes, to satisfy the one gratitude that had filled my heart, to extinguish a fire that burns in me even now ! "Bourgeat," continued Desplein, after a pause, with evi- dent emotion, "Bourgeat, my second father died in my arms, leaving me all he possessed by a will which he had made at a public notary's, and which bore the date of the year when we went to lodge in the Cour de Rohan. He had the faith of a simple workman. He loved the Blessed Virgin as he would have loved his mother. Zealous Catholic as he was, he had never said a word to me about my own lack of religion. When he was in danger of death he begged me to spare nothing to obtain the help of the Church for him. I had mass said for him every day. Often in the night he expressed to me his fears for his future ; he was afraid that he had not lived a holy enough life. Poor man! he used to work from morning to night. Who is heaven for then, if there is a heaven? He received the last sacraments like the saint that he was, and his death was worthy of his life. "I was the only one who followed his funeral. When I 66 FRENCH SHORT STORIES had laid my one benefactor in the earth, I tried to find out how I could discharge my debt of gratitude to him. I knew that he had neither family nor friends, neither wife nor children. But he believed ! he had religious convictions, and had I any right to dispute them? He had spoken to me timidly of masses said for the repose of the dead; he did not seek to impose this duty on me, thinking that it would be like asking to be paid for his services to me. As soon as I could arrange for the endowment, I gave the Saint- Sulpice the sum necessary to have four masses said there each year. As the only thing that I could offer to Bourgeat was the fulfilment of his pious wishes, I go there in his name on the day the mass is said at the beginning of each quarter of the year, and say the prayers for him that he wished for. I say them in the good faith of one who doubts: — 'My God, if there is a sphere where after their death you place those who have been perfect, think of good Bourgeat; and if he has still anything to suffer, lay these sufferings on me, so that he may enter the sooner into what they call Paradise !' This, my dear friend, is all that a man, who holds my opinions, can allow himself. God must be good-hearted, and He will not take it ill on my part. But I swear to you, I would give my fortune for the sake of finding the faith of Bourgeat coming into my brain." Bianchon, who attended Desplein in his last illness, does not venture to affirm, even now, that the famous surgeon died an atheist. Will not those who believe take pleasure in the thought that perhaps the poor Auvergnat came to open for him the gate of Heaven, as he had already opened for him the portals of that temple on earth, on the facade of which one reads the words: — Aux grands hommes la Patrie reconnaissante? 1C lfi. The inscription on the Pantheon in Paris : "A grateful country to its great men." COLONEL CHABERT 1 By HONORS DE BALZAC "Hullo ! There is that old Box-coat again !" This exclamation was made by a lawyer's clerk of the class called in French offices a gutter-jumper — a messenger in fact — who at this moment was eating a piece of dry bread with a hearty appetite. He pulled off a morsel of crumb to make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through the open pane of the window against which he was leaning. The pel- let, well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after hitting the hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard of a house in the Rue Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville, attorney-at-law. "Come, Simonnin, don't play tricks on people, or I will turn you out of doors. However poor a client may be, he is still a man, hang it all !" said the head clerk, pausing in the addition of a bill of costs. The lawyer's messenger is commonly, as was Simonnin. a lad of thirteen or fourteen, who, in every office, is under the special jurisdiction of the managing clerk, whose errands and billets-doux keep him employed on his way to carry writs to the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts. He is akin to the street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger by fate. The boy is almost always ruthless, unbroken, unmanageable, a ribald rhymester, impudent, greedy, and idle. And yet, almost all these clerklings have an old mother lodging on some fifth floor with whom they share their pittance of thirty or forty francs 2 a month. 1. Translated by Mrs. Clara Bell. 2. A franc is worth twenty cents. 67 68 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "If he is a man, why do you call him old Box-coat?" asked Simonnin, with the air of a schoolboy who has caught out his master. And he went on eating his bread and cheese, leaning hi.< shoulder against the window jamb; for he rested standing like a cab-horse, one of his legs raised and propped against the other, on the toe of his shoe. "What trick can we play that cove?" said the third clerk, whose name was Godeschal, in a low voice, pausing in the middle of a discourse he was extemporizing in an appeal engrossed by the fourth clerk, of which copies were being made by two neophytes from the provinces. Then he went on improvising — "But, in his noble and beneficent wisdom, his Majesty Louis the Eighteenth — (write it at full length, heh Desroches the learned — you, as you engross it!) — when ht resumed the reins of Government, understood — (what die that old nincompoop ever understand?) — the high missior to which he had been called by Divine Providence ! — (a not< of admiration and six stops. They are pious enough at the Courts to let us put six) — and his first thought, as is provec by the date of the order hereinafter designated, teas to repaii the misfortunes caused by the terrible and sad disasters of the revolutionary times, by restoring to his numerous ant faithful adherents — ("numerous" is flattering, and ought to please the Bench) — all their unsold estates, whether witliit our realm, or in conquered or acquired territory, or in tin endowments of public institutions, for we are, and proclain ourselves competent to declare, that this is the spirit am meaning of the famous, truly loyal order given in — Stop,' said Godeschal to the three copying clerks, "that rascalh sentence brings me to the end of my page. — Well," he wen on, wetting the back fold of the sheet with his tongue, SK as to be able to fold hack the page of thick stampei COLONEL CHABERT 69 paper, "well, if you want to play him a trick, tell him that the master can only see his clients between two and three in the morning; we shall see if he comes, the old ruffian !" And Godeschal took up the sentence he was dictating — "given in — Are you ready?" "Yes," cried the three writers. It all went on together, the appeal, the gossip, and the conspiracy. "Given in — Here, Daddy- Boucard, what is the date of the order? We must dot our i's and cross our t's, by Jingo ! It helps to fill the pages." . "By Jingo!" repeated one of the copying clerks before Boucard, the head clerk, could reply. "What! have you written by Jingo?" cried Godeschal. looking at one of the novices, with an expression at once stern and humorous. "Why, yes," said Desroches, the fourth clerk, leaning across his neighbor's copy, "he has written We must dot our i's and spelt it by Gingo!" A\\ the clerks shouted with laughter. "Why ! Monsieur Hure, you take 'By Jingo' for a law term, and you say you come from Mortagne!" 3 exclaimed Simonnin. "Scratch it cleanly out," said the head clerk. "If the judge, whose business it is to tax the bill, were to see such things he would say you were laughing at the whole boiling. You would hear of it from the chief ! Come, no more of this nonsense, Monsieur Hure ! A Norman ought not to write out an appeal without thought. It is the 'Shoulder arms !' of the law." "Given in — in?" asked Godeschal. — "Tell me when, Boucard." 3. A city in northern France noted for its legal institutions. 70 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "June, 1814/' replied the head clerk, without looking up from his work. A knock at the office door interrupted the circumlocutions of the prolix document. Five clerks with rows of hungry teeth, bright, mocking eyes, and curly heads, lifted their noses towards the door, after crying all together in a singing tone, "Come in !" Boucard kept his face buried in a pile of papers — broutilles (odds and ends) in French law jargon— and went on drawing out the bill of costs on which he was busy. The office was a large room furnished with the traditional stool which is to be seen in all these dens of law-quibbling. The stove pipe crossed the room diagonally to the chimney of a bricked-up fireplace ; on the marble chimney-piece were several chunks of bread, triangles of Brie cheese, pork cut- lets, glasses, bottles, and the head clerk's cup of chocolate. The smell of these dainties blended completely with that of the immoderately overheated stove and the odor peculiar to offices and old papers. The floor was covered with mud and snow, brought in by the clerks. Near the window stood the desk with a revolving lid, where the head clerk worked, and against the back of it was the second clerk's table. The second clerk was at this moment in Court. It was between eight and nine in the morning. The only decoration of the office consisted in huge yellow posters, announcing seizures of real estate, sales, settle- ments under trust, final or interim judgments, — all the glory of a lawyer's office. Behind the head clerk was an enormous stack of pigeon-holes from the top to the bottom of the room, of which each division was crammed with bundles of papers with an infinite number of tickets hanging from them at the ends of red tape, which give a peculiar physiognomy to law- papers. The lower rows were filled with cardboard boxes, yellow with use, on which might be read the names of the COLONEL CHABERT 71 more important clients whose cases were juicily stewing at this present time. The dirty window-panes admitted but little daylight. Indeed, there are very few offices in Paris where it is possible to write without lamplight before ten in the morning in the month of February, for they are all left to very natural neglect; everyone comes and no one stays ; no one has any personal interest in a scene of mere routine — neither the attorney, nor the counsel, nor the clerks, trouble themselves about the appearance of a place which, to the youths, is a schoolroom; to the clients, a pas- sage; to the chief, a laboratory. The greasy furniture is handed down to successive owners with such scrupulous care, that in some offices may still be seen boxes of remainders, machines for twisting parchment gut, and bags left by the prosecuting parties of the Chatelet (abbreviated to Chlet) — a Court which, under the old order of things, represented the present Court of First Instance (or County Court). So in this dark office, thick with dust, there was, as in all its fellows, something repulsive to the clients — something which made it one of the most hideous monstrosities of Paris. Nay, were it not for the moldy sacristies where prayers are weighed out and paid for like groceries and for the old- clothes shops, where flutter the rags that blight ail the illusions of life by showing us the last end of all our festivi- ties — an attorney's office would be, of all social marts, the most loathsome. But we might say the same of the gam- bling-hell, of the Law Court, of the lottery office, of the brothel. But why? In these places, perhaps, the drama being played in a man's soul makes him indifferent to accessories, which would also account for the single-mindedness of great thinkers and men of great ambitions. "Where is my penknife?" "I am eating my breakfast." 72 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "You go and be hanged ! here is a blot on the copy." "Silence, gentlemen!" These various exclamations were uttered simultaneously at the moment when the old client shut the door with the sort of humility which disfigures the movements of a man down on his luck. The stranger tried to smile, but the muscles of his face relaxed as he vainly looked for some symptoms of amenity on the inexorably indifferent faces of the six clerks. Accustomed, no doubt, to gauge men, he very politely addressed the gutter- jumper, hoping to get a civil answer from this boy of all work. "Monsieur, is your master at home?" The pert messenger made no reply, but patted his ear with the fingers of his left hand, as much as to say, "I am deaf." "What do you want, sir?" asked Godeschal, swallowing as he spoke a mouthful of bread big enough to charge a four-pounder, flourishing his knife and crossing his legs, throwing up one foot in the air to the level of his eyes. "This is the fifth time I have called," replied the victim. "I wish to speak to M. Derville." "On business?" "Yes, but I can explain it to no one but " "M. Derville is in bed; if you want to consult him on some difficulty, he does no serious work till midnight. But if you will lay the case before us, we could help you just as well as he can to " The stranger was unmoved ; he looked timidly about him, like a dog who has got into a strange kitchen and expects a kick. By grace of their profession, lawyers' clerks have no fear of thieves ; they did not suspect the owner of the box- coat, and left him to study the place, where he looked in vain for a chair to sit on, for he was evidently tired. Attor- neys, on principle, do not have many chairs in their offices. The inferior client, being kept waiting on his feet, goes away COLONEL CHABERT 73 grumbling, but then he does not waste time, which, as an old lawyer once said, is not allowed for when the bill is taxed. "Monsieur," said the old man, "as I have already told you, I can not explain my business to any one but M. Derville. I will wait till he is up." Boucard had finished his bill. He smelt the fragrance of his chocolate, rose from his cane arm-chair, went to the chimney-piece, looked the old man from head to foot, stared at his coat, and made an indescribable grimace. He prob- ably reflected that whichever way this client might be wrung, it would be impossible to squeeze out a centime, 4 so he put in a few brief words to rid the office of a bad customer. "It is the truth, monsieur. The chief only works at night. If your business is important, I recommend you to return at one in the morning." The stranger looked at the head clerk with a bewildered expression, and remained motionless for a moment. The clerks, accustomed to every change of countenance, and the odd whimsicalities to which indecision or absence of mind gives rise in "parties," went on eating, making as much noise with their jaws as horses over a man- ger, and paying no further heed to the old man. "I will come again tonight," said the stranger at length, with the tenacious desire, peculiar to the unfortunate, to catch humanity at fault. The only irony allowed to poverty is to drive Justice and Benevolence to unjust denials. When a poor wretch has con- victed Society of falsehood, he throws himself more eagerly on the mercy of God. "What do you think of that for a cracked pot?" said Simonnin, without waiting till the old man had shut the door. "He looks as if he had been buried and dug up again," said a clerk. 4. A copper coin worth a fifth of a cent. It is no longer current:. 74 FRENXH SHORT STORIES "He is some Colonel who wants his arrears of pay/' said the head clerk. "No, he is a retired concierge/' said Godeschal. "I bet you he is a nobleman/' cried Boucard. "I bet you he has been a porter/' retorted Godeschal. "Only porters are gifted by nature with shabby box-coats, as worn and greasy and frayed as that old body's. And did you see his trodden-down boots that let the water in, and his stock which serves for a shirt? He has slept in a dry arch." "He may be of noble birth, and yet have pulled the door- latch/' cried Desroches. "It has been known !" "No/' Boucard insisted, in the midst of laughter, "I main- tain that he was a brewer in 1789, and a Colonel in the time of the Republic." "I bet theater tickets round that he never was a soldier," said Godeschal. "Done with you," answered Boucard. "Monsieur ! Monsieur !" shouted the little messenger, open- ing the window. "What are you at now, Simonnin?" asked Boucard. "I am calling him that you may ask him whether he is a Colonel or a porter; he must know." All the clerks laughed. As to the old man, he was already coming upstairs again. "What can we say to him?" cried Godeschal. "Leave it to me," replied Boucard. The poor man came in nervously, his eyes cast down, perhaps not to betray how hungry he was by looking too greedily at the eatables. "Monsieur," said Boucard, "will you have the kindness to leave your name, so that M. Derville may know " "Chabert." COLONEL CHABERT 75 "The Colonel who was killed at Eylau?" 5 asked Hure, who, having so far said nothing, was jealous of adding a jest to all the others. "The same, Monsieur," replied the good man, with antique simplicity. And he went away. "Whew!" "Done brown !" "Poof!" "Oh!" "Ah!" "Bourn!" "The old rogue!" "Ting-a-ring-ting !" "Sold again !" "Monsieur Desroches, you are going to the play without paying," said Hure to the fourth clerk, giving him a slap on the shoulder that might have killed a rhinoceros. There was a storm of cat-calls, cries, and exclamations, which all the onomatopeia of the language would fail to rep- resent. "Which theater shall we go to?" "To the opera," cried the head clerk. "In the first place." said Godeschal, "I never mentioned which theater. I might, if I chose, take you to see Madame Saqui." "Madame Saqui is not the play." "What is a play?" replied Godeschal. "First, we must define the point of fact. What did I bet, gentlemen? A play. What is a play ? A spectacle. What is a spectacle ? Something to be seen " "But on that principle you would pay your bet by taking 5. Eylau is a town in East Prussia. An indecisive battle was fought here, Feb. 8. 1808. between the French under Napoleon, and the Ger- mans and Russians. 76 ' FRENCH SHORT STORIES us to see the water run under the Pont Neuf !" cried Simon- nin, interrupting him. "To be seen for money," Godeschal added. "But a great many things are to be seen for money that are not plays. The definition is defective/' said Desroches. "But do listen to me !" "You are talking nonsense, my dear boy," said Boucard. "Is Curtius' a play?" said Godeschal. "No," said the head clerk, "it is a collection of figures — but it is a spectacle." "I bet you a hundred francs to a sou," 6 Godeschal resumed, "that Curtius' Waxworks forms such a show as might be called a play or theater. It contains a thing to be seen at various prices, according to the place you choose to occupy." "And so on, and so forth !" said Simonnin. "You mind I'don't box your ears!" said Godeschal. The clerks shrugged their shoulders. "Besides, it is not proved that that old ape was not mak- ing game of us," he said, dropping his argument, which was drowned in the laughter of the other clerks. "On my honor. Colonel Chabert is really and truly dead. His wife is mar- ried again to Comte Ferraud, Councillor of State. Madame Ferraud is one of our, clients." "Come, the case is remanded till tomorrow," said Boucard.. "To work, gentlemen. The deuce is in it ; we get nothing done here. Finish copying that appeal; it must be handed in before the sitting of the Fourth Chamber, judgment is to be given today. Come, on you go !" "If he really were Colonel Chabert, would not that impu- dent rascal Simonnin have felt the leather of his boot in the right place when he pretended to be deaf?" said Desroches, regarding this remark as more conclusive than Godeschal's. 6. One cent. COLONEL CHABERT 77 "Since nothing is settled/' said Boucard, "let us all agree to go to the upper boxes of the Francais 7 and see Talma in Nero. Simonnin may go to the pit." And thereupon the head clerk sat down at his table, and the others followed his example. "Given in June eighteen hundred and fourteen (in words)/' said Godeschal. "Ready?" "Yes/' replied the two copying clerks and the engrosser, whose pens forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned by schoolboys in paper cages. "And we hope that my lords on the Bench," the extempo- rizing clerk went on. "Stop ! I must read my sentence through again. I do not understand it myself." "Forty-six (that must often happen) and three forty- nines/' said Boucard. "We hope," Godeschal began again, after reading all through the documents, "that my lords on the Bench will not be less magnanimous than the august author of the decree, and that they will do justice against the miserable claims of the acting committee of the chief Board of the Legion of Honor by interpreting the law in the tvide sense we have here set forth "Monsieur Godeschal, wouldn't you like a glass of water?" said the little messenger. "That imp of a boy !" said Boucard. "Here, get on your double-soled shanks-mare, take this packet, and spin off to the Invalides." "Here set forth," Godeschal went on. "Add in the inter- est of Madame la Vicomtesse (at full length) de Grandlieu." "What" cried the chief, "are you thinking of drawing up an appeal in the case of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu against the Legion of Honor — a case for the office to stand or fall 7. The foremost theater in France. 78 FRENXH SHORT STORIES by ? You are something like an ass ! Have the goodness to put aside your copies and your notes; you may keep all that for the case of Navarreins against the Hospitals. It is late; I will draw up a little petition myself, with a due allowance of 'inasmuch,' and go to the Courts myself." This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look back on our youth, make us say, "Those were good times." At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at the door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance in the Department of the Seine. The por- ter told him that Monsieur Derville had not yet come in. The old man said he had an appointment, and was shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer, who, notwithstanding his youth, was considered to have one of the longest heads in Paris. Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his master's dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be tried on the morrow. The clerk, not less astonished, bowed to the Colonel and begged him to take a seat, which the client did. "On my word, Monsieur, I thought you were joking yes- terday when you named such an hour for an interview," said tlie old man, with the forced mirth of a ruined man, who does his best to smile. "The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth too," replied the man, going on with his work. "M. Derville chooses this hour for studying his cases, taking stock of their possibilities, arranging how to conduct them, deciding on the line of defense. His prodigious intellect is freer at this hour — the only time when he can have the silence and quiet needed for the conception of good ideas. Since he COLONEL CHABERT 79 entered the profession, you are the third person to come to him for a consultation at this midnight hour. After coming- in the chief will discuss each case, read everything, spend four or five hours perhaps over the business, then he will ring for me and explain to me his intentions. In the morn- ing from ten till two he hears what his clients have to say, then he spends the rest of his day in appointments. In the evening he goes into society to keep up his connections. So he has only the night for undermining his cases, ransacking the arsenal of the Code, and laying his plan of battle. He is determined never to lose a case ; he loves his art. He will not undertake every case, as his brethren do. That is his life, an exceptionally active one. And he makes a great deal of money." As he listened to this explanation, the old man sat silent, and his strange face assumed an expression so bereft of intel- ligence, that the clerk, after looking at him, thought no more about him. A few minutes later Derville came in, in evening dress; his head clerk opened the door to him, and went back to finish arranging the papers. The young lawyer paused for a moment in amazement on seeing in the dim light the strange client who awaited him. Colonel Chabert was as absolutely immovable as one of the wax figures in Curtius' collection to which Godeschal had proposed to treat his fellow-clerks. This quiescence would not have been a subject for aston- ishment if it had not completed the supernatural aspect of the man's whole person. The old soldier was dry and lean. His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly combed wig, gave him a look of mystery. His eyes seemed shrouded in a transparent film; you would have compared them to dingy mother-of-pearl with a blue iridescence changing in the gleam of the wax-lights. His face, pale, livid, and as thin as a knife, if I may use such a vulgar expression, was as $0 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the face of the dead. Round his neck was a tight black silk stock. Below the dark line of this rag the body was so com- pletely hidden in shadow that a man of imagination might have supposed the old head was due to some chance play of light and shade, or have taken it for a portrait by Rembrandt/ without a frame. The brim of the hat which covered the old man's brow cast a black line of shadow on the upper part of the face. This grotesque effect, though natural, threw into relief by contrast the white furrows, the cold wrinkles, the colorless tone of the corpse-like countenance. And the ab- sence of all movement in the figure, of all fire in the eye, were in harmony with a certain look of melancholy madness, and the deteriorating symptoms characteristic of senility, giving the face an indescribably ill-starred look which no human words could render. But an observer, especially a lawyer., could also have read in this stricken man the signs of deep sorrow, the traces of grief which had worn into this face, as drops of water from the sky falling on fine marble at last destroy its beauty. A physician, an author, or a judge might have discerned a whole drama at the sight of its sublime horror, while the least charm was its resemblance to the grotesques which artists amuse themselves by sketching on a corner of the litho- graphic stone while chatting with a friend. On seeing the attorney, the stranger started, with the convulsive thrill that comes over a poet when a sudden noise rouses him from a fruitful reverie in silence and at night. The old man hastily removed his hat and rose to bow to the young man ; the leather lining of his hat was doubtless very greasy; his wig stuck to it without his noticing it, and left his head bare, showing his skull horribly disfigured by a scar beginning at the nape of the neck and ending over the 8. The celebrate*! Putrh portrait painter. COLONEL CHABERT 81 right eye, a prominent seam all across his head. The sud- den removal of the dirty wig which the poor man wore to hide this gash gave the two lawyers no inclination to laugh, so horrible to behold was this riven skull. The first idea sug- gested by the sight of this old wound was, "His intelligence must have escaped through that cut." "If this is not Colonel Chabert, he is some thorough-going trooper I" thought Boucard. "Monsieur," said Derville, "to whom have I the honor of speaking?" "To Colonel Chabert." "Which?" "He who was killed at Eylau," replied the old man. On hearing this strange speech, the lawyer and his clerk glanced at each other, as much as to say, "He is mad." "Monsieur," the Colonel went on, "I wish to confide to you the secret of my position." A thing well worthy of note is the natural intrepidity of lawyers. Whether from the habit of receiving a great many persons, or from the deep sense of the protection conferred on them by the law, or from confidence in their mission, they enter everywhere, fearing nothing, like priests and physi- cians. Derville signed to Boucard, who vanished. "During the day, sir," said the attorney, "I am not so miserly of my time, but at night every minute is precious. So be brief 1 and concise. Go to the facts without digression. I will ask for any explanations I may consider necessary. Speak." Having bid his strange client to be seated, the young man sat down at the table ; but while he gave his attention to the deceased Colonel, he turned over the bundles of papers. "You know, perhaps," said the dead man, "that I com- manded a cavalry regiment at Eylau. I was of important 82 FRENCH SHORT STORIES service to the success of Murat's 9 famous charge which de- cided the victory. Unhappily for me, my death is a historical fact, recorded in Victoires et Conquetes, where it is related in full detail. We cut through the three Russian lines, which at once closed up and formed again, so that we had to repeat the movement back again. At the moment when we were nearing the Emperor, 10 after having scattered the Russians, I came against a squadron of the enemy's cavalry. I rushed at the obstinate brutes. Two Russian officers, per- fect giants, attacked me both at once. One of them gave me a cut across the head that crashed through everything, even a black silk cap I wore next my head, and cut deep into the skull. I fell from my horse. Murat came up to support me ; he rode over my body, he and all his men, fifteen hundred of them — there might have been more ! My death was announced to the Emperor, who as a precaution — for he was fond of me, was the Master — wished to know if there were no hope of saving the man he had to thank for such a vigorous attack. He sent two surgeons to identify me and bring me into Hospital, saying, perhaps too carelessly, for he was very busy, "Go and see whether by any chance poor Chabert is still alive." These rascally saw-bones, who had just seen me lying under the hoofs of the horses of two regi- ments, no doubt did not trouble themselves to feel my pulse, and reported that I was quite dead. The certificate of death was probably made out in accordance with the rules of mili- tary jurisprudence." As he heard his visitor express himself with complete lucidity, and relate a story so probable though so strange, the young lawyer ceased fingering the papers, rested his left elbow on the table, and with his head on his hand looked steadily at the Colonel. 9. Ono of Napoleon's most famous marshals. He took part in tin battle of Eylau. 10. Napoleon Bonaparte. COLONEL CHABERT ♦ 83 "Do you know, Monsieur, that I am lawyer to the Comtesse Ferraud," he said, interrupting the speaker, "Colonel Cha- bert's widow?" "My wife — yes, Monsieur. Therefore, after a hundred fruitless attempts to interest lawyers, who have all thought me mad, I made up my mind to come to you. I will tell you of my misfortunes afterwards; for the present, allow me to prove the facts, explaining rather how things must have fallen out rather than how they did occur. Certain circumstances, known, I suppose, to no one but the Almighty, compel me to speak of some things as hypothetical. The wounds I had received must presumably have produced tetanus, or have thrown me into a state analogous to that of a disease called, I believe, catalepsy. Otherwise how is it conceivable that I should have been stripped, as is the cus- tom in time of war, and thrown into the common grave by the men ordered to bury the dead ? "Allow me here to refer to a detail of which I could know nothing till after the event, which, after all, I must speak of as my death. At Stuttgart, in 1814, I met an old quarter- master of my regiment. This dear fellow, the only man who chose to recognize me, and of whom I will tell you more later, explained the marvel of my preservation, by telling me that my horse was shot in the flank at the moment when I was wounded. Man and beast went down together, like a monk cut out of card-paper. As I fell, to the right or to the left, I was no doubt covered by the body of my horse, which protected me from being trampled to death or hit bv a ball. "When I came to myself, Monsieur, I was in a position and an atmosphere of which I could give you no idea if I talked till tomorrow. The little air there was to breathe was foul. I wanted to move, and found no room. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. The most alarming circumstance 84 FRENCH SHORT STORIES was the lack of air, and this enlightened me as to my situa- tion. I understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me, and that I must die. This thought took off the sense of intolerable j^ain which had aroused me. There was a violent singing in my ears. I heard — or I thought I heard, I will assert nothing — groans from the world of dead among whom I was lying. Some nights I still think I hear those stifled moans ; though the remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my memory very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute suffering I was fated to go through, and which have confused my ideas. "But there was something more awful than cries; there was a silence such as I have never known elsewhere — liter- ally., the silence of the grave. At last, by raising my hands and feeling the dead, I discerned a vacant space between my head and. the human carrion above. I could thus measure the space, granted by a chance of which I knew not the cause. It would seem that, thanks to the carelessness and the haste with which we had been pitched into the trench, two dead bodies had leaned across and against each other, forming an angle like that made by two cards when a child is building a card castle. Feeling about me at once, for there was no time for play, I happily felt an arm lying detached. the arm of a Hercules ! A stout bone, to which I owed my rescue. But for this unhoped-for help, I must have perished. But with a fury you may imagine, I began to work my May through the bodies which separated me from the layer am earth which had no doubt been thrown over us — I say usj as if there had been others living! I worked with a will, Monsieur, for here I am! But to this day I do not know how I succeeded in getting through the pile of flesh which formed a barrier between me and life. You will say I had three arms. This crowbar, which I used cleverly enough! opened out a little air between the bodies I moved, and I COLONEL CHABERT 85 economized my breath. At last I saw daylight, but through snow ! "At that moment I perceived that my head was cut open. Happily my blood, or that of my comrades, or perhaps the torn skin of my horse, who knows, had in coagulating formed a sort of natural plaster. But, in spite of it, I fainted away when my head came into contact with the snow. However, the little warmth left in me melted the snow about me ; and when I recovered consciousness, I found myself in the mid- dle of a round hole, where I stood shouting as long as I could. But the sun was rising, so I had very little chance of being heard. Was there any one in the fields yet? I pulled myself up, using my feet as a spring, resting on one of the dead, whose ribs were firm. You may suppose that this was not the moment for saying, 'Respect courage in mis- fortune !' In short, Monsieur, after enduring the anguish, if the word is strong enough for my frenzy of seeing for a long time, yes, quite a long time, those cursed Germans fly- ing from a voice they heard where they could see no one, I was dug out by a woman, who was brave or curious enough to come close to my head, which must have looked as though it had sprouted from the ground like a mushroom. This woman went to fetch her husband, and between them they got me to their poor hovel. "It would seem that I must have again fallen into a catalepsy — allow me to use the word to describe a state of which I have no idea, but which, from the account given by my hosts, I suppose to have been the effect of that malady. I remained for six months between life and death ; not speak- ing, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium. At last, my hosts got me admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg. Six months afterwards, when I remembered, one fine morning, that I had been Colonel Chabert, and when, on recovering my wits, I tried to exact from my nurse rather 86 FRENCH SHORT STORIES more respect than she paid to any poor devil, all my com- panions in the ward began to laugh. Luckily for me. the surgeon, out of professional pride, had answered for my cure, and was naturally interested in his patient. When I told him coherently about my former life, this good man, named Sparchman, signed a deposition, drawn up in the legal form of his country, giving an account of the miraculous way in which I had escaped from the trench dug for the dead, the day and hour when I had been found by my bene- factress and her husband, the nature and exact spot of my injuries, adding to these documents a description of my per- son. "Well, Monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence, nor the declaration I made before a notary at Heilsberg, with a view to establishing my identity. From the day when I was turned out of that town by the events of war, I have wandered about like a vagabond, begging my bread, treated as a madman when I have told my story, with- out ever having found or earned a sou to enable me to recover the deeds which would prove my statements, and restore me to society. My sufferings have often kept me for six months at a time in some little town, where every care was taken of the invalid Frenchman, but where he was laughed at to his face as soon as he said he was Colonel Chabert. For a long time that laughter, those doubts, used to put me into rages which did me harm, and which even led to my being locked up at Stuttgart as a madman. And, indeed, as you may judge from my story, there was ample reason for shutting a man up. "At the end of two years' detention, which I was com- pelled to submit to, after hearing my keepers say a thousand times, 'Here is a poor man who thinks he is Colonel Chabert' to people who would reply, 'Poor fellow !' I became con- vinced of the impossibility of my own adventure. I grew COLONEL CHABERT 87 melancholy, resigned, and quiet, and gave up calling myself Colonel Chabert, in order to get out of my prison, and see France once more. Oh, Monsieur ! To see Paris again was I a delirium which I " Without finishing his sentence, Colonel Chabert fell into a deep study, which Derville respected. "One fine day," his visitor resumed, "one spring day, they gave me the key of the fields, as we say, and ten thalers, 11 admitting that I talked quite sensibly on all subjects, and no longer called myself Colonel Chabert. On my honor, at that time, and even to this day, sometimes I hate my name. I wish I were not myself. The sense of my rights kills me. If my illness had but deprived me of all memory of my past life, I could be happy. I should have entered the service again under any name, no matter what, and should, perhaps, have been made Field-Marshal in Austria or Russia. Who knows ?" "Monsieur," said the attorney, "you have upset all my ideas. I feel as if I heard you in a dream. Pause for a moment, I beg of you." "You are the only person," said the Colonel, with a melancholy look, "who ever listened to me so patiently. No lawyer has been willing to lend me ten napoleons 12 to enable me to procure from Germany the necessary documents to begin my lawsuit " "What lawsuit?" said the attorney, who had forgotten his client's painful position in listening to the narrative of his past sufferings. "Why, Monsieur, is not the Comtesse Ferraud my wife? She has thirty thousand francs a year, which belong to me, and she will not give me a sou. When I tell lawyers these things — men of sense; when I propose — I, a beggar — to 11. A thaler is a German silver coin worth about 75 cents. 12. A napoleon was worth $4.00. 88 FRENCH SHORT STORIES bring an action against a Count and Countess; when I — a dead man — bring up as against a certificate of death a cer- tificate of marriage and registers of births, they show me out, either with the air of cold politeness, which you all know how to assume to rid yourselves of a hapless wretch, or brutally, like men who think they have to deal with a swindler or a madman — it depends on their nature. I have been buried under the dead ; but now I am buried under the living, under papers, under facts, under the whole of society, which wants to shove me underground again !" "Pray resume your narrative," said Derville. "Pray resume it !" cried the hapless old man, taking the young lawyer's hand. "That is the first polite word I have heard since " The Colonel wept. Gratitude choked his voice. The appealing and unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a gesture, even in silence, entirely convinced Derville, and touched him deeply. "Listen, Monsieur," said he; "I have this evening won three hundred francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness of the loan as coming from a young man who has his fortune to make. Proceed." The Colonel, as he called himself, sat for a moment motion- less and bewildered; the depth of his woes had no doubt destroyed his powers of belief. Though he was eager in pursuit of his military distinction, of his fortune, of himself, perhaps it was in obedience to the inexplicable feeling, the latent germ in every man's heart, to which we owe the experiments of alchemists, the passion for glory, the discov- eries of astronomy and of physics, everything which prompts COLONEL CHABERT 89 man to expand his being by multiplying himself through deeds or ideas. In his mind the Ego was now but a secondary object, just as the vanity of success or the pleasure of win- ning become dearer to the gambler than the object he has at stake. The young lawyer's words were as a miracle to this man, for ten years repudiated by his wife, by justice, by the whole social creation. To find in a lawyer's office the ten gold pieces which had so long been refused him by so many people, anct in so many ways ! The Colonel was like the lady who, having been ill of a fever for fifteen years, fancied she had some fresh complaint when she was cured. There are joys in which we have ceased to believe; they fall on us, it is like a thunderbolt ; they burn us. The poor man's gratitude was too great to find utterance. To super- ficial observers he seemed cold, but Derville saw complete honesty under this amazement. A swindler would have found his voice. "Where was I?" said the Colonel, with the simplicity of a child or of a soldier, for there is often something of the child in a true soldier, and almost always something of the soldier in a child, especially in France. "At Stuttgart. You were out of prison," said Derville. "You know my wife?" asked the Colonel. "Yes," said Derville, with a bow. "What is she like?" "Still quite charming." The old man held up his hand, and seemed to be swal- lowing down some secret anguish with the grave and solemn resignation that is characteristic of men who have stood the ordeal of blood and fire on the battlefield. "Monsieur," said he, with a sort of cheerfulness — for he breathed again, the poor Colonel; he had again risen from the grave; he had just melted a covering of snow less easily thawed than that which had once before frozen his head ; 90 FRENCH SHORT STORIES and he drew a deep breathy as if he had just escaped from a dungeon — "Monsieur, if I had been a handsome young fellow, none of my misfortunes would have befallen me. Women believe in men when they flavor their speeches with the word Love. They hurry then, they come, they go, they are everywhere at once; they intrigue, they assert facts, they play the very devil for a man who takes their fancy. But how could I interest a woman? I had a face like a Requiem. 13 I was dressed like a sans-culotte. 1 * I was more like an Esquimaux than a Frenchman — I, who had formerly been considered one of the smartest of fops in 1799! — I, Chabert, Count of the Empire. "Well, on the very day when I was turned out into the streets like a dog, I met the quartermaster of whom I just now spoke. This old soldier's name was Boutin. The poor devil and I made the queerest pair of broken-down hacks I ever set eyes on. I met him out walking ; but though I recog- nized him, he could not possibly guess who I was. We went into a tavern together. In there, when I told him my name. Boutin's mouth opened from ear to ear in a roar of laughter, like the bursting of a mortar. That mirth, Monsieur, was one of the keenest pangs I have known. It told me without dis- guise how great were the changes in me ! I was, then, un- recognizable even to the humblest and most grateful of my former friends ! "I had once saved Boutin's life, but it was only the repay- ment of a debt I owed him. I need not tell you how he did me this service; it was at Ravenna, in Italy. The house where Boutin prevented my being stabbed was not extremely respectable. At that time I was not a colonel, but, like Boutin himself, a common trooper. Happily there were certain details of this adventure which could be known only 13. He looked like one (load, for whom a mass is chanted. 14. Literally, "without breeches." A name jjiveu to the Republican extremists of the French Revolution. COLONEL CHABERT 91 to us two, and when I recalled them to his mind his incre- dulity diminished. I then told him the story of my singular experiences. Although my eyes and my voice, he told me, were strangely altered, although I had neither hair, teeth, nor eyebrows, and was as colorless as an Albino, he at last recognized his Colonel in the beggar, after a thousand ques- tions, which I answered triumphantly. "He related his adventures ; they were not less extraordi- nary than my own ; he had lately come back from the fron- tiers of China, which he had tried to cross after escaping from Siberia. He told me of the catastrophe of the Rus- sian campaign, and of Napoleon's first abdication. That news was one of the things which caused me most anguish ! "We were two curious derelicts, having been rolled over the globe as pebbles are rolled by the ocean when storms bear them from shore to shore. Between us we had seen Egypt, Syria, Spain, Russia, Holland, Germany, Italy and Dal- matia, England, China, Tartary, Siberia ; the only thing wanting was that neither of us had been to America or the Indies. Finally, Boutin, who still was more locomotive than I, undertook to go to Paris as quickly as might be to inform my wife of the predicament in which I was. I wrote a long letter full of details to Madame Chabert. That, Monsieur, was the fourth ! If I had had any relations, perhaps nothing of all this might have happened ; but, to be frank with you, I am but a workhouse child, a soldier, whose sole fortune was his courage, whose sole family is mankind at large, whose country is France, whose only protector is the Al- mighty. — Nay, I am wrong! I had a father — the Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear man! If he could see his Chabert, as he used to call me, in the state in which I am now, he would be in a rage ! What is to be done ? Our sun is set, and we are all out in the cold now. After all, political events might account for my wife's silence ! 92 FRENCH SHOUT STORIES "Boutin set out. He was a lucky fellow! He had two bears, admirably trained, which brought him in a living. I could not go with him ; the pain I suffered forbade my walk- ing long stages. I wept, Monsieur, when we parted, after I had gone as far as my state allowed in company with him and his bears. At Carlsruhe I had an attack of neuralgia in the head, and lay for six weeks on straw in an inn. — I should never have ended if I were to tell you all the distresses of my life as a beggar. Moral suffering, before which physi- cal suffering pales, nevertheless excites less pity, because it is not seen. I remember shedding tears, as I stood in front of a fine house in Strassburg where I once had given an entertainment, and where nothing was given me, not even a piece of bread. Having agreed with Boutin on the road I was to take, I went to every post-office to ask if there were a letter or some money for me. I arrived at Paris without having found either. What despair I had been forced to endure ! 'Boutin must be dead !' I told myself, and in fact the poor fellow was killed at Waterloo. I heard of his death later, and by mere chance. His errand to my wife had, of course, been fruitless. "At last I entered Paris — with the Cossacks. To me this was grief on grief. On seeing the Russians in France. I quite forgot that I had no shoes on my feet nor money in my pocket. Yes, Monsieur, my clothes were in tatters. The evening before I reached Paris I was obliged to bivouac in the woods of Claye. The chill of the night air no doubt brought on an attack of some nameless complaint which seized me as I was crossing the Faubourg Saint-Martin. I dropped almost senseless at the door of an ironmonger's shop. When I recovered I was in a bed in the Hotel-Dieu. 1 "' There I stayed very contentedly for about a month. I was then turned out; I had no money, but I was well, and my 15. A famous hospital in Paris. COLONEL CHABERT 93 feet were on the good stones of Paris. With what delight and haste did I make my way to the Rue du Mont-Blanc, where my wife should be living in a house belonging to me ! Bah ! the Rue du Mont-Blanc was now the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin; I could not find my house; it had been sold and pulled down. Speculators had built several houses over my gardens. Not knowing that my wife had married M. Ferraud^ I could obtain no information. "At last I went to the house of an old lawyer who had been in charge of my affairs. This worthy man was dead, after selling his connection to a younger man. This gentle- man informed me, to my great surprise, of the administra- tion of my estate, the settlement of the moneys, of my wife's marriage, and the birth of her two children. When I told him that I was Colonel Chabert, he laughed so heartily that I left him without saying another word. My detention at Stuttgart had suggested possibilities of Charenton/ 6 and I determined to act with caution. Then, Monsieur, knowing where my wife lived, I went to her house, my heart high with hope. — Well," said the Colonel, with a gesture of concen- trated fury, "when I called under an assumed name I was not admitted, and on the day when I used my own I was turned out of doors. "To see the Countess come home from a ball or the play in the early morning, I have sat whole nights through, crouch- ing close to the wall of her gateway. My eyes pierced the depths of the carriage, which flashed past me with the swift- ness of lightning, and I caught a glimpse of the woman who is my wife and no longer mine. Oh, from that day I have lived for vengeance !" cried the old man in a hollow voice, and suddenly standing up in front of Derville. "She knows that I am alive; since my return she has had two letters written with my own hand. She loves me no more ! — I — I 10. An insane asylum near Paris. 94 FRENCH SHORT STORIES know not whether I love or hate her. I long for her and curse her by turns. To me she owes all her fortune, all her happiness; well, she has not sent me the very smallest pittance. Sometimes I do not know what will become of me!" With these words the veteran dropped on to his chair again and remained motionless. Derville sat in silence, studying his client. "It is a serious business," he said at length, mechanically. "Even granting the genuineness of the documents to be pro- cured from Heilsberg, it is not proved to me that we can at once win our case. It must go before three tribunals in suc- cession. I must think such a matter over with a clear head ; it is quite exceptional." "Oh," said the Colonel, coldly; with a haughty jerk of his head, "if I fail, I can die — but not alone." The feeble old man had vanished. The eyes were those of a man of energy, lighted up with the spark of desire and revenge. "We must perhaps compromise," said the lawyer. "Compromise!" echoed Colonel Chabert. "Am I dead, or am I alive?" "I hope, Monsieur," the attorney went on, "that you will follow my advice. Your cause is mine. You will soon per- ceive the interest I take in your situation, almost unexampled in judicial records. For the moment I will give you a letter to my notary, who will pay you to your order fifty francs every ten days. It would be unbecoming for you to come here to receive alms. If you are Colonel Chabert, you ought to be at no man's mercy. I shall regard these advances as a loan; you have estates to recover; you are rich." This delicate compassion brought tears to the old man's eyes. Derville rose hastily, for it was perhaps not correct for a lawyer to show emotion; he went into the adjoining COLONEL CHABERT 95 room, and came back with an unsealed letter, which he gave to the Colonel. When the poor man held it in his hand, he felt through the paper two gold pieces. "Will you be good enough to describe the documents, and tell me the name of the town, and in what kingdom?" said the lawyer. The Colonel dictated the information, and verified the spelling of the names of places ; then he took his hat in one hand, looked at Derville, and held out the other — a horny hand, saying with much simplicity — "On my honor, sir, after the Emperor, you are the man to whom I shall owe most. You are a splendid fellow !" The attorney clapped his hand into the Colonel's, saw him to the stairs, and held a light for him. "Boucard," said Derville to his head clerk, "I have just listened to a tale that may cost me five-and-twenty louis. 17 If I am robbed, I shall not regret the money, for I shall have seen the most consummate actor of the day." When the Colonel was in the street and close to a lamp, he took the two twenty-franc pieces out of the letter and looked at them for a moment under the light. It was the first gold he had seen for nine years. "I may smoke cigars !" he said to himself. About three months after this interview, at night, in Derville's room, the notary commissioned to advance the half- pay on Derville's account to his eccentric client, came to consult the attorney on a serious matter, and began by beg- ging him to refund the six hundred francs that the old soldier had received. "Are you amusing yourself with pensioning the old army ?" said the notary, laughing — a young man named Crottat, who had just bought up the office in which he had been head 17. A louis is a gold coin worth $4.00. 96 FRENCH SHORT STORIES >us clerk, his chief having fled in consequence of a disastrous bankruptcy. "I have to thank you, my dear sir, for reminding me of that affair/' replied Derville. "My philanthropy will not carry me beyond twenty-five louis ; I have, I fear, already been the dupe of my patriotism." "As Derville finished the sentence, he saw on his desk the papers his head clerk had laid out for him. His eye was struck by the appearance of the stamps — long, square, and triangular, in red and blue ink, which distinguished a letter that had come through the Prussian, Austrian, Bavarian, and French postoffices. "Ah ha !" said he with a laugh, "here is the last act of the comedy; now we shall see if I have been taken in!" He took up the letter and opened it; but he could not read it; it was written in German. "Boucard, go yourself and have this letter translated, and bring it back immediately," said Derville, half opening his study door, and giving the letter to the head clerk. The notary at Berlin, to whom the lawyer had written, informed him that the documents he had been requested to forward would arrive within a few days of this note an- nouncing them. They were, he said, all perfectly regular and duly witnessed, and legally stamped to serve as evidence in law. He also informed him that almost all the witnesses to the facts recorded under these affidavits were still to be found at Eylau, in Prussia, and that the woman to whom M. le Comte Chabert owed his life was still living in a suburb of Heilsberg. "This looks like business," cried Derville, when Boucard had given him the substance of the letter. "But look here, my boy," he went on, addressing the notary, "I shall want some information which ought to exist in your office. Was it not that old rascal Roguin ?" COLONEL CHABERT 97 "We will say that unfortunate, that ill-used Roguin," interrupted Alexandre Crottat with a laugh. "Well, was it not that ill-used man who has just carried off eight hundred thousand francs of his clients' money, and reduced several families to despair, who effected the settle- ment of Chabert's estate? I fancy I have seen that in the documents in our case of Ferraud." "Yes," said Crottat. "It was when I was third clerk; I copied the papers and studied them thoroughly. Rose Chapotel, wife and widow of Hyacinthe, called Chabert, Count of the Empire, grand officer of the Legion of Honor. They had married without settlement; thus, they held all the property in common. To the best of my recollection, the personalty was about six hundred thousand francs. Before his marriage, Comte Chabert had made a will in favor of the hospitals of Paris, by which he left them one-quarter of the fortune he might possess at the time of his decease, the State to take the other quarter. The will was contested, there was a forced sale, and then a division, for the attorneys went at a pace. At the time of the settlement the monster who was then governing France handed over to the widow, by special decree, the portion bequeathed to the treasury." "So that Comte Chabert's personal fortune was no more than three hundred thousand francs?" "Consequently so it was, old fellow !" said Crottat. "You lawyers sometimes are very clear-headed, though you are accused of false practices in pleading for one side or the other." Colonel Chabert, whose address was written at the bottom of the first receipt he had given the notary, was lodging in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, Rue du Petit-Banquier, with an old quartermaster of the Imperial Guard, now a cow- keeper, named Vergniaud. Having reached the spot, Der- ville was obliged to go on foot in search of his client, for 98 FRENCH SHORT STORIES his coachman declined to drive along an unpaved street, where the ruts were rather too deep for cab wheels. Looking about him on all sides, the lawyer at last discovered at the end of the street nearest to the boulevard, between two walls built of bones and mud, two shabby stone gate-posts, much knocked about by carts, in spite of two wooden stumps that served as blocks. These posts supported a cross beam with a pent-house coping of tiles, and on the beam, in red letters, were the words, "Vergniaud, dairyman." To the right of this inscription were some eggs, to the left a cow, all painted in white. The gate was open, and no doubt remained open all day. Beyond a good-sized yard there was a house facing the gate, if indeed the name of house may be applied to one of the hovels built in the neighborhood of Paris, which are like nothing else, not even the most wretched dwellings in the country, of which they have all the poverty without their poetry. Indeed, in the midst of fields, even a hovel may have a certain grace derived from the pure air, the verdure, the open country — a hill, a serpentine road, vineyards, quick- set hedges, moss-grown thatch and rural implements; but poverty in Paris gains dignity only by horror. Though recently built, this house seemed ready to fall into ruins. None of its materials had found a legitimate use ; they had been collected from the various demolitions which are going on every day in Paris. On a shutter made of the boards of a shop-sign Derville read the words, "Fancy Goods." The windows were all mismatched and grotesquely placed. The ground floor, which seemed to be the habitable part, was on one side raised above the soil, and on the other sunk in the rising ground. Between the gate and the house lay a puddle full of stable litter, into which flowed the rain-water and house waste. The back wall of this frail construction, which seemed rather more solidly built than the rest, sup- COLONEL CHABERT 99 ported a row of barred hutches, where rabbits bred their numerous families. To the right of the gate was the cow- house, with a loft above for fodder; it communicated with the house through the dairy. To the left was a poultry yard, with a stable and pig-styes, the roofs finished, like that of the house, with rough deal boards nailed so as to overlap, and shabbily thatched with rushes. Like most of the places where the elements of the huge meal daily devoured by Paris are every day prepared, the yard Derville now entered showed traces of the hurry that comes of the necessity for being ready at a fixed hour. The large pot-bellied tin cans in which milk is carried, and the little pots for cream, were flung pell-mell at the dairy door, with their linen-covered stoppers. The rags that were used to clean them, fluttered in the sunshine, riddled with holes, hanging to strings fastened to poles. The placid horse, of a breed known only to milk-women, had gone a few steps from the cart, and was standing in front of the stable, the door being shut. A goat was munching the shoots of a starved and dusty vine that clung to the cracked yellow wall of the house. A cat, squatting on the cream j ars, was licking them over. The fowls, scared by Derville's approach, scuttered away screaming, and the watch-dog barked. "And the man who decided the victory at Eylau is to be found here !" said Derville to himself, as his eyes took in at a glance the general effect of the squalid scene. The house had been left in charge of three little boys. One, who had climbed to the top of a cart loaded with hay, was pitching stones into the chimney of a neighboring house, in the hope that they might fall into a saucepan ; another was trying to get a pig into a cart by the back board, which rested on the ground; while the third, hanging on in front, was waiting till the pig had got into the cart, to hoist it by making the whole thing tilt. When Derville asked them if 100 FRENCH SHORT STORIES M. Chabert lived there, neither of theni replied, but all three looked at him with a sort of bright stupidity, if I may com- bine those two words. Derville repeated his questions, but without success. Provoked by the saucy cunning of these three imps, he abused them with the sort of pleasantry which young men think they have a right to address to little boys, and they broke the silence with a horse-laugh. Then Der- ville was angry. The Colonel, hearing him, now came out of a little low room, close to the dairy, and stood on the threshold of his doorway with indescribable military coolness. He had in his mouth a very finely colored pipe — a technical phrase to a smoker — a humble, short clay pipe of the kind called "brule- gueule." He lifted the peak of a dreadfully greasy cloth cap, saw Derville, and came straight across the midden to join his benefactor the sooner, calling out in friendly tones to the boys — "Silence in the ranks !" The children at once kept a respectful silence, which showed the power the old soldier had over them. "Why did you not write to me?" he said to Derville. "Go along by the cowhouse ! There — the path is paved there," he exclaimed, seeing the lawyer's hesitancy, for he did not wish to wet his feet in the manure heap. Jumping from one dry sr^pt to another, Derville reached the door by which the Colonel had come out. Chabert seemed but ill pleased at having to receive him in the bedroom he occupied; and, in fact, Derville found but one chair there. The Colonel's bed consisted of some trusses of straw, over which his hostess had spread two or three of those old frag- ments of carpet, picked up heaven knows where, which milk- women use to cover the seats of their carts. The floor was simply the trodden earth. The walls, sweating saltpetre, green with mold, and full of cracks, were so excessively COLONEL CHABERT 101 damp that on the side where the Colonel's bed was a reed mat had been nailed. The famous box-coat hung on a nail. Two pairs of old boots lay in a corner. There was not a sign of linen. On the worm-eaten table the Bulletins de la Grande Armee, reprinted by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the Colonel's reading; his countenance was calm and serene in the mids't of this squalor. His visit to Derville seemed to have altered his features ; the lawyer perceived in them traces of a happy feeling, a particular gleam set there by hope. "Does the smell of a pipe annoy you?" he said, placing the dilapidated straw-bottomed chair for his lawyer. "But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!" The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers, and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the appalling and obscure tragedies at which they look on. "Here," said he to himself, "is a man who has of course spent my money in satisfying a trooper's three theological virtues — play, wine, and women !" "To be sure, Monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here. It is a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but " And the soldier shot a deep glance at the man of law — "I have done no one wrong, I have never turned my Jftack on anybody, and I sleep in peace." Derville reflected that there would be some want of deli- cacy in asking his client to account for the sums of money he had advanced, so he merely said — "But why would you not come to Paris, where you might have lived as cheaply as you do here, but where you would have been better lodged?" "Why," replied the Colonel, "the good folks with whom I am living had taken me in and fed me gratis for a year. How could I leave them just when I had a little money. Besides, the father of those three pickles is an old Egyptian— — 102 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "An Egyptian !" "We give that name to the troopers who came back from the expedition into Egypt, of which I was one. Not merely are all who got back brothers; Vergniaud was in my regi- ment. We have shared a draught of water in the desert; and besides, I have not yet finished teaching his brats to read." "He might have lodged you better for your money/' said Derville. "Bah!" said the Colonel, "his children sleep on the straw as I do. He and his wife have no better bed; they are very poor, you see. They have taken a bigger business than they can manage. But if I recover my fortune . . . However, it does very well." "Colonel, tomorrow, or next day, I shall receive your papers from Heilsberg. The woman who dug you out is still alive !" "Curse the money ! To think I haven't got any !" he cried, flinging his pipe on the ground. Now, a well-colored pipe is to a smoker a precious posses- sion ; but the impulse was so natural, the emotion so generous, that every smoker, and the excise office itself, would have pardoned this crime of treason to tobacco. Perhaps the angels may have picked up the pieces. "Colonel, it is an exceedingly complicated business," said Derville as they left the room to walk up and down in the sunshine. "To me," said the soldier, "it appears exceedingly simple. I was thought to be dead, and here I am ! Give me back my wife and my fortune; give me the rank of General, to which I have a right, for I was made Colonel of the Imperial Guard the day before the battle of Eylau." "Things are not done so in the legal world." said Derville. "Listen to me. You are Colonel Chabert, I am glad to think COLONEL CHABERT 103 it ; but it has to be proved j udicially to persons whose interest it will be to deny it. Hence, your papers will be disputed. That contention will give rise to ten or twelve preliminary inquiries. Every question will be sent under contradiction up to the supreme court, and give rise to so many costly suits, which will hang on for a long time, however eagerly I may push them. Your opponents will demand an inquiry, which we can not refuse, and which may necessitate the sending of a commission of investigation to Prussia. But even if we hope for the best; supposing that justice should at once recognize you as Colonel Chabert — can we know how the questions will be settled that will arise out of the very inno- cent bigamy committed by the Comtesse Ferraud? "In your case, the point of law is unknown to the Code, and can only be decided as a point in equity, as a jury decides in the delicate cases presented by the social eccentricities of some criminal prosecutions. Now, you had no children by your marriage; M. le Comte Ferraud has two. The judges might pronounce against the marriage where the family ties are weakest, to the confirmation of that where they are stronger, since it was contracted in perfect good faith. Would you be in a very becoming moral position if you insisted, at your age, and in your present circumstances, in resuming your rights over a woman who no longer loves you? You will have both your wife and her husband against you, two important persons who might influence the Bench. Thus, there are many elements which would prolong the case ; you will have time to grow old in the bitterest regrets." "And my fortune ?" "Do you suppose you had a fine fortune?" "Had I not thirty thousand francs a year?" "My dear Colonel, in 1799 you made a will before your marriage, leaving one-quarter of your j)roperty to hospitals." "That is true." 104 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Well, when you were reported dead, it was necessary to make a valuation, and have a sale, to give this quarter away. Your wife was not particular about honesty to the poor. The valuation, in which she no doubt took care not to include the ready money or jewelry, or too much of the plate, and in which the furniture would be estimated at two-thirds of its actual cost, either to benefit her, or to lighten the succes- sion duty, and also because a valuer can be held responsible for the declared value — the valuation thus made stood at six hundred thousand francs. Your wife had a right to half for her share. Everj^thing was sold and bought in by her; she got something out of it all, and the hospitals got their seventy-five thousand francs. Then, as the remainder went to the State, since you had made no mention of your wife in your will, the Emperor restored to your widow by decree the residue which would have reverted to the Exchequer. So. now, what can you claim? Three hundred thousand francs, no more, and minus the costs." "And you call that justice!" said the Colonel, in dismay. "Why, certainly " "A pretty kind of justice!" "So it is, my dear Colonel. You see, that what you thought so easy is not so. Madame Ferraud might even choose to keep the sum given to her by the Emperor." "But she was not a widow. The decree is utterly void " "I agree with you. But eve"ry case can get a hearing. Listen to me. I think that under these circumstances a com- promise would be both for her and for you the best solution of the question. You will gain by it a more considerable sum than you can prove a right to." "That would be to sell my wife!" "With twenty-four thousand francs a year you could find a woman who, in the position in which you are, would suit you better than your own wife, and make you happier. I COLONEL CHABERT 105 propose going this very day to see the Comtesse Ferraud and sounding the ground; but I would not take such a step without giving you due notice." "Let us go together." "What, just as you are?" said the lawyer. "No, my dear Colonel, no. You might lose your case on the spot." "Can I possibly gain it?" "On every count," replied Derville. "But, my dear Colonel Chabert, you overlook one thing. I am not rich; the price of my connection is not wholly paid up. If the bench should allow you a maintenance, that is to say, a sum advanced on your prospects, they will not do so till you have proved that you are Comte Chabert, grand officer of the Legion of Honor." "To be sure, I am a grand officer of the Legion of Honor; I had forgotten that," said he simply. "Well, until then," Derville went on, "will you not have to engage pleaders, to have documents copied, to keep the underlings of the law going, and to support yourself? The expenses of the preliminary inquiries will, at a rough guess, amount to ten or twelve thousand francs. I have not so much to lend you — I am crushed as it is by the enormous interest I have to pay on the money I borrowed to buy my business; and you? — Where can you find it?" Large tears gathered in the poor veteran's faded eyes, and rolled down his withered cheeks. This outlook of diffi- culties discouraged him. The social and the legal world weighed on his breast like a nightmare. "I will go to the foot of the Vendome 18 column !" he cried. "I will call out: I am Colonel Chabert who rode through the Russian square at Eylau ! — The statue — he — he will know 18. A column in the Place Vendome, Paris, erected by Napoleon in honor of his army. 106 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "And you will find yourself in Charenton." At this terrible name the soldier's transports collapsed. "And will there be no hope for me at the Ministry of War?" "The war office!" said Derville. "Well, go there; but take a formal legal opinion with you, nullifying the certifi- cate of your death. The government offices would be only too glad if they could annihilate the men of the Empire." The Colonel stood for a while, speechless, motionless, his eyes fixed, but seeing nothing, sunk in bottomless despair. Military justice is ready and swift; it decides with Turk- like finality, and almost always rightly. This was the only justice known to Chabert. As he saw the labyrinth of diffi- culties into which he must plunge, and how much money would be required for the journey, the poor old soldier was mortally hit in that power peculiar to man, and called the Will. He thought it would be impossible to live as party to a lawsuit; it seemed a thousand times simpler to remain poor and a beggar, or to enlist as a trooper if any regiment would pass him. His physical and mental sufferings had already impaired his bodily health in some of the most important organs. He was on the verge of one of those maladies for which medi- cine has no name, and of which the seat is in some degree variable, like the nervous system itself, the part most fre- quently attacked of the whole human machine — a malady which may be designated as the heart-sickness of the unfortu- nate. However serious this invisible but real disorder might already be, it could still be cured by a happy issue. But a fresh obstacle, an unexpected incident, would be enough to wreck this vigorous constitution, to break the weakened springs, and produce the hesitancy, the aimless, unfinished movements, which physiologists know well in men under- mined by grief. COLONEL CHABERT 107 Derville, detecting in his client the symptoms of extreme dejection, said to him — "Take courage; the end of the business can not fail to be in your favor. Only, consider whether you can give me your whole confidence and blindly accept the result I may think best for your interests." "Do what you will," said Chabert. "Yes, but you surrender yourself to me like a man march- ing to his death." "Must I not be left to live without a position, without a name ? Is that endurable ?" "That is not my view of it," said the lawyer. "We will try a friendly suit, to annul both your death certificate and your marriage, so as to put you in possession of your rights. You may even, by Comte Ferraud's intervention, have your name replaced on the army list as general, and no doubt you will get a pension." "Well, proceed then," said Chabert. "I put myself entirely in your hands." "I will send you a power of attorney to sign," said Der- ville. "Good-bye. Keep up your courage. If you want money, rely on me." Chabert warmly wrung the lawyer's hand, and remained standing with his back against the wall, not having the energy to follow him excepting with his eyes. Like all men who know but little of legal matters, he was frightened by this unforeseen struggle. During their interview, several times, the figure of a man posted in the street had come forward from behind one of the gate-pillars, watching for Derville to depart, and he now accosted the lawyer. He was an old man, wearing a blue waistcoat and a white-pleated kilt, like a brewer's ; on his head was an otter-skin cap. His face was tanned, hollow- 108 FRENCH SHORT STORIES cheeked, and wrinkled, but ruddy on the cheekbones by hard work and exposure to the open air. "Asking your pardon, sir," said he, taking Derville by the arm, "if I take the liberty of speaking to you. But I fancied, from the look of you, that you were a friend of our General's." "And what then?" replied Derville. "What concern have you with him? — But who are you?" said the cautious lawyer. "I am Louis Vergniaud," he at once replied. "I have two words to say to you." "So you are the man who has lodged Comte Chabert as I have found him?" "Asking your pardon, sir, he has the best room. I would have given mine if I had had but one; I could have slept in the stable. A man who has suifered as he has, who teaches my kids to read, a general, an Egyptian, the first lieutenant I ever served under — What do you think? — Of us all, he is best served. I shared what I had with him. Unfortunately, it is not much to boast of — bread, milk, eggs. Well, well; it's neighbor's fare, sir. And he is heartily welcome. — But he has hurt our feelings." "He?" "Yes, sir, hurt our feelings. To be plain with you, I have taken a larger business than I can manage, and he saw it. Well, it worried him ; lie must needs mind the horse ! I says to him, 'Really, General ' Bah ! says he, 'I am not going to eat my head off doing nothing. I learned to rub a horse down many a year ago. I had some bills out for the purchase money of my dairy — a fellow named Grados — Do you know him, sir?" "But, my good man, I have not time to listen to your story. Only tell me how the Colonel offended you." "He hurt our feelings, sir, as sure as my name is Louis Vrrgniaud, and my wife cried about it. He heard from our COLONEL CHABERT 109 neighbors that we had not a sou to begin to meet the bills with. The old soldier, as he is, he saved up all you gave him, he watched for the bill to come in, and he paid it. Such a trick ! While my wife and me, we knew he had no tobacco, poor old boy, and went without. — Oh ! now — yes, he has his cigar every morning! I would sell my soul for it — No, we are hurt. Well, so I wanted to ask you — for he said you were a good sort — to lend us a hundred crowns 19 on the stock, so that we may get him some clothes, and furnish his room. He thought he was getting us out of debt, you see? Well, it's just the other way; the old man is running us into debt — and hurt our feelings — He ought not to have stolen a march on us like that. And we his friends, too ! — On my word as an honest man, as sure as my name is Louis Verg- niaud, I would sooner sell up and enlist than fail to pay you back your money " Derville looked at the dairyman, and stepped back a few paces to glance at the house, the yard, the manure-pool, the cowhouse, the rabbits, the children. "On my honor, I believe it is characteristic of virtue to have nothing to do with riches !" thought he. "All right, you shall have your hundred crowns, and more. But I shall not give them to you; the Colonel will be rich enough to help, and I will not deprive him of the pleasure." "And will that be soon?" "Why, yes." "Ah, dear God ! how glad my wife will be !" and the cow- keeper's tanned face seemed to expand. "Now," said Derville to himself, as he got into his cab again, "let us call on our opponent. We must not show our hand, but try to see hers, and win the game at one stroke. She must be. frightened. She is a woman. Now, what 19. The French crown of the ISth century was worth about $1.12. HO FRENCH SHORT STORIES frightens women most? A woman is afraid of nothing but . . ." And he set to work to study the Countess's position, falling into one of those brown studies to which great politicians give themselves up when concocting their own plans and try- ing to guess the secrets of a hostile Cabinet. Are not attor- neys, in a way, statesman in charge of private affairs ? But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and his wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the lawj^er's cleverness. Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former Councillor in the old Parlement of Paris, who had emigrated during the Reign of Terror/ and so, though he saved his head, lost his fortune. He came back under the Consulate, and remained persistently faithful to the cause of Louis XVIII, in whose circle his father had moved before the Revo- lution. He thus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint- Germain which nobly stood out against Napoleon's blandish- ments. The reputation for capacity gained by young Count — then simply called Monsieur Ferraud — made him the ob- ject of the Emperor's advances, for he was often as well pleased at his conquests among the aristocracy as at gaining a battle. The Count was promised the restitution of his title, of such of his estates as had not been sold, and he was shown in perspective a place in the ministry or as senator. The Emperor fell. At the time of Comte Chabert's death, M. Ferraud was a young man of six-and-twenty, without fortune, of pleasing appearance, who had had his successes, and whom the Fau- bourg Saint-Germain had adopted as doing it credit; but Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn her share of her husband's fortune to such good account that, after 20. That period of the French Revolution when the faction in power made it a principle to execute every one considered hostile to their rule. It lasted from March. 1708. to the fall of Robespierre in 1704. COLONEL CHABERT m eighteen months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand francs a year. Her marriage to the young Count was not regarded as news in the circles of the Faubourg Saint-Ger- main. Napoleon, approving of this union, which carried out his idea of fusion, restored to Madame Chabert the money falling to the Exchequer under her husband's will; but Na- poleon's hopes were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not only in love with her lover ; she had also been fas- cinated by the notion of getting into the haughty society which, in spite of its humiliation, was still predominant at the Imperial Court. By this marriage all her vanities were as much gratified as her passions. She was to become a real line lady. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain understood that the young Count's marriage did not mean desertion, its drawing-rooms were thrown open to his wife. Then came the Restoration. The Count's political ad- vancement was not rapid. He understood the exigencies of the situation in which Louis XVIII found himself; he was one of the inner circle who waited till the "Gulf of Revolu- tion should be closed"— for this phrase of the King's, at which the Liberals laughed so heartily, had a political sense. The order quoted in the long lawyer's preamble at the be- ginning of this story had, however, put him in possession of two tracts of forest, and of an estate which had considerably increased in value during its sequestration. At the present moment, though Comte Ferraud was a Councillor of State, and a Director-General, he regarded his position as merely the first step of his political career. Wholly occupied as he was by the anxieties of consuming ambition, he had attached to himself, as secretary, a ruined attorney named Delbecq, a more than clever man, versed in all the resources of the law, to whom he left the conduct of his private affairs. This shrewd practitioner had so well understood his position with the Count as to be honest in his 112 FRENCH SHORT STORIES own interest. He hoped to get some place by his master's influence, and he made the Count's fortune his first care. His conduct so effectually gave the lie to his former life, that he was regarded as a slandered man. The Countess, with the tact and shrewdness of which most women have a share more or less, understood the man's motives, watched him quietly, and managed him so well, that she had made good use of him for the augmentation of her private fortune. She had con- trived to make Delbecq believe that she ruled her husband, and had promised to get him appointed President of an inferior Court in some important provincial town, if he de- voted himself entirely to her interests. The promise of a place, not dependent on changes of ministry, which would allow of his marrying advantageously, and rising subsequently to a high political position, by being chosen Depute, made Delbecq the Countess's abject slave. He had never allowed her to miss one of those favorable chances which the fluctuations of the Bourse and the in- creased value of property afforded to clever financiers in Paris during the first three years after the Restoration. He had trebled his protectress's capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had no scruples as to the means which might make her an enormous fortune as quickly as possible. The emoluments derived by the Count from the places he held she spent on the housekeeping, so as to reinvest her dividends ; and Delbecq lent himself to these calculations of avarice without trying to account for her motives. People of that sort never trouble themselves about any secrets of which the discovery is not necessary to their own interests. And, indeed, he naturally found the reason in the thirst for money, which taints almost every Parisian woman; and as a fine fortune was needed to support the pretensions of Comte Ferraud, the secretary sometimes fancied that he saw in the Countess's greed a consequence of her devotion to a COLONEL CHABERT 113 husband with whom she still was in love. The Countess buried the secrets of her conduct at the bottom of her heart. There lay the secrets of life and death to her, there lay the turning-point of this history. At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was settled on an apparently immovable foundation; its doc- trines of government, as understood by lofty minds, seemed calculated to bring to France an era of renewed prosperity, and Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame la Comtesse. Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambition. Still young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the part of a woman of fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with a rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the royalist party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are feelings which women guess in spite of the care men take to bury them. On the first return of the King, Comte Fer- raud had begun to regret his marriage. Colonel Chabert's widow had not been the means of allying him to anybody; he was alone and unsupported in steering his way in a course full of shoals and beset by enemies. Also, perhaps, when he came to judge his wife coolly, he may have discerned in her certain vices of education which made her unfit to second him in his schemes. A speech he made, a propos of Talleyrand's 21 marriage, enlightened the Countess, to whom it proved that if he had still been a free man she would never have been Madame Ferraud. What woman could forgive this repentance ? Does it not include the germs of every insult, every crime, every form of repudiation? But what a wound must it have left 21. A famous French statesman, 1754-1838. 114 FRENCH SHORT STORIES in the Countess's heart, supposing that she lived in the dread of her first husband's return? She had known that he still lived, and she had ignored him. Then during the time when she had heard no more of him, she had chosen to believe that he had fallen at Waterloo with the Imperial Eagle, at the same time as Boutin. She resolved, nevertheless, to bind the Count to her by the strongest of all ties, by a chain of gold, and vowed to be so rich that her fortune might make her second marriage indissoluble, if by chance Colonel Chabert should ever reappear. And he had reappeared; and she could not explain to herself why the struggle she dreaded had not already begun. Suffering, sickness, had perhaps delivered her from that man. Perhaps he was half mad, and Charenton might yet do her justice. She had not chosen to take either Delbecq or the police into her confidence, for fear of putting herself in their power, or of hastening the catastrophe. There are in Paris many women who, like the Countess Ferraud, live with an unknown moral monster, or on the brink of an abyss ; a callus forms over the spot that tortures them, and they can still laugh and enjoy them- selves. "There is something very strange in Comte Ferraud's position," said Derville to himself, on emerging from his long reverie, as his cab stopped at the door of the Hotel Ferraud in the Rue de Varennes. "How is it that he, so rich as he is, and such a favorite with the King, is not yet a peer of France? It may, to be sure, be true that the King, as Mme. de Grandlieu was telling me, desires to keep up the value of the pairie 22 by not bestowing it right and left. And. after all, the son of a Councillor of the Parlement is not a Crillon nor a Rohan. 23 A Comte Ferraud can only get into the Upper Chamber surreptitiously. But if his marriage 22. The name of the rank formerly given to a member of the Upper Chamber. 23. Two French generals of the Kith and 17th centuries. COLONEL CHABERT 115 were annulled, could he not get the dignity of some old peer who has only daughters transferred to himself, to the King's great satisfaction? At any rate this will be a good bogey to put forward and frighten the Countess," thought he as he went up the steps. Derville had without knowing it laid his finger on the hidden wound, put his hand on the canker that consumed Madame Ferraud. She received him in a pretty winter dining-room, where she was at breakfast, while playing with a monkey tethered by a chain to a little pole with climbing bars of iron. The Countess was in an elegant wrapper; the curls of her hair, carelessly pinned up, escaped from a cap, giving her an arch look. She was fresh and smiling. Silver, gilding, and mother-of-pearl shone on the table, and all about the room were rare plants growing in magnificent china jars. As he saw Colonel Chabert's wife, rich with his spoil, in the lap of luxury and the height of fashion, while he, poor wretch, was living with a poor dairyman among the beasts, the lawyer said to himself — "The moral of all this is that a pretty woman will never acknowledge as her husband, nor even as a lover, a man in an old box-coat, a tow wig, and boots with holes in them." A mischievous and bitter smile expressed the feelings, half philosophical and half satirical, which such a man was cer- tain to experience — a man well situated to know the truth of things in spite of the lies behind which most families in Paris hide their mode of life. "Good morning, Monsieur Derville," said she, giving the monkey some coffee to drink. "Madame," said he, a little sharply, for the light tone in which she spoke jarred on him, "I have come to speak with you on a very serious matter." "I am so grieved, M. le Comte is away " 116 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "I, Madame, am delighted. It would be grievous if lie could be present at our interview. Besides, I am informed through M. Delbecq that you like to manage your own busi- ness without troubling the Count." '"Then I will send for Delbecq," said she. "He would be of no use to you, clever as he is," replied Derville. "Listen to me, Madame; one word will be enough to make you grave. Colonel Chabert is alive !" "Is it by telling me such nonsense as that that you think you can make me grave?" said she with a shout of laughter. But she was suddenly quelled by the singular penetration of the fixed gaze which Derville turned on her, seeming to read to the bottom of her soul. "Madame," he said, with cold and piercing solemnity, "you know not the extent of the danger which threatens you. I need say nothing of the indisputable authenticity of the evi- dence nor of the fullness of proof which testifies to the iden- tity of Comte Chabert. I am not, as you know, the man to take up a bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to show that the certificate of death was false, you will lose that first case, and that matter once settled, we shall gain every point." "What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?" "Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to the briefs which clever advocates may draw up when armed with the curious facts of this case, or the advantage they may derive from the letters you received from your first husband before your marriage to your second." "It is false," she cried, with the violence of a spoiled woman. "I never had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if someone is pretending to be the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like Coignard perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the Colonel rise from the dead, Monsieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp to inquire for me on his death and to this day I draw the pension of COLONEL CHABERT 117 three thousand francs granted to his widow by the Govern- ment. I have been perfectly in the right to turn away all the Chaberts who have ever come,,as I shall all who may come." "Happily we are alone, Madame. We can tell lies at our ease/' said he coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the Countess' rage so as to lead her to betray herself, by tactics familiar to lawyers, who are accustomed to keep cool when their opponents or their clients are in a passion. "Well, then, we must fight it out," thought he, instantly hitting on a plan to entrap her and show her her weakness. "The proof that you received the first letter, Madame, is that it contained some securities " "Oh, as to securities — that it certainly did not." . "Then you received the letter," said Derville, smiling. "You are caught, Madame, in the first snare laid for you by an attorney, and you fancy you could fight against Justice " The Countess colored, and then turned pale, hiding her face in her hands. Then she shook off her shame, and retorted with the natural impertinence of such women, "Since you are the so-called Chabert's attorney, be so good as to " "Madame," said Derville, "I am at this moment as much your lawyer as I am Colonel Chabert's. Do you suppose I want to lose so valuable a client as you are? But you are not listening." "Nay, speak on Monsieur," said she graciously. "Your fortune came to you from M. le Comte Chabert, and you cast him off. Your fortune is immense, and you leave him to beg. An advocate can be very eloquent when a cause is eloquent in itself; there are here circumstances which might turn public opinion strongly against you." "But, Monsieur," said the Comtesse, provoked by the way in which Derville turned and laid her on the gridiron, 118 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "even if I grant that your M. Chabert is living, the law will uphold my second marriage on account of the children, and I shall get off with the restitution of two hundred and twenty- five thousand francs to M. Chabert." "It is impossible to foresee what view the Bench may take of the question. If on one side we have a mother and children, on the other we have an, old man crushed by sorrows, made old by your refusals to know him. Where is he to find a wife? Can the judges contravene the law? Your marriage with Colonel Chabert has priority on its side and every legal right. But if you appear under disgraceful colors, you might have an unlooked-for adversar3 T . That, Madame, is the danger against which I would warn you." "And who he is?" "Comte Ferraud." "Monsieur Ferraud has too great an affection for me, too much respect for the mother of his children " "Do not talk of such absurd things," interrupted Derville, "to lawyers, who are accustomed to read hearts to the bottom. At this instant Monsieur Ferraud has not the slightest wish to annul your union, and I am quite sure that he adores you ; but if some one were to tell him that his marriage is void, that his wife will be called before the bar of public opinion as a criminal " "He would defend me, Monsieur." "No, Madame." "What reason could he have for deserting me, Monsieur?" "That he would be free to marry the only daughter of a peer of France, whose title would be conferred on him by patent from the King." The Countess turned pale. "A hit!" said Derville to himself. "I have you on the hip; the poor Colonel's case is won." "Besides, Madame." he went on aloud, "he would feel all the less remorse because COLONEL CHABERT li^- a man covered with glory — a General, Count, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor — is not such a bad alternative; and if that man insisted on his wife's returning to him " "Enough, enough, Monsieur!" she exclaimed. "I will never have any lawyer but you. What is to be done?" "Compromise!" said Derville. "Does he still love me?" she said. "Well, I do not think he can do otherwise." The Countess raised her head at these words. A flash of hope shone in her eyes ; she thought perhaps that she could speculate on her first husband's affection to gain her cause by some feminine cunning. "I shall await your orders, Madame, to know whether I am to report our proceedings to you, or if you will come to my office to agree to the terms of a compromise," said Der- ville, taking leave. A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine morning in June, the husband and wife, who had been sepa- rated by an almost supernatural chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet in the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies liberally advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly style. He held himself up ; his face, grave and mysterious-looking, reflected his happiness and all his hopes, and seemed to have acquired youth and impasto,'-* to borrow a picturesque word from the painter's art. He was no more like the Chabert of the old box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a newly coined forty-franc piece. 24. His face had color, as though it were painted. 120 FRENCH SHORT STORIES The passer-by, only to see him, would have recognized at once one of the noble wrecks of our old army, one of the heroic men on whom our national glory is reflected, as a splinter of ice on which the sun shines seems to reflect every beam. These veterans are at once a picture and a book. When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into Derville's office, he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly had his cab moved off when a smart brougham drove up, splendid with coats of arms. Madame la Comtesse Ferraud stepped out in a dress which, though simple, was cleverly designed to show how youthful her figure was. She wore a pretty drawn bonnet lined with pink, which framed her face to perfection, softening its outlines and making it look younger. If the clients were rejuvenescent, the office was unaltered, and presented the same picture as that described at the beginning of this story. Simonnin was eating his breakfast, his shoulder leaning against the window, which was then open, and he was staring up at the blue sky in the opening of the courtyard enclosed by four gloomy houses. "Ah, ha!" cried the little clerk, "who will bet an evening at the play that Colonel Chabert is a General, and wears a red ribbon?" "The chief is a great magician," said Godeschal. "Then there is no trick to play on him this time?" asked Desroches. "His wife has taken that in hand, the Comtesse Ferraud.'' said Boucard. "What next?" said Godeschal. "Is Comtesse Ferraud required to belong to two men?" "Here she is," answered Simonnin. At this moment the Colonel came in and asked for Derville. "He is at home, sir," said Simonnin. COLONEL CHABERT 121 "So you are not deaf, you young rogue \" said Chabert, taking the gutter- j umper by the ear and twisting it, to the delight of the other clerks, who began to laugh, looking at the Colonel with the curious attention due to so singular a personage. Comte Chabert was in Derville's private room at the moment when his wife came in by the door of the office. "I say, Boucard, there is going to be a queer scene in the chief's room ! There is a woman who can spend her days alternately, the odd with Comte Ferraud, and the even with Comte Chabert." "And in leap year," said Godeschal, "they must settle the count between them." "Silence, gentlemen, you can be heard!" said Boucard severely. "I never was in an office where there was so much jesting as there is here over the clients." Derville had made the Colonel retire to the bedroom when the Countess was admitted. "Madame," he said, "not knowing whether it would be agreeable to you to meet M. le Comte Chabert, I have placed you apart. If, however, you should wish it " "It is an attention for which I am obliged to you." "I have drawn up the memorandum of an agreement of which you and M. Chabert can discuss the conditions, here and now. I will go alternately to him and to you, and ♦explain your views respectively." "Let me see, Monsieur," said the Countess impatiently. Derville read aloud — "'Between the undersigned: " 'M. Hyacinthe Chabert, Count, Marechal de Camp, and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, living in Paris, Rue du Petit Banquier, on the one part; " 'And Madame Rose Chapotel, wife of the aforesaid M. le Comte Chabert, nee 122 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Pass over the preliminaries/' said she. "Come to the conditions." "Madame/' said the lawyer, "the preamble briefly sets forth the position in which you stand to each other. Then, by the first clause, you acknowledge, in the presence of three witnesses, of whom two shall be notaries, and one the dairyman with whom your husband has been lodging, to all of whom your secret is known, and who will be absolutely silent — you acknowledge, I say, that the individual desig- nated in the documents subjoined to the deed, and whose identity is to be further proved by an act of recognition prepared by your notary, Alexandre Crottat, is your first husband, Comte Chabert. By the second clause Comte Chabert, to secure your happiness, will undertake to assert his rights only under certain circumstances set forth in the deed. And these," 'said Derville, in a parenthesis, "are none other than a failure to carry out the conditions of this secret agreement. — M. Chabert, on his part, agrees to accept judgment on a friendly suit, by which his certificate of death shall be annulled, and his marriage dissolved." "That will not suit me in the least," said the Countess with surprise. "I will be a party to no suit; you know why." "By the third clause," Derville went on, with imperturba- ble coolness, you pledge yourself to secure to Hyacinthe Comte Chabert an income of twenty-four thousand francs on government stock held in his name, to revert to you at his death " "But it is much too dear !" exclaimed the Countess. "Can you compromise the matter cheaper?" "Possibly." "But what do you want, Madame?" "I want — I will not have a lawsuit. I want " "You want him to remain dead?" said Derville. inter- rupting her hastily. COLONEL CHABERT 123 "Monsieur/' said the Countess, "if twenty-four thousand francs a year are necessary, we will go to law " "Yes, we will go to law/' said the Colonel in a deep voice, as he opened the door and stood before his wife, with one hand in his waistcoat and the other hanging by his side — an attitude to which the recollection of his adventure gave horrible significance. "It is he," said the Countess to herself. "Too dear!" the old soldier exclaimed. "I have given 30U near on a million, and you are cheapening my misfor- tunes. Very well; now I will have you — you and your fortune. Our goods are in common, our marriage is not dissolved " "But Monsieur is not Colonel Chabert!" cried the Countess, in feigned amazement. "Indeed !" said the old man, in a tone of intense irony. "Do you want proofs? I found you in the Palais Royal 25 — " The Countess turned pale. Seeing her grow white under her rouge, the old soldier paused, touched by the acute suffering he was inflicting on the woman he had once so ardently loved ; but she shot such a venomous glance at him that he abruptly went on: "You were with La " "Allow me, Monsieur Derville," said the Countess to the lawyer. "You must give me leave to retire. I did not come here to listen to such dreadful things." She rose and went out. Derville rushed after her; but the Countess had taken wings and seemed to have flown from the place. On returning to his private room he found the Colonel in a towering rage, striding up and down. 25. A palace built by Richelieu and afterwards left to Louis XIV. Since then various parts of it have been put to different uses, but it has always been noted for its galleries and arcades, and shops of all kinds, especially jewelry shops. The implication of the Colonel is that his wife had been a shop girl. 124 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "In those times a man took his wife where he chose/' said he. "But I was foolish and chose badly; I trusted to appearances. She has no heart." "Well, Colonel, was I not right to beg you not to come? I am now positive of your identity; when you came in, the Countess gave a little start, of which the meaning Mas unequivocal. But you have lost your chances. Your wife knows that you are unrecognizable." "I will kill her!" "Madness ! You will be caught and executed like any common wretch. Besides, you might miss ! That would be unpardonable. A man must not miss his shot when he wants to kill his wife. Let me set things straight; you are only a big child. Go now. Take care of yourself ; she is capable of setting some trap for you and shutting you up in Charen- ton. I will notify her of our uroceedings to protect you against a surprise." The unhappy Colonel obeyed his young benefactor, and went away, stammering apologies. He slowly went down the dark staircase, lost in gloomy thoughts, and crushed perhaps by the blow just dealt him — the most cruel he could feel, the thrust that could most deeply pierce his heart — when he heard the rustle of a woman's dress on the lowest landing, and his wife stood before him. "Come, Monsieur," said she, taking his arm with a gesture like those familiar to him of old. Her action and the accent of her voice, which had recovered its graciousness, were enough to allay the Colonel's wrath, and he allowed himself to be led to the carriage. "Well, get in" said she, when the footman had let cjown the step. And as if by magic he found himself sitting by his wife in the brougham. "Where to?" asked the servant. COLONEL CHABERT 125 "To Groslay," said she. The horses started at once, and carried them all across Paris. "Monsieur/' said the Countess, in a tone of voice which betrayed one of those emotions which are rare in our lives, and which agitate every part of our being. At such moments the heart, fibers, nerves, countenance, soul, and bod} r , every- thing, every pore even, feels a thrill. Life no longer seems to be within us ; it flows out, springs forth, is communicated as by contagion, transmitted by a look, a tone of voice, a gesture, impressing our will on others. The old soldier started on hearing this single word, this first, terrible "Mon- sieur !" But still it was at once a reproach and a pardon, a hope and a despair, a question and an answer. This word included them all; none but an actress could have thrown so much eloquence, so many feelings into a single word. Truth is less complete in its utterance ; it does not put every- thing on the outside ; it allows us to see what is within. The Colonel was filled with remorse for his suspicions, his demands, and his anger; he looked down not to betray his agitation. "Monsieur," repeated she, after an imperceptible pause, "I knew you at once." "Rosine," said the old soldier, "those words contain the only balm that can help me to forget my misfortunes." Two large tears rolled hot on to his wife's hands, which he pressed to show his paternal affection. "Monsieur," she went on, "could you not have guessed what it cost me to appear before a stranger in a position so false as mine now is? If I have to blush for it, at least let it be in the privacy of my family. Ought not such a secret to remain buried in our hearts ? You will forgive me, I hope, for my apparent indifference to the woes of a Chabert in whose existence I could not possibly believe. I received your 126 FRENCH SHORT STORIES letters/' she hastily added, seeing in his face the objection it expressed, "but they did not reach me till thirteen months after the battle of Eylau. They were opened, dirty, the writing was unrecognizable; and after obtaining Napoleon's signature to my second marriage contract, 1 could not help believing that some clever swindler wanted to make a fool of me. Therefore, to avoid disturbing Monsieur Ferraud's peace of mind, and disturbing family ties, I was obliged to take precautions against a pretended Chabert. Was I not right, I ask you?" "Yes, you were right. It was I who was the idiot, the owl, the dolt, not to have calculated better what the conse- quences of such a position might be. But where are we going?" he asked, seeing that they had reached the barrier of La Chapelle. "To my country house near Groslay, in the valley of Montmorency. There, Monsieur, we will consider the steps to be taken. I know my duties. Though I am yours by right, I am no longer yours in fact. Can you wish that we should become the talk of Paris? We need not inform the public of a situation, which for me has its ridiculous side, and let us preserve our dignity. You still love me," she said, with a sad, sweet gaze at the Colonel, "but have not I been authorized to form other ties? In so strange a position, a secret voice bids me trust to your kindness, which is so well known to me. Can I be wrong in taking you as the sole arbiter of my fate? Be at once judge and party to the suit. I trust in your noble character; you will be generous enough to forgive me for the consequences of faults com- mitted in innocence. I may then confess to you: I love M. Ferraud. I believed that I had a right to love him. I do not blush to make this confession to you; even if it offends you, it does not disgrace us. I cannot conceal the facts. When fate made me a widow, I was not a mother." COLONEL CHABERT 127 The Colonel with a wave of his hand bade his wife be silent, and for a mile and a half they sat without speaking a .single word. Chabert could fancy he saw the two little ones before him. "Rosine." "Monsieur ?" "The dead are very wrong to come to life again." "Oh, Monsieur, no, no ! Do not think me ungrateful. Only, you find me a lover, a mother, while you left me merely a wife. Though it is no longer in my power to love, I know how much I owe you, and I can still offer you all the affection of a daughter." "Rosine," said the old man in a softened tone, "I no longer feel any resentment against you. We will forget everything," he added, with one of those smiles which always reflect a noble soul. "I have not so little delicacy as to demand the mockery of love from a wife who no longer loves me/' The Countess gave him a flashing look full of such deep gratitude that poor Chabert would have been glad to sink again into his grave at Eylau. Some men have a soul strong enough for such self-devotion, of which the whole reward consists in the assurance that they have made the person they love happy. "My dear friend, we will talk all this over later when our hearts have rested," said the Countess. The conversation turned to other subjects, for it was impossible to dwell very long on this one. Though the couple came back again and again to their singular position, either by some allusion or of serious purpose, they had a delightful drive, recalling the events of their former life together and the times of the Empire. The Countess knew how to lend peculiar charm to her reminiscences, and gave the conversation the tinge of melancholy that was needed to 128 FRENCH SHORT STORIES his keep it serious. She revived his love without awakening his desires, and allowed her first husband to discern the mental wealth she had acquired while trying to accustom him to moderate his pleasure to that which a father may feel in the society of a favorite daughter. The Colonel had known the Countess of the Empire ; he found her a Countess of the Restoration. At last, by a cross-road, they arrived at the entrance to a large park lying in the little valley which divides the heights of Margency from the pretty village of Groslay. The Countess had there a delightful house, where the Colonel on arriving found everything in readiness for his stay there, as well as for his wife's. Misfortune is a kind of talisman whose virtue consists in its power to confirm our original nature; in some men it increases their distrust and ma- lignancy, just as it improves the goodness of those who have a kind heart. Sorrow had made the Colonel even more helpful and good than he had always been, and he could understand some secrets of womanly distress which are unrevealed to most men. Nevertheless, in spite of his loyal trustfulness, he could not help saying to his wife — "Then you felt quite sure you would- bring me here?" "Yes," replied she, "if I found Colonel Chabert in Der- ville's client." The appearance of truth she contrived to give to this answer dissipated the slight suspicions which the Colonel was ashamed to have felt. For three days the Countess was quite charming to her first husband. By tender attentions and unfailing sweetness she seemed anxious to wipe out the memory of the sufferings he had endured, and to earn for- giveness for the woes which, as she confessed, she had inno- cently caused him. She delighted in displaying for him the charms she knew he took pleasure in, while at the same time COLONEL CHABERT 129 she assumed a kind of melancholy; for men are more espe- cially accessible to certain ways, certain graces of the heart or of the mind which they cannot resist. She aimed at interesting him in her position, and appealing to his feelings so far as to take possession of his mind and control him despotically. Ready for anything to attain her ends, she did not yet know what she was to do with this man ; but at any rate she meant to annihilate him socially. On the evening of the third day she felt that in spite of her efforts she could not conceal her uneasiness as to the results of her maneuvers. To give herself a minute's reprieve, she went up to her room, sat down before her writing-table, and laid aside the mask of composure which she wore in Chabert's presence, like an actress who, returning to her dressing-room after a fatiguing fifth act, drops half dead, leaving with the audi- ence an image of herself which she no longer resembles. She proceeded to finish a letter she had begun to Delbecq, whom she desired to go in her name and demand of Derville the deeds relating to Colonel Chabert, to copy them, and to come to her a,t once to Groslay. She had hardly finished when she heard the Colonel's step in the passage ; uneasy at her absence, he had come to look for her. "Alas !" she exclaimed, "I wish I were dead ! My position is intolerable. "Why, what is the matter?" asked the good man. "Nothing, nothing!" she replied. She rose, left the Colonel, and went down to speak pri- vately to her maid, whom she sent off to Paris, impressing on her that she was herself to deliver to Delbecq the letter just written, and to bring it back to the writer as soon as he had read it. Then the Countess went out to sit on a bench suffi- ciently in sight for the Colonel to join her as soon as he might 130 FRENCH SHORT STORIES choose. The Colonel, who was looking for her, hastened up and sat down by her. "Rosine," said he, "what is the matter with you?" She did not answer. It was one of those glorious, calm evenings in the month of June, whose secret harmonies infuse such sweetness into the sunset. The air was clear, the stillness perf ect, so that far away in the park they could hear the voices of some children, which added a kind of melody to the sublimity of the scene. "You do not answer me?" the Colonel said to his wife. "My husband " said the Countess, who broke off, started a little, and with a blush stopped to ask him, "What am I to say when I speak of M. Ferraud?" "Call him your husband, my poor child," replied the Colonel, in a kind voice. "Is he not the father of your children ?" "Well, then," she said, "if he should ask what I came here for, if he finds that I came here, alone, with a stranger, what am I to say to him? Listen, Monsieur," she went on, assuming a dignified attitude, "decide my fate, t I am resigned to anything " "My dear," said the Colonel, taking possession of his wife's hands, "I have made up my mind to sacrifice myself entirely for your happiness " "That is impossible !" she exclaimed, with a sudden spas- modic movement. "Remember that you would have to renounce your identity, and in an authenticated form." "What?" said the Colonel. "Is not my word enough for you?" The word "authenticated" fell on the old man's heart and roused involuntary distrust. He looked at his wife in a way that made her color; she cast down her eyes, and he feared that he might find himself compelled to despise her. The COLONEL CHABERT 131 Countess was afraid lest she had scared the shy modesty, the stern honesty, of a man whose generous temper and primitive virtues were known to her. Though these feelings had brought the clouds to their brow, they immediately recovered their harmony. This was the way of it. A child's cry was heard in the distance. "Jules, leave your sister in peace," the Countess called out. "What, are your children here?" said Chabert. "Yes, but I told them not to trouble you." The old soldier understood the delicacy, the womanly tact of so gracious a precaution, and took the Countess' hand to kiss it. "But let them come," said he. The little girl ran up to complain of her brother. "Mamma !" "Mamma !" "It was Jules " "It was her " Their little hands were held out to their mother, and the two childish voices mingled; it was an unexpected and charming picture. "Poor little things !" cried the Countess, no longer restrain- ing her tears, "I shall have to leave them. To whom will the law assign them ? A mother's heart cannot be divided ; I want them, I want them." "Are you making mamma cry ?" said Jules, looking fiercely at the Colonel. "Silence, Jules !" said the mother in a decided tone. The two children stood speechless, examining their mother and the stranger with a curiosity which it is impossible to express in words. "Oh, yes !" she cried. "If I am separated from the Count, only leave me my children, and I will submit to any- thing." 132 FRENCH SHORT STORIES \ This was the decisive speech which gained all that she had hoped from it. "Yes/' exclaimed the Colonel, as if he were ending a sentence already begun in his mind, "I must return under- ground again. I had told myself so already." "Can I accept such a sacrifice?" replied his wife. "If some men have died to save a mistress' honor, they gave their life but once. But in this case you would be giving your life every day. No, no. It is impossible. If it were only your life, it would be nothing; but to sign a declaration that you are not Colonel Chabert, to acknowledge yourself an impostor, to sacrifice your honor and live a lie every hour of the day ! Human devotion cannot go so far. Only think ! No. But for my poor children I would have fled with you by this time to the other end of the world." "But," said Chabert, "cannot I live here in your little lodge as one of your relations ! I am as worn out as a cracked cannon ; I want nothing but a little tobacco and the Constitutionnel." The Countess melted into tears. There was a contest of generosity between the Comtesse Ferraud and Colonel Cha- bert, and the soldier came out victorious. One evening, seeing this mother with her children, the soldier was be- witched by the touching grace of a family picture in the country, in the shade and the silence; he made a resolution to remain dead, and, frightened no longer at the authenti- cation of a deed, he asked what he was to do to secure beyond all risk the happiness of this family. "Do exactly as you like," said the Countess. "I declare to you that I will have nothing to do with this affair. I ought not." Delbecq had arrived some days before, and in obedience to the Countess' verbal instructions, the intendant had suc- ceeded in gaining the old soldier's confidence. So on the COLONEL CHABERT 133 following morning Colonel Chabert went with the ere while attorney to Saint-Leu-Taverny, where Delbecq had caused the notary to draw up an affidavit in such terms that, after hearing it read, the Colonel started up and walked out of the office. "Turf and thunder! What a fool you must think me! Why, I should make myself out a swindler!" he exclaimed. "Indeed, Monsieur/' said Delbecq, "I should advise you not to sign in haste. In your place I would get at least thirty thousand francs a year out of the bargain. Madame would pay them." After annihilating this scoundrel emeritus by the light- ning look of an honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off, carried away by a thousand contrary emotions. He was suspicious, indignant, and calm again by turns. Finally he made his way back into the park' of Groslay by a gap in a fence, and slowly walked on to sit down and rest and meditate at his ease in a little room under a gazebo, from which the road to Saint-Leu could be seen. The path being strewn with the yellowish sand which is used instead of river-gravel, the Countess, who was sitting in the upper room of this little summer-house, did not hear the Colonel's approach, for she was too much preoccupied with the success of her business to pay the smallest attention to the slight noise made by her husband. Nor did the old man notice that his wife was in the room over him. "Well, Monsieur Delbecq, has he signed?" the Countess asked her secretary, whom she saw alone on the road beyond the hedge of a haha. "No, Madame. I do not even know what has become of our man. The old horse reared." "Then we shall be obliged to put him into Charenton," said she, "since we have got him." The Colonel, who recovered the elasticity of youth to leap 134 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the haha, in the twinkling of an eye was standing in front of Delbecq, on whom he bestowed the two finest slaps that ever a scoundrel's cheeks received. "And you may add that old horses can kick!" said he. His rage spent, the Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness. The Countess' speech and Delbecq's reply had revealed the conspiracy of which he was to be the victim. The care taken of him was but a bait to entrap him in a snare. That speech was like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on in the old soldier a return of all his sufferings, physical and moral. He came back to the summer-house through the park gate, walking slowly like a broken man. Then for him there was to be neither peace nor truce ! From this moment he must begin the odious warfare with this woman of which Derville had spoken, enter on a life of litigation, feed on gall, drink every morning of the cup of bitterness. And then — fearful thought ! where was he to find the money needful to pay the cost of the first proceedings ? He felt such disgust of life, that if there had been any water at hand he .would have thrown himself into it; that if he had had a pistol, he would have blown out his brains. Then he relapsed into the indecision of mind which, since his conversation with Derville at the dairyman's had changed his character. At last, having reached the kiosque, he went up to the gazebo, where little rose-windows afforded a view over each lovely landscape of the valley, and where he found his wife seated on a chair. The Countess was gazing at the distance and preserved a calm countenance, showing that impene- trable face which women can assume when resolved to do their worst. She wiped her eyes as if she had been weeping and played absently with the pink ribbons of her sash. Nevertheless, in spite of her apparent assurance, she could COLONEL CHABERT 135 not help shuddering slightly when she saw before her her venerable benefactor, standing with folded arms, his face pale, his brow stern. "Madame," he said, after gazing at her fixedly for a moment and compelling her to blush, "Madame, I do not curse you — I scorn you. I can now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire for revenge; I no longer love you. I want nothing from you. Live in peace on the strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of all the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name I perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor devil named Hyacinthe, who asks no more than his share of the sunshine. Farewell !" The Countess threw herself at his feet; she would have detained him by taking his hands, but he pushed her away with disgust, saying — "Do not touch me !" The Countess' expression when she heard her husband's retreating steps is quite indescribable. Then, with the deep perspicacity given only by utter villainy or by fierce worldly selfishness, she knew that she might live in peace on the word and the contempt of this loyal veteran. Chabert, in fact, disappeared. The dairyman failed in business and became a hackney-cab driver. The Colonel, perhaps, took up some similar industry for a time. Perhaps, like a stone flung into a chasm, he went falling from ledge to ledge, to be lost in the mire of rags that seethes through the streets of Paris. Six months after this event, Derville, hearing no more of Colonel Chabert or the Comtesse Ferraud, supposed that they had no doubt come to a compromise, which the Countess, out of revenge, had had arranged by some other lawyer. So one morning he added up the sums he had advanced to the said Chabert with the costs, and begged the Comtesse 136 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Ferraud to claim from M. le Comte Chabert the amount of the bill, assuming that she would know where to find her first husband. The very next day Comte Ferraud's man of business, lately appointed President of the County Court in a town of some importance, wrote this distressing note to Derville: "Monsieur. — "Madame la Comtesse Ferraud desires me to inform you that your client took complete advantage of your confidence, and that the individual calling himself Comte Chabert has acknowledged that he came forward under false pretences. Yours, etc. Delbecq." "One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stupid by half," cried Derville. "They don't deserve to be Christians ! Be humane, generous, philanthropical, and a lawyer, and you are bound to be cheated ! There is a piece of business that will cost me two thousand-franc notes !" Some time after receiving this letter, Derville went to the Palais de Justice in search of a pleader to whom he wished to speak, and who was employed in the Police Court. As chance would have it, Derville went into Court Number 6 at the moment when the Presiding Magistrate was sentencing one Hyacinthe to two months' imprisonment as a vagabond, and subsequently to be taken to the Mendicity House of Detention, a sentence which, by magistrate's law, is equiv- alent to perpetual imprisonment. On hearing the name Hyacinthe, Derville looked at the delinquent, sitting between two gendarmes on the bench for the accused, and recognized in the condemned man his false Colonel Chabert. The old soldier was placid, motionless, almost absent- minded. In spite of his rags, in spite of the misery stamped on his countenance, it gave evidence of noble pride. His eye had a stoical expression which no magistrate ought to COLONEL CHABERT 137 have misunderstood; but as soon as a man has fallen into the hands of justice, he is no more than a moral entity, a matter of law or of fact, just as to statists he has become a zero. When the veteran was taken back to the lock-up, to be removed later with the batch of vagabonds at that moment at the bar, Derville availed himself of the privilege accorded to lawyers of going wherever they please in the courts, and followed him to the lock-up, where he stood scrutinizing him for some minutes, as well as the curious crew of beggars among whom he found himself. The passage to the lock-up at that moment afforded one of those spectacles which, unfortunately, neither legislators nor philanthropists, nor painters, nor writers come to study. Like all the laboratories of the law, this ante-room is a dark and malodorous place; along the walls runs a wooden seat, blackened by the constant presence there of the wretches who come to this meeting- place of every form of social squalor, where not one of them is missing. A poet might say that the day was ashamed to light up this dreadful sewer through which so much misery flows ! There is not a spot on that plank where some crime has not sat, in embryo or matured ; not a corner where a man has never stood who, driven to despair by the blight which justice has set upon him after his first fault, has not there begun a career, at the end of which looms the guillotine or the pistol-snap of the suicide. All who fall on the pavement of Paris rebound against these yellow-gray walls, on which a philanthropist who was not a speculator, might read a justifi- cation of the numerous suicides complained of by hypocritical writers who are incapable of taking a step to prevent them — for that justification is written in that ante-room, like a preface to the dramas of the Morgue, or to those enacted on the Place de la Greve. 138 FRENCH SHORT STORIES At this moment Colonel Chabert was sitting among these men — men with coarse faces, clothed in the horrible livery of misery, and silent at intervals, or talking in a low tone, for three gendarmes on duty paced to and fro, their sabers clattering on the floor. "Do you recognize me?" said Derville to the old man, standing in front of him. "Yes, sir," said Chabert, rising. "If you are an honest man," Derville went on in an under- tone, "how could you remain in my debt?" The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when accused by her mother of a clandestine love affair. "What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?" cried he in a loud voice. "Paid me?" said Derville. "She wrote to me that you were a swindler." The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of horror and imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this fresh subterfuge. "Monsieur," said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer huskiness, "get the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up, and I will sign an order which will certainly be honored." At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to take his client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few lines, and addressed them to the Comtesse Ferraud. "Send her that," said the soldier, "and you will be paid your costs and the money you advanced. Believe me, Mon- sieur, if I have not shown you the gratitude I owe you for your kind offices, it is not the less there," and he laid his hand on his heart. "Yes, it is there, deep and sincere. But what can the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all." "What !" said Derville. "Did you not stipulate for an allowance?" 7 COLONEL CHABERT 139 "Do not speak of it !" cried the old man. "You cannot conceive how deep my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was suddenly attacked by a sick- ness — disgust of humanity. When I think that Napoleon is at Saint Helena, everything on earth is a matter of indif- ference to me. I can no longer be a soldier ; that is my only real grief. After all," he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, "it is better to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I fear nobody's contempt." And the Colonel sat down on his bench again. Derville went away. On returning to his office, he sent Godeschal, at that time his second clerk, to the Comtesse Ferraud, who, on reading the note, at once paid the sum due to Comte Chabert's lawyer. In 1830, toward the end of June, Godeschal, now himself an attorney, went to His with Derville, to whom he had succeeded. When they reached the avenue leading from the high road to Bicetre, 26 they saw, under one of the elm trees by the wayside, one of those old, broken, and hoary paupers who have earned the Marshal's staff 27 among beggars by living on at Bicetre as poor women live on at la Salpetriere. 28 This man, one of the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the infirmary for the aged, was seated on a corner- stone, and seemed to have concentrated all his intelligence on an operation well known to these pensioners, which consists in drying their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs in the sun, per- haps to save washing them. This old man had an attractive countenance. He was dressed in the reddish cloth wrapper- coat which the workhouse affords to its inmates, a sort of horrible livery. 26. A town known for its home for the aged and the insane. 27. The rank of Marshal is the highest .honor that can be conferred in the French army. The staff is part of the insignia of the rank. 28. An institution for women, in Paris, similar to the one for men at Bicetre. 140 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "I say, Derville," said Godeschal to his traveling com- panion, "look at that old fellow. Isn't he like those gro- tesque carved figures we get from Germany ? And it is alive, jjerhaps it is happy." Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and with a little exclamation of surprise he said: "That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the romantics say, a drama. Did you ever meet the Comtesse Ferraud?" "Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too pious," said Godeschal. "That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte Chabert, the old Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt. And if he is in this workhouse instead of living in a mansion, it is solely because he reminded the pretty Countess that he had taken her, like a hackney cab, on the street. I can remember now the tiger's glare she shot at him at that "moment." This opening having excited Godeschal's curiosity, Der- ville related the story here told. Two days later, on Monday morning, as they returned to Paris, the two friends looked again at Bicetre, and Derville proposed that they should call on Colonel Chabert. Half way up the avenue they found the old man sitting on the trunk of a felled tree ; with his stick in one hand, he was amusing himself with drawing lines in the sand. On looking at him narrowly, they perceived that he had been breakfasting elsewhere than at Bicetre. "Good morning, Colonel Chabert," said Derville. "Not Chabert! Not Chabert! My name is Hyacinthe," replied the veteran. "I am no longer a man, I am Xo. 16%, Room 7," he added, looking at Derville with timid anxiety, the fear of an old man and a child. "Are you going to visit the man condemned to death?" he asked. COLONEL CHABERT 141 after a moment's silence. "He is not married ! He is very lucky !" "Poor fellow !" said Godeschal. "Would you like some- thing to buy snuff?" With all the simplicity of a street Arab; the Colonel eagerly held out his hand to the two strangers, who each gave him a twenty-franc piece; he thanked them with a puzzled look, saying — "Brave troopers !" He ported arms, pretended to take aim at them, and shouted with a smile: "Fire! both arms! Vive Napoleon!" And he drew a flourish in the air with his stick. "The nature of his wound has no doubt made him childish/' said Derville. "Childish ! He ?" said another old pauper, who was looking on. "Why, there are days when you had better not tread on his corns. He is an old rogue, full of philosophy and imagination. But today, what can you expect ! He has had his Monday treat. He was here, Monsieur, so long ago as 1820. At that time a Prussian officer, whose chaise was crawling up the hill of Villejuif, came by on foot. We two were together, Hyacinthe and I, by the roadside. The officer, as he walked, was talking to another, a Russian, or some animal of the same species, and when the Prussian saw the old boy, just to make fun, he said to him, 'Here is an old cavalry man who must have been at Rossbach.' 28 'I was too young to be there,' said Hyacinthe. 'But I was at Jena. 29 And the Prussian made off pretty quick, without asking any more questions." "What a destiny !" exclaimed Derville. "Taken out of the Foundling Hospital to die in the Infirmary for the Aged, 29. At Rossbach, a village in Saxony, the Germans defeated the French, Nov. 5, 1757. At Jena, also in Saxony, the French, under Napoleon, defeated the Germans, Oct. 14, 1806. 142 FRENCH SHORT STORIES after helping Napoleon between whiles to conquer Egypt and Europe. Do you know, my dear fellow," Derville went on after a pause, "there are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world — the priest, the doctor, and the man of law ? And they wear black robes-, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search of the priest, he is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by beliefs which make him interesting, which elevate him and comfort the soul of the intercessor whose task will bring him a sort of gladness ; he purifies, repairs, and recon- ciles. But we lawyers, we see the same evil feelings repeated again and again, nothing can correct them ; our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed. "How many things have I learned in the exercise of my profession ! I have seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two daughters, to whom he had given forty thousand francs a year ! I have known wills burnt ; I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives killing their husbands, and working on the love they could inspire to make the men idiotic or mad, that they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teaching the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth. — You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I am going to live in the country with my wife. I have a horror of Paris." "I have seen plenty of them already in Desroches' office," replied Godeschal. MERIMEE (1803-1870) Prosper Merimee was born in Paris in 1803. Both his father and mother were artists, but the son was educated to be a lawyer. He passed the bar examination but never practiced, preferring to spend his time in the study of lan- guages, especially English. Merimee was very fond of the intellectual society of Paris and liked to be considered a man of the world, a distinction which he deserved because of his varied interests both at home and in foreign parts. He did not allow himself to become too much attached to any one profession, but rather played the part of the ama- teur in many. Among his particular interests were : writing plays ; making historical investigations ; archaeology ; writing novels and short stories; collecting coins; and traveling. Under the Second Empire he was a Senator, and later he was appointed Inspector-General of Historical Monuments, in which capacity he labored much in the restoration of old architecture and the preservation of the Roman remains in France. Merimee's short stories are always dramatic, realistic in treatment, but romantic in subject. Like Balzac, he looked for the exceptional incident and the exceptional character. He chose stories in which something happened, something definite and striking, and nearly always that something was death. His style is simple, direct, jjrecise, and entirely without decoration. He emphasized the importance of small but significant facts and was unusually successful in imparting local color effects without obtruding them upon the story proper. In his attitude towards life and the world he always maintained a severely cynical pessimism. Neither in his 143 144 FRENCH SHORT STORIES stories nor in his life did he allow any display of emotion. He was skeptical about the idea of good in the world and wrote "that there is nothing more common than doing evil for the pleasure of doing it." However, underneath all this outward cynicism he was really a man of warm sympa- thies and charitable inclinations, though, like Maupassant, he never allowed his personality to be revealed in his work. Merimee was the first great French writer who took an intelligent and special interest in Russian novelists. He greatly admired the stories of Pushkin and was the friend of Turgenev, who lived all the latter part of his life in Paris. Mateo Falcone (1829), the selection in this volume, is an excellent illustration of Merimee's choice of subject, mate- rial, treatment, and above all, the tragic irony which he consciously cultivated for the purpose of his art. Other stories of the same type are Colomba, Taking of the Re- doubt, Tamango, and Carmen, all of which deserve the attention of the reader of French fiction. Merimee was elected to the French Academy in 1844. He died at Cannes, September 23, 1870. MATEO FALCONE By PROSPER MERIMEE Going out of Porto-Vecchio and turning northwest, towards the interior of the island, you see the land rise pretty sharply, and, after a three hours' walk along wind- ing paths, obstructed by great lumps of rock, and sometimes cut bjr ravines, you reach the edge of a most extensive mdquis. 1 The maquis is the home of the Corsican shepherds and of whoever is in trouble with the police. You must know that the Corsican peasant, to save himself the trouble of manuring, sets fire to a stretch of wood; if the flames spread further than is necessary, so much the worse: but whatever 1. The name given to the bush country of Corsica. MATEO FALCONE 145 happens-, he is sure of a good harvest from sowing on this ground, fertilized by the ashes of the trees it bore. When the corn has been gathered (they leave the straw, which would be a trouble to collect), the tree roots, which have stayed in the ground without wasting away, put forth very heavy shoots in the following spring, which in a few years reach a height of seven or eight feet. It is this species of close thicket that they call the maquis. It is made up of different kinds of trees and shrubs mixed and entangled as God wills. Only with a hatchet in his hand can a man open himself a way through, and there are maquis so thick and bushy that the wild rams themselves are unable to penetrate them. If you have killed a man, go into the maquis of Porto- Vecchio, and you will live there in safet}^, with a good gun, powder, and shot; you must not forget a brown cloak with a hood on it, that will serve as covering and mattress. The shepherds give you milk, cheese, and chestnuts, and you "will have nothing to fear from the law, or the dead man's rela- tions, except when you have to go down into the town to renew your stock of ammunition. Mateo Falcone, when I was in Corsica in 18 — , had his house half a league's distance from the maquis. He was a fairly rich man in the countryside; living as a gentleman, that is to say, without doing anything, on the produce of his flocks, that shepherds, a kind of nomads, pastured here and there over the mountains. When I saw him, two years after the incident I am about to relate to you, he seemed to me fifty years old at most. Imagine a man small but sturdy, with crisp hair, black as jet, large quick eyes, and a complexion the color of boot-leather. His skill with the gun passed for extraordinary, even in his country where there are so many good shots. For example, Mateo would never fire at a wild ram with buckshot; at a hundred and 146 FRENCH SHORT STORIES twenty paces, he would bring it down with a bullet in the head or the shoi lder, as he chose. He used his weapon as easily at night as in the daytime, and I heard this proof of his skill, that will perhaps seem incredible to those who have not traveled in Corsica. At eighty paces, a lighted candle was placed behind a piece of transparent paper as big as a plate. He aimed. The candle was blown out, and, after a minute in the most absolute darkness, he fired and pierced the paper three times out of four. With such transcendent merit, Mateo Falcone had won a great reputation. Men said he was as good a friend as he was a dangerous enemy: obliging, too, and charitable, he lived at peace with everybody in the neighborhood of Porto- Vecchio. But it was said of him that, at Corte, whence he had taken his wife, he had disembarrassed himself in the most vigorous manner of a rival accounted as redoubtable in war as in love; at least, to Mateo was attributed a certain shot that had surprised his rival shaving before a little mirror hung in his window. The aifair was hushed up, and Mateo married. His wife Giuseppa had given him first three girls (at which he was enraged) and finally a boy, whom he called Fortunato, the hope of his family, heir to the name. The daughters were well married: their father could count at need on the poniards and carbines of his sons-in-law. The son was only ten years old, but already promised well. One autumn day, Mateo went out early with his wife to visit one of his flocks in a clearing in the maquis. Little Fortunato wanted to accompany him, but the clearing was too far away; besides, it was very necessary that some one should stay to guard the house; the father refused: we shall sec if he had not good reason to regret it. He had been away some hours, and little Fortunato was tranquilly stretched in the sun. looking at the blue moun- MATEO FALCONE 147 tains, and thinking that next Sunday he would be going to dinner in the town, at the house of his uncle the Corporal, 2 when he was suddenly interrupted in his meditations by the sound of a gun. He stood up and turned to the side of the plain whence the sound came. Other gunshots followed, fired at irregular intervals, and always nearer and nearer; at last, a man appeared in the path leading from the plain to Mateo's house, a pointed cap on his head, like those worn by the mountaineers, bearded, in tatters, dragging himself with difficulty, leaning on his gun. He had just received a bullet in the thigh. The man was a bandit/ who, having set off by night to get powder in the town, had fallen on the way into an ambuscade of Corsican light infantry. After a vigorous defense, he had succeeded in making good his retreat, hotly pursued, and firing from rock to rock. But he had not much start of the soldiers, and his wound made it impossible for him to reach the maquis before being caught up. He came up to Fortunato, and said: "You are Mateo Falcone's son?" "Yes." "I am Gianetto Sanpiero. The yellow collars 4 are after me. Hide me, for I can go no further." "And what will my father say, if I hide you without his leave?" "He will say you have done right." "Who knows?" "Hide me quickly; they are coming." "Wait till my father comes back." "Wait! Confound it! They will be here in five minutes. Come, hide me, or I'll kill you." Fortunato answered him with the utmost calm : 2. A title in Corsica to a man of propei'ty and influence. 3. A refugee from justice. 4. The light infantry uniform had a yellow collar. 148 FRENCH SHORT STORIES ."Your gun is not loaded, and there are no cartridges in your caribera." 5 "I have my dagger." "But will you run as quick as I?" He made a bound and put himself out of reach. "You are not the son of Mateo Falcone. Will you let me be arrested in front of your house?" The child seemed touched. "What will you give me if I hide you?" he said, coming nearer. The bandit rummaged in a leather pouch that hung at his belt, and took out a five-franc piece that he had no doubt kept to buy powder. Fortunato smiled at the sight of the piece of silver; he seized it and said to Gianetto: "Fear nothing." Instantly he made a great hole in a hayrick placed near the house. Gianetto squatted down in it, and the child covered him up so as to leave him a little air to breathe, and yet so that it was impossible to suspect that a man was concealed in the hay. He bethought himself too of an ingenious piece of savage cunning. He fetched a cat and her little ones, and established them on the hayrick, to make believe that it had not been stirred for some time. Then, noticing traces of blood on the. path close to the house, he covered them carefully with dust, and, that done, lay down again in the sun with the utmost tranquillity. Some minutes later, six men in brown uniform with yellow collars, commanded by an adjutant, were before Mateo's door. The adjutant was distantly connected with Falcone. (It is well known that in Corsica degrees of relationship are counted farther than elsewhere.) His name was Tiodoro Gamba: he was a man of energy, much feared by the bandits, many of whom he had already run down. 5. A cartridge bolt. MATEO FALCONE 149 "Good-day,, little cousin/' said he, accosting Fortunato. "How you have grown! Did you see a man pass by just now?" "Oh, I am not yet as big as you, cousin," the child answered with a simple air. "That will come. But tell me, haven't you seen a man go by?" "Have I seen a man go by?" "Yes; a man with a pointed cap, and a waistcoat worked in red and yellow?" "A man with a pointed cap, and a waistcoat worked in red and yellow?" "Yes; answer quickly, and do not repeat my questions." "This morning, Monsieur the Cure went past our door on his horse Piero. He asked me how papa was, and I told him . . ." "Ah, you young scamp, you are playing the fool! Tell me at once which way Gianetto went; he is the man we are after, and I am sure he took this path." "Who knows ?" "Who knows? I know you have seen him." "Does one then see passersby when one is asleep?" "Rogue, you were not asleep; the gunshots woke you up." "So you think, cousin, that your carbines make so much noise ? My father's rifle makes much more." "May the devil take you, cursed scamp that you are! I am very sure you have seen Gianetto. Perhaps you have even hidden him. Come, mates, into the house with you, and see if our man is not there. He was only going on one foot, and he has too much sense, the rascal, to try and reach the mdquis limping. Besides, the traces of blood stop here." "And what will papa say?" asked Fortunato, chuckling; |50 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "what will he say when he hears that his house was entered while he was out?" "Rogue!" said Adjutant Gamba, taking him by the ear, "do you know that, if I like, I can make you change your tune? Perhaps, if I give you a score of blows with the flat of the sword, you will speak at last." And Fortunato went on chuckling. "My father is Mateo Falcone," he said with emphasis. "Do you know, little scamp, that I can take you off to Corte or to Bastia? I will put you to sleep in a cell, on straw, with irons on your feet, and I will have your head cut off unless you say where is Gianetto Sanpiero." The child broke into a laugh at this ridiculous threat. He said again: "My father is Mateo Falcone." "Adjutant," said one of the voltigeurs 5 under his breath, "do not let us get into trouble with Mateo." It was clear that Gamba was embarrassed. He spoke in a low voice to his men, who had already gone through the house. It was not a long business, for a Corsican's cottage is made up of a single square room. The furniture consists of a table, benches, chests, household utensils, and the weapons of the chase. Meanwhile, little Fortunato stroked his cat, and seemed to find a malicious enjoyment in the discomfiture of the voltigeurs and his cousin. A soldier came up to the hayrick. He saw the cat, and carelessly stuck a bayonet in the hay, shrugging his shoul- ders, as if he felt he were taking a ridiculous precaution. Nothing stirred; and the child's face did not betray the slightest emotion. The adjutant and his men cursed their luck; they were already looking seriously towards the plain, as if ready to go back whence they had come, when their leader, convinced 6. The light infantry employed as country police. MATEO FALCONE 151 that threats would make no impression on Falcone's son, wished to make a final attempt, and try the effect of caresses and gifts. "Little cousin/' said he, "you seem to be a wide-awake young rogue ! You will go far. But you are playing a risky game with me; and, if it were not for fear of troubling my cousin Mateo, devil take it, if I would not carry you off with me." "Bah!" "But, when my cousin returns, I shall tell him the whole story, and he will give you the whip till the blood comes, for telling lies." "How do you know?" "You will see. . . . But look here. . . . Be a good boy, and I will give you something." "As for me, cousin, I will give you a piece of advice ; and that is, that if you dawdle any longer, Gianetto will be in the mdquis, and it will take a smarter fellow than you to go and look for him there." The adjutant pulled a silver watch out of his pocket, worth a good ten crowns ; T and, noticing that little For- tunato's eyes glittered as they looked at it, dangled the watch at the end of its steel chain, and said: "Scamp ! you would be glad enough to have a watch like this hanging from your neck ; you would walk in the streets of Porto-Vecchio, proud as a peacock; and people would ask you, 'What time is it ?' and you would say to them, 'Look at my watch.' " "When I am big, my uncle the Corporal will give me a watch." "Yes; but your uncle's son has one already • • • not as fine as this it is true . . . and yet he is younger than you." The child sighed. 7. The crown was worth $1.12 ; it is no longer current in France. 152 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Well, would you like the watch, little cousin?" Fortunato, ogling the watch out of the corners of his eyes, was like a cat to whom one offers a whole chicken. The cat dares not put a claw on it, feeling that one is laughing at him, and turns away his eyes from time to time, so as not to succumb to the temptation ; but he licks his lips continually, and seems to say to his master, "What a cruel joke this is!" And yet» Adjutant Gamba seemed to be making a real offer of the watch. Fortunato did not put out his hand, but said, with a bitter smile: "Why are you laughing at me?" "By God ! I am not laughing. Only tell me where is Gianetto, and the watch is yours." Fortunato allowed an incredulous smile to escape him; and, fixing his black eyes on those of the adjutant, tried to read in them the good faith he sought for in the words. "May I lose my epaulettes," cried the adjutant, "if I do not give you the watch on that condition ! My fellows are witnesses, and I cannot unsay it." As he spoke, he brought the watch nearer and nearer till it almost touched the pale cheek of the child, whose face showed clearly how covetousness and the respect due to hos- pitality were contending in his soul. His bare breast heaved convulsively, and he seemed almost choking. Meanwhile the watch swung, and twisted, and sometimes touched the tip of his nose. At last, little by little, his right hand rose towards the watch; he touched it with the tip of his fingers ; its whole weight was in his hand, without the adjutant, however, let- ting go the end of the chain . . . the face was blue . . . the case newly burnished ... it seemed all on fire in the sun. . . . The temptation was too strong. Fortunato lifted his left hand also, and indicated with his thumb, over his shoulder, the hayrick on which he leant. The adjutant instantly understood. He dropped the end of the MATEO FALCONE 153 chain. Fortunato felt himself sole possessor of the watch. He leapt with the agility of a deer, and put ten paces between himself and the hayrick, that the voltigeurs imme- diately set to work to bring down. It was not long before they saw the hay stir; a bleeding man came out of it, with a dagger in his hand ; but, when he tried to get on his feet, his congealed wound prevented him from standing upright. He fell. The adjutant flung him- self upon him, and wrested away his poniard. Immediately he was strongly bound, in spite of his resistance. Gianetto, laid on the ground, and tied up like a bundle of sticks, turned his head towards Fortunato, who had come up again. "Son of . . . !" he said, with more scorn, than anger. The child threw him the piece of silver he had had from him, feeling that he no longer deserved it ; but the proscribed man did not seem to notice the action. He said very tran- quilly to the adj utant : "My dear Gamba, I cannot walk; you will have to carry me to the town." "You were running just now, quicker than a young goat," retorted the cruel victor; "but be easy: I am so glad to have got you, I would carry you a league on my back without feel- ing the weight. Anyhow, comrade, we will make you a litter with branches and your cloak, and we shall find horses at the farm of Crespoli." "Good," said the prisoner; "you will put a little straw on the litter, won't you, to make me more comfortable?" While the voltigeurs were busy, some in making a sort of stretcher with branches of a chestnut-tree, others in dressing Gianetto's wound, Mateo Falcone and his wife appeared suddenly at the bend of a path that led to the mdquis. The woman was in front, bending heavily under the weight of a huge sack of chestnuts, while her husband strutted along, 154 FRENCH SHORT STORIES carrying nothing but a gun in his hand; and another slung on his back. It is beneath the dignity of a man to carry any other burden than his weapons. Mateo's first thought on seeing the soldiers was that they had come to arrest him. But why this idea? Had Mateo then some quarrel with the law? Not at all. He enjoyed a good reputation. He was "well spoken of/' as the saying is ; but he was a Corsican and a mountaineer, and there are few Corsican mountaineers who, if they look well into their memories, do not find there some peccadillo, a gunshot or a dagger-blow, or other bagatelle. Mateo had a clearer con- science than most; for it was ten years since he had aimed his gun at a man ; but he was prudent nevertheless, and got ready to make a good defense, if need be. "Wife," said he, to Giuseppa, "put down your sack, and be ready." She instantly obeyed. He gave her the gun from his bandolier s which might have inconvenienced him. He cocked the one he had in his hand, and advanced slowly towards his house, keeping along the trees by the side of the path, and ready, at the slightest sign of hostility, to throw himself behind the biggest trunk, whence he would be able to fire from cover. His wife walked at his heels, holding his spare gun, and his cartridge-box. It is the business of a good wife, in case of battle, to load her husband's weapons. The adjutant, on the other side, was considerably troubled at seeing Mateo advance in this manner, with measured steps, his gun ready, and his finger at the trigger. "If by chance," he thought, "Mateo should be a relation of Gianetto, or a friend, and should wish to defend him, the bullets of his two guns will reach two of us, as sure as a letter by post, and if he should aim at me in spite of our relationship . . . !" 8. A shoulder belt with cartridge loops. MATEO FALCONE 155 In the difficulty he made a very courageous resolve, and that was to go forward to meet Mateo by himself , and tell him about the matter, accosting him as an old acquaint- ance; but the short distance that separated him from Mateo seemed terribly long. "Hola there, old comrade/' he cried, "how are you, old man? It is I, Gamba, your cousin." Mateo, without answering a word, had stopped, and, as the other spoke, slowly raised the barrel of his gun, so that at the moment when the adjutant came up to him it was pointed to the sky. "Good-day, brother," said the adjutant, holding out his hand. "It is a very long time since I last saw you." "Good-day, brother." "I had come to give good-day to you in passing, and to my cousin Pepa. We have made a long march today; but we must not complain of being tired, for we have made a famous capture. We have just got hold of Gianetto San- piero." "God be praised," cried Giuseppa; "he robbed us of a milch-goat last week." These words rejoiced Gamba. "Poor devil," said Mateo, "he was hungry." "The rogue defended himself like a lion," pursued the adjutant, a little taken aback; "he killed one of my volti- geurs, and, not content with that, broke Corporal Chardon's arm; but that is no great harm, he was only a Frenchman. . . . Then he had hidden himself so well that the devil could not have discovered him. Without my little cousin Fortunato, I should never have been able to find him." "Fortunato!" cried Mateo. "Fortunato!" repeated Giuseppa. "Yes, Gianetto had hidden himself under that hayrick over there ; but my little cousin showed me the trick. I shall 156 FRENCH SHORT STORIES tell his uncle the Corporal, and he will send him a fine present for his pains. And his name and yours shall be in the report that I send to the Public Prosecutor." "Curse/" said Mateo, very low. They had come up to the soldiers. Gianetto was already laid on his litter, ready to start. When he saw Mateo with Gamba he smiled an odd smile; then, turning towards the door of the house, he spat on the threshold, and said: "The house of a traitor." Only a man ready to die would have dared to apply the name of traitor to Falcone. A good dagger thrust, that would leave no need of a second, would have instantly avenged the insult. But Mateo's only movement was to put his hand to his forehead like a stunned man. Fortunato had gone into the house on seeing the arrival of his father. He soon reappeared with a bowl of milk, which he presented with downcast eyes to Gianetto. "Keep off!" shouted the bandit with a voice of thunder. Then, turning to one of the voltigeurs: "Let's have a drink, comrade," he said. The soldier put his flask in his hands, and the bandit drank the water given him by a man with whom he had just been exchanging gunshots. Then he asked that his hands should be fastened crossed on his breast, instead of tied behind his back. "I like," said he, "to lie at my ease." They did their best to satisfy him; then the adjutant gave the signal for the start, said "good-bye" to Mateo, who did not answer, and went down at a smart pace towards the plain. Ten minutes passed before Mateo opened his mouth. The child looked uneasily, now at his mother, and now at his father, who, leaning on his gun, considered him with an expression of concentrated rage. MATEO FALCONE 157 "You begin well/' said Mateo at last, in a voice calm, but terrifying to those who knew the man. "Father !" cried the child, coming nearer, with tears in his eyes, as if to throw himself at his knees. But Mateo shouted at him: "Out of my presence!" And the child stopped short, and sobbed, motionless, a few steps from his father. Giuseppa came up. She had just noticed the watch- chain, one end of which hung out of Fortunato's shirt. "Who gave you that watch?" she asked sternly. "My cousin, the adjutant." Falcone seized the watch, and, flinging it violently against a stone, broke it in a thousand pieces. "Woman," said he, "is this child mine?" The brown cheeks of Giuseppa became brick red. "What are you saying, Mateo? Do you know to whom you are speaking?" "Well, this child is the first of his race to be a traitor." The sobs and chokes of Fortunato redoubled, and Falcone kept his lynx eyes always fixed upon him. At last he struck the ground with the butt of his gun, then threw it across his shoulder, and took once more the path to the mdquis, shout- ing to Fortunato to follow him. The child obeyed. Giuseppa ran after Mateo and caught him by the arm. "He is your son," she said in a trembling voice, fixing her black eyes on her husband's as if to read what was passing in his soul. "Leave me," answered Mateo; "I am his father." Giuseppa kissed her son and went weeping back into the cottage. She threw herself on her knees before an image of the Virgin, and prayed fervently. Meanwhile Falcone walked some two hundred paces along the path, and did not stop until he went down into a small ravine. He felt 158 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the earth with the butt of his gun, and found it soft and easy to dig. The place seemed suitable to his purpose. "Fortunato, go up to that big rock." The child did as he was told, and then knelt. "Say your prayers." "Father, my father, do not kill me." "Say your prayers !" repeated Mateo in a terrible voice. The child, stammering and sobbing, recited the Pater and the Credo. The father responded Amen in a loud voice at the end of each prayer. "Are those all the prayers you know?" "Father, I know the Ave Maria too, and the litany my aunt taught me." "It is very long, but never mind." The child finished the litany in a stifled voice. "Have you done?" "O father, have mercy ! forgive me ! I will not do it again! I will beg my cousin the Corporal ever so hard that Gianetto may be pardoned !" He was still speaking; Mateo had cocked his gun, and took aim, saying: "May God forgive you !" The child made a desperate effort to get up, and embrace his father's knees; but he had not the time. Mateo fired, and Fortunato fell stone-dead. Without throwing a glance at the corpse, Mateo took the path to his house, to get a spade for the digging of his son's grave. He had only gone a few yards when be nut Giuseppa, running, alarmed by the gunshot. "What have you done?" she cried. "Justice." "Where is he?" "In the ravine. I am going to bury him. He died a Christian; I will have a mass sung for him. Let them tell my son-in-law, Tiodorc Bianchi, to come and live with us." MUSSET (1810-1857) Alfred de Musset was born in Paris in 1810. He was brought up in an atmosphere of literary culture; and even as a boy he delighted in reading the old romances with his Qlder brother, Paul. At the University he studied both law and medicine, but never practiced either of these professions. He gravitated towards literature, and at the age of twenty created a tremendous sensation by a volume of poetry en- titled Stories of Spain and Italy. His romantic tempera- ment drew him among that group of romanticists who flocked to the standards of Victor Hugo. To the French he is known primarily as a poet and dramatist, though English readers know him mainly through his stories. The early part of Musset's life was a brilliant success. He moved in the first literary circles of Paris, knowing and being known by everybody. His work brought him the honor of election to the French Academy in 1852. Unfor- tunately, however, his life had been an almost continuous dissipation, and this prematurely blunted his unusual talents. He was a man of striking personality, but of perverse moods, craving sympathy and easily influenced, especially by women. His last years were spent most sadly ; the friends of his better days drifted away from him, and in 1857, when he died, barely thirty people followed his body to Pere Lachaise cemetery. Among those who remained devot- edly loyal to him throughout his life, and to his memory after death, were his mother, his sister, and his brother Paul. Like Byron, Musset assumed an air of melancholy in his life and often let it appear in his work, especially in his poetry. His prose stories number only about a dozen, and all have the lively charm that goes with the chronicle of young love. 159 150 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Musset's genius cared little for time or place. He is equally fascinating whether his scene is laid in remote times or in the Paris of his own day. Croisilles (1839), selected for this volume, is a story of Havre during the reign of Louis XV. CROISILLES* By ALFRED DE MUSSBT I At the beginning of the reign of Louis XV, a young man named Croisilles, son of a goldsmith, was returning from Paris to Havre, his native town. He had been intrusted by his father with the transaction of some business, and his trip to the great city having turned out satisfactorily, the joy of bringing good news caused him to walk the sixty leagues more gaily and briskly than was his wont; for, though he had a rather large sum of money in his pocket, he traveled on foot for pleasure. He was a good-tempered fellow, and not without wit, but so very thoughtless and flighty that people looked upon him as being rather weak- minded. His doublet buttoned awry, his periwig flying to the wind, his hat under his arm, he followed the banks of the Seine, at times finding enjoyment in his own thoughts and again indulging in snatches of song; up at daybreak, supping at wayside inns, and always charmed with this stroll of his through one of the most beautiful regions of France. Plundering the apple-trees of Normandy on his way, he puzzled his brain to find rhymes (for all these rattlepates are more or less poets), and tried hard to turn out a mad- rigal for a certain fair damsel of his native place. She was no less than a daughter of a fermicr-general. Mademoiselle Godeau, the pearl of Havre, a rich heiress, and much •Copyright, 1888, by Brentano's. CROISILLES 161 courted. Croisilles was not received at M. Godeau's other- wise than in a casual sort of way, that is to say, he had sometimes himself taken there articles of jewelry purchased at his father's. M. Godeau, whose somewhat vulgar sur- name ill-fitted his immense fortune, avenged himself by his arrogance for the stigma of his birth, and showed himself on all occasions enormously and pitilessly rich. He cer- tainly was not the man to allow the son of a goldsmith to enter his drawing-room; but, as Mademoiselle Godeau had the most beautiful eyes in the world, and Croisilles was not ill-favored; and as nothing can prevent a fine fellow from falling in love with a pretty girl, Croisilles adored Madem- oiselle Godeau, who did not seem vexed thereat. Thus was he thinking of her as he turned his steps toward Havre; and, as he had never reflected seriously upon anything, in- stead of thinking of the invincible obstacles which separated him from his lady-love, he busied himself only with finding a rhyme for the Christian name she bore. Mademoiselle Godeau was called Julie, and the rhyme was found easily enough. So Croisilles, having reached Honfleur, embarked with a satisfied heart, his money and his madrigal in his pocket, and as soon as he jumped ashore ran to the paternal house. He found the shop closed, and knocked again and again, not without astonishment and apprehension, for it was not a holiday; but nobody came. He called his father, but in vain. He went to a neighbor's to ask what had happened ; instead of replying, the neighbor turned away, as though not wishing to recognize him. Croisilles repeated his questions; he learned that his father, his affairs having long been in an embarrassed condition, had just become bankrupt, and had fled to America, abandoning to his creditors all that he possessed. Not realizing as yet the extent of his misfortune, Croisilles 162 FRENCH SHORT STORIES felt overwhelmed by the thought that he might never again see his father. It seemed to him incredible that he should be thus suddenly abandoned ; he tried to force an entrance into the store ; but was given to understand that the official seals had been affixed; so he sat down on a stone, and giving way to his grief, began to weep piteously, deaf to the consolations of those around him, never ceasing to call his father's name, though he knew him to be already far away. At last he rose, ashamed at seeing a crowd about him, and, in the most pro- found despair, turned his steps towards the harbor. On reaching the pier, he walked straight before him like a man in a trance, who knows neither where he is going, nor what is to become of him. He saw himself irretrievably lost, possessing no longer a shelter, no means of rescue and, of course, no longer any friends. Alone, wandering on the sea- shore, he felt tempted to drown himself, then and there. Just at the moment when, yielding to this thought, he was advancing to the edge of a high cliff, an old servant named Jean, who had served his family for a number of years., arrived on the scene. "Ah ! my poor Jean !" he exclaimed, "you know all that has happened since I went away- Is it possible that my father could leave us without warning, without farewell?" "He is gone," answered Jean, "but indeed not without saying good-bye to you." At the same time he drew from his pocket a letter, which he gave to his young master. Croisilles recognized the hand- writing of his father, and, before opening the letter, kissed it rapturously; but it contained only a few words. Instead of feeling his trouble softened, it seemed to the young man still harder to bear. Honorable until then, and known as such, the old gentleman, ruined by an unforeseen disaster (the bankruptcy of a partner), had left for his son nothing but a few commonplace words of consolation, and no hope, except. CROISILLES 163 perhaps, that vague hope without aim or reason, which con- stitutes^ it is said, the last possession one loses. "Jean, my friend, you carried me in your arms/' said Croisilles, when he had read the letter, "and you certainly are today the only being who loves me at all ; it is a very sweet thing to me, but a very sad one for you ; for, as sure as my father embarked there, I will throw myself into the same sea which is bearing him away; not before you nor at once, but some day I will do it, for I am lost." "What can you do?" replied Jean, not seeming to have understood, but holding fast to the skirt of Croisilles' coat. "What can you do, my dear master? Your father was de- ceived ; he was expecting money which did not come, and it was no small amount, either. Could he stay here? I have seen him, sir, as he made his fortune, during the thirty years that I served him ; I have seen him working, attending to his business, the crown-pieces x coming in one by one. He was an honorable man, and skillful ; they took a cruel advantage of him. Within the last few days, I was still there, and as fast as the crowns came in, I saw them go out of the shop again. Your father paid all he could, for a whole day, and, when his desk was empty > he could not help telling me, pointing to a drawer where but six francs 2 remained : 'There were a hundred thousand francs there this morning!' That does not look like a rascally failure, sir? There is nothing in it that can dishonor you." "I have no more doubt of my father's integrity," answered Croisilles; "than I have of his misfortune. Neither do I doubt his affection. But I wish I could have kissed him, for what is to become of me ? I am not accustomed to poverty, I have not the necessary cleverness to build up my fortune. And, if I had it, my father is gone. It took him thirty years, 1. Obsolete French coins worth $1.12. 2. A franc is worth twenty cents. 164 FRENCH SHORT STORIES how long would it take me to repair this disaster? Much longer, ^.nd will he be living then? Certainly not; he will die over there, and I cannot even go and find him ; I can j oin him only by dying." Utterly distressed as Croisilles was, he possessed much religious feeling. Although his despondency made him wish for death, he hesitated to take his life. At the first words of this interview, he had taken hold of old Jean's arm, and thus both returned to the town. When they had entered the streets and the sea was no longer so near : "It seems to me, sir," said Jean, "that a good man has a right to live and that a misfortune proves nothing. Since your father has not killed himself, thank God, how can you think of dying? Since there is no dishonor in his case, and all the town knows it is so, what would they think of you? That you felt unable to endure poverty. It would be neither brave nor Christian ; for, at the very worst, what is there to frighten you? There are plenty of people born poor, and who have never had either mother or father to help them on. I know that we are not all alike, but, after all, nothing is impossible to God. What would you do in such a case? Your father was not born rich, far from it, — meaning no offense — and that is perhaps what consoles him now. If you had been here, this last month, it would have given you courage. Yes, sir, a man may be ruined, nobody is secure from bankruptcy; but your father, I make bold to say, has borne himself, through it all, like a man, though he did leave us so hastily. But what could he do? It is not every day that a vessel starts for America. I accompanied him to the wharf, and if you had seen how sad he was ! How he charged me to take care of you ; to send him news from you ! — Sir, it is a right poor idea you have, that throwing the helve after the hatchet. Every one has his time of trial in this world, and I was a soldier before I was a servant. I suf- CROISILLES 165 fered severely at the time, but I was young; I was of your age, sir, and. it seemed to me that Providence could not have spoken His last word to a young man of twenty-five. Why do you wish to prevent the kind God from repairing the evil that has befallen you? Give Him time, and all will come right. If I might advise you, I would say, just wait two or three years, and I will answer for it, you will come out all right. It is always easy to go out of this world. Why will you seize an unlucky moment?" While Jean was thus exerting himself to persuade his master, the latter walked in silence, and, as those who suffer often do, was looking this way and that as though seeking for something which might bind him to life. As chance would have it, at this juncture, Mademoiselle Godeau, the daughter of the fermier-general, happened to pass with her governess. The mansion in which she lived was not far distant; Crois- illes saw her enter it. This meeting produced on him more effect than all the reasonings in the world. I have said that he was rather erratic, and nearly always yielded to the first impulse. Without hesitating an instant, and without ex- planation, he suddenly left the arm of his old servant, and crossing the street, knocked at Monsieur Godeau's door. II When we try to picture to ourselves, nowadays, what was called a "financier" in times gone by, we invariably imagine enormous corpulence, short legs, a gigantic wig, and a broad face with a triple chin, — and it is not without reason that we have become accustomed to form such a picture of such a personage. Everyone knows to what great abuses the royal taxf arming led, and it seems as though there were a law of nature which renders fatter than the rest of mankind those who fatten, not only upon their own laziness, but also upon the work of others. 166 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Monsieur Godeau, among financiers, was one of the most classical to be found, — that is to say, one of the fattest. At the present time he had the gout, which was nearly as fash- ionable in his day as the nervous headache is in ours. Stretched upon a lounge, his eves half-closed, he was cod- dling himself in the coziest corner of a dainty boudoir. The panel-mirrors which surrounded him, majestically duplicated on every side his enormous person ; bags filled with gold cov- ered the table; around him, the furniture, the wainscot, the doors, the locks, the mantel-piece, the ceiling were gilded ; so was his coat. I do not know but that his brain was gilded too. He was calculating the issue of a little business affair which could not fail to bring him a few thousand louis ; 3 and was even deigning to smile over it to himself when Croisilles was announced. The young man entered with an humble, but resolute air, and with every outward manifesta- tion of that inward tumult with which we find no difficulty in crediting a man who is longing to drown himself. Mon- sieur Godeau was a little surprised at this unexpected visit ; then he thought his daughter had been buying some trifle, and was confirmed in that thought by seeing her appear almost at the same time with the young man. He made a sign to Croisilles not to sit down but to speak. The young lady seated herself on a sofa, and Croisilles, remaining standing, expressed himself in these terms : "Sir, my father has failed. The bankruptcy of a partner has forced him to suspend his payments, and unable to wit- ness his own shamed he has fled to America, after having paid his last sou 4 to his creditors. I was absent when all this happened; I have just come back and have known of these events only two hours. I am absolutely without resources, and determined to die. It is very probable that, on leaving 3. A gold coin worth $4.00. 4. One cent. CROISILLES 167 your house, I shall throw myself into the water. In all probability, I would already have done so, if I had not chanced to meet, at the very moment, this young lady, your daughter. I love her, sir, from the very depths of my heart ; for two years I have been in love with her, and my silence, until now, proves better than anything else the respect I feel for her; but today, in declaring my passion to you, I fulfill an imperative duty, and I would think I was offending God, if, before giving myself over to death, I did not come to ask you Mademoiselle Julie in marriage. I have not the slightest hope that you will grant this request; but I have to make it, nevertheless, for I am a good Christian, sir, and when a good Christian sees himself come to such a point of misery that he can no longer suffer life, he must at least, to extenuate his crime, exhaust all the chances which remain to him before taking the final and fatal step." At the beginning of this speech, Monsieur Godeau had sup- posed that the young man came to borrow money, and so he prudently threw his handkerchief over the bags that were lying around him, preparing in advance a refusal, and a polite one, for he always felt some good-will toward the father of Croisilles. But when he had heard the young man to the end, and understood the purport of his visit, he never doubted one moment but that the poor fellow had gone com- pletely mad. He was at first tempted to ring the bell and have him put out ; but, noticing his firm demeanor, his deter- mined look, the fermier-general took pity on so inoffensive a case of insanity. He merely told his daughter to retire, so that she might be no longer exposed to hearing such impro- prieties. While Croisilles was speaking, Mademoiselle Godeau had blushed as a peach in the month of August. At her father's bidding, she retired, the young man making her a profound bow, which she did not seem to notice. Left alone with 168 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Croisilles, Monsieur Godeau coughed, rose, then dropped again upon the cushions, and, trying to assume a paternal air, delivered himself to the following effect : "My boy," said he, "I am willing to believe that you are not poking fun at me, but you have really lost your head. I not only excuse this proceeding, but I consent not to punish you for it. I am sorry that your poor devil of a father has become bankrupt and has skipped. It is indeed very sad, and I quite understand that such a misfortune should affect your brain. Besides, I wish to do something for you; so take this stool and sit down there." "It is useless, sir," answered Croisilles. "If you refuse me, as I see you do, I have nothing left but to take my leave. I wish you every good fortune." "And where are you going?" "To write to my father and say good-bye to him." "Eh ! the devil ! Any one would swear you were speaking the truth. I'll be damned if I don't think you are going to drown yourself." "Yes, sir; at least I think so, if my courage does not for- sake me." "That's a bright idea ! Fie on you ! How can you be such a fool? Sit down, sir, I tell you, and listen to me." Monsieur Godeau had just made a very wise reflection, which was that it is never agreeable to have it said that a man, whoever he may be, threw himself into the water on leaving your house. He therefore coughed once more, took his snuff-box, cast a careless glance upon his shirtfrill, and continued : "It is evident that you are nothing but a simpleton, a fool, a regular baby. You do not know what you are saying. You are ruined, that's what has happened to you. But, my dear friend, all that is not enough; one must reflect upon the things of this world. If you came to ask me — well, good CROISILLES 169 advice, for instance, — I might give it to you; but what is it you are after ? You are in love with my daughter ?" "Yes, sir, and I repeat to you, that I am far from suppos- ing that you can give her to me in marriage ; but as there is nothing in the world but that, which could prevent me from dying, if you believe in God, as I do not doubt you do, you will understand the reason that brings me here." "Whether I believe in God or not, is no business of yours. I do not intend to be questioned. Answer me first: where have you seen my daughter?" "In my father's shop, and in this house, when I brought jewelry for Mademoiselle Julie." "Who told you her name was Julie ? What are we coming to, great heavens ! But be her name Julie or Javotte, do you know what is wanted in any one who aspires to the hand of the daughter of a fermier-general?" "No, I am completely ignorant of it, unless it is to be as rich as she." "Something more is necessary, my boy ; you must have a name." "Well! my name is Croisilles." "Your name is Croisilles, poor wretch ! Do you call that a name?" "Upon my soul and conscience, sir, it seems to me to be as good a name as Godeau." "You are very impertinent, sir, and you shall rue it." "Indeed, sir, do not be angry; I had not the least idea of offending you. If you see in what I said anything to wound you, and wish to punish me for it, there is no need to get angry. Have I not told you that on leaving here I am going straight to drown myself?" Although M. Godeau had promised himself to send Crois- illes away as gently as possible, in order to avoid all scandal, his prudence could not resist the vexation of his wounded 170 FRENCH SHORT STORIES pride. The interview to which he had to resign himself was monstrous enough in itself ; it may be imagined then, what he felt at hearing himself spoken to in such terms. "Listen/' he said, almost beside himself, and determined to close the matter at any cost. "You are not such a fool that you cannot understand a word of common sense. Are you rich? No. Are you noble? Still less so. What is this frenzy that brings you here? You come to worry me; you think you are doing something clever; you know perfectly well that it is useless ; you wish to make me responsible for your death, Have you any right to complain of me? Do I owe a sou to your father ? Is it my fault that you have come to this ? Mon Dieu ! When a man is going to drown himself, he keeps quiet about it — " "That is what I am going to do now. I am your very humble servant." "One moment! It shall not be said that you had recourse to me in vain. There, my boy, here are three louis d'or ; go and have dinner in the kitchen, and let me hear no more about you." "Much obliged; I am not hungry, and I have no use for your money." So Croisilles left the room, and the financier, having set his conscience at rest by the offer he had just made, settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and resumed his meditations. Mademoiselle Godeau, during this time, was not so far away as one might suppose; she had, it is true, withdrawn in obedience to her father; but, instead of going to her room, she had remained listening behind the door. If the extrav- agance of Croisilles seemed incredible to her, still she found nothing to offend her in it ; for love, since the world has existed, has never passed as an insult. On the other hand, as it was not possible to doubt the despair of the young man. CROISILLES 171 Mademoiselle Godeau found herself a victim, at one and the same time, to the two sentiments most dangerous to women — compassion and curiosity. When she saw the interview at an end, and Croisilles ready to come out, she rapidly crossed the drawing-room where she stood, not wishing to be surprised eavesdropping, and hurried towards her apartment ; but she almost immediately retraced her steps. The idea that per- haps Croisilles was really going to put an end to his life troubled her in spite of herself. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she walked to meet him ; the drawing-room was large, and the two young people came slowly towards each other. Croisilles was as pale as death, and Mademoiselle Godeau vainly sought words to express her feelings. In passing beside him, she let fall on the floor a bunch of violets which she held in her hand. He at once bent down and picked up the bouquet in order to give it back to her, but instead of taking it, she passed on without uttering a word, and entered her father's room. Croisilles, alone again, put the flowers in his breast, and left the house with a troubled heart, not knowing what to think of his adventure. Ill Scarcely had he taken a few step in the street, when he saw his faithful friend Jean running towards him with a joyful face. "What has happened?" he asked; "have you news to tell me?" "Yes," replied Jean; "I have to tell you that the seals have been officially broken and that you can enter your home. All your father's debts being paid, you remain the owner of the house. It is true that all the money and all the jewels have been taken away ; but at least the house belongs to you, and you have not lost everything. I have been running about for 172 FRENCH SHORT STORIES an hour, not knowing what had become of you^ and I hope, my dear master, that you will now be wise enough to take a reasonable course." "What course do you wish me to take?" "Sell this house, sir, it is all your fortune. It will bring you about thirty thousand francs. With that at any rate you will not die of hunger ; and what is to prevent you from buying a little stock in trade, and starting business for yourself ? You would surely prosper." "We shall see about this," answered Croisilles, as he hur- ried to the street where his home was. He was eager to see the paternal roof again. But when he arrived there so sad a spectacle met his gaze, that he had scarcely the courage to enter. The shop was in utter disorder, the rooms deserted, his father's alcove empty. Everything presented to his eyes the wretchedness of utter ruin. Not a chair remained; all the drawers had been ransacked, the till broken open, the chest taken away ; nothing had escaped the greedy search of creditors and lawyers ; who, after having pillaged the house, had gone, leaving the doors open, as though to testify to all passers-by how neatly their work was done. "This, then," exclaimed Croisilles, "is all that remains after thirty years of work and a respectable life, — and all through the failure to have ready, on a given day, money enough to honor a signature imprudently given !" While the young man walked up and down given over to the saddest thoughts, Jean seemed very much embarrassed. He supposed that his master was without ready money, and that he might perhaps not even have dined. He was there- fore trying to think of some way to question him on the subject, and to offer him, in case of need, some part of his savings. After having tortured his mind for a quarter of an hour to try and hit upon some way of leading up to the subject, he could find nothing better than to come np to Crois- CROISILLES 173 illes, and ask him, in a kindly voice : "Sir, do you still like roast partridges?" The poor man uttered this question in a tone at once so comical and so touching, that Croisilles, in spite of his sad- ness, could not refrain from laughing. "And why do you ask me that?" said he. "My wife," replied Jean, "is cooking me some for dinner, sir, and if by chance you still liked them — " Croisilles had completely forgotten till now the money which he was bringing back to his father. Jean's proposal reminded him that his pockets were full of gold. "I thank you with all my heart," said he to the old man, "and I accept your dinner with pleasure; but, if you are anxious about my fortune, be reassured. I have more money than I need to have a good supper this evening, which you, in your turn, will share with me." Saying this, he laid upon the mantel four well-filled purses, which he emptied, each containing fifty louis. "Although this sum does not belong to me," he added, "I can use it for a day or two. To whom must I go to have it forwarded to my father?" "Sir," replied Jean, eagerly, "your father especially charged me to tell you that this money belongs to you, and, if I did not speak of it before, it was because I did not know how your affairs in Paris had turned out. Where he has gone your father will want for nothing; he will lodge with one of your correspondents, who will receive him most gladly ; he has moreover taken with him enough for his immediate needs, for he was quite sure of still leaving behind more than was necessary to pay all his just debts. All that he has left, sir, is yours ; he says so himself in his letter, and I am espe- cially charged to repeat it to you. That gold is, therefore, legitimately your property, as this house in which we are now. I can repeat to you the very words your father said 174 FRENCH SHORT STORIES to me on embarking: 'May my son forgive me for leaving him ; may he remember that I am still in the world only to love him, and let him use what remains after my debts are paid as though it were his inheritance.' Those, sir, are his own expressions ; so put this back in your pocket, and, since you accept my dinner, pray let us go home." The honest joy which shone in Jean's eyes, left no doubt in the mind of Croisilles. The words of his father had moved him to such a point that he could not restrain his tears ; on the other hand, at such a moment, four thousand francs were no bagatelle. As to the house, it was not an available re- source, for one could realize on it only by selling it, and that was both difficult and slow. All this, however, could not but make a considerable change in the situation the young man found himself in; so he felt suddenly moved — shaken in his dismal resolution, and, so to speak, both sad and, at the same time, relieved of much of his distress. After having closed the shutters of the shop, he left the house with Jean, and as he once more crossed the town, could not help thinking how small a thing our affections are, since they sometimes serve to make us find an unforeseen joy in the faintest ray of hope. It was with this thought that he sat down to dinner beside his old servant, who did not fail, during the repast, to make every effort to cheer him. Heedless people have a happy fault. They are easily cast down, but they have not even the trouble to console them- selves, so changeable is their mind. It would be a mistake to think them, on that account, insensible or selfish; on the contrary they perhaps feel more keenly than others and are but too prone to blow their brains out in a moment of despair; but, this moment once passed, if they are still alive, they must dine, they must eat, they must drink, as usual ; only to melt into tears again, at bed-time. Joy and pain do not glide over them but pierce them through like arrows. Kind, hot-headed CROISILLES * 175 natures which know how to suifer, but not how to lie, through which one can clearly read, — not fragile and empty like glass, but solid and transparent like rock crystal. After having clinked glasses with Jean, Croisilles, instead of drowning himself, went to the play. Standing at the back of the pit, he drew from his bosom Mademoiselle Godeau's bouquet, and, as he breathed the perfume in deep meditation, he began to think in a calmer spirit about his adventure of the morning. As soon as he had pondered over it for awhile, he saw clearly the truth ; that is to say, that the young lady, in leaving the bouquet in his hands, and in refusing to take it back, had wished to give him a mark of interest; for other- wise this refusal and this silence could only have been marks of contempt, and such a supposition was not possible. Crois-. illes, therefore, judged that Mademoiselle Godeau's heart was of a softer grain than her father's and he remembered distinctly that the young lady's face, when she crossed the drawing-room, had expressed an emotion the more true that it seemed involuntary. But was this emotion one of love, or only of sympathy? Or was it perhaps something of still less importance, — mere commonplace pity? . Had Mademoiselle Godeau feared to see him die — him, Croisilles — or mereh' - to be the cause of the death of a man, no matter what man? Although withered and almost leafless, the bouquet still re- tained so exquisite an odor and so brave a look, that in breathing it and looking at it, Croisilles could not help hop- ing. It was a thin garland of roses round a bunch of violets. What mysterious depths of sentiment an Oriental might have read in these flowers, by interpreting their language ! But after all, he need not be an Oriental in this case. The flowers which fall from the breast of a pretty woman, in Europe, as in the East, are never mute ; were they but to tell what they have seen while reposing in that lovely bosom, it would be enough for a lover, and this, in fact, they do. Perfumes have 176 FRENCH SHORT STORIES more than one resemblance to love, and there are even people who think love to be but a sort of perfume; it is true the flowers which exhale it are the most beautiful in creation. While Croisilles mused thus, paying very little attention to the tragedy that was being acted at the time, Mademoiselle Godeau herself appeared in a box opposite. The idea did not occur to the young man that, if she should notice him, she might think it very strange to find the would- be suicide there after what had transpired in the morning. He, on the contrary, bent all his efforts towards getting nearer to her; but he could not succeed. A fifth-rate actress from Paris had come to play Merope, 5 and the crowd was so dense that one could not move. For lack of anything better, Croisilles had to content himself with fixing his gaze upon his lady-love, not lifting his eyes from her for a moment. He noticed that she seemed pre-occupied and moody, and that she spoke to every one with a sort of repugnance. Her box was surrounded, as may be imagined, by all the fops of the neighborhood, each of whom passed several times before her in the gallery, totally unable to enter the box, of which her father filled more than three-fourths. Croisilles noticed fur- ther that she was not using her opera-glasses, nor was she listening to the play. Her elbows resting on the balustrade, her chin in her hand, with her far-away look, she seemed, in all her sumptuous apparel, like some statue of Venus dis- guised en marquise. The display of her dress and her hair, her rouge, beneath which one could guess her paleness, all the splendor of her toilet, did but the more distinctly bring out the immobility of her countenance. Never had Croisilles seen her so beautiful. Having found means, between the acts, to escape from the crush, he hurried off to look at her from the passage leading to her box, and, strange to say, scarcely had he reached it, when Mademoiselle Godeau. who had not 5. A play by Voltaire. CROISILLES 171 stirred for the last hour, turned round. She started slightly as she noticed him and only cast a glance at him; then she resumed her former attitude. Whether that glance expressed surprise, anxiety, pleasure, or love; whether it meant "What, not dead !" or "God be praised ! There you are, living !" — I do not pretend to explain. Be that as it may; at that glance, Croisilles inwardly swore to himself to die or gain her love. IV Of all the obstacles which hinder the smooth course of love, the greatest is, without doubt, what is called false shame, which is indeed a very potent obstacle. Croisilles was not troubled with this unhappy failing, which both pride and timidity combine to produce; he was not one of those who, for whole months, hover round the woman they love, like a cat round a caged bird. As soon as he had given up the idea of drowning himself, he thought only of letting his dear Julie know that he lived solely for her. But how could he tell her so ? Should he present him- self a second time at the mansion of the fermier-general, it was but too certain that M. Godeau would have him ejected. Julie, when she happened to take a walk, never went without her maid ; it was therefore useless to undertake to follow her. To pass the nights under the windows of one's beloved is a folly dear to lovers, but, in the present case, it would cer- tainly prove vain. I said before that Croisilles was very religious ; it therefore never entered his mind to seek to meet his lady-love at church. As the best way, though the most dangerous, is to write to people when one cannot speak to them in person, he decided on the very next day to write to the young lady. His letter possessed, naturally, neither order nor reason. It read somewhat as follows : 178 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Mademoiselle, — Tell me exactly, I beg of you, what for- tune one must possess to be able to pretend to your hand. I am asking you a strange question; but I love you so desper- ately, that it is impossible for me not to ask it, and you are the only person in the world to whom I can address it. It seemed to me, last evening, that you looked at me at the play. I had wished to die ; would to God I were indeed dead, if I am mistaken, and if that look was not meant for me. Tell me if Fate can be so cruel as to let a man deceive himself in a manner at once so sad and so sweet. I believe that you commanded me to live. You are rich, beautiful. I know it. Your father is arrogant and miserly, and you have a right to be proud; but I love you, and the rest is a dream. Fix your charming eyes on me ; think of what love can do, when I who suffer so cruelly, who must stand in fear of everything, feel, nevertheless, an inexpressible joy in writing you this mad letter, which will perhaps bring down your anger upon me. But think also, mademoiselle, that you are a little to blame for this, my folly. Why did you drop that bouquet? Put yourself for an instant, if possible, in my place; I dare think that you love me, and I dare ask you to tell me so. Forgive me, I beseech you. I would give my life's blood to be sure of not offending you, and to see you listening to my love with that angel smile which belongs only to you. "Whatever you may do, your image remains mine; you can remove it only by tearing out my heart. As long as your look lives in my remembrance, as long as the bouquet keeps a trace of its perfume, as long as a word will tell of love, I will cherish hope." Having sealed his letter, Croisilles went out and walked up and down the street opposite the Godeau mansion, waiting for a servant to come out. Chance, which always serves mys- terious loves, when it can do so without compromising itself. CROISILLES 179 willed it that Mademoiselle Julie's maid should have ar- ranged to purchase a cap on that day. She was going to the milliner's when Croisilles accosted her, slipped a louis into her hand; and asked her to take charge of his letter. The bargain was soon struck; the servant took the money to pay for her cap and promised to do the errand out of gratitude. Croisilles, full of joy, went home and sat at his door awaiting an answer. Before speaking of this answer, a word must be said about Mademoiselle Godeau. She was not quite free from the van- ity of her father, but her good nature was ever uppermost. She was, in the full meaning of the term, a spoilt child. She habitually spoke very little, and never was she seen with a needle in her hand ; she spent her days at her toilet, and her evenings on the sofa, not seeming to hear the conversation going on around her. As regards her dress, she was pro- digiously coquettish, and her own face was surely what she thought most of on earth. A wrinkle in her collarette, an ink-spot on her finger, would have distressed her ; and, when her dress pleased her, nothing can describe the last look which she cast at her mirror before leaving the room. She showed neither taste nor aversion for the pleasures in which young ladies usually delight. She went to balls willingly enough, and renounced going to them without a show of temper, sometimes without motive. The play wearied her, and she was in the constant habit of falling asleep there. When her father, who worshiped her, proposed to make her some present of her own choice, she took an hour to decide, not being able to think of anything she cared for. When M. Godeau gave a reception or a dinner, it often happened that Julie would not appear in the drawing-room, and at such times she passed the evening alone in her own room, in full dress, walking up and down, her fan in her hand. If a com- pliment was addressed to her, she turned away her head, « 180 FRENCH SHORT STORIES and if any one attempted to pay court to her, she responded only by a look at once so dazzling and so serious as to dis- concert even the boldest. Never had a sally made her laugh ; never had an air in an opera, a flight of tragedy, moved her ; indeed, never had her heart given a sign of life; and, on seeing her pass in all the splendor of her nonchalant loveli- ness one might have taken her for a beautiful somnambulist, walking through the world as in a trance. So much indifference and coquetry did not seem easy to understand. Some said she loved nothing, others that she loved nothing but herself. A single word, however, suffices to explain her character, — she was waiting. From the age of fourteen she had heard it ceaselessly repeated that nothing was so charming as she. She was convinced of this, and that was why she paid so much attention to dress. In failing to do honor to her own person, she would have thought herself guilty of sacrilege. She walked, in her beauty, so to speak, like a child in its holiday dress ; but she was very far from thinking that her beauty was to remain useless. Beneath her apparent unconcern she had a will, secret, inflexible, and the more potent the better it was concealed. The coquetry of ordinary women, which spends itself in ogling, in simper- ing, and in smiling, seemed to her a childish, vain, almost contemptible way of fighting with shadows. She felt herself in possession of a treasure, and she disdained to stake it piece by piece ; she needed an adversary worthy of herself ; but, too accustomed to see her wishes anticipated, she did not seek that adversary; it may even be said that she felt astonished at his failing to present himself. For the four or five years that she had been out in society and had conscientiously dis- played her flowers, her furbelows, and her beautiful should- ers, it seemed to her inconceivable that she had not yet in- spired some great passion. Had she said what was really behind her thoughts, she certainly would have replied to her CROISILLES 181 many flatterers: "Well! if it is true that I am so beautiful, why do you not blow your brains out for me?" An answer which many other young girls might make, and which more than one who says nothing hides away in a corner of her heart, not far perhaps from the tip of her tongue. What is there, indeed, in the world, more tantalizing for a woman than to be young, rich, beautiful, to look at herself in her mirror and see herself charmingty dressed, worthy in every way to please, fully disposed to allow herself to be loved, and to have to say to herself: "I am admired, I am praised, all the world thinks me charming, but nobody loves me. My gown is by the best maker, my laces are superb, my coiffure is irreproachable, my face the most beautiful on earth, my figure slender, my foot prettily turned, and all this helps me to nothing but to go and yawn in the corner of some drawing-room! If a young man speaks to me he treats me as a child ; if I am asked in marriage, it is for my dowry ; if somebody presses my hand in a dance, it is sure to be some provincial fop; as soon as I appear anywhere, I excite a murmur of admiration ; but nobody speaks low, in my ear, a word that makes my heart beat. I hear impertinent men praising me in loud tones, a couple of feet away, and never a look of humbly sincere adoration meets mine. Still I have an ardent soul full of life, and I am not, by any means, only a pretty doll to be shown about, to be made to dance at a ball, to be dressed by a maid in the morning and undressed at night — beginning the whole thing over again the next day." That is what Mademoiselle Godeau had many times said to herself ; and there were hours when that thought inspired her with so gloomy a feeling that she remained mute and almost motionless for a whole day. When Croisilles wrote her, she was in just such a fit of ill-humor. She had just been taking her chocolate and was deep in meditation, stretched upon a lounge, when her maid entered and handed 182 FRENCH SHORT STORIES her the letter with a mysterious air. She looked at the address, and not recognizing the handwriting, fell again to musing. The maid then saw herself forced to explain what it was, which she did with a rather disconcerted air, not being at all sure how the 3^oung lady would take the matter. Mademoiselle Godeau listened without moving, then opened the letter, and cast only a glance at it ; she at once asked for a sheet of paper, and nonchalantly wrote these few words : "No, sir, I assure you I am not proud. If you had only a hundred thousand crowns, I would willingly marry you." Such was the reply which the maid at once took to Crois- illes, who gave her another louis for her*trouble. V A hundred thousand crowns are not found "in a don- key's hoof-print," and if Croisilles had been suspicious he might have thought in reading Mademoiselle Godeau's letter that she was either crazy or laughing at him. He thought neither, for he only saw in it that his darling Julie loved him, and that he must have a hundred thousand crowns, and lie dreamed from that moment of nothing but trying to secure chem. He possessed two hundred louis in cash, plus a house which, as I have said, might be worth about thirty thousand francs. What was to be done? How was he to go about transfiguring these thirty-four thousand francs, at a jump, into three hundred thousand. The first idea which came into the mind of the young man was to find some way of staking his whole fortune on the toss-up of a coin, but for that he must sell the house. Croisilles therefore began by putting a notice upon the door, stating that his house was for sale ; then, while dreaming what he would do with the money that he would get for it, he awaited a purchaser. A week went by, then another; not a single purchaser CROISILLES 183 applied. More and more distressed, Croisilles spent these days with Jean, and despair was taking possession of him once more, when a. Jewish broker rang at the door. "This house is for sale, sir, is it not? Are you the owner of it?" "Yes, sir." "And how much is it worth?" "Thirty thousand francs, I believe; at least I have heard my father say so." The Jew visited all the rooms, went upstairs and down into the cellar, knocking on the walls, counting the steps of the staircase, turning the doors on their hinges and the h.ejs in their locks, opening and closing the windows ; then, at last, after having thoroughly examined everything, without saying a word and without making the slightest proposal, he bowed to Croisilles and retired. Croisilles, who for a whole hour had followed him with a palpitating heart, as may be imagined, was not a little disap- pointed at this silent retreat. He thought that perhaps the Jew wished to give himself time to reflect and that he would return presently. He waited a week for him, not daring to go out for fear of missing his visit, and looking out of the windows from morning till night. But it was in vain; the Jew did not reappear. Jean, true to his unpleasant role of adviser, brought moral pressure to bear to dissuade his mas- ter from selling his house in so hasty a manner and for so ex- travagant a purpose. Dying of impatience, ennui, and love, Croisilles one morning took his two hundred louis and went out, determined to tempt fortune with this sum, since he could not have more. The gaming-houses at that time were not public, and that refinement of civilization which enables the first comer to ruin himself at all hours, as soon as the wish enters his mind, had not yet been invented. 184 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Scarcely was Croisilles in the street before he stopped, not knowing where to go to stake his money. He looked at the houses of the neighborhood, and eyed them, one after the other, striving to discover suspicious appearances that might point out to him the object of his search. A good- looking young man, splendidly dressed, happened to pass. Judging from his mien, he was certainly a young man of gentle blood and ample leisure, so Croisilles politely ac- costed him. "Sir," he said, "I beg your pardon for the liberty I take. I have two hundred louis in my pocket and I am dying either to lose them or win more. Could you point out to me some respectable place where such things are done?" At this rather strange speech the young man burst out laughing. "Upon my word, sir!" answered he, "if you are seeking any such wicked place you have but to follow me, for that is just where I am going." Croisilles followed him, and a few steps farther they both entered a house of very attractive appearance, where they were received hospitably by an old gentleman of the highest breeding. Several young men were already seated round a green cloth. Croisilles modestly took a place there, and in less than an hour his two hundred louis were gone. He came out as sad as a lover can be who thinks himself beloved. He had not enough to dine with, but that did not cause him any anxiety. "What can I do now," he asked himself, "to get money? To whom shall I address myself in this town? Who will lend me even a hundred louis on this house that I can not sell?" While he was in this quandary, he met his Jewish broker. He did not hesitate to address him, and, featherhead as he was, did not fail to tell him the plight he was in. CROISILLES 185 The Jew did not much want to buy the house; he had come to see it only through curiosity, or, to speak more ex- actly, for the satisfaction of his own conscience, as a passing dog goes into a kitchen, the door of which stands open, to see if there is nothing to steal. But when he saw Croisilles so despondent, so sad, so bereft of all resources, he could not resist the temptation to put himself to some inconvenience, even, in order to pay for the house. He therefore offered him about one-fourth of its value. Croisilles fell upon his neck, called him his friend and savior, blindly signed a bar- gain that would have made one's hair stand on end, and, on the very next day, the possessor of four hundred new louis, he once more turned his steps toward the gambling-house where he had been so politely and speedily ruined the night before. On his way, he passed by the wharf. A vessel was about leaving; the wind was gentle, the ocean tranquil. On all sides, merchants, sailors, officers in uniform were coming and going. Porters were carrying enormous bales of merchan- dise. Passengers and their friends were exchanging fare- wells, small boats were rowing about in all directions; on every face could be read fear, impatience, or hope; and, amidst all the agitation which surrounded it, the majestic vessel swayed gently to and fro under the wind that swelled her proud sails. "What a grand thing it is," thought Croisilles, "to risk all one possesses and go beyond the sea, in perilous search of fortune ! How it fills me with emotion to look at this vessel setting out on her voyage, loaded with so much wealth, with the welfare of so many families ! What j oy to see her come back again, bringing twice as much as was intrusted to her, returning so much prouder and richer than she went away ! Why am I not one of those merchants? Why could I not stake my four hundred louis in this way ? This immense sea ! 186 FRENCH SHORT STORIES What a green cloth, on which to boldly tempt fortune ! Why should I not myself buy a few bales of cloth or silk ? What is to prevent my doing so, since I have gold? W r hy should this captain refuse to take charge of my merchandise ? And who knows ? Instead of going and throwing away this — my little all — in a gambling-house, I might double it, I might triple it, perhaps, by honest industry. If Julie truly loves me, she will wait a few years, she will remain true to me until I am able to marry her. Commerce sometimes yields greater profits than one thinks ; examples are not wanting in this world of wealth gained with astonishing rapidity in this way on the changing waves — why should Providence not bless an endeavor made for a purpose so laudable, so worthy of His assistance? Among these merchants who have accu- mulated so much and who send their vessels to the ends of the world, more than one has begun with a smaller sum than I have now. They have prospered with the help of God ; why should not I prosper in my turn? It seems to me as though a good wind were filling these sails, and this vessel inspires confidence. Come ! the die is cast ; I will speak to the captain, who seems to be a good fellow ; I will then write to Julie, and set out to become a clever and successful trader." The greatest danger incurred by those who are habitually but half crazy, is that of becoming, at times, altogether so. The poor fellow, without further deliberation, put his whim into execution. To find goods to buy, when one has money and knows nothing about the goods, is the easiest thing in the world. The captain, to oblige Croisilles, took him to one of his friends, a manufacturer, who sold him as much cloth and silk as he could pay for. The whole of it, loaded upon a cart, was promptly taken on board. Croisilles, delighted and full of hope, had himself written in large letters his name upon the bales. He watched them being put on board with inex- CROISILLES 187 pressible joy; the hour of departure soon came., and the vessel weighed anchor. VI I need not say that in this transaction, Croisilles had kept no money in hand. His house was sold ; and there remained to him, for his sole fortune, the clothes he had on his back ; — no home, and not a sou. With the best will possible, Jean could not suppose that his master was reduced to such an extremity ; Croisilles was not too proud, but too thoughtless to tell him of it. So he determined to sleep under the starry vault, and as for his meals, he made the following calcula- tion: he presumed that the vessel which bore his fortune would be six months before coming back to Havre ; Croisilles, therefore, not without regret, sold a gold watch his father had given him, and which he had fortunately kept; he got thirty-six livres 6 for it. That was sufficient to live on for about six months, at the rate of four sous a day. He did not doubt that it would be enough, and, reassured for the present, he wrote to Mademoiselle Godeau to inform her of what he had done. He was very careful in his letter not to speak of his distress ; he announced to her, on the contrary, that he had undertaken a magnificent commercial enterprise, of the speedy and fortunate issue of which there could be no doubt; he explained to her that La Fleurette, a merchant- vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, was carrying to the Baltic his cloths and his silks, and implored her to remain faithful to him for a year, reserving to himself the right of asking, later on, for a further delay, while, for his part, he swore eternal love to her. When Mademoiselle Godeau received this letter, she was sitting before the fire, and had in her hand, using it as a screen, one of those bulletins which are printed in seaports, 6. The liyre was worth twenty cents. 188 FRENCH SHORT STORIES announcing the arrival and departure of vessels, and which also report disasters at sea. It had never occurred to her, as one can well imagine, to take an interest in this sort of thing; she had in fact never glanced at any of these sheets. The perusal of Croisilles' letter prompted her to read the bulletin she had been holding in her hand ; the first word that caught her eye was no other than the name of La Fleurette. — The vessel had been wrecked on the coast of France, on the very night following its departure. The crew had barely escaped, but all the cargo was lost. Mademoiselle Godeau, at this news, no longer remembered that Croisilles had made to her an avowal of his poverty ; she was as heartbroken as though a million had been at stake. In an instant, the horrors of the tempest, the fury of the winds, the cries of the drowning, the ruin of the man who loved her, presented themselves to her mind like a scene in a romance. The bulletin and the letter fell from her hands. She rose in great agitation, and, with heaving breast and eyes brimming with tears, paced up and down, determined to act, and asking herself how she should act. There is one thing that must be said in justice to love; it is that the stronger, the clearer, the simpler the considera- tions opposed to it, in a word, the less common sense there is in the matter, the wilder does the passion become and the more does the lover love. It is one of' the most beautiful things under heaven, this irrationality of the heart. We should not be worth much without it. After having walked about the room (without forgetting either her dear fan or the passing glance at the mirror), Julie allowed herself to sink once more upon her lounge. Whoever had seen her at this moment would have looked upon a lovely sight; her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were on fire; she sighed deeply, and murmured in a delicious transport of joy and pain: "Poor fellow ! He has ruined himself for me !" CROISILLES 189 Independently of the fortune which she could expect from her father, Mademoiselle Godeau had in her own right the property her mother had left her. She had never thought of it. At this moment, for the first time in her life, she remem- bered that she could dispose of five hundred thousand francs. This thought brought a smile to her lips ; a proj ect, strange, bold, wholly feminine, almost as mad as Croisilles himself, entered her head; — she weighed the idea in her mind for some time, then decided to act upon it at once. She began by inquiring whether Croisilles had any rela- tives or friends; the maid was sent out in all directions to find out. Having made minute inquiries in all quarters, she discovered, on the fourth floor of an old rickety house, a half- crippled aunt, who never stirred from her arm-chair, and had not been out for four or five years. This poor woman, very old, seemed to have been left in the world expressly as a specimen of hungry misery. Blind, gouty, almost deaf, she lived alone in a garret; but a gayety, stronger than misfor- tune- and illness, sustained her at eighty years of age, and made her still love life. Her neighbors never passed her door without going in to see her, and the antiquated tunes she hummed enlivened all the girls of the neighborhood. She possessed a little annuity which sufficed to maintain her; as long as day lasted, she knitted. She did not know what had happened since the death of Louis XIV. It was to this worthy person that Julie had herself pri- vately conducted. She donned for the occasion all her finery; feathers, laces, ribbons, diamonds, nothing was spared. She wanted to be fascinating; but the real secret of her beauty, in this case, was the whim that was carrying her away. She went up the steep, dark staircase which led to the good lady's chamber, and, after the most graceful bow, spoke somewhat as follows : "You have, madame, a nephew, called Croisilles, who 190 FRENCH SHORT STORIES loves me and has asked for my hand; I love him, too, and wish to marry him; but my father, Monsieur Godeau, fer- mier-general of this town, refuses his consent, because your nephew is not rich. I would not, for the world, give occasion to scandal, nor cause trouble to anybody ; I would therefore never think of disposing of myself without the consent of my family. I come to ask you a favor, which I beseech you to grant me. You must come yourself and propose this mar- riage to my father. I have, thank God, a little fortune which is quite at your disposal ; you may take possession, whenever you see fit, of five hundred thousand francs at my notary's. Yoir will say that this sum belongs to your nephew, which in fact it does. It is not a present that I am making him, it is a debt which I am paying, for I am the cause of the ruin of Croisilles, and it is but just that I should repair it. My father will not easily give in; you will be obliged to insist and you must have a little courage ; I, for my part, will not fail. As nobody on earth excepting myself has any right to the sum of which I am speaking to you, nobody will ever know in what way this amount will have passed into your hands. You are not very rich yourself, I know, and you may fear that people will be astonished to see you thus endowing your nephew; but remember that my father does not know you, that you show yourself very little in town, and that, consequently, it will be easy for you to pretend that you have just arrived from some journey. This step will doubtless be some exertion to you; you will have to leave your arm-chair and take a little trouble; but you will make two people happy, madame, and if you have ever known love, I hope you will not refuse me." The old lady, during this discourse, had been in turn surprised, anxious, touched, and delighted. The last words persuaded her. "Yes, my child," she repeated several times, "I know what it is, — I know what it is." CROISILLES 191 As she said this she made an effort to rise ; her feeble limbs could barely support her ; Julie quickly advanced and put out her hand to help her; by an almost involuntary movement they found themselves, in an instant, in each other's arms. A treaty was at once concluded; a warm kiss sealed it in advance, and the necessary and confidential consultation followed without further trouble. All the explanations having been made, the good lady drew from her wardrobe a venerable gown of taffeta, which had been her wedding-dress. This antique piece of property was not less than fifty years old ; but not a spot, not a grain of dust had disfigured it ; Julie was in ecstasies over it. A coach was sent for, the handsomest in the town. The good lady prepared the speech she was going to make to Monsieur Godeau; Julie tried to teach her how she was to touch the heart of her father, and did not hesitate to confess that love of rank was his vulnerable point. "If you could imagine," said she, "a means of flattering this weakness, you will have won our cause." The good lady pondered deeply, finished her toilet without another word, clasped the hands of her future niece, and en- tered the carriage. She soon arrived at the Godeau mansion ; there, she braced herself up so gallantly for her entrance that she seemed ten years younger. She ma j estically crossed the drawing-room where Julie's bouquet had fallen, and when the door of the boudoir opened, said in a firm voice to the lackey who preceded her : "Announce the dowager Baroness de Croisilles." These words settled the happiness of the two lovers. Monsieur Godeau was bewildered by them. Although five hundred thousand francs seemed little to him, he consented to everything, in order to make his daughter a baroness, and such she became; — who would dare contest her title? For my part, I think she had thoroughly earned it. MAUPASSANT (1850-1893) Guy de Maupassant was born in Normandy (northern France) in 1850. He completed his education at Rouen and then went to Paris where he was for a time a clerk in the Ministry of Marine. While yet a boy it was his good for- tune to have as the directing hand for his genius an acknowl- edged master of prose style, his god-father Flaubert. He taught Maupassant how to observe accurately and express himself clearly ; how to choose his characters and make them act in such a way as to seem real and fit the part assigned to them in the story. Flaubert read all of Maupassant's early poems and stories, pointed out their faults, and then de- stroyed them, with the result that when the young appren- tice finally began to publish his work it was the finished product of an expert in the art of writing. The two outstanding features of Maupassant's stories are precision of observation and simplicity of style. He had no theories of life to expound, no propaganda to advance. He himself says that his only doctrine was to portray nature, that is, human nature, faithfully. He chose his characters as they presented themselves to him in his own experience, and then contrived the story around them. He never tries to explain ; he simply gives the facts. The reader draws his own conclusion. Maupassant is, in other words, uncom- promisingly realistic. Maupassant's work fills thirty volumes, comprising six novels and two hundred and twelve short stories. The range of his characters and situations is equally extensive. He portrays the peasants of his native Normandy, the bour- geoisie and the working classes both of the country and of Paris, small tradesmen and their employees, government clerks, the men and women working on the Parisian news- 192 MAUPASSANT I93 papers and magazines, and finally, the gentlemen and ladies of the salons. Add to these the mystic and fantastic sub- jects that came to him in those moments when his chronic nervous disorder caused his visions to be distorted, and the category of Maupassant's material is fairly complete. Many of his stories touch upon the harshness of the strug- gle for existence, often in its most primitive form, the mere difficulty of making ends meet ; or again, the emphasis is placed upon the desire for money to secure certain ends — social or political or for the pursuit of pleasure. Some- times there is humor, a sort of grim humor, especially in his earlier stories. He liked to tell of the barren life of the underpaid officials of the bureaus, The Necklace being not only the best of this type of Maupassant story, but in the opinion of many critics the most perfect short story in any language. Of the other selections in this book, Fright, The Two Friends, and The Hand are excellent examples of the au- thor's power of calm and unadorned realism in depicting the horrible. The Wreck is a pleasant love story, a type not at all common with Maupassant. In the appreciation of Maupassant's work his general pessimism should be noted. Even when he laughs it is the laugh of irony. His outlook on life was essentially bitter, yet he makes the reader feel that the bitterness is not in the writer but in the essence of things as they are. And the fact that he wrote mostly about people in ordinary life makes the gloom all the deeper. His stories almost inva- riably emphasize the tragedy of the commonplace. However, even in the most unpleasant of his stories the reader is conscious of the high art of the writer. There is no exuberance of words, there are no overwrought pas- sages, nothing to impede the progress of the story. So carefully did Maupassant write that not a word seems super- fluous, out of place, wanting. Every word, every idea, every incident is given its proper value; just that and no more. These are some of the qualities of Maupassant's style that are the despair of all imitators. 194 FRENCH SHORT STORIES * The last few years of his life were spent very miserably in a private sanitarium near Paris, where he died July 6, 1893. THE NECKLACE 1 By GUY DE MAUPASSANT She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born as by a mistake of destiny, in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, under- stood, loved, or married by a rich and distinguished man ; so she let herself be married to an ordinary clerk in the Depart- ment of Public Instruction. She was simple in her dress because she could not be elegant; but she was unhappy, like one kept out of her proper class; for with women there is neither caste nor rank. Their beauty, their grace, and their charm serve in- stead of birth and family. Native delicacy, an instinct for what is fine, and their nimbleness of wit constitute their only hierarchy, making daughters of the people the equals of the greatest ladies. She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered because of the poverty of her dwelling, the wretchedness of its walls, the worn chairs, and the ugliness of the hangings. All the things which any other woman of her class would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton girl who did her humble housework awoke in her tormenting regrets and distracted dreams. Her mind dwelt on silent ante-rooms hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall bronze lamps, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches, dozing in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the stove. She thought of long par- 1. Translated by H. C. Schweikert. THE NECKLACE 195 lors decorated with old silk, of delicate furniture laden with precious bric-a-brac, and of coquettish little rooms, scented, made for the small-talk at five o'clock with one's most inti- mate friends, men well known and much sought after, whose attention is the envy and desire of every woman. When she sat down to dinner, at the round table covered with a cloth three days old, opposite her husband, who uncovered the tureen, and said with an air of satisfaction, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! 2 I don't know anything better than that/' she was thinking of dainty repasts, with shining silver, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages and strange birds in the midst of a fairy forest ; and of exquisite dishes served on marvelous plates, of whis- pered gallantries listened to with sphinx-like smile, while eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail. She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing more than that ; she felt herself made for that. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be attrac- tive- and sought after. She had a rich friend, a companion of her convent days, whom she no longer wanted to go to see, because she suffered so much when she returned. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress. But one evening her husband came home with an air of triumph, holding a large envelope in his hand. "There," said he, "there is something for you." She quickly tore the paper and drew out a printed card which bore these words : "The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges Ramponneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to honor them with their presence at the palace of the Ministry, Monday, January 18." Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she 2. A dish consisting of meat and vegetables boiled together. 196 FRENCH SHORT STORIES disdainfully threw the invitation on the table,, murmur- ing: "What am I to do with that?" "But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here is an opportunity, a splendid one. I had considerable trouble to get it. Everybody is after them; it is a very select affair and not many are given to clerks. The entire official world will be there." She looked at him with an expression of irritation and declared impatiently : "What am I to put on my back to go there?" He had not thought of that; he stammered: "Why, the- dress you wear to the theater. That seems very fine to me." Astonished and distracted, he said nothing more. His wife was crying. Two large tears rolled slowly from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her mouth. He stuttered : "What's the matter? What's the matter?" But by a violent effort she had overcome her difficulty, and she replied in a calm voice, as she wiped her moist cheeks : "Nothing. Only I have no clothes and therefore can't go to this affair. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has better clothes than I." He was grieved. He resumed: "Let's see, Mathilde. How much would a suitable dress cost, one which you could use on other occasions, something very simple?" She reflected several seconds, making calculations, and thinking also of the sum she could ask without an imme- diate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the eco- nomical clerk. At last she replied, hesitatingly: THE NECKLACE 197 "I don't know exactly, but I believe I could do with four hundred francs." 3 He grew pale, for he was reserving just that amount to purchase a gun and treat himself to a little shooting the coming summer on the plain of Nanterre with several friends who used to go there Sundays to shoot larks. However, he said : "All right. I'll give you four hundred francs. But do try to have a pretty dress." The day of the party was drawing near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Her dress was ready, how- ever. Her husband said to her one evening: "What's the matter? You've been quite queer the last three days." - And she answered: "It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a stone to put on. I shall look wretched. I'd almost rather not go to the reception." "You could wear natural flowers. It's very stylish this time of the year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses." She was not convinced. "No; there's nothing mere humiliating than to look poor among women who are rich." But her husband continued: "How stupid of you! Go find your friend Mme. Fores- tier, and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You have been close enough to her to do that." She gave a cry of joy: "That's true. I had not thought of that." The next day she went to her friend and told her dis- tress. 3. About eighty dollars. 198 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Mme. Forestier went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large jewelry-box, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel: "Choose, my dear." First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross, gold and precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, and could not make up her mind to leave them, to give them back. She kept on asking: "You haven't any others?" "Why, yes. Look. I don't know what may please you." All at once she discovered, in a box of black satin, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart began to beat with immoderate longing. Her hands trembled as she took it up. She fastened it around her neck, over her high-necked dress, and was rapt in ecstasy at the sight of herself. Then she asked, hesitatingly, full of anxiety: "Can you let me have this, only this?" "Why, yes; certainly." She sprang upon her friend's neck, embraced her warmly, and then escaped with her treasure. The day of the party came. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the best looking of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men were looking at her, asking who she was, and seeking an introduction. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. The Minister himself took notice of her. She danced in a transport of delight, intoxicated with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness produced by all this homage and admiration, of this victory so complete and so dear to the heart of woman. She left about four in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a small deserted ante-room, THE NECKLACE 199 with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, modest wraps of everyday life, the poverty of which was in contrast with the elegance of her ball dress. She felt this and wished to get away without being noticed by the other women who were wrapping themselves up in rich furs. Loisel held her back. "Wait a minute. You'll catch cold. I'll call a cab." But she did not listen to him, and went rapidly down the stairs. When they came to the street they could not find a carriage ; and they began to look for one, shouting to drivers whom they saw at a distance. They went down towards the Seine, in disgust and shiver- ing from the cold. Finally they found on the quay one of those old night carriages which one does not see in Paris until after nightfall, as if they were ashamed of their wretchedness during the day. It took them to their door, Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted their own steps. It was all over, for her. He, on the other hand, was thinking that he would have to be at the office by ten o'clock. She removed the wraps from her shoulders, before the looking-glass, in order to see herself once more in her glory. But all at once she gave a cry. She no longer had the neck- lace around her neck ! Her husband, already half undressed, asked: "What's the matter?" She turned to him in terror : "I — I — I no longer have Mme. Forestier's necklace." He rose, frightened. "What? — How? — It isn't possible!" And they searched the folds of her dress, the folds of her cloak, the pockets, everywhere. But they did not find it. 200 FRENCH SHORT STORIES He asked: "You are sure that you still had it when leaving the ball?" "Yes, I touched it while in the vestibule of the Ministry." "But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it drop. It must be in the carriage." "Yes, very likely. You took his number?" "No. And you, didn't you look at it?" "No." They looked at one another, thoroughly upset. Finally Loisel dressed again. "I'm going back over the whole route," said he, "on foot, to see if I can't find it." And he went out. She remained there, in her evening gown, without strength to go to bed, utterly depressed, without a fire, without thought. Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He had not found it. He went to the Prefecture of Police, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab companies; indeed, he went wherever a glimmer of hope impelled him to go. She waited all day, in the same state of distraction over this frightful disaster. Loisel came home in the evening, with his face pale and sunken; he had discovered nothing. "You must write to your friend," he said, "that you have broken the clasp of the necklace and that you are having it repaired. That will give us time to turn round." She wrote as he dictated. At the end of the week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared : "We must see about replacing that piece of jewelry." Next day they took the box in which it had been contained to the jeweler whose name was on the inside. He consulted his books. . THE NECKLACE 201 "It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace. I must only have furnished the case." Then they went from one jeweler to another, searching for a necklace like the other, consulting their memories, sick, both of them, with chagrin and anxiety. In a shop in the Palais Royal 4 they found a diamond necklace which seemed to them quite like the one they were looking for. It was priced at forty thousand francs, but they could have it for thirty-six. They begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made a bargain that he would take it back for thirty-four thousand francs if the other was found before the end of February. Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He had to borrow the rest. He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one, five hundred from another, five louis 5 here, five there. He gave notes, made ruinous obligations, did business with the whole tribe of money-lenders. He compromised all the rest of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing whether he could meet his obligation ; and, terrified by the anguish of the future, by the black misery which was going to fall upon him, by the prospect of physical privations and moral tortures of every kind, he went and bought the neck- lace, laying down thirty-six thousand francs on the jeweler's counter. When Mme. Loisel took the necklace back, Mme. Fores- tier said, with an air of inquiry: "You should have brought it back sooner, for I might have needed it." Her friend had been in dread lest Mme. Forestier should 4. A palace in Paris built by Richelieu and afterwards left to Louis XIV. It has galleries and arcades still famous for shops, especially jewelry sbops. 5. Twenty dollars. 202 FRENCH SHORT STORIES open the case, but her fear was groundless. If she had observed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said ? Would she not have been taken for a thief? Mme. Loisel now experienced the horrible life of the needy. Presently, however, she took her part heroically. That frightful debt had to be paid. She would pay it. They sent the servant away ; they changed lodgings ; they rented an attic under a roof. She learned what heavy housework was, the disagreeable duties of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing off her rosy nails on the greasy kettles and the bottoms of the pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts, and all the rougher things, which she dried on a line; every morning she carried the garbage down to the street, and brought up the water, stopping to regain her breath on every landing. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, with her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting sou 6 by sou with her wretched money. They had to pay some notes each month, and renew others to gain time. Her husband worked evenings making fair copies of a tradesman's accounts, and at night he often did copying at five sous a page. And this life lasted ten years. At the end of ten years they had repaid everything, rates of usury, accumulations of compound interest, all. Mme. Loisel seemed old now. She had become a typical woman of a poor household, strong, hard, and rough. With hair badly combed, her skirts untidy, and her hands red, she talked in a loud voice, and washed the floor with copious splashings of water. But, at times, when her husband was 6. One cent. THE NECKLACE 203 at the office, she would sit down by the window, and think of that evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so courted. What would have happened if she had not lost that neck- lace? A^ho knows? Who knows? How singular is life, and how changeable ! How little a thing it takes to be lost or saved ! But, one Sunday, as she was taking a walk in the Champs-Etysees as a relief from her cares of the week, she all at once saw a woman walking with a child. It was Mme. Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive. Mme. Loisel was moved. Should she go and speak to her? Why, certainly. Now that she had paid, she would tell her everything. Why not? She approached her. "Good afternoon, Jeanne." The other woman did not recognize her, and was aston- ished at being spoken to so familiarly by this woman of the common people. She stammered : "But, madame, — I do not know — You must have made a mistake." "No. I am Mathilde LoiseL" "Oh! — My poor Mathilde, how you have changed!" "Yes, I have indeed had hard days since I last saw you; and much misery — and that because of you." "Of me — How can that be ?" "You remember that diamond necklace }^ou lent me to go to the ball at the Ministry ?" "Yes. What of that?" "Well, I lost it." "What? Why, you returned it." "I bought you one just like it. And for ten years we've been paying for it. You will understand that it was no easy 204 FRENCH SHORT STORIES matter for us, who had nothing. At last that is over, and I'm happy enough." Mme. Forestier had stopped. "You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?" "Yes. You didn't even notice it, then, did you? They were very much alike." , And she smiled with a proud and naive joy. Mme. Forestier, strongly moved, took hold of both her hands. "Oh! My poor Mathilde ! Why, mine was false. It was worth at most five hundred francs !" THE WRECK 1 By GUY DE MAUPASSANT It was yesterday., the 31st of December. I had just finished breakfast with my old friend, Georges Garin. The servant brought him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps. Georges said to me : "Allow me?" "Certainly." And he began to read an eight-page letter written in a large English hand, scrawled in every direction. He read slowly, giving it serious attention, with that interest which one gives only to things that touch the heart. Then he placed the letter on the edge of the mantel- piece and said: "Well, here is a curious story which I have never told you, a sentimental story, withal, and one which happened to me! Oh! That was a red-letter day for me, that year. That was twenty years ago, for I was then thirty years old, and I am now fifty. "I was then an inspector for the Maritime Insurance Company, of which I am now manager. I had expected to pass New Year's Day in Paris, since it is the custom to make that day a holiday, when I received a letter from the manager ordering me to set out immediately for the Island of Re, 2 where a three-masted schooner from Saint-Nazaire, insured by us, had just been stranded. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. By ten o'clock I was at the office 1. Translated by H. C. Schweikert. 2. An island in the Bay of Biscay. 205 206 FRENCH SHORT STORIES to get my instructions, and that same night I took the express, which got me into La Rochelle 3 the next day, the 31st of December. "I had two hours on my hands before going aboard the boat for Re, the Jean-Guiton. I took a turn about the city. La Rochelle is indeed a unique town of impressive character, with its labyrinthine maze of streets whose sidewalks run under galleries without end, galleries and arcades like those of the Rue de Rivoli, 4 but low, with an air of mystery, as though specially built to tempt conspirators, and of antique appearance, savoring of the wars of olden times, the heroic and savage wars of religion. It is indeed the old Huguenot 5 city, grave, discreet, without any great art, and none of those wonderful monuments which make Rouen 6 so mag- nificent; yet it is striking because of its severe physical outlines, a little elusive too, a city of determined fighters, the birthplace of many fanaticisms, a city in which flourished the faith of the Calvinists 7 and where the plot of the 'Four Sergeants' 8 was born. "After I had wandered about these picturesque streets for some time I boarded the small steamboat, black and squat, which was to take me to the Island of Re. It started, puffing angrily, passed between the two ancient towers which guard the port, crossed the channel, passed out beyond the mole built by Richelieu, 9 the enormous rocks of which were visible above the water's edge, encircling the city like an immense necklace ; then we turned towards the right. 3. A city in southeastern France, on the Bay of Biscay. 4. A street in Paris noted for its shops. 5. The name given to the Protestants in France in the 15th and 16th centuries. They were often subjected to persecution. 6. A city on the Seine River. It is noted for its shipping, for its architectural monuments, and as the scene of the burning of Joan of Arc. 7. The Protestants who were followers of John Calvin instead of Luther. In France they were called Huguenots. 8. Four conspirators beheaded in Paris, 1822, for treason. 9. A famous French statesman (1585-1642). THE WRECK 207 "It was one of those gloomy, depressing days, which weigh heavily upon one's mind, which make one sick at heart, deadening in us all our force and energy ; a day gray and frigid, heavy with salty fog, damp as rain, cold as^ frost, affecting the breathing like the stench of a sewer. "Under this low-hanging and forbidding fog, the yellow sea, shallow and sandy from washing over the long stretch of beach, remained without a ripple, without movement, lifeless, a sea of muddy water, greasy and stagnant. The Jean-Guiton went over it, rolling a little through habit, ^cutting the smooth dark surface, leaving behind a few waves, a few splashes, and some heavings which soon calmed them- selves. "I began talking to the captain, a little short man almost without feet, round as his boat and balanced like it. I wanted some details about the wreck upon which I was going to make an estimate. A large three-masted vessel from Saint-Nazaire, the Marie-Joseph, had gone aground on a stormy night, on the sand-bars near the Island of Re. "The storm had thrown the ship so far in, wrote the owner, that it had been impossible to float it again, and that they had had to take off hastily everything detachable. It was my business, then, to examine the situation of the wreck, figure out its condition before the storm, and decide if all possible efforts had been made to float it. I came as agent of the company, so that I might give contradictory testimony later, if necessary, in the lawsuit. "Upon receipt of my report, the manager would take such steps as he thought necessary for safeguarding our interests. "The captain of the Jean-Guiton knew all about the affair, having been called on for help, with his boat, in the attempts at salvage. "He told me the story of the wreck, very simply, too. The Marie-Joseph, driven by the furious gale, became lost 208 FRENCH SHORT STORIES in the night, and steering by chance on a foamy sea — 'a milk-soup sea' it was called by the captain — was wrecked on those immense shoals of shifting sands which make the coasts of this region seem like limitless Saharas during the hours of low tide. "As we spoke I looked around and ahead. Between the ocean and the lowering sky there was an open space through which one could see far. We were skirting a shore. I asked: " 'Is that the Island of Re?' " 'Yes, monsieur.' "And all at once the captain, pointing with his right hand straight before us, indicated to me an object almost imperceptible on the open sea, and said : " 'Look, there is your ship !' The Marie-Joseph?' " 'Yes.' "I was astounded. That black speck, well-nigh invisible, which I should have taken for a reef, seemed to me about two miles from shore. "I resumed: " 'But, captain, there must be a hundred fathoms of water at the spot you are indicating.' "He laughed. " 'A hundred fathoms, my dear sir ! . . . Not two fathoms, I assure you!' . . . "He was from Bordeaux. 10 He continued: " 'It is high tide now, twenty minutes of ten. Walk along the beach, your hands in your pockets, after you have lunched at the Hotel Daupin, and I'll guarantee that by ten minutes of three, or three o'clock at the most, you will have walked to the wreck, without getting your feet wet, and you will have from an hour and three-quarters to two 10. In the French the captain speaks the dialect of Bordeaux, which it is impossible to reproduce in translation. THE WRECK 209 hours to remain on it; no longer, though, or you'll get caught. The further out the tide goes, the quicker it comes back. The coast along here is as flat as a bug. Be sure to start back at ten minutes of five; and at seven-thirty you. will again be on board the Jean-Guiton, which will take you back this very night to the quay at La Rochelle.' "I thanked the captain, and went to take a seat on the bow of the boat, to take a look at the little town of Saint- Martin, which we were rapidly approaching. "It was like all the miniature seaports which serve as capitals for the barren little islands scattered along the continent. It was a large fishing village, part of it in the water and part on land; its people living on fish and wild-fowl, vegetables and shell-fish, radishes and mussels. The island is very low, little cultivated, but seems well populated. However, I did not penetrate into the interior. "After lunch I went up a little promontory, and from there, as the tide was going out fast, I proceeded across the sand towards a kind of black rock which I noticed just above the water, way out. "I walked rapidly across this yellow level of sand, elastic as flesh, and it seemed to sweat under my steps. The sea had been there a while before; now I saw it far out, as though fleeing from sight, and I could no longer distinguish the line which separated the land from the sea. I felt as though I were a part of a gigantic and supernatural spec- tacle. The Atlantic had just been before me, but now it seemed to have disappeared into the strand, like stage scenery into a trap, and I walked now in the middle of a desert. Only the feeling and the breath of the salt water remained with me. I smelled the odor of the debris left by the sea, the smell of the ocean, the good, strong-scented smell of the coast. I walked fast; I was no longer cold; 210 FRENCH SHORT STORIES I looked at the wreck, which became larger the nearer I approached, and now resembled a huge stranded whale. "It seemed to rise out of the earth, and on that vast ' expanse of sand, flat and yellow, it assumed surprising proportions. I reached it at last, after an hour's walk. It lay upon its side, split open, shattered, its broken bones showing like those of an animal, and its ribs of tarred wood pierced by large nails clearly visible. The sand already was enveloping it, entering through the rents, holding it, possessing it, never to let go. It seemed to have become rooted in the sand. The prow had sunk deep into that soft, treacherous sand, while the stern, high in the air, seemed to throw toward the sky, like a hopeless cry of appeal, those two white words on the black planking, Marie- Joseph. "I climbed upon this corpse of a ship by the lower side; and after gaining the deck I went down into the interior. The daylight, coming in through the broken hatches and the fissures in the sides, illuminated sadly what looked like long and somber caves, full of broken timbers. There was nothing inside except sand, which served as a floor to these vaults of planks. "I began to take notes on the condition of the vessel. I sat down on a broken empty barrel, writing by the light of a large crack through which I could see the limitless stretch of the shore. A peculiar shiver, due to the cold and the solitude, crept over me from time to time ; and I stopped writing at times to listen to the vague and mysterious sounds in the wreck : the sound of crabs scraping the timbers with their hooked claws, the sound of a thousand small animals of the sea already attached to this corpse; the sound, soft and regular, of the worms gnawing ceaselessly, making a noise like that of a gimlet, as they dig out and devour the old planks. "And suddenly I heard human voices, quite near me. I THE WRECK 211 jumped as though a ghost had appeared. For a moment I really thought that I was going to see two drowned men rise from the depths of that sinister hold, who would tell me how they died. You can imagine that it did not take me long to pull myself up on the deck, with all the strength that lay in my wrists. I saw, standing below the stern, a tall gentleman and three young ladies, or, rather, a tall En- glishman and three young misses. Indeed, they were more frightened than I was, when they saw this apparition sud- denly appearing on the abandoned three-master. The youngest of the girls ran away ; the two others caught hold of their father's arms; as for him, he opened his mouth — that was the only sign which indicated his emotion. "Then, after a few seconds, he said: " 'Ah, mosieu, you are the proprietor of this ship?' " 'Yes, sir/ " 'May I visit it?' " 'Yes/ "He then spoke a long sentence in English, in which I distinguished only the word 'gracious,' repeated several times. "As he was looking for a place to climb up, I pointed out the best one and gave him a helping hand. He came up; then we assisted the three young girls, who were now reas- sured. They were charming, especially the oldest, a blonde of eighteen years, fresh as a flower, so delicate and dainty ! Truly, the pretty English girls have the look of the tender fruits of the sea. One could have said that this one had just risen from the sand and that her hair had kept some of its tint. They made you think, with their exquisite freshness, of the delicate colors of pink sea-shells and mother-of-pearl, rare, mysterious, born in the unknown depths of the ocean. "She spoke French a little better than her father and served as interpreter. I had to tell the story of the wreck 212 FRENCH SHORT STORIES to the minutest details, and I invented them, as though I had been present at the catastrophe. Then the whole family went down into the interior of the wreck. As soon as they had entered that dark gallery, poorly lighted, they uttered cries of astonishment and admiration; and suddenly the father and his three daughters were holding sketch-books, which doubtless they had carried concealed in the folds of their heavy wraps, and they began at the same time four pencil sketches of this bizarre and gloomy scene. "They were seated side by side on a projecting beam, and the four sketch-books on the eight knees were covered with little black lines which were to represent the shattered hull of the Marie-Joseph. "Although busy with her sketch, the oldest girl kept on talking to me as I continued my inspection of the remains of the ship. "I learned that they were spending the winter at Biar- ritz, 11 and that they had come to the Island of Re expressly to view this three-master stuck in the sand. They did not have the usual English arrogance, these people; they were simple and straightforward, of that class of wanderers with which England is covering the world. The father was tall and slender, his red face fringed with whiskers, a sort of living sandwich, a slice of ham in the form of a human head between two layers of hair. The daughters were like young and growing herons, long-legged, slender also, except the oldest; and all three were good-looking — especially the tallest. "She had such a droll way of speaking, of telling things, of laughing, of understanding and not understanding, of raising her eyes to question me, eyes like the deep blue sea, of stopping her drawing to figure out what I had said, and of beginning her work again, saying 'Yes' or 'No' — that I 11. A French bathing resort on the Bay of Biscay. THE WRECK 213 could have stayed indefinitely to listen to her and look at her. "All of a sudden she murmured: "'I heard a slight movement on the ship.' "I listened; and I immediately made out a slight sounds peculiar, continuous. What was it? I got up and looked through the crack, and uttered a sharp cry. "The tide had returned; and it was about to surround us ! "We were on deck in a trice. It was too late. The water encircled us, and was running towards the shore with fright- ful speed. No, it did not run, it glided along, it crept, stretching itself as though it were carrying out a definitely assigned task. Hardly more than a few inches of water covered the sand ; but already the water was so far in that we could no longer see the fleeing line of its edge. "The Englishman wanted to jump in, but I held him back ; for flight was impossible, because of the deep pools which we had avoided in coming, and which we should be sure to fall into on our return. "In our hearts there was a moment of horrible anxiety. Then the little English girl smiled and remarked : " 'It is we who are the shipwrecked !' "I wanted to laugh; but fear prevented me, a cowardly fright, base and stealthy, like the tide. All the dangers to which we were exposed appeared to me at once. I felt like shouting 'Help !' But to whom? "The two younger girls were clinging to their father, who looked in consternation at the boundless sea around us. "And the night was falling with the same rapidity that the ocean was rising, a heavy night, wet and icy. "I said: ' 'There is nothing to do but to remain on the boat.' "The Englishman responded: " 'Oh! yes.' "And we remained there a quarter of an hour, a half hour, 214 FRENCH SHORT STORIES in truths I know not how long, watching the yellow water around us becoming deeper and deeper, eddying about so that it seemed to play over the immense shore once more recovered. "One of the little girls was cold, and the idea suggested itself that we go below again to shelter ourselves from the light but icy breeze, which struck us and bit our skins. ,"I was leaning on the hatch. The ship was full of water. We had to keep close to the bulwarks at the stern, which protected us somewhat. "Darkness now enveloped us, and we remained crowded one against the other, surrounded by the shadows of the night, and by the sea. Against my shoulder I felt the trembling of that little English girl, whose teeth chattered every now and then; but I felt also the soft warmth of her body through her heavy cloak, and that warmth was as pleasing to me as a kiss. We no longer talked; we remained motionless, silent, cowering like beasts in a ditch during a storm. Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the night, in spite of the terrible and growing danger, I began to feel happy at being there, glad of the peril and the cold, glad of those long hours of darkness and anxiety which I had to spend on that spot, so near that pretty and charming girl. "I asked myself why that strange feeling of happiness and joy which permeated me. "Why? Who knows? Because she was there? Who, she? A little English girl whom I did not even know? I did not love her, I did not know her, and yet I felt myself attracted, conquered ! I would , have liked to save her, to devote myself to her, to do a thousand foolish things ! Strange thing ! How does it happen that the presence of a woman so upsets us? Is it the power of her charm which envelops us ? Is it the allurement of beauty and youth which intoxicates us like wine? THE WRECK 215 "Is it not rather a sort of touch of love, the mysterious love which ceaselessly seeks to unite two beings, which tries its power when a man and woman are brought face to face, and which pervades them with emotion, an emotion confused, secret, profound, just as you water the ground to make the flowers grow? "But the silence of the darkness, the silence of the sky, became frightful, for we could hear around us, vaguely, a light rustling noise, the infinite hollow roar of the rising sea, and the monotonous beating of the current against the vessel. "Of a sudden, I heard sobs. The youngest of the girls was crying. Her father wanted to console her, and they began to talk in their own language, which I did not under- stand. I gathered that they were reassuring her, and that she was still afraid. "I asked the one next me: " 'Are you not too cold, miss?' "'Oh! yes; I am very cold.' "I wanted to give her my cloak; she refused it. But I had taken it off and wrapped her up in it in spite of herself. In the brief struggle my hand met hers, and it gave me a pleasing shiver all over. "For some minutes the air had been growing brisker, the breaking of the water against the sides of the ship more strong. "I rose; a strong gust of wind blew over my face. The wind was rising ! "The Englishman perceived it at the same time, and he said simply: " 'That is bad for us, that. . . .' "That surely was bad, it was certain death if the waves, even feeble waves, struck the wreck and moved it; so shat- 216 FRENCH SHORT STORIES tered and disjointed was it that the first heavy sea would carry it off in pieces. "So our anxiety increased from second to second as the gusts became stronger and stronger. Now the sea was be- coming a little rougher, and I saw in the darkness lines of white appear and disappear, lines of foam; while each wave shook the hulk of the Marie- Joseph, causing an abrupt tremor which rose to our hearts. "The English girl was shaking; I felt her shivering against me, and I had a mad desire to fold her in my arms. "Out there, before us, to the left, to the right, behind us, the lighthouses were glaring along the coast — lights white, yellow, red, revolving like enormous eyes, the eyes of a giant who was looking at us, watching us, waiting greedily for us to disappear. One of them especially irritated me. It went out every thirty seconds, to be re-lit immediately; it was truly an eye, that one, with its lid always lowered over its fiery glare. "From time to time the Englishman struck a match to see the time ; then he put his watch back into his pocket. Sud- denly he said to me, over the heads of his daughters, with supreme gravity: " 'Monsieur, I wish you a Happy New Year/ "It was midnight. I held out my hand to him and he shook it. Then he said something in English, and presently he and his daughters began to sing 'God Save the Queen/ which rose in the dark, silent air and was lost in space. "First I had a desire to laugh; then I was seized by a strong and queer emotion. "It was something sinister and superb, this song of the shipwrecked, of the condemned, something like a prayer, and also something grander, comparable to the old and sublime Ave Ccesar morituri te salutamus. 12 12. "Hail, Caesar ! We, who are about to die. salute you." It was the address of the Gladiators entering the arena, to the Caesar. THE WRECK 217 "When they had finished I asked the girl to sing by her- self, some ballad, what she would, to make us forget our anxiety. She consented and soon her clear and youthful voice took wing in the night. She was singing something sad, no doubt, for the notes were long drawn out, coming slowly from her mouth, and fluttered, like wounded birds, across the waters. "The tide became higher and now was battering our wreck. As for me, I thought of nothing but that voice. And I thought also of the Sirens. If a boat had passed near us, what would the sailor have said? My troubled spirit was carried away in a dream ! A Siren ! was she not, in fact, a Siren, this child of the sea, who had held me on this worm- eaten ship, and who, in a very short while, was going to sink with me into the waves ? "But all five of us were suddenly rolling promiscuously over the deck, because the Marie-Joseph had given a lurch to her right side. The English girl had fallen right over me. I caught her in my arms, and madly, without knowing what I was doing, believing my last moment had come, I kissed her on the lips, on the temples, on the hair. The boat no longer moved, and we also remained motionless. "The father said: 'Kate!' The one I was holding an- swered 'Yes/ and made a movement to disengage herself. "Surely, at that instant, I could have wished that the boat would split in two, so that I might fall into the sea with her. "The Englishman went on: " 'Just a trifle of a lurch ; it is nothing. I have my three daughters safe.' "Not seeing the oldest girl, he had, at first, thought her lost! "I rose slowly, and, all at once, I saw a light on the sea, quite near us. I shouted ; some one answered. It was a boat 218 FRENCH SHORT STORIES looking for us, the proprietor of the hotel having foreseen our imprudence. "We were saved. I was sorry for it! They took us off from our raft and brought us back to Saint-Martin. "The Englishman now rubbed his hands and murmured: " 'A good supper ! A good supper !' "We supped; but I was not lively; I regretted the Marie- Joseph. "We had to separate the next day, after many hand- shakes and promises to write. They went to Biarritz, and I came near following them. "I was hit hard; I wanted to ask that young girl to marry me. I am sure that if we had passed eight days together I should have married her. How weak a man is sometimes, and how incomprehensible ! "Two years rolled by 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 every year, on the first of January. She tells me about her life, talks about her children, her sisters, but never about her husband. Why? Ah, why? And as for me, I speak only of the Marie-Joseph. She is perhaps the only woman I ever loved . . . no . . . should have loved. . . . But . . . Ah! . . . Does one know? . . . The events of life carry you along. . . . And then . . . and then . . . everything passes. . . . She must be old now. ... I wouldn't know her. . . . Ah ! Those old days . . . that wreck. . . . What a creature . . . divine ! She writes me that her hair is quite white. . . . Good heavens ! . . . That gives me a terrible pain. . . . Ah ! Her blonde locks. . . . No ! The girl I knew no longer exists. . . . How sad it is ... all that. . . ." FRIGHT 1 By GUY DE MAUPASSANT After dinner we again went up on the bridge. Before us lay the Mediterranean, its silvery calm undisturbed by even a single ripple. Our steamer glided along, casting a long serpent-like trail of black smoke against a sky which seemed sprinkled with stars. Behind us the sea, stirred by the swift movement of the heavy vessel, was churned into foam by the blades of the propeller, and it seemed to writhe, so that its white surface, broken into many rays of light, made it appear as though the very moonlight was boiling. Here we were, some six or eight of us, in silent admiration, our eyes fixed on distant Africa, whither we were bound. The captain, who was smoking his cigar with us, resumed the conversation begun at dinner. "Surely I was frightened that day. My ship remained six hours with that rock in its side, constantly battered by the sea. Fortunately for us we were picked up towards evening by an English collier which happened to sight us." Thereupon a tall man with a tanned face and a serious expression, one of those men who give the impression of having traveled far in unknown lands, always surrounded by danger, and whose tranquil eyes seemed to retain in their depths something of those strange lands which he had seen ; one of those men who seem to be fearlessly daring, now spoke for the first time : "You say, captain, that you were frightened. I have to differ. You use the wrong word for the feeling you expe- rienced on that occasion. A strong man is never frightened 1. Translated by H. C. Schweikert. 219 220 FRENCH SHORT STORIES in the presence of an immediate danger. He is moved, agitated, anxious; but frightened; that's another thing." The captain replied, laughing : "The devil you say ! I insist that I was a frightened man." Then the man with the bronzed face said, speaking slowly : "Permit me to explain. Fright (and the hardiest of men can have it) is something horrible, a dreadful sensation, like the decomposition of the soul; a fearful spasm of the mind and of the heart, the mere memory of which brings shivers of agony. But a brave man does not experience it even in the moment of an attack, or when confronted by inevitable death, or in the presence of any of the known forms of danger ; it takes an abnormal situation, mysterious influences in the face of unknown perils. Real fright is like a sort of reminiscence of the fantastic terrors of old. A man who believes in spirits and imagines himself seeing a ghost in the night must expe- rience fright in all its fearful horror. "As for myself, I had a taste of fright in broad daylight about ten years ago. I felt it again last winter, one night in December. "And yet, I have certainly had many a narrow escape, many an adventure which pointed to deadly consequences. I have often been in fights. I have been left for dead by rob- ber bands. I have been condemned to the gallows in Amer- ica to be hanged as a rebel ; and I have been thrown into the sea, near the coast of China, from the bridge of a ship. Each time I thought myself lost, accepting my fate without comment or even regret. "But that was not fright. "I had a touch of it while in Africa. And yet fright is a child of the north; sunshine dissipates it as though it were a fog. Note this well, gentlemen: among the Orientals life counts for nothing; they readily resign themselves; the FRIGHT 221 nights are clear, and free of the somber anxieties which harass the imagination of the people of northern climes. In the East men know panic, but they do not know what fright is. "And here is what happened to me in that land of Africa: "I was crossing the broad sand dunes in the south of Ouargla. 2 That is one of the strangest countries in the world. You have seen the smooth sand on the interminable beaches of the ocean. Well, picture the ocean itself in the midst of a storm suddenly become sand; imagine a silent tempest of motionless waves of yellow sand. They are as high as mountains, these waves, unequal, each one different, and heaving as though they had just been unchained, larger and larger, with furrow-like streaks on their surface. On this raging sea, silent and motionless, the devouring sun of the south beats down remorselessly. The traveler must climb these billows of golden ashes, come down again, go up, climbing without end, without rest, without shade. The horses pant, sinking to their knees, and slipping as they go down the other side of these peculiar hills. "There were two of us, myself and a friend, acompanied by eight spahis 3 and four camels with their drivers. We no longer talked, weakened by the heat, tired out, and dry as the desert itself with thirst. Suddenly one of our men gave a sort of cry; all of us stopped; we remained motion- less, surprised by an inexplicable phenomenon known only to travelers in those desert lands. "Somewhere, near us, in a direction which we could not make out, we heard the beating of a drum, the mysterious drum of the dunes ; the beating was distinct, now strong, now weaker, stopping entirelv, then resuming its fantastic roll. 2. A part of the Sahara Desert in Algeria. : J >. Native horse soldiers serving in the French army in Algeria. 222 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "The Arabs, frightened, looked at each other; one said in his own language, 'Death is upon us.' And behold, all of a sudden my companion and friend, almost my brother, fell from his horse, head forward, from sunstroke. "For two hours, during which I tried in vain to save him, that drum ceaselessly kept filling my ears with its monoto* nous noise, intermittent and incomprehensible; and I began to feel glide into my bones fright, true fright, hideous fright, there in the presence of the dead body of my beloved friend, in that sun-scorched trough, between four hills of sand; while here, six hundred miles from the nearest French village, continued the echo of the beating of that strange drum. "That day I understood what it was to be frightened; I knew it even better on another occasion. ..." The captain interrupted the story-teller : "Pardon, Monsieur, but that drum ? What was it ?" The traveler replied : "I know nothing about it. No one knows. Officers, often surprised by that singular sound, generally attribute it to an enlarged echo, multiplied, immeasurably swelled by the hollows of the dunes, a sort of hail of grains of sand carried by the wind and thrown against tufts of dried grass ; for it has been remarked that the phenomenon is produced in the vicinity of small plants parched by the sun and hard as parchment. "This drum is therefore nothing more than a sort of mirage of sound. That's all. But this I learned only later. "I go on to my second experience. "It was last winter, in a forest in the northeast of France. Night fell two hours before its time because the sky was overcast. My guide was a peasant who walked at my side, along a very narrow path, beneath an arch of fir-trees through which the howling wind roared. Between the tops FRIGHT 223 I saw the scattered clouds sweep by, clouds distracted, as though fleeing before something fearful. At times, hit by a strong gust, the whole forest bowed down in the same direction, with a groan as of suffering; and the cold pene- trated me in spite of my rapid pace and my heavy clothing. "We were to have supper and lodging at the home of a forest- guard whose house was not very far away. I was going there to hunt. "My guide every now and then raised his eyes, muttering, 'Miserable weather !' Then he spoke to me about the people to whose house we were going. The father had killed a poacher two years before, and since that time he seemed melancholy, as though haunted by the memory of his act. His two married sons lived with him. "It was pitch dark. I saw nothing in front of me, nor around me, and the trees clashing with one another filled the night with a ceaseless rumble. At last I saw a light and presently my companion was knocking at a door. We were answered by the shrill cries of women. Then a man's voice, a choked voice, asked 'Who's there ?' My guide gave his name. We entered. The picture before us was one we shall never forget. "An old white-haired man, wild-eyed, a loaded gun in his hands, stood in the middle of the kitchen awaiting us, while two husky fellows, armed with axes, guarded the door. In the dark corners I made out two women on their knees, their faces turned towards the wall. "They explained. The old man placed his weapon against the wall and ordered my room to be made ready ; and as the women did not budge he said to me, gruffly : ' 'You see, Monsieur, I killed a man, two years ago to- night. Last year he came back and called my name. I am expecting him again tonight!' "And he added, in a tone which almost made me smile : 224 FRENCH SHORT STORIES " 'So we are not very calm.' "I removed his fears as best I could, pleased to have come on just this evening, when I could witness this display ot superstitious terror. I told stories, and succeeded somewhat in calming nearly all of them. "Near the fireplace an old dog, shaggy-haired and almost blind, one of those dogs who seemed to resemble someone whom we know, lay asleep, his nose between his paws. "Outside the furious storm beat upon the little house, and through a narrow window, a sort of peep-hole placed near the door, I saw every now and then, in the flashes ot the lightning, a confusion of trees jostled about by the wind. "In spite of my efforts I could feel that a profound terror gripped these people, and every time I stopped speaking every ear was turned as though to catch a distant sound. Tired of witnessing these foolish fears., I was about to ask to be shown to my room, when the old guard made a sudden bound from his chair, again seized his gun, and exclaimed in a wild and broken voice: 'Here he is ! Here he is ! I hear him!' The two women again fell to their knees in their corners, hiding their faces ; and the sons again took up their axes. I was once more going to try to calm them when the sleeping dog roused himself abruptly, and, raising his head, stretching out his neck, gazing into the fire with his dimmed eyes, he gave forth one of those mournful howls which so often startle travelers at night in the country. All eyes were centered on him, but he remained motionless, erect on his feet as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl towards some invisible object, unknown, fearful, no doubt, because his hair was bristling. The guard, pale, cried: 'He scents him! He scents him! He was there when I killed him.' And the two women, both utterly distracted, began to howl with the dog. "In spite of myself I felt a cold shiver between my shoul- FRIGHT 225 ders. The sight of that animal in that position at that hour, in the midst of those excited people, was frightful to see. "So for an hour the dog howled without moving; he howled like someone in the agony of a dream; and fright, terrible fright, took hold of me. Fright of what? Do I know ? It was fright, that's all. "We remained motionless, pale, awaiting some ghastly outcome, alert, with beating heart, upset at the least noise. And the dog began to walk around the room, sniffing the walls and growling constantly. That beast drove us mad ! Presently my guide grabbed him in a sort of paroxysm of furious terror, and, opening a door which gave upon a small court, he pitched the animal out. "The dog immediately became quiet; and we remained in a spell of silence even more terrifying. Suddenly all of us together gave a start; some being scraped against the wall on the outside in the direction of the forest ; it passed against the door, groping along as with a hesitating hand ; then we heard nothing for about two minutes, which almost drove us insane; then it came back, continually grazing the wall; there was a light scratching, such as a child might make with its nails ; then all of a sudden a head appeared against the glass of the peep-hole, a white head with two glistening eyes like those of a deer. And a sound came from its mouth, an indistinct sound, a plaintive murmur. "Then there was the noise of a great explosion in the kitchen. The old' guard had fired. Quickly the sons rushed' forth and stopped up the pe^p-hole by putting the table against it, buttressing it with the sideboard. And I vow that at the crash of the gun-shot, which I was not expecting, I felt such a depression of the heart, the soul, and the body, that I was near collapsing, ready to die" from fright. "We remained there until dawn, unable to move or to say a word, spellbound by an unspeakable terror. 226 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "We did not dare to free the door of its barricade until we saw through a crack at the top a thin ray of daylight. "At the foot of the wall, against the door, the old dog lay, his jaw shattered by a bullet. "He had escaped from the yard by digging a hole beneath the fence." The man with the tanned face stopped talking; then he added : "That night, however, I ran no risk of danger; yet I should rather experience again every hour in which I was confronted with the most terrible perils than that single minute of the shot of that gun at the bearded head against the peep-hole." TWO FRIENDS 1 By GUY DE MAUPASSANT Paris was blockaded, famished, at the last gasp. Spar- rows were scarce on the roofs, and the sewers depleted of their rats. Every mortal thing was being eaten. Strolling sadly along the outer boulevard on a fine Janu- ary morning, with his hands in the pockets of his military trousers, and his stomach empty, M. Morissot, a watch- maker by profession, and a man of his ease when he had the chance, caught sight of a friend, and stopped. This was M. Sauvage, an acquaintance he had made out fishing. For before the war Morissot had been in the habit of starting out at dawn every Sunday, rod in hand, and a tin box on his back. He would take the train to Argenteuil, 2 get out at Colombes, then go on foot as far as the Island of Marante. The moment he reached this Elysium of his dreams he would begin to fish, and fish till night. Every Sunday he met there a little round and jovial man, this M. Sauvage, a haberdasher of Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, also a perfect fanatic at fishing. They would often pass half the day side by side, rod in hand, feet dangling above the stream, and in this manner had become fast friends. Some days they did not talk, other days they did. But they understood each other admirably without words, for their tastes and feelings were identical. On spring mornings, about ten o'clock, when the young sun was raising a faint mist above the quiet-flowing river, 1. From Yrette and Other Stories. Translated by Mrs. John Gals- worthy and printed by permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 2. A town six miles out from Paris. 007 228 FRENCH SHORT STORIES and blessing the backs of those two passionate fishermen with a pleasant warmth, Morissot would murmur to his neighbor: "I say, isn't it heavenly?" and M. Sauvage would reply: "Couldn't be jollier!" It was quite enough to make them understand and like each other. Or in autumn, towards sunset, when the blood-red sky and crimson clouds were reflected in the water, the whole river stained with color, the horizon flaming, when our two friends looked as red as fire, and the trees, already russet and shivering at the touch of winter, were turned to gold, M. Sauvage would look smilingly at Morissot, and remark: "What a sight!" and Morissot, not taking his eyes off his float, would reply ecstatically: "Bit better than it is in town, eh?" Having made sure of each other, they shook hands heart- ily, quite moved at meeting again in such different circum- stances. M. Sauvage, heaving a sigh, murmured: "Nice state of things!" Morissot, very gloomy, quavered out: "And what weather! Today's the first fine day this year!" The sky was indeed quite blue and full of light. They moved on, side by side, ruminative, sad. Morissot pursued his thought: "And fishing, eh? What jolly times we used to have!" "Ah !" muttered M. Sauvage. "W T hen shall we go fishing again?" They entered a little cafe, took an absinthe together, and started off once more, strolling along the pavement. Suddenly Morissot halted: "Another nip?" he said. "Right-o!" responded M. Sauvage. And in they went to another wine-shop. They came out rather light-headed, affected by so much alcohol on their starving stomachs. The day was mild, and a soft breeze caressed their faces. M. Sauvage, to whose light-headedness this warmth was TWO FRIENDS 229 putting the finishing touch, stopped short: "I say — suppose we go !" "What d'you mean?" "Fishing!" "Where?" "Why, at our island. The French outposts are close to Colombes. I know Colonel Dumoulin ; he'll be sure to let us pass." Morissot answered, quivering with eagerness : "All right ; I'm on !" And they parted, to get their fishing gear. An hour later they were marching along the high road. They came presently to the villa occupied by the Colonel, who, much amused by their whim, gave them leave. And furnished with his permit, they set off again. They soon passed the outposts, and, traversing the aban- doned village of Colombes, found themselves at the edge of the little vineyard fields that run down to the Seine. It was &bout eleven o'clock. The village of Argenteuil, opposite, seemed quite deserted. The heights of Orgemont and Sannois commanded the whole countryside ; the great plain stretching to Nanterre was empty, utterly empty of all but its naked cherry-trees and its gray earth. M. Sauvage jerking his thumb towards the heights, mut- tered: "The Prussians are up there!" And disquietude stole into the hearts of the two friends, looking at that de- serted land. The Prussians ! They had never seen any, but they had felt them there for months, all around Paris, bringing ruin to France, bringing famine; pillaging, mas- sacring; invisible, yet invincible. And a sort of supersti- tious terror went surging through their hatred for this unknown and victorious race. Morissot stammered: "I say — suppose we were to meet some?" 230 FRENCH SHORT STORIES With that Parisian jocularity which nothing can repress M. Sauvage replied: "We'd give 'em some fried fish." None the less, daunted by the silence all round, they hesitated to go further. At last M. Sauvage took the plunge. "Come on ! But we must keep our eyes skinned !" They got down into a vineyard, where they crept along, all eyes and ears, bent double, taking cover behind every bush. There was still a strip of open ground to cross before they could get to the riverside ; they took it at the double, and the moment they reached the bank plumped down amongst some osiers. Morissot glued his ear to the ground for any sound of footsteps. Nothing ! They were alone, utterly alone. They plucked up spirit again, and began to fish. In front of them the Island of Marante, uninhabited, hid them from the far bank. The little island restaurant was closed, and looked as if it had been abandoned for years. M. Sauvage caught the first gudgeon, Morissot the second, and every minute they kept pulling in their lines with a little silvery creature wriggling at the end. Truly a miraculous draught of fishes ! They placed their spoil carefully in a very fine-meshed net suspended in the water at their feet, and were filled by the delicious joy that visits those who know once more a pleasure of which they have been deprived too long. The good sun warmed their shoulders; they heard noth- ing, thought of nothing, were lost to the world. They fished. But suddenly a dull boom, which seemed to come from underground, made the earth tremble. The bombardment had begun again. Morissot turned his head. Away above the bank he could see on the left the great silhouette of Mont Valerien, show- ing a white plume high up — an ashy puff just belched forth. TWO FRIENDS 231 Then a second spurt of smoke shot up from the fort's summit, and some seconds afterwards was heard the roar of the gun. Then more and more. Every minute the hill shot forth its deadly breath, sighed out milky vapors that rose slowly to the calm heaven, and made a crown of cloud. M. Sauvage shrugged his shoulders. "At it again !" he said. Morissot, who was anxiously watching the bobbing of his float, was seized with the sudden fury of a man of peace against these maniacs battering at each other, and he growled out: "Idiots I call them, killing each other like that!" "Worse than the beasts !" said M. Sauvage. And Morissot, busy with a fish, added: "It'll always be like that, in my opinion, so long as we have governments." M. Sauvage cut him short. "The Republic would never have declared war " Morissot broke in: "Under a monarchy you get war against your neighbors; under a republic — war amongst yourselves." And they began tranquilly discussing and unravelling momentous political problems with the common sense of two gentle, narrow creatures, who agreed at any rate on this one point, that Man would never be free. And Mont Valerien thundered without ceasing, shattering with its shells the homes of France, pounding out life, crush- ing human beings, putting an end to many a dream, to many a longed-for joy, to many a hoped-for happiness; opening everywhere, too, in the hearts of wives, of girls, of mother*, wounds that would never heal. "That's life!" declared M. Sauvage. "I should call it death," said Morissot, and laughed. They both gave a sudden start; there was surely someone coming up behind them. Turning their eyes they s^iw, 232 FRENCH SHORT STORIES standing close to their very elbows, four men, four big bearded men, dressed in a sort of servant's livery, wi^h flat caps on their heads, pointing rifles at them. The rods fell from their hands and floated off down- stream. In a few seconds, they were seized, bound, thrown into a boat, and taken over to the island. Behind the house that they had thought deserted they perceived some twenty German soldiers. A sort of hairy giant, smoking a great porcelain pipe, and sitting astride of a chair, said in excellent French: "Well, gentlemen, what luck fishing?" Whereupon a soldier laid at his officer's feet the net full of fish, which he had carefully brought along. The Prussian smiled. "I see — not bad. But we've other fish to fry. Now listen to me, and keep cool. I regard you two as spies sent to watch me. I take you, and I shoot you. You were pretending to fish, the better to disguise your plans. You've fallen into my hands ; so much the worse for you. That's war. But, seeing that you passed through your outposts, you must assuredly have been given the password to get back again. Give it me, and I'll let you go." Livid, side by side, the two friends were silent, but their hands kept jerking with little nervous movements. The officer continued: "No one will ever know; it will be all right; you can go home quite easy in your minds. If you refuse, it's death — instant death. Choose." They remained motionless, without a word. The Prussian, calm as ever, stretched out his hand towards the water, and said: "Think! In five minutes you'll be at the bottom of that river. In five minutes. You've got fami- lies, I suppose?" Mont Valerien went on thundering. The two fishermen staod there silent. TWO FRIENDS 233 The German gave an order in his own language. Then he moved his chair so as not to be too near his prisoners. Twelve men came forward, took their stand twenty paces away, and grounded arms. The officer said: "I give you one minute; not a second more." And, getting up abruptly, he approached the two French- men, took Morissot by the arm, and, drawing him aside, whispered : "Quick, that password. Your friend need never know. It will only look as if I'd relented. Morissot made no answer. Then the Prussian took M. Sauvage apart, and asked him the same question. M. Sauvage did not reply. Once again they were side by side. The officer gave a word of command. The soldiers raised their rifles. At that moment Morissot's glance lighted on the net full of gudgeons lying on the grass a few paces from him. The sunshine was falling on that glittering heap of fishes, still full of life. His spirit sank. In spite of all effort his eyes filled with tears. "Adieu, M. Sauvage!" he stammered out. M. Sauvage answered: "Adieu, M. Morissot." They grasped each other's hands, shaken from head to foot by a trembling that they could not control. "Fire !" cried the officer. Twelve shots rang out as one. M. Sauvage fell forward like a log. Morissot, the taller, wavered, spun round, and came down across his comrade, his face upturned to the sky ; blood spurted from his tunic, torn across the chest. The German gave another order. His men dispersed. They came back with ropes and stones, which they fastened to the feet of the two dead friends, whom thev carried to the 234 FRENCH SHORT STORIES river bank. And Mont Valerien never ceased rumbling, crowned now with piled-up clouds of smoke. Two of the soldiers took Morissot by the head and heels, two others laid hold of M. Sauvage. The bodies, swung violently to and fro, were hurled forward, described a curve, then plunged upright into the river, where the stones dragged them down feet first. The water splashed up, bubbled, wrinkled, then fell calm again, and tiny waves rippled out towards the banks. A few bloodstains floated away out there. The officer, calm as ever, said quietly: "It's the fish who've got the luck now !" and went back towards the house. But suddenly catching sight of the net full of gudgeons on the grass, he took it up, looked it over, smiled, and called out: "Wilhelm!" A soldier in a white apron came running up. The Prussian threw him the spoil of the two dead fishermen. "Get these little affairs fried at once while they're still alive. First-rate like that !" And he went back to his pipe. THE HAND 1 By GUY DE MAUPASSANT We formed a circle around Monsieur Bermutier, Exam- ining Magistrate/ as he gave his version of the mysterious affair at St. Cloud. 3 For a month this inexplicable crime baffled Paris. No one understood it. Monsieur Bermutier, standing with his back to the fire- place, spoke, summing up the proof, discussing the different opinions, but coming to no conclusion himself. Several women had risen to come closer and remained standing, their eyes fixed on the clean-shaven mouth of the magistrate from which fell the grave words. They shivered and shuddered, thrilled by their curious fear, by the greedy and insatiable need of excitement which haunted their souls, torturing them like hunger. One of them, paler than the others, remarked, during a moment of silence: "It's frightful. It verges on the supernatural. No one will ever know." The magistrate turned toward her : "Yes, madame, it is probable that we shall never know anything about it. As for the word 'supernatural' which you just used, it has no connection here. We are in the presence of a crime very well known, very commonly enacted, but so completely enveloped in mystery that it is impossible to disentangle it from the impenetrable circumstances which 1. Translated by Louis LaCroix. 2. In France, an officer appointed by the court to make an impar- tial investigation of a crime. 3. A town some miles away from Paris. 235 236 FRENCH SHORT STORIES surround it. But I had to follow up an affair once where truly there seemed to be an element of the fantastic. It had to be abandoned^ moreover, through lack of means to solve it." Several of the ladies said at once, speaking so quickly that their voices sounded as one: "Oh ! tell us about it." Monsieur Bermutier smiled gravely, as an Examining Magistrate should smile. He continued: "Don't think, though, that I was able, even for a moment, to persuade myself to believe there was anything super- human in this adventure. I believe in normal causes only. But if, instead of employing the word 'supernatural' to express that which we do not understand, we use simply the word 'inexplicable,' that would be much better. At all events, in the affair about which I am going to tell you, it is particularly the surrounding circumstances, the preparatory circumstances, which stirred me. In fine, here are the facts: "I was the Examining Magistrate at Ajaccio, 4 a little white village nestling picturesquely on the edge of a gulf, surrounded on all sides by high mountains. "My special business there was an investigation of the activities connected with the vendettas. 5 One finds some of these feuds superb, some dramatic to the utmost, some ferocious, some heroic. We find there the most striking cases of vengeance imaginable, hatreds a hundred years old, allayed for a while, but never extinct; execrable ruses; assassinations which take on the proportions of massacres, and deeds that are almost glorious. For two years I heard speak of nothing but the price of blood, of that terrible Cor- sican custom which seeks to revenge every injury on the person of him who committed it, on his descendants and his 4. The capital of Corsica. The island of Corsica is a province of France. 5. A vendetta is the mode of self-redress by which fellow-kinsmen were bound to take vengeance for any personal injury done to a mem- ber of their clan or family. THE HAND 237 kin. I saw old men butchered;, and children., together with their blood relations. My head was full of such stories. "One day I learned that an Englishman had just leased for several years a little villa just back from the gulf. He had brought with him a French domestic, hired as he passed through Marseilles. 6 "Soon every one busied himself about this strange indi- vidual who lived all by himself,, coming out only to hunt and to fish. v He spoke to no one, never came to town, and every morning, for an hour or two, practiced shooting with the pistol and the rifle. "He became the subject of queer stories. The gossip ran that he was a man of high rank who had fled his country for political reasons; and some insisted that he had com- mitted a terrible crime and was hiding. Some even supplied the horrible details. "As Examining Magistrate I wanted to get hold of some information about the man, but it was impossible to learn anything. He went by the name of Sir John Rowell. "So I contented myself with merely keeping a close watch; but in truth, nothing seemed to justify a suspicion of him. "However, as the rumors about him continued, grew more sweeping, more general, I resolved to try to see this stranger myself, and I began hunting regularly in the vicinity of his estate. "I waited a long time for an opportunity. It presented itself, finally, in the form of a partridge which I shot and killed under the very nose of the Englishman. My dog fetched it, but I as quickly seized the fowl and went to excuse my impropriety, begging Sir John Rowell to accept the dead bird. 6. The largest port in southern France and the point of departure for Corsica. 238 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "He was a big man with red hair, red beard, very tall, well proportioned, a sort of Hercules, placid and polite. He had none of the reputed British stiffness, and he hastened to thank me for my courtesy in a French strongly marked with an English accent. In the course of a month we had conversed five or six times. "Finally one evening, as I passed by his house, I noticed him sitting straddle on a chair in his garden, smoking a pipe. I greeted him and he invited me in to have a glass of beer with him. He did not have to ask me twice. "He received me with all the meticulous courtesy of the English, spoke in glowing terms of France and of Corsica, declaring that he greatly liked this country and this coast. "So I asked him, with much precaution, under the sem- blance of lively interest, several questions about his life and his experiences. He answered me without embarrass- ment, telling me that he had traveled much in Africa, in the Indies, in America. He added laughingly : " 'I've had many adventures, oh! out' "Then I resumed the conversation about hunting; he gave me the most curious details about hunting hippopotami, tigers, elephants, and even about hunting gorillas. "I remarked: " 'Those are all formidable animals.' "He smiled: " 'Oh ! no. The most formidable is man.' "He burst into a laugh, the hearty laugh of a big, contented Englishman. He continued: " 'I've hunted men a great deal, too.' - "And he spoke of weapons, asking me into the house to show me his collection of guns of various makes. "His living room was draped in black, black silk embroid- ered with gold. Large yellow flowers bedecked the somber cloth, shining like fire. THE HAND 239 "He explained: " 'This is a Japanese tapestry.' "In the center of the largest panel a strange thing attracted my eye. On a square of red velvet a black object dangled. I approached it; it was a hand, the hand of a man. Not the hand of a skeleton, white and clean, but a shriveled-up black hand, with yellow fingernails, the muscles exposed, with traces of dried clots of blood on the bones, which were cut bluntly as by the stroke of an ax, about the middle of the forearm. "Around the wrist a heavy iron chain was riveted and soldered, attaching this ghastly member to the wall by a ring strong enough to hold an elephant in leash. "I asked: "'What's that?' "The Englishman answered calmly: " 'That was my most formidable enemy. It comes from America. It was cut off with a sword and the skin torn off with a sharpened stone and dried in the sun for eight days. Oh, that was all right for me, that was/ "I touched this bit of human debris, which must have belonged to a colossus. The fingers, unusually long, were held by enormous tendons which still retained strips of skin in places. That hand was a fearful thing to look at, skinned like that. It very naturally made one think of some savage kind of vengeance. "I said: ' 'That man must have been very strong.' "The Englishman answered calmly: " 'Oh, yes ; but I was stronger than he. I have put on that chain to hold him.' "I thought that he was joking. I continued: ' 'That chain is quite useless now; the hand will not run awav.' 240 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Sir John Rowell resumed gravely: " 'It has constantly threatened to run away. That chain is necessary/ "I glanced inquiringly at the expression on his face,, asking myself : " 'Is he crazy, or just a morbid joker?' "But his face remained impenetrable, calm, and benevo- lent. I spoke of other things, and admired his guns. "I noticed, too, that on the table there were three loaded pistols, as though the man lived in constant fear of being- attacked. "I visited him several times more. Then I stopped going. The community became accustomed to his presence; he was no longer the special object of attention to any one. "A whole year elapsed. But one morning, toward the end of November, my servant awoke me with the news that Sir John Rowell had been assassinated during the night. "A half hour later I entered the house of the Englishman, together with the president of the police board and the chief of police. The valet, distracted and in despair, stood outside the door, weeping. At first I suspected him, but he was innocent. "The guilty party has never been found. "Upon entering the living room of Sir John Rowell the first thing which met my eyes was the corpse, stretched on its back, in the middle of the floor. "The vest was torn, a detached sleeve hung loose; and everything indicated that a terrible struggle had taken place. "The Englishman had been strangled! His face, black and swollen, was dreadful and seemed to show signs of a horrible fright. Between his teeth, closed tight, he held something j and in his neck were five holes which seemed made with points of steel and were covered with blood. THE HAND 241 "A doctor joined us. He examined for a long time the torn flesh where the fingers had plowed through, and spoke these strange words: " 'It looks as though he had been strangled by a skeleton^' "A chill crept over me, and I cast my eyes on the wall, at the spot where I had seen that horrible hand with the skin torn off. It was no longer there. The broken chain only dangled there. "Then I stooped over the corpse and noticed, in the mouth, held tightly, one of the fingers of that vanished hand, cut, or rather sawed off by the teeth at the second joint. "Then we proceeded with the investigation. We discov- ered nothing. No door had been broken, no window, no furniture. The two watch-dogs had not been awakened. "Here, in a few words, is the deposition of the servant: "For a month his employer had seemed troubled. He had received many letters, all of which he burned imme- diately. "Often, taking a riding-whip, in a fit of anger which bordered on madness, he struck with fury the shriveled hand fastened to the wall, and detached, no one knows how, at the very hour of the crime. "He went to bed very late and carefully locked himself in. He always kept weapons at hand. Often, at night, he spoke out loud as though he were quarreling with some. one. "This particular night, however, he had made no noise, and it was only when he came to open the windows that the servant found Sir John Rowell assassinated. He suspected no one. "I told the magistrates and the officers of the police what I knew about the dead man, and a minute inquiry was made on the whole island. No clue was found. "Then, one night, three months after the crime, I had a fearful nightmare. It seemed to me that I saw the hand, 242 FRENCH SHORT STORIES that horrible hand, run like a scorpion or a spider along my curtains and my walls. Three times I awoke, three times I went back to sleep, three times I saw that hideous hand gallop around my room, moving its fingers like claws. "The next day it was brought to me, having been found in the cemetery, on the tomb of Sir John Rowell, who was buried there; for we had been unable to locate his family. The index finger was missing. "There, ladies, you have my story. I know nothing more about it." The women were aghast, pale, trembling. One of them exclaimed : "But that is not a denouement, or an explanation. We shall not sleep if you do not tell us what your theory is." The magistrate smiled with an air of seriousness : "Oh, of course, ladies. I shall prevent your having bad dreams. I think it was simply that the legitimate owner of the hand was not dead ; that he came back to get it with the remaining hand. I have been unable to understand, though, how he did it. In that respect it is a sort of ven- detta." One of the women remarked slowly : "No, it could hardly have been that." The Examining Magistrate, still smiling, concluded: "I told you at the beginning that my explanation would not satisfy you." DAUDET (1840-1897) Alphonse Daudet was born in Provence., a district of southern France, in 1840. Owing to family misfortunes his education was irregular. While yet a boy he went to Lyons and later to Paris, where he eventually received his first recognition as a writer. He was for many years connected with Le Figaro, one of the most influential journals of Paris. This association gave Daudet's charming personality an opportunity to manifest itself, and he became a member of the select circle of literary men which included Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourt brothers, and others. However, in spite of the many years in Paris, Daudet never outgrew his love for his native Provence, and much of his characteristic work deals with the life and people of a part of France which has lingered gently within the border- land of romance. Fortunately Daudet did not allow this feeling to carry him over into mere rhapsody. He saw the humorous side of his fellow Provencals, and at times he even burlesques them. This is true of his best known long story, Tartarin de Taraseon, one of the very best pieces of humor that France has produced. Daudet was a realist, like nearly all of his contemporaries, but his realism was tempered by a highly colored imagina- tion and a nature that was essentially emotional. His real- ism shows perhaps best in the vivid local color with which he surrounds many of his plots. This he achieved by ac- tually putting himself into the environment which he tried to present. For instance, in order to write The Letters from My Mill — a series of sketches and short stories about that part of Provence in which Nimes is located — he lived for a time in an old windmill near that city. This book includes some of his best stories, such as The Death of the Dauphin, 243 244 FRENCH SHORT STORIES a story full of tears, and The Pope's Mule and The Reverend Father Gaucher's Elixir, both printed in this volume, two of his most effective short pieces of humor. The story mentioned first also illustrates Daudet's fondness for por- traying child life. Owing to his own early life he always becomes intensely emotional when writing about the afflic- tions of childhood. Besides a number of short stories on this thenie, at least two of his longer novels, Le Petit Chose and Jack, are elaborations of the same idea. Daudet is at his best in the short story, and his stories are among the finest that were produced in a language and a literature second to none in this particular form of fiction. He always got his material from his immediate surround- ings, so it is no wonder that the Franco-Prussian War entered into his work, as it did into that of so many of his contemporaries. He was in Paris at the time o*f the siege, and of this he tells with remarkable vividness and striking originality in the Siege of Berlin. Like all his countrymen, he was profoundly touched by the fate of Alsace, and no native Alsatian could exceed Daudet in the feeling of despair which he expresses in The Last Lesson, one of the stories selected for this volume. Daudet spent most of his life in Paris, where he died on December 16, 1897. THE LAST LESSON 1 By ALPHONSE DAUDET That morning it was quite late before I started for school, and I was terribly afraid I should be scolded, for Monsieur Hamel had told us that he would question us upon participles, and I did not know the first thing about them. For a moment I thought of escaping from school and roving through the fields. The day was so warm, so clear ! The blackbirds were whistling on the outskirts of the woods. In Rippert Meadow,* behind the sawmill, the Prussians were drilling. All these things were far more attractive to me than the rule for the use of participles. But I mustered up strength to resist temptation, and hurried on to school. As I reached the town hall, I saw a group of people; they .loitered before the little grating, reading the placards posted upon it. For two years every bit of bad news had been anounced to us from that grating. There we read what battles had been lost, what requisitions made; there we learned what orders had issued from headquarters. And though I did not pause with the rest, I wondered to myself, "What can be the matter now?" As I ran across the square, Wachter, the blacksmith, who, in company with his apprentice, was absorbed in reading the notice, exclaimed, — "Not so fast, child ! You will reach school soon enough !" I believed he was making game of me, and I was quite out of breath when I entered Monsieur Hamel's small domain. 1. Translated by Marian Mclntyre. Copyright. 1899, by Little, Brown and Company. 245 246 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Now, at the beginning of the session there was usually such an uproar that it could be heard as far as the street. Desks were opened and shut, lessons recited at the top of our voices, all shouting together, each of us stopping his ears that he might hear better. Then the master's big ruler would descend upon his desk, and he would say, — "Silence!" I counted upon making my entrance in the midst of the usual babel and reaching my seat unobserved, but upon this particular morning all was hushed. Sabbath stillness reigned. Through the open window I could see that my comrades had already taken their seats; I could see Mon- sieur Hamel himself, passing back and forth, his formidable iron ruler under his arm. I must open that door. I must enter in the midst of that deep silence. I need not tell you that I grew red in the face, and terror seized me. But, strangely enough, as Monsieur Hamel scrutinized me, there was no anger in his gaze. He said very gently, — "Take your seat quickly, my little Franz. We were going to begin without you." I climbed over the bench, and seated myself.. But when I had recovered a little from my fright, I noticed that our master had donned his beautiful green frock-coat, his finest frilled shirt, and his embroidered black silk calotte, 2 which he wdre only on inspection days, or upon those occasions when prizes were distributed. Moreover, an extraordinary solemnity had taken possession of my classmates. But the greatest surprise of all came when my eye fell upon the benches at the farther end of the room. Usually they were empty, but upon this morning the villagers were seated there, solemn as ourselves. There sat old Hauser, with his three-cornered hat, there sat the venerable mayor, the aged 2. The skull-cap worn by teachers. THE LAST LESSON 247 carrier, and other personages of importance. All of our visitors seemed sad, and Hauser had brought with him an old primer, chewed at the edges. It lay wide open upon his knees, his big spectacles reposing upon the page. While I was wondering at all these things, Monsieur Hamel had taken his seat, and in the same grave and gentle tone in which he had greeted me, he said to us, — "My children, this is the last day I shall teach you. The I order has come from Berlin that henceforth in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine 3 all instruction shall be given in the German tongue only. Your new master will arrive tomorrow. Today you hear the last lesson you will receive in French, and I beg you will be most attentive." My "last" French lesson ! And I scarcely knew how to write! Now I should never learn. My education must be cut short. How I grudged at that moment every minute I had lost, every lesson I had missed for the sake of hunting birds' nests or making slides upon the Saar! 4 And those books which a moment before were so dry and dull, so heavy to carry, my grammar, my Bible-history, seemed now to wear the faces of old friends, whom I could not bear to bid farewell. It was with them as with Monsieur Hamel, the thought that he was about to leave, that I should see him no more, made me forget all the blows of his ruler, and the many punishments I had received. Poor man! It was in honor of that last session that he was arrayed in his finest Sunday garb, and now I began to understand why the villagers had gathered at the back of the class-room. Their presence at such a moment seemed to express regret that they had not visited that school-room of tener j it was their way of telling our master they thanked 3. Two French provinces taken from France by the Germans after the war of 1870. 4. A river in Alsace-Lorraine. 248 FRENCH SHORT STORIES him for forty years of faithful service, and desired to pay their respects to the land whose empire was departing. I was busied with these reflections when I heard my name called. It was now my turn to recite. Ah! what would I not have given then, had I been able to repeat from beginning to end that famous rule for the use of participles loudly, distinctly, and without a single mistake; but I became entangled in the first few words, and remained standing at my seat, swinging from side to side, my heart swelling. I dared not raise my head. Monsieur Hamel was addressing me. "I shall not chide thee, my little Franz ; thy punishment will be great enough. So it is ! We say to ourselves each day, 'Bah! I have time enough. I will learn tomorrow.' And now see what results. Ah, it has ever been the greatest misfortune of our Alsace that she was willing to put off learning till Tomorrow! And now these foreigners can say to us, and justly, 'What! you profess to be Frenchmen, and can neither speak nor write your own language?' And in all this, my poor Franz, you are not the chief culprit. Each of us has something to reproach himself with. "Your parents have not shown enough anxiety about having you educated. They preferred to see you spinning, or tilling the soil, since that brought them in a few more sous. 5 And have I nothing with which to reproach myself ? Did I not often send you to water my garden when you should have been at your tasks? And if I wished to go trout- fishing, was my conscience in the least disturbed when I gave you a holiday?" One topic leading to another, Monsieur Hamel began to speak of the French language, saying it was the strongest, clearest, most beautiful language in the world, which we must keep as our heritage, never allowing it to be forgotten, 5. A sou is worth one cent. THE LAST LESSON 249 telling us that when a nation has become enslaved, she holds the key which shall unlock her prison as long as she pre- serves her native tongue. Then he took a grammar, and read our lesson to us, and I was amazed to see how well I understood. Everything he said seemed so very simple, so easy! I had never, I believe, listened to any one as I listened to him at that moment, and never before had he shown so much patience in his explanations. It really seemed as if the poor man, anxious to impart everything he knew before he took leave of us, desired to strike a single blow that might drive all his knowledge into our heads at once. The lesson was followed by writing. For this occasion Monsieur Hamel had prepared some copies that were en- tirely new, and upon these were written in a beautiful round hand, "France, Alsace! France, Alsace!" These words were as inspiring as the sight of the tiny flags attached to the rod of our desks. It was good to see how each one applied himself, and how silent it was ! Not a sound save the scratching of pens as they touched our papers. Once, indeed, some cockchafers entered the room, but no one paid the least attention to them, not even the tiniest pupil; for the youngest were absorbed in tracing their straight strokes as earnestly and conscientiously as if these too were written in French ! On the roof of the school- house the pigeons were cooing softly, and I thought to myself as I listened, "And must they also be compelled to sing in German?" From time to time, looking up from my page, I saw Monsieur Hamel, motionless in his chair, his eyes riveted upon each object about him, as if he desired to fix in his mind, and forever, every detail of his little school. Remem- ber that for forty years he had been constantly at his post, in that very school-room, facing the same playground. Little 250 FRENCH SHORT STORIES had changed. The desks and benches were polished and worn, through long use ; the walnut-trees in the playground had grown taller; and the hop-vine he himself had planted curled its tendrils about the windows, running even to the roof. What anguish must have filled the poor man's heart, as he thought of leaving all these things, and heard his sister moving to and fro in the room overhead, busied in fastening their trunks! For on the morrow they were to leave the country, never to return. Nevertheless, his courage did not falter ; not a single lesson was omitted. After writ- ing came history, and then the little ones sang their "Ba, Be, Bi, Bo, Bu," together. Old Hauser, at the back of the room, had put on his spectacles, and, holding his primer in both hands, was spelling out the letters with the little ones. He too was absorbed in his task; his voice trembled with emo- tion, and it was so comical to hear him that we all wanted to laugh and to cry at the same moment. Ah ! never shall I forget that last lesson ! Suddenly the church clock struck twelve, and then the Angelus 6 was heard. At the same moment, a trumpet-blast under our window announced that the Prussians were returning from drill. Monsieur Hamel rose in his chair. He was very pale, but never before had he seemed to me so tall as at that moment. "My friends — " he said, "my friends — I — I — " But something choked him. He could not finish. Then he took a piece of chalk, and, grasping it with all his strength, wrote in his largest hand, — "Vive la France !" He remained standing at the blackboard, his head resting against the wall. He did not speak again, but a motion of his hand said to us, — "That is all. You are dismissed." 6. The Angelus is a Catholic devotional exercise repeated at morn- ing, noon, and sunset upon the ringing of the church bell. THE POPE'S MULE 1 By ALPHONSE DAUDET Of all the pretty sayings, proverbs, adages, with which our Provencal peasantry decorate their discourse, I know of none more picturesque, or more peculiar than this: — for fifteen leagues around my mill, 2 when they speak of a spite- ful and vindictive man, they say, "That fellow ! distrust him ! he's like the Pope's mule who kept her kick for seven years." I tried for a long time to find out whence that proverb came, what that Pope's mule was, and why she kept her kick for seven years. No one could give me any information on the subject, not even Francet Mamai, my old fife-player, though he knows his Provencal legends to the tips of his fingers. Francet thought, as I did, that there must be some ancient chronicle of Avignon 3 behind it, but he had never heard of it otherwise than as a proverb. "You won't find it anywhere except in the Grasshoppers' Library," said the old man, laughing. This idea struck me as a good one; and as the Grasshop- pers' Library is close at my door, I shut myself up there for over a week. It is a wonderful library, admirably stocked, open to poets night and day, and served by little librarians 4 with cymbals who make music for you all the time. I spent some delightful days there, and after a week of researches (on my back) I 1. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Copyright, 1899, by Little, Brown and Company. 2. Daudet lived in an old windmill near Nimes when he wrote this story. 3. A city in southern France. In the 14th century the popes lived in Avignon after they had been exiled from Italy. 4. Locusts. 251 252 FRENCH SHORT STORIES ended by discovering what I wanted, namely, the story of the mule with that famous kick which she kept for seven years. The tale is pretty, though rather naive, and I shall try to tell it to you just as I read it yesterday in a manuscript colored by the weather, smelling of good dried lavender and tied with the Virgin's threads — as they call gossamer in these parts. Whoso did not see Avignon in the days of the Popes has seen nothing. For gayety, life, animation, the excitement of festivals, never was a town like it. From morning till night there was nothing but processions, pilgrimages, streets strewn with flowers, draped with tapestries, cardinals arriv- ing by the Rhone, banners in the breeze, galleys dressed in flags, the Pope's soldiers chanting Latin on the squares, and the tinkling rattle of the begging friars; while from garret to cellar of houses that pressed, humming, round the great papal palace like bees around their hive, came the tick-tack of lace-looms, the to-and-fro of shuttles weaving the gold thread of chasubles, the tap-tap of the goldsmith's chasing- tools tapping on the chalices, the tuning of choir-instruments at the lute-makers, the songs of the spinners at their work ; and above all this rose the sound of bells, and always the echo of certain tambourines coming from away down there on the bridge of Avignon. Because, with us, when the people are happy they must dance — they must dance; and as in those days the streets were too narrow for the farandole, 5 fifes and tambourines posted themselves on the bridge of Avignon in the fresh breeze of the Rhone, and day and night folks danced, they danced. Ah ! the happy times ! the happy town ! Halberds that did not wound, prisons where the wine was put to cool; no hunger, no war. That's how the Popes of the 5. A Provencal dance in which the dancers were arranged in a long line. THE POPE'S MULE 253 Comtat 6 governed their people ; and that's why their people so deeply regretted them. There was one Pope especially, a good old man called Boniface. Ah ! that one, many were the tears shed in Avignon when he was dead. He was so amiable, so affable a prince ! He laughed so merrily on the back of his mule ! And when you passed him, were you only a poor little gatherer of mad- der-roots, or the grand provost of the town, he gave you his benediction so politely ! A real Pope of Yvetot, but a Yvetot of Provence, with something delicate in his laugh, a sprig of sweet marjoram in his cardinal's cap, and never a Jeanneton, — the only Jeanneton he was ever known to have, that good Father, was his vineyard, his own little vineyard which he planted himself, three leagues from Avignon, among the myrtles of Chateau-Neuf. Every Sunday, after vespers, the good man paid court to his vineyard; and when he was up there, sitting in the blessed sun, his mule near him, his cardinals stretched out beneath the grapevines, he would order a flask of the wine of his own growth to be opened, — that beautiful wine, the color of rubies, which is now called the Chateau-Neuf des Papes, and he sipped it with sips, gazing at his vineyard tenderly. Then, the flask empty, the day fading, he rode back joyously to town, the Chapter following; and when he crossed the bridge of Avignon through the tambourines and the farandoles, his mule, set going by the music, paced along in a skipping little amble, while he himself beat time to the dance with his cap, which greatly scandalized the cardinals but made the people say: "Ah! the good prince! Ah! the kind Pope !" What the Pope loved best in the world, next to his vine- yard of Chateau-Neuf, was his mule. The good man doted on that animal. Everj^ evening before he went to bed he went 6. Another name .for the district including Avignon. 254 FRENCH SHORT STORIES to see if the stable was locked, if nothing was lacking in the manger ; and never did he rise from the table without seeing with his own eyes the preparation of a great bowl of wine in the French fashion with sugar and spice, which he took to his mule himself, in spite of the remarks of his cardinals. It must be said that the mule was worth the trouble. She was a handsome black mule, with reddish points, sure-footed, hide shining, back broad and full, carrying proudly her thin little head decked out with pompons and ribbons, silver bells and streamers ; gentle as an angel withal, innocent eyes, and two long ears, always shaking, which gave her the look of a downright good fellow. All Avignon respected her, and when she passed through the streets there were no civilities that the people did not pay her; for every one knew there was no better way to stand well at court, and that the Pope's mule, for all her innocent look, had led more than one man to fortune, — witness Tistet Vedene and his amazing adventure. This Tistet Vedene was, in point of fact, an impudent young rogue, whom his father, Guy Vedene, the goldsmith, had been forced to turn out of his house, because he would not work and only debauched the apprentices. For six months Tistet dragged his jacket through all the gutters of Avignon, but principally those near the papal palace; for the rascal had a notion in his head about the Pope's mule, and you shall now see what mischief was in it. One day when his Holiness was riding all alone beneath the ramparts, behold our Tistet approaching him and say- ing, with his hands clasped in admiration: "Ah ! mon Dieu, Holy Father, what a fine mule you are riding ! Just let me look at her. Ah ! Pope, what a mule ! The Emperor of Germany hasn't her equal." And he stroked her and spoke to her softly as if to a pretty young lady : "Come here, my treasure, my jewel, my pearl — " THE POPE'S MULE 255 And the good Pope, quite touched, said to himself: "What a nice young fellow; how kind he is to my mule!" And the next day what do you think happened? Tistet Vedene changed his yellow jacket for a handsome lace alb, a purple silk hood, shoes with buckles; and he entered the household of the Pope, where no one had ever yet been admitted but sons of nobles and nephews of cardinals. That's what intriguing means ! But Tistet was not satisfied with that. Once in the Pope's service, the rascal continued the game he had played so successfully. Insolent to every one, he showed attentions and kindness to none but the mule and he was always to be met with in the courtyards of the palace with a handful of oats, or a bunch of clover, shaking its pink blooms at the window of the Holy Father as if to say: "Hein ! who's that for, hey ?" Time and again this happened, so that, at last, the good Pope, who felt himself getting old, left to Tistet the care of looking after the stable and of carrying to the mule his bowl of wine, — which did not cause the cardinals to laugh. Nor the mule either. For now, at the hour her wine was due she beheld half a dozen little pages of the household slipping hastily into the hay with their hoods and their laces ; and then, soon after, a good warm smell of caramel and spices pervaded the stable, and Tistet Vedene appeared bearing carefully the bowl of hot wine. Then the poor ani- mal's martyrdom began. That fragrant wine she loved, which kept her warm and gave her wings, they had the cruelty to bring it into her stall and let her smell of it; then, when her nostrils were full of the perfume, away ! and the beautiful rosy liquor went down the throats of those young scamps ! And not only did they steal her wine, but they were like devils, those young fellows, after they had drunk it. One pulled her ears, another 256 FRENCH SHORT STORIES her tail. Quinquet jumped on her back, Beluguet put his hat on her head, and not one of the rascals ever thought that with one good kick of her hind-legs the worthy animal could send them all to the polar star, and farther still if she chose. But no ! you are not the Pope's mule for nothing — that mule of benedictions and plenary indulgences. The lads might do what they liked, she was never angry with them ; it was only Tistet Vedene whom she hated. He, indeed ! when she felt him behind her, her hoofs itched ; and reason enough too. That good-for-nothing Tistet played her such villainous tricks. He had such cruel ideas and inventions after drink- ing. One day he took it into his head to make her go with him into the belfry, high up, very high up, to the peak of the palace ! What I am telling you is no tale ; two hundred thousand Provencal men and women say it. Imagine the terror of that unfortunate mule, when, after turning for an hour, blindly, round a corkscrew staircase and climbing I don't know how many steps, she found herself all of a sudden on a platform blazing with light, while a thousand feet below her she saw a diminutive Avignon, the booths in the market no bigger than nuts, the Pope's soldiers moving about their barrack like little red ants, and down there, bright as a silver thread, a microscopic little bridge on which they were dancing, dancing. Ah ! poor beast ! what a panic ! At the cry she gave, all the windows of the palace shook. "What's the matter? what are they doing to my mule?" cried the good Pope, rushing out upon his balcony. Tistet Vedene was already in the courtyard pretending to weep and tear his hair. "Ah ! great Holy Father, what's the matter, indeed ! M on Dieu! what will become of us ? There's your mule gone up to the belfry." "All alone?" THE POPE'S MULE 257 "Yes, great Holy Father, all alone. Look up there, high up. Don't you see the tips of her ears pointing out — like two swallows?" "Mercy!" cried the poor Pope, raising his eyes. "Why, she must have gone mad ! She'll kill herself ! Come down, come down, you luckless thing!" Peca'ire! 7 she wanted nothing so much as to come down; but how? which way? The stairs? not to be thought of; they can be mounted, those things ; but as for going down ! why, they are enough to break one's legs a hundred times. The poor mule was in despair, and while circling round and round the platform with her big eyes full of vertigo she thought of Tistet Vedene. "Ah ! bandit, if I only escape — what a kick tomorrow morning!" That idea of a kick put some courage into her heart ; with- out it she never could have held good. ... At last, they managed to save her ; but 't was quite a serious affair. They had to get her down with a derrick, ropes, and a sling. You can fancy what humiliation it was for a Pope's mule to see herself suspended at that height, her four hoofs swimming in the void like a cockchafer hanging to a string. And all Avignon looking at her ! The unfortunate beast could not sleep at night. She fancied she was still turning round and round that cursed platform while the town laughed below, and again she thought of the infamous Tistet and a fine kick of her heels she would let fly at him next day. Ah ! friends, what a kick ! the dust of it would be seen as far as Pamperigouste. Now, while this notable reception was being made ready for him in the Pope's stable what do you think Tistet Vedene was about? He was descending the Rhone on a papal gal- ley, singing as he went his way to the Court of Naples with a 7. A Provencal expression of pity. 258 FRENCH SHORT STORIES troop of young nobles whom the town of Avignon sent every year to Queen Jeanne to practice diplomacy and fine man- ners. Tistet Vedene was not noble; but the Pope was bent on rewarding him for the care he had given to his mule, and especially for the activity he displayed in saving her from her perilous situation. The mule was the disappointed party on the morrow ! "Ah! the bandit! he suspected something/' she thought, shaking her silver bells. "No matter for that, scoundrel; you'll find it when you get back, that kick; I'll keep it for you!" And she kept it for him. After Tistet's departure the Pope's mule returned to her tranquil way of life and her usual proceedings. No more Quinquet, no more Beluguet in the stable. The good old days of the spiced wine came back, and with them good-humor, long siestas, and the little gavotte step as she crossed the bridge of Avignon. Nevertheless, since her adventure a cer- tain coldness was shown to her in the town. Whisperings were heard as she passed, old people shook their heads, chil- dren laughed and pointed to the belfry. The good Pope himself no longer had quite the same confidence in his friend, and when he let himself go into a nice little nap on her back of a Sunday, returning from his vineyard, he always had this thought latent in his mind : "What if I should wake up there on the platform I" The mule felt this, and she suffered, but said nothing; only, whenever the name of Tistet Vedene was uttered in her hearing, her long ears quivered, and she struck the iron of her shoes hard upon the pavement with a little snort. Seven years went by. Then, at the end of those seven years, Tistet Vedene returned from the Court of Naples. His time was not yet finished over there, but he had heard that the Pope's head mustard-bearer had died suddenly at THE POPE'S MULE 259 Avignon, and as the place seemed a good one, he hurried back in haste to solicit it. When this intriguing Vedene entered the palace the Holy Father did not recogize him, he had grown so tall and so stout. It must also be said that the good Pope himself had grown older, and could not see much without spectacles. Tistet was not abashed. "What, great Holy Father ! you don't remember me ? It is I, Tistet Vedene." "Vedene?" "Why, yes, you know the one that once took the wine to your mule." "Ah ! yes, yes, — I remember. A good little fellow, that Tistet Vedene! And now, what do you want of me?" "Oh! very little, great Holy Father. I came to ask — by the bye, have you still got her, that mule of yours? Is she well? Ah ! good ! I came to ask you for the place of the chief mustard-bearer who lately died." "Mustard-bearer, you! Why you are too young. How old are you?" "Twenty-two, illustrious pontiff; just five years older than your mule. Ah! palm of God, what a fine beast she is! If you only knew how I love her. that mule. — how I pined for her in Italy! Won't you let me see her?" "Yes, my son, you shall see her," said the worthy Pope, quite touched. "And as you love her so much I must have you live near her. Therefore, from this day I attach you to my person as chief mustard-bearer. My cardinals will cry out, but no matter ! I'm used to that. Come and see me tomorrow, after vespers, and you shall receive the insignia of your rank in presence of the whole Chapter, and then I will show you the mule and you shall go to the vineyard with us, hey ! hey !" I need not tell vou if Tistet Vedene was content when he 260 FRENCH SHORT STORIES left the palace, and with what impatience he awaited the ceremony of the morrow. And yet there was one more im- patient and more content than he; it was the mule. After Vederie's return, until vespers on the following day that terrible animal never ceased to stuff herself with oats, and practice her heels on the wall behind her. She, too, was pre- paring for the ceremony. Well, on the morrow, when vespers were said, Tistet Vedene made his entry into the papal court-yard. All the grand clergy were there; the cardinals in their red robes, the devil's advocate 8 in black velvet, the convent abbots in their small miters, the wardens of Saint-Agrico, the violet hoods of the Pope's household, the lower clergy also, the Pope's guard in full uniform, the three penitential brother- hoods, the hermits of Mont-Ventoux, with their sullen faces, and the little clerk who walks behind them with a bell, the flagellating friars naked to the waist, the ruddy sextons in judge's gowns, all, all, down to the givers of holy water, and the man who lights and him who puts out the candles — not one missing. Ah ! 't was a fine ordination ! Bells, fire- crackers, sunshine, music, and always those frantic tam- bourines leading the farandole over there, on the bridge. When Vedene appeared in the midst of this great assembly, his fine bearing and handsome face sent a murmur of admi- ration through the crowd. He was truly a magnificent Provencal; but of the blonde type, with thick hair curling at the tips, and a dainty little beard, that looked like slivers of fine metal fallen from the chisel of his father, the goldsmith. The rumor ran that the fingers of Queen Jeanne had some- times played in the curls of that golden beard ; and, in truth, the Sieur de Vedene had the self-glorifying air and the abstracted look of men that queens have loved. On this day, in order to do honor to his native town, he had substi- 8. The doctor who opposes the candidate for canonization. THE POPE'S MULE 261 tuted for his Neapolitan clothes a tunic edged with pink, a la Provengale, and in his hood there quivered a tall feather of the Camargue 9 ibis. As soon as he entered, the new official bowed with a gallant air, and approached the high portico where the Pope was waiting to give him the insignias of his rank, namely, a wooden spoon and a saffron coat. The mule was at the foot of the steps, saddled and bridled, all ready to go to the vineyard; as he passed beside her, Tistet Vedene smiled pleasantly, and stopped to give her a friendly pat or two on the back, glancing, as he did so, out of the corner of his eye to see if the Pope noticed it. The position was just right, — the mule let fly her heels. "There, take it, villain! Seven years have I kept it for thee !" And she gave him so terrible a kick, — so terrible that even at Pamperigouste the smoke was seen, a whirlwind of blonde dust, in which flew the feather of an ibis, and that was all that remained of the unfortunate Tistet Vedene ! Mule kicks are not usually so destructive ; but this was a papal mule; and then, just think ! she had kept it for him for seven years. There is no finer example of ecclesiastical rancor. 9. An island in the Rhone, near its mouth. THE REVEREND FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR 1 BY ALPHOXSE DAUDET "Drink this, neighbor, and tell me what you think of it." And drop by drop, with the scrupulous care of a lapidary counting pearls, the cure of Graveson poured me out two fingers of a golden-green liquor, warm, shimmering, exquisite. It warmed my stomach like sunshine. "That is Father Gaucher's elixir, the pride and the health of our Provence/' 2 the good man informed me triumphantly. "It is made at the Premonstratensian 3 convent, a couple of leagues from your mill. . . . Isn't it worth all their Chartreuses? 4 . . . And if you only knew how amus- ing the story of this elixir is ! Just listen. Thereupon quite innocently, thinking no evil, in the pres- bytery dining-room so simple and quiet with its little pictures of the Stations of the Cross and its pretty white starched curtains like surplices, the abbe began to tell me a tale just a little skeptical and irreverent, after the manner of a story from Erasmus 5 or D'Assoucy. 6 "Twenty years ago the Premonstratensians, or rather the White Fathers, as oiy Provencals call them, had fallen into great poverty. If you had seen their house in those days, it would have made your heart ache. "The great wall and St. Pachomius' tower were falling into pieces. Around the weed-grown cloisters the columns 1. Translated by William Metcalfe. 2. A district in southern France. 3. An order of Angustinian monks, founded in 1120. 4. A liqueur made by the Carthusian monks. 5. A famous Dutch scholar, 1465-1536. U. A burlesque poet of the 17th century. 1CV2 REV. FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR 263 were splitting, the stone saints were crumbling in their niches. Not a window was whole, not a door held fast. In the garths 7 and chapels the Rhone wind blew as it does in the Camargue, 8 extinguishing the candles, breaking the lead of the windows, and driving the holy water out of the stoups. But saddest of all was the convent steeple as silent as a deserted dove-cote, and the fathers, for want of means to buy themselves a bell, forced to ring to matins with clappers of almondwood ! "Poor White Fathers ! I can see them yet, at a Corpus Christi 9 procession, filing sadly past in their patched man- tles, pale, thin from their diet of pumpkins and melons, and behind them his lordship the abbot, who hung down his head as he went, ashamed at letting the sun see his crosier with the gilding worn off and his white woolen miter all moth- eaten. The ladies of the confraternity wept in their ranks for pity at the sight, and the big banner-carriers grinned and whispered to each other, as they pointed at the poor monks : " 'Starlings go thin when they go in a flock!' "The fact is that the unfortunate White Fathers were themselves reduced to debating whether they would not be better to take their flight across the world and seek fresh pasture, each one where he could. "So then, one day when this grave question was being dis- cussed in the chapter, a message was brought to the prior that Brother Gaucher asked to be heard before the council. You must understand that this Brother Gaucher was the convent cowherd ; that is to say, he spent his days in wandering from arch to arch of the cloisters, driving two scraggy cows, which sought for grass in the crevices of the pavement. Brought up until his twelfth year by an old half- 7. Gardens. 8. An island in the Rhone, near its mouth. 9. A festival of the Roman Catholic church, Thursday after Trinity Sunday. 264 FRENCH SHORT STORIES witted woman in Les Baux, called Auntie Begon, and then taken in by the monks, the unfortunate cowherd had never been able to learn anything except to drive his beasts and to repeat his paternoster, and even that he said in Provencal; for he had a thick skull., and his wits were about as sharp as a leaden dagger. A fervent Christian, for all that, though somewhat visionary, quite comfortable in his sackcloth, and disciplining himself with strong conviction and such arms ! "When they saw him enter the chapter-house, simple and clownish, and salute the assembly with a scrape, prior, canons, treasurer, and every one burst out laughing. That was always the effect produced everywhere that his honest, grizzled face appeared, with its goatee and its somewhat vacuous eyes; so Brother Gaucher was not put about. ' 'Your Reverences,' he said in a good-natured tone, twist- ing at his olive-stone beads, 'it's a true saying that empty barrels make the most sound. What do you think ? By put- ting my poor brains to steep, though they're soft enough already, I do believe I've found the way to get us all out of our difficulties. " 'It's this way. You know Auntie Begon, the good woman who took care of me when I was little — God rest her soul, the old sinner ! She used to sing some queer songs when she had drink — Well, what I want to tell you, my reverend fathers, is that when Auntie Begon was alive she knew the herbs that grow in the mountains as well and better than any old hag in Corsica. And, by the same token, in her latter days she com- pounded an incomparable elixir by blending live or six sorts of simples, which we used to go and gather together in the Alpilles. That's many a year ago ; but I think that with the aid of Saint Augustine, and the permission of our father abbot, I might — if I search carefully — recall the composi- REV. FATHER GAUCHERS ELIXIR 265 tion of that mysterious elixir. Then we should only have to put it into bottles and sell it a little dear, and the com- munity would be able to get rich at its ease, like our brethren at La Trappe and the Grande. . . . ' "He had not time to finish. The prior got up and fell on his neck. The canons took him by the hands. The treas- urer, even more deeply moved than any of the others, respectfully kissed the frayed hem of his cowl. . . . Then each returned to his stall to deliberate ; and in solemn assem- bly the chapter decided to entrust the cows to Brother Thrasybulus, in order that Brother Gaucher might devote himself entirely to the preparation of his elixir. "How did the good brother manage to recall Auntie Begon's recipe? What efforts, what vigils did it cost him? History does not relate. But this much is certain, at the end of six months the White Fathers' elixir was very popular already. In all the Comtat, in all the Aries district not a mas, not a farm-house but had at the backdoor of its spence, among the bottles of wine syrup and j ars of olives picholines, a little brown stone flagon sealed with the arms of Provence, with a monk in ecstasy on a silver label. Thanks to the vogue of its elixir the house of the Premonstratensians got rich very rapidly. St. Pachomius' tower was rebuilt. The prior got a new miter, the church grand new painted win- dows; and in the fine tracery of the steeple a whole flight of bells, big and little, alighted one fine Easter morning, chiming and pealing in full swing. "As for Brother Gaucher, the poor lay brother whose rusticities used to amuse the chapter so, he was never men- tioned now in the convent. They only knew the Reverend Father Gaucher, a man of brains and ability, who lived quite isolated from the petty, multifarious occupations of the clois- ter, and shut himself up all day in his distillery, while 266 FRENCH SHORT STORIES thirty monks scoured the mountains in search of his fragrant herbs. . . . This distillery, to which no one, not even the prior, had the right of entry, was an old abandoned chapel at the bottom of the canons' garden. The good fathers' simplicity had made it into a very mysterious and formidable place; and any bold and inquisitive monk who managed to reach the rose-window above the door by scrambling up the climbing vines promptly tumbled down, terrified at his peep of Father Gaucher with his necroman- cer's beard, stooping over his furnaces, hydrometer in hand ; and all around him red stone retorts, gigantic alembics, glass worms, a regular weird litter that glowed as if enchanted in the red gleam of the windows. . "At close of day, when the last stroke of the Angelus 10 sounded, the door of this place of mystery was opened dis- creetly, and his Reverence betook himself to the church for the evening office. You should have seen the reception that he got as he traversed the monastery ! The brethren lined up as he passed. They said: "'Hush! . . He has the secret ! . . . "The treasurer walked behind him and spoke to him, bowing deferentially. . . . Amid these adulations the Father went his way, wiping his brow, his three-cornered hat with its broad brim on the back of his head like an aureole, looking complacently about him at the wide courts planted with orange-trees, the blue roofs where new vanes were turning, and in the dazzling white cloister, amid the neat flower columns, the canons all newly rigged out, walking two and two with contented faces. " 'They owe all that to me !' his Reverence said inwardly : and, as often as he did so, the thought made his pride rise in 10. The Angelus is a Catholic devotional exercise repeated at morn- ing, noon, and sunset, upon the ringing of the church bell. REV. FATHER GALTHER'S ELIXIR 267 "The poor man was heavily punished for it. You'll hear how that happened. . . . "You must understand that one evening, whilst the office was being sung, he arrived at the church in an extraordinary state of agitation: red, breathless, his cowl awry, and so upset that in taking holy water he dipped his sleeves into it up to the elbows. At first they thought that it was excite- ment at being late ; but when they saw him make profound reverences to the organ and the galleries instead of saluting the high altar, rush across the church like a whirlwind, wan- der about in the choir for five minutes in search of his stall, then, once he was seated, sway right and left, smiling benignly, a murmur of astonishment ran through the nave and aisles. They chuckled to one another behind their breviaries : ' 'Whatever is the matter with our Father Gaucher ? . . . Whatever is the matter with our Father Gaucher?' "Twice the prior impatiently let his crosier fall on the pavement to command silence. . . . Down at the end of the choir the psalms still went on ; but the responses lacked animation. . "Suddenly, in the middle of the Ave verum, 11 lo and be- hold, Father Gaucher flung himself back in his stall, and sang out at the top of his voice : " 'In Paris there dwells a White Father, Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban . . .' "General consternation. Everyone rose. There were cries of: " 'Take him away ! . . . He's possessed !' "The canons crossed themselves. His Lordship flourished his crosier. . . . But Father Gaucher saw nothing, heard nothing; and two sturdy monks had to drag him out by the 11. The first words of a part of the Catholic service, "Hail to Thee, True Body," etc. 268 FRENCH SHORT STORIES side door of the choir, struggling like a demoniac and going on worse than ever with his 'patatins' and 'tarabans.' "Next morning, at daybreak, the unfortunate man was on his knees in the prior's oratory, owning his fault with a torrent of tears. "'It was the elixir, my lord; it was the elixir that over- came me,' he said, beating on his breast. "And seeing him so conscience-smitten, so penitent, the good prior himself was moved. " 'Come, come. Father Gaucher, set j^our mind at rest; it will all pass away like dew in the sun. . . . After all, the scandal has not been so great as you think. To be sure, there was a song that was a little. . . . hem ! hem ! . . . Yet let us hope that the novices would not pick it up. . . . But now, let us see; tell me frankly how it all happened. . It was when you were trying the elixir, was it not ? Perhaps your hand was too heavy? . . . Yes, yes, I under- stand. ... It is like brother Schwartz, the inventor of gunpowder: you have been the victim of your invention. But tell me, my good friend, is it absolutely necessary for you to try this terrible elixir on yourself?' ' 'Unfortunately it is, ray lord ! The gauge gives me the strength and the degree of alcohol, it is true ; but for the fine- ness, the velvetiness, P can't very well trust anything but my tongue ! . . " 'Ah, to be sure ! . . . But listen for another moment to what I am going to say to you. . . . When you are compelled to taste the elixir thus, does, it seem good? Do you derive any pleasure from it?' i " 'Alas, yes, my lord !' said the unfortunate father, blush- ing to the roots of his hair. 'These last two evenings I have found such a bouquet in it, such an aroma ! . . . Surely it must be the Devil that has played me this sorry trick. . . . REV. FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR 269 And so I have quite decided to use nothing but the gauge in future. If the liquor is not fine enough, if it does not pearl enough, so much the worse. . . . ' " 'For any sake don't do that/ the prior interrupted excit- edly. 'We must not run the risk of making our customers dissatisfied. . . . All you have to do, now that you are forewarned, is to be on your guard. ... Let us see, how much do you require to ascertain? . . . Fifteen or twenty drops, eh? . . . Let's say twenty drops. . . . The Devil will be smart indeed if he catches you with twenty drops. . . . In any case, to prevent accidents, I'll dispense you from coming to church in future. You will say the evening office in the distillery. . . . And, meanwhile, go in peace, reverend father, and, above all things, count your drops care- fully.' "Alas, his poor reverence had much need to count his drops ! . . . The Devil had hold of him, and never after- wards let him go. "The distillery heard some strange offices ! "So long as it was day, all went well. The father was tolerably calm : he prepared his chafing dishes and alembics, sorted his herbs carefully, all Provence herbs, fine, gray, serrated, hot with perfume and sunshine. . . . But in the evening, when the simples were infused and the elixir was cooling in great copper basins, the poor man's martyrdom began. " 'Seventeen . . . eighteen . . . nineteen . . . twenty ! "The drops fell from the stirring-rod into the silver-gilt goblet. The father swallowed the twenty at a gulp, almost without pleasure. What he longed for was the twenty-first. Oh, that twenty-first drop ! . . . Then, to escape tempta- tion, he went and knelt down at the farthest end of the labora- 270 FRENCH SHORT STORIES torv, and buried himself in his paternosters. But from the still-warm liquor there rose a faint steam charged with aromas, which came stealing about him and sent him back willy-nilly to his basins. . . . The liquor was a lovely golden green. . . . Leaning over it with open nostrils, the father stirred it gently with his stirring-rod, and in the little sparkling bubbles that the emerald wave carried round he seemed to see Auntie Begon's eyes laughing and twinkling as they looked at him. . . . " 'Here goes ! Another drop !' "And with one drop and another the unfortunate at last had his goblet full to the brim. Then, completely vanquished, lie sank down in a great arm-chair, and lolling at ease, his eyes half shut, tasted his sin sip by sip, saying softly to him- self with a delicious remorse: "'Ah! I'm damning myself . . . damning myself . . . .' "The most terrible thing was that at the bottom of this diabolical elixir he rediscovered by some black art or other all Amntie Begon's naughty songs : 'There are three little gossips, who talk of making a banquet' . . .or: 'Master Andrews' little shepherdess goes off to the wood by her little self,' and always the famous one about the White Fathers: 'Patatin, patatan.' "Imagine his confusion next day when his cell-mates said to him slyly: " 'Eh, eh, Father Gaucher, you had a bee in your bonnet last night, when you went to bed !' "Then it was tears, despair and fasting, sackcloth and discipline. But nothing could avail against the demon of the elixir, and every evening at the same hour his possession began anew. "All this time orders were pouring into the abbey in excess of expectation. They came from Nimes, from Aix, from REV. FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR 271 Avignon, from Marseilles 12 . . . Every day the convent became more like a factory. There were packing brothers,, labeling brothers, others for the accounts, others for the carting; the service of God may have lost a few tolls of the bells now and again by it; but I can assure you that the poor folk of the district lost nothing. . . . "Well, then, one fine Sunday morning, whilst the treasurer was reading in full chapter his stock-sheet at the end of the year, and the good canons were listening to him with sparkling eyes and smiles on their lips, who should burst into the middle of the meeting but Father Gaucher, shouting out: " 'That's an end»of it ! . . .1 can't stand it any longer ! . . . Give me my cows again !' s " 'But what is it, Father Gaucher?' asked the prior, who had his own suspicions of what it was. " 'What is it, my lord? . . . I'm on a fair way of pre- paring myself a fine eternity of flames and pitchforks I drink, and drink, like a lost soul ; that's what it is ! . . " 'But I told you to count your drops.' "'Ah, so you did ! To count my drops ! But I would need to count by goblets now. . . . Yes, your Reverences, that's what I've come to. Three bottles an evening! . . . You know quite well that can't go on forever. . . . So, get whom you like to make the elixir. . . . God's fire burn me, if I take anything more to do with it !' "There was no more laughing for the chapter. " 'But, wretched man, you'll ruin us !' cried the treasure^ brandishing his ledger. " 'Would you rather I damned myself?' "Thereupon the prior stood up. " 'Reverend sirs/ he said, stretching out his fine white hand, on which the pastoral ring glistened, 'it can all be 12. Cities in Provence, southern France. 272 FRENCH SHORT STORIES arranged. . . . It's at night, is it not, my dear son, that the demon assails you ? . . ■ 'Yes, Sir Prior, regularly every evening. . . . When I see the night coming on, I get all in a sweat, saving your Reverence's presence, like Capitou's ass, when he saw them come with the pack-saddle.' ' 'Well, then, keep your mind easy. . . . In future, every evening, during the office, we'll recite on your behalf the Prayer of Saint Augustine, to which plenary indulgence is attached. . . . With that, you are safe, whatever hap- pens. . . . It is absolution at the very moment of sin.' " 'O that is good, thank you, Sir Prior.' "And, without asking anything more, Father Gaucher returned to his alembics as light as a lark. "And in fact, from that moment, every evening, at the end of compline, the officiant never failed to say : " Xet us pray for our poor Father Gaucher, who is sacri- ficing his soul in the interests of the community. Oremus, Domine. 13 . . . ' "And, while the prayer ran along all those white cowls prostrated in the shadow of the naves, like a little breeze over snow, away at the other end of the convent, behind the lighted windows of the distillery., Father Gaucher might be heard chanting open-throated : i( 'In Paris there dwells a White Father, Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban; In Paris there dwells a White Father Who sets all the little nuns dancing, Trip, trip, trip, trip in a garden; Who sets all the . . .' " At this point the good cure stopped short in horror. "Mercy on us ! If my parishioners heard me !" 13. "Let us pray, O Lord," part of the Catholic service. COPPEE (1842-1908) Francois Coppee was born in Paris, January 12, 1842. While a young man he worked as a clerk in the Ministry of War, and later was dramatic critic for La Patrie, a promi- nent Parisian newspaper. From 1878 to 1884 he was archiv- ist of the Comedie Francaise, giving up this position on his election to the French Academy. Coppee began his literary career as a poet, but in later years turned to the drama and the short story as modes of expression. He received no recognition as a poet until 1869, when the phenomenal success of his play, Le Passant, drew him from the obscurity of his government clerkship. It was in this play that Sarah Bernhardt met with her first success. Coppee continued to produce volume after volume of poetry as well as a number of plays ; at the same time he took active part in the affairs of the day, especially political movements such as the Dreyfus affair. His stories are of uneven merit, but the best of them promise to guarantee him an important place in French fic- tion. In his stories he aimed to be simple and intense, thor- oughly earnest, and deeply sympathetic. At times he be- comes somewhat morbid and over-sentimental, but, on the whole, there is a certain geniality about his stories, a charac- teristic not at all common to most of his contemporaries. These various traits are shown particularly in those stories in which he describes the trials and sufferings of the poor and the unfortunate. Like every French writer of his day Coppee was influenced by the War of 1870 with Germany, and a number of his stories touch upon some phase of the hardship and injustice of war when brought home to the individual. The best of 273 274 FRENCH SHORT STORIES these are A Piece of Bread (printed in this volume by per- mission of Current Opinion, N. Y.) and The Substitute. A PIECE OF BREAD By FRANCOIS COPPEE The young Due de Hardimont happened to be at Aix in Savoy/ whose waters he hoped would benefit his famous mare, Perichole, who had become wind-broken since the cold she had caught at the last Derby/ — and was finishing his breakfast while glancing over the morning paper, when he read the news of the disastrous engagement at Reichshoffen. 3 He emptied his glass of chartreuse/ laid his napkin upon the restaurant table, ordered his valet to pack his trunks, and two hours later took the express to Paris ; arriving there, he hastened to the recruiting office and enlisted in a regiment of the line. In vain had he led the enervating life of a fashionable swell — that was the word of the time — and had knocked about race-course stables from the age of nineteen to twenty- five. In circumstances like these, he could not forget that Enguerrand de Hardimont died of the plague at Tunis the same day as Saint-Louis, 5 that Jean de Hardimont com- manded the Free Companies under Du Guesclin, 6 and that Francois-Henri de Hardimont was killed at Fontenoy 7 with "Red" Maison. Upon learning that France had lost a battle on French soil, the young duke felt the blood mount to his face, giving him a horrible feeling of suffocation. And so, early in November, 1870, Henri de Hardimont 1. A province in southeastern France. '.1. The famous annual race at Epsom, England. 3. A town in Alsace. A battle was fought there Aug. 6, 1870. 4. A liqueur made by the Carthusian monks. 5. Louis IX of France. lie died Aug. 25, 1270. 6. A French general (1320-1380). 7. A village in Belgium, where a bloody battle was fought on May 11, 1745. A PIECE OF BREAD 275 returned to Paris with his regiment, forming part of Vinoy's 8 corps, and his company being the advance guard before the redoubt of Hautes Bruyeres, a position fortified in haste, and which protected the cannon of Fort Bicetre. It was a gloomy place; a road planted with clusters of broom, and broken up into muddy ruts, traversing the lep- rous fields of the neighborhood; on the border stood an abandoned tavern, a tavern with arbors, where the soldiers had established their post. They had fallen back here a few days before; the grape-shot had broken down some of the young trees, and all of them bore upon their bark the white scars of bullet wounds. As for the house, its appearance made one shudder ; the roof had been torn by a shell, and the walls seemed whitewashed with blood. The torn and shattered arbors under their network of twigs, the rolling of an upset cask, the high swing whose wet rope groaned in the damp wind, and the inscriptions over the door, furrowed by bullets ; "Cabinets de societe — Absinthe — Vermouth — Vin a 60 cent, le litre" 9 — encircling a dead rabbit painted over two billiard cues tied in a cross by a ribbon, — all this recalled with cruel irony the popular entertainment of former days. And over all, a wretched winter sky, across which rolled heavy laden clouds, an odious sky, angry and hateful. At the door of the tavern stood the young duke, motion- less, with his gun in his shoulder belt, his cap over his eyes, his benumbed hands in the pockets of his red trousers, and shivering in his sheepskin coat. He gave himself up to his somber thoughts, this defeated soldier, and looked with sorrowful eyes toward a line of hills, lost in the fog, where could be seen each moment the flash and smoke of a Krupp ] " gun, followed by a report. S. A French general during the siege of Paris, 1870. 9. The sign means that the place consisted of small booths, and that drinks were sold at 12 cents a litre (nearly a quart). 10. The famous German gun-maker. 276 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Suddenly he felt hungry. Stooping, he drew from his knapsack, which stood near him leaning against the wall, a piece of ammunition bread, and as he had lost Jiis knife, he bit off a morsel and slowly ate it. But after a few mouthf uls, he had enough of it ; the bread was hard and had a bitter taste. No fresh would be given until the next morning's distribution, so the commissary officer had willed it. This was certainly a very hard life sometimes. The remembrance of former breakfasts came to him, such as he had called "hygienic," when, the day after too over-heating a supper, he would seat himself by a win- dow on the ground floor of the Cafe-Anglais, and be served with a cutlet, or buttered eggs with asparagus tips, and the butler, knowing his tastes, would bring him a fine bottle of old Leovile, lying in its basket, and which he would pour out with the greatest care. The deuce take it ! That was a good time, all the same, and he would never become accus- tomed to this life of wretchedness. And, in a moment of impatience, the young man threw the rest of his bread into the mud. At the same moment a soldier of the line came from the tavern, stooped and picked up the bread, drew back a few steps, wiped it with his sleeve and began to devour it eagerly. Henri de Hardimont was already ashamed of his action, and now, with a feeling of pity, watched the poor devil who gave proof of such a good appetite. He was a tall, large young fellow, but badly made; with feverish eyes and a hospital beard, and so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out beneath his well-worn cape. "You are very hungry?" he said, approaching the soldier. "As you see," replied the other with his mouth full. A PIECE OF BREAD 277 "Excuse me, then. For if I had known that you would like the bread, I would not have thrown it away." "It does not harm it/' replied the soldier, "I am not dainty." "No matter," said the gentleman, "it was wrong to do so, and I reproach myself. But I do not wish you to have a bad opinion of me, and as I have some old cognac in my can, let us drink a drop together." The man had finished eating. The duke and he drank a mouthful of brandy; the acquaintance was made. "What is your name?" asked the soldier of the line. "Hardimont," replied the duke, omitting his title. "And yours ?" "Jean- Victor — I have just entered this company — I am just out of the ambulance — I was wounded at Chatillon — ■ oh ! but it was good in the ambulance, and in the infirmary they gave me horse bouillon. But I had only a scratch, and the major signed my dismissal. So much the worse for me ! Now I am going to commence to be devoured by hunger again — for, believe me, if you will, comrade, but, such as you see me, I have been hungry all my life." The words were startling, especially to a Sybarite lr who had just been longing for the kitchen of the Cafe- Anglais, and the Due de Hardimont looked at his companion in almost terrified amazement. The soldier smiled sadly, showing his hungr}^, wolf-like teeth, as white as his sickly face, and, as if understanding that the other expected something further in the way of explanation or confidence : "Come," said he, suddenly ceasing his familiar way of speaking, doubtless divining that his companion belonged to the rich and happy; "let us walk along the road to warm our feet, and I will tell you things which probably you have 11. One who lives in luxury. | 278 FRENCH SHORT STORIES never heard of — I am called Jean- Victor, that is all, for I am a foundling, and my only happy remembrance is of my earliest childhood, at the Asylum. The sheets were white on our little beds in the dormitory; we played in a garden under large trees, and a kind Sister took care of us, quite young and as pale as a wax-taper — she died afterwards of lung trouble — I was her favorite, and would rather walk by her than play with the other children, because she used to draw me to her side and lay her warm thin hand on my fore- head. But when I was twelve years old, after my first commu- nion, there was nothing but poverty. The managers put me as apprentice with a chair-mender in Faubourg Saint- Jacques. That is not a trade, you know, it is impossible to earn one's living at it, and as proof of it, the greater part of the time the master was only able to engage the poor little blind boys from the Blind Asylum. It was there that I began to suffer with hunger. The master and mistress, two old Limousins 12 ■ — afterwards murdered — were terrible misers, and the bread, cut in tiny pieces for each meal, was kept under lock and key the rest of the time. You should have seen the mistress at supper time serving the soup, sighing at each ladleful she dished out. The other apprentices, two blind boys, were less unhappy; they were not given more than I, but they could not see the reproachful look the wicked woman used to give me as she handed me my plate. And then, unfortu- nately, I was always so terribly hungry. Was it my fault, do you think ? I served there for three years, in a continual fit of hunger. Three years ! And one can learn the work in one month. But the managers could not know everything, and had no suspicion that the children were abused. Ah ! you were astonished just now when you saw me take the bread out of the mud? I am used to that, for I have picked ur> enough of it; and crusts from the dust, and when they l'Z. People from Limoges, southern Prance. I A PIECE OF BREAD 279 were too hard and dry, I would soak them all night in my basin. I had windfalls sometimes, such as pieces of bread nibbled at the ends, which the children would take out of their baskets and throw on the sidewalks as they came from school. I used to try to prowi around there when I went on errands. At last my time was ended at this trade by which no man can support himself. Well, I did many other things, for I was willing enough to work. I served the masons; I have been shop-boy, floor-polisher, I don't know what all! But, pshaw ; today, work is lacking, another time I lose my place. Briefly, I never have had enough to eat. Heavens ! how often have I been crazy with hunger as I have passed the bakeries ! Fortunately for me, at these times I have* always remembered the good Sister at the Asylum, who so often told me to be honest, and I seemed to feel her warm little hand upon my forehead. At last, when I was eighteen I enlisted; you know as well as I do, that the trooper has only just enough. Now, — I could almost laugh — here is the siege and famine ! You see, I did not lie, when I told you just now that I have always, always been hungry !" The young duke had a kind heart, and was profoundly moved by this terrible story, told him by a man like himself, by a soldier whose uniform made him his equal. It was even fortunate for the phlegm of this dandy, that the night wind dried the tears which dimmed his eyes. "Jean- Victor," said he, ceasing in his turn, by a delicate tact, to speak familiarly to the foundling, "if we survive this dreadful war, we will meet again, and I hope that I may be useful to you. But, in the meantime, as there is no bakery but the commissary, and as my ration of bread is twice too large for my delicate appetite, — it is understood, is it not ? — we will share it like good comrades." It was strong and hearty, the hand-clasp which followed : 280 FRENCH SHORT STORIES then, harassed and worn by their frequent watches and alarms, as night fell, they returned to the tavern, where twelve soldiers were sleeping on the straw; and, throwing themselves down side by side, they were soon sleeping soundly. Toward midnight Jean- Victor awoke, being hungry prob- ably. The wind had scattered the clouds, and a ray of moonlight made its way into the room through a hole in the roof, lighting up the handsome blonde head of the young duke, who was sleeping like an Endymion. Still touched by the kindness of his comrade, Jean-Victor was gazing at him with admiration, when the sergeant of the platoon opened the door and called the five men who were to relieve the sentinels of the outposts. The duke was of the number, but he did not waken when his name was called. "Hardimont, stand up !" repeated the non-commissioned officer. "If you are willing, sergeant," said Jean- Victor, rising, "I will take his duty, he is sleeping so soundly — and he is my comrade." "As you please." The five men left, and the snoring recommenced. But half an hour later the noise of near and rapid firing burst upon the night. In an instant every man was on his feet, and each, with his hand on the chamber of his gun, stepped cautiously out, looking earnestly along the road, lying white in the moonlight. "What time is it?" asked the duke. "I was to go on duty tonight." "Jean- Victor went in your place." At that moment a soldier was seen running toward them along the road. "What is it?" they cried as he stopped, out of breath. A PIECE OF BREAD 281 "The Prussians have attacked us, let us fall back to the redoubt." "And your comrades?" • "They are coming — all but poor Jean-Victor." "Where is he?" cried the duke. "Shot through the head with a bullet — died without a word ! — ough !" One night last winter, the Due de Hardimont left his club about two o'clock in the morning, with his neighbor, Count de Saulnes; the duke had lost some hundred louis, 13 and had a slight headache. "If you are willing, Andre," he said to his companion, "we will go home on foot — I need the air." "Just as you please, I am willing, although the walking may be bad." They dismissed their coupes, turned up the collars of their overcoats, and set off towards the Madeleine. 14 Sud- denly an object rolled before the duke which he had struck with the toe of his boot; it was a large piece of bread spattered with mud. Then, to his amazement, Monsieur de Saulnes saw the Due de Hardimont pick up the piece of bread, wipe it care- fully with his handkerchief embroidered with his armorial bearings, and place it on a bench, in full view under the gas-light. "What did you do that for?" asked the count, laughing heartily; "are you crazy?" "It is in memory of a poor fellow who died for me," replied the duke in a voice which trembled slightly. "Do not laugh, my friend, it offends me." 13. A gold coin worth $4.00. 14. A famous church of Paris. * FRANCE (1844- ) Jacques Anatole Thibault, who writes under the name of Anatole France, was born in 1844; in Paris. He was a boy of lively imagination, always trying to put into prac- tice the ideas and ideals of the stories which he read or had read to him. At the age of seven The Lives of the Saints was read to him by his mother, and this profoundly im- pressed him. Before, his ambition had been to die a heroic death on the field of battle like the knights of old, but as that seemed impracticable, in his youthful fancy he decided to become a saint, a career which had "fewer requirements and was of greater renown than that of a soldier." School interfered with his final resolve to become a hermit in the desert wastes of Le Jardin des Plantes, one of the most beautiful public gardens of Paris. His father was a bookseller on the Quai Voltaire, and in his shop France early acquired the habit of promiscuous reading. He was fond of roaming around the older and more picturesque parts of Paris, observing with interest the old shops full of curios ; then, too, what interesting persons one could always find on the streets, such as the milkmen, the soldiers in their resplendent uniforms, and above all, the women who sold flowers on the quay! As a student in college Anatole France became fond of the Latin and Greek classics, and this, together with an innate love for the curious, has led him into all sorts of literary and historical by-ways, giving his work an atmosphere of erudition which constitutes one of its most fascinating charms. In this respect he resembles Charles Lamb, and. like Lamb, Anatole France constantly puts his own personality into everything he writes. His first published work, a critical essay on De Vigny, was 282 FRANCE 283 followed by several volumes of poetry. As a novelist his first real success was The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). This is an intensely interesting story and forms an excellent beginning for the study and appreciation of the novels of Anatole France. It has the clear, forcible, and finished style characteristic of all his writing, while the chief character in the story, the old scholar who still likes to keep in touch with the world at large, is a type of character that the author likes to draw. Here, as in all his stories, the in- terest is concentrated on the characters rather than on the plot, and the development of the story is brought about largely through conversation instead of direct narration. Anatole France has always been very active, both as a literary man and as a publicist. He has published many volumes of stories, both long and short. The Juggler of Notre Dame, printed in this book, is one of his best sketches. The emphasis upon character should be noted. As a pub- licist he has made many speeches, most of which have appeared in book form. He had definite leanings towards Socialism, and the Dreyfus case finally swung him into the ranks of the Socialists. He never has been of that radical type which believes that the present time is hopelessly out of joint, but he seems to believe that there will be a great leveling of classes, and that this will be a universal blessing. , In spite of advanced years, Anatole France has been prominent in the Great War of 1914, asking that he be allowed to wear a uniform, and giving his pen to the service of his country. A volume of his war sketches, On the Glori- ous Path, has already appeared (1917). THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME 1 By ANATOLE FRANCE In the days of King Louis there was a poor juggler in France, a native of Compiegne, Barnaby by name, who went about from town to town performing feats of skill and strength. On fair days he would unfold an old worn-out carpet in the public square, and when by means of a jovial address, which he had learned of a very ancient juggler, and which he never varied in the least, he had drawn together the children and loafers, he assumed extraordinary attitudes, and bal- anced a tin plate on the tip of his nose. At first the crowd would feign indifference. But when, supporting himself on his hands face down- wards, he threw into the air six copper balls, which glit- tered in the sunshine, and caught them again with his feet; or when throwing himself backwards until his heels and the nape of his neck met, giving his body the form of a perfect wheel, he would juggle in this posture with a dozen knives, a murmur of admiration would escape the spectators, and pieces of money rain down upon the carpet. Nevertheless, like the majority of those who live by their wits, Barnaby had a great struggle to make a living. Earning his bread in the sweat of his brow, he bore rather more than his share of the penalties consequent upon the misdoings of our father Adam. Again, he was unable to work as constantly as he would have been willing to do. The warmth of the sun and the broad daylight were as necessary to enable him to display 1. Translated by Frederic Chapman. 284 THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME 285 his brilliant parts as to the trees .if flower and fruit should be expected of them. In winter time he was nothing more than a tree stripped of its leaves, and as it were dead. The frozen ground was hard to the juggler, and, like the grass- hopper of which Marie- de France 2 tells us, the inclement season caused him to suffer both cold and hunger. But as he was simple-natured he bore his ills patiently. He had never meditated on the origin of wealth, nor upon the inequality of human conditions. He believed firmly that if this life should prove hard, the life to come could not fail to redress the balance, and this hope upheld him. He did not resemble those thievish and miscreant Merry Andrews 3 who sell their souls to the devil. He never blasphemed God's name; he lived uprightly, and although he had no wife of his own, he did not covet his neighbor's, since woman is ever the enemy of the strong man, as it appears by the history of Samson recorded in the Scriptures. In truth, his was not a nature much disposed to carnal delights, and it was a greater deprivation to him to forsake the tankard than the Hebe 4 who bore it. For whilst not wanting in sobriety, he was fond of a drink when the weather waxed hot. He was a worthy man who feared God, and was very devoted to the Blessed Virgin. Never did he fail on entering a church to fall upon his knees before the image of the Mother of God, and offer up this prayer to her : "Blessed Lady, keep watch over my life until it shall please God that I die, and when I am dead, ensure to me the possession of the joys of paradise." 2. A writer of lays and metrical romances in the Middle Ages. 3. The Merry Andrews were clowns or buffoons, wandering from place to place in small companies. In the Middle Ages all sorts of actors were considered outcasts. 4. A Greek goddess of youth, cup-bearer to the gods before thj coming of Ganymede. 286 FRENCH SHORT STORIES Now on a certain evening after a dreary wet day as Bar- naby pursued his road, sad and bent, carrying under his arm his balls and knives wrapped up in his old carpet, on the watch for some barn where, though he might not sup, he might sleep, he perceived on the road, going in the same direction as himself, a monk, whom he saluted courteously. And as they walked at the same rate they fell into conversa- tion with one another. "Fellow traveler," said the monk, "how comes it about that you are clothed all in green? Is it perhaps in order to take the part of a jester in some mystery play?" "Not at all, good father," replied Barnaby. "Such as you see me, I am called Barnaby, and for my calling I am a juggler. There would be no pleasanter calling in the world if it would always provide one with daily bread." "Friend Barnab}^," returned the monk, "be careful what you say. There is no calling more pleasant than the mon- astic life. Those who lead it are occupied with the praises of God, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints ; and, indeed, the religious life is one ceaseless hymn to the Lord." Barnaby replied: "Good father, I own that I spoke like an ignorant man. Your calling cannot be in any respect compared to mine, and although there may be some merit in dancing with a penny balanced on a stick on the tip of one's nose, it is not a merit which comes within hail of your own. Gladly would I, like you, good father, sing my office day by day, and especially the office of the most Holy Virgin, to whom I have vowed a singular devotion. In order to embrace the monastic life I would willingly abandon the art by which from Soissons to Beauvais I am well known in upwards of six hundred towns and villages." The monk was touched by the juggler's simplicity, and as THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME 287 he was not lacking in discernment, he at once recognized in Barnaby one of those men of whom it is said in the Scrip- tures: Peace on earth to men of good will. And for this reason he replied: "Friend Barnaby, come with me, and I will have you admitted into the monastery of which I am Prior. He who guided St. Mary of Egypt in the desert set me upon your path to lead you into the way of salvation." It was in this manner, then, that Barnaby became a monk. In the monastery into which he was received the religious vied with one another in the worship of the Blessed Virgin, and in her honor each employed all the knowledge and all the skill which God had given him. The Prior on his part wrote books dealing according to the rules of scholarship with the virtues of the Mother of God. Brother Maurice, with a deft hand copied out these treatises upon sheets of vellum. Brother Alexander adorned the leaves with delicate minia- ture paintings. Here were displayed the Queen of Heaven seated upon Solomon's throne, and while four lions were on guard at her feet, around the nimbus which encircled her head hovered seven doves, which are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts, namely, of Fear, Piety, Knowledge, Strength, Counsel, Understanding, and Wis- dom. For her companions she had six virgins with hair of gold, namely, Humility, Prudence, Seclusion, Submission. Virginity, and Obedience. At her feet were two little naked figures, perfectly white, in an attitude of supplication. These were souls imploring her all-powerful intercession for their soul's health, and we may be sure not imploring in vain. Upon another page facing this, Brother Alexander repre- sented Eve, so that the Fall and the Redemption could be 288 FRENCH SHORT STORIES perceived at one and the same time — Eve the Wife abased, and Mary the Virgin exalted. Furthermore, to the marvel of the beholder, this book contained presentments of the Well of Living Waters, the Fountain, the Lily, the Moon, the Sun, and the Garden Enclosed of which the Song of Songs 5 tells us, the Gate of Heaven and the City of God, and all these things were symbols of the Blessed Virgin. Brother Marbode was likewise one of the most loving children of Mary. He spent all his days carving images in stone, so that his beard, his eyebrows, and his hair were white with dust, and his eyes continually swollen and weeping; but his strength and cheerfulness were not diminished, although he was now well gone in years, and it was clear that the Queen of Paradise still cherished her servant in his old age. Marbode represented her seated upon a throne, her brow encircled with an orb-shaped nimbus set with pearls. And he took care that the folds of her dress should cover the feet of her, concerning whom the prophet declared: My beloved is as a garden enclosed. Sometimes, too, he depicted her in the semblance of a child full of grace, appearing to say, "Thou art my God, even from the day of my birth." In the priory, moreover, were poets who composed hymns in Latin, both in prose and verse, in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and amongst the company was even a brother from Picardy who sang the miracles of Our Lady in rhymed verse and in the vulgar 6 tongue. 5. One of the books of the Old Testament, sometimes called the Hong of Solomon. The reference to the Garden Enclosed will be found in iv :12 of that Book. 6. The vulgar tongue of any land is that spoken by the common people. Here, of course, it was French, perhaps even a dialect. THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME 289 Being a witness of this emulation in praise and the glo- rious harvest of their labors, Barnaby mourned his own ignorance and simplicity. "Alas !" he sighed, as he took his solitary walk in the shelterless garden of the monastery, "wretched wight that I am, to be unable, like my brothers, worthily to praise the Holy Mother of God, to whom I have vowed my whole heart's affection. Alas ! alas ! I am but a rough man and unskilled in the arts, and I can render you in service, blessed Lady, neither edifying sermons, nor treatises set out in order according to rule, nor ingenious paintings, nor statues truthfully sculptured, nor verses whose march is measured to the beat of feet. No gift have I, alas !" After this fashion he groaned and gave himself up to sorrow. But one evening, when the monks were spending their hour of liberty in conversation, he heard one of them tell the tale of a religious man who could repeat nothing- other than the Ave Maria. This poor man was despised for his ignorance; but after his death there issued forth from his mouth five roses in honor of the five letters of the name Mary [Marie], and thus his sanctity was made manifest. Whilst he listened to this narrative Barnaby marveled yet once again at the loving kindness of the Virgin ; but the lesson of that blessed death did not avail to console him. for his heart overflowed with zeal, and he longed to advance the glory of his Lady, who is in heaven. How to compass this he sought but could find no way, and day by day he became the more cast down, when one morning he awakened filled with joy, hastened to the chapel, and remained there alone for more than an hour. After dinner he returned to the chapel once more. And, starting from that moment, he repaired daily to the chapel at such hours as it was deserted, and spent within it a good part of the time which the other monks devoted to 290 FRENCH SHORT STORIES the liberal and mechanic arts. His sadness vanished, nor did he any longer groan. A demeanor so strange awakened the curiosity of the monks. These began to ask one another for what purpose Brother Barnaby could be indulging so persistently in retreat. -The prior, whose duty it is to let nothing escape him in the behavior of his children in religion, resolved to keep a watch over Barnaby during his withdrawals to the chapel. One day, then, when he was shut up there after his custom, the prior, accompanied by two of the older monks, went to discover through the chinks in the door what was going on within the chapel. They saw Barnaby before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, head downwards, with his feet in the air, and he was jug- gling with six balls of copper and a dozen knives. In honor of the Holy Mother of God he was performing those feats which aforetime had won him most renown. Not recogniz- ing that the simple fellow was thus placing at the service of the Blessed Virgin his knowledge and skill, the two old monks exclaimed against the sacrilege. The prior was aware how stainless was Barnaby's soul, but he concluded that he had been seized with madness. They were all three preparing to lead him swiftly from the chapel, when they saw the Blessed Virgin descend the steps of the altar and advance to wipe away with a fold of her azure robe the sweat which was dropping from her juggler's forehead. Then the prior, falling upon his face upon the pavement, uttered these words : "Blessed are the simple-hearted, for they shall see God." "Amen!" responded the old brethren, and kissed the ground. BAZIN (1853- ) Rene Bazin was born in 1853 near the city of Angers, in eastern France. He is still living (1918). He was sent to Paris to study law and after completing his course he re- turned to Angers, where he became a professor of law in the University of that city. Although Bazin spends several months every winter in Paris, the lure of the boulevards has never been strong enough to blunt his sensibilities for the delights of the country. He is a genuine enthusiast about nature, and, as he says himself, he loves to watch for the first signs of spring in the swelling buds and to listen for the first songs of the returning birds. He is entirely at home among the peasants and the laborers of his part of the coun- try and finds the themes of his stories among them. Bazin appeals to the English reader because of his protest against certain modes in French fiction, especially its hard naturalism, found objectionable by many who live elsewhere than on the continent. He does not believe in the realistic methods that were in vogue in the eighties, when he began to publish, and is particularly opposed to that type of story about country life which is written solely for the amusement of Parisians. In his long stories the dominant note is usually something pertaining to the life and problems of the laboring classes, and love as a motive is usually second- ary. Like Anatole France, he believes that in the not dis- tant future there will be a general leveling of classes, and that it is no more than fitting that the higher class know and understand the life and ideals of the lower. Most of Bazin's stories are either long novels or what, for want of a better term, are called novelettes. He has also written books of travel in very pleasing vein, but his strength 291 292 FRENCH SHORT STORIES lies in his fiction. Though he has not done much in the short story, The Birds in the Letter-Boa;, in this volume by the kind permission of The Frank A. Munsey Co., N. Y., is an excellent story. His most recent work is a collection of short sketches and stories dealing with the Great War, none of them, however, of special merit. Bazin's style and mate- rial are very agreeable, and he is an author who deserves to be better known by English readers. THE BIRDS IN THE LETTER-BOX By RENE BAZIN Nothing can describe the peace that surrounded the country parsonage. The parish was small, moderately honest, prosperous, and was used to the old priest, who had ruled it for thirty years. The town ended at the parson- age, and there began meadows which sloped down to the river and were filled in summer with the perfume of flowers and all the music of the earth. Behind the great house a kitchen-garden encroached on the meadow. The first ray of the sun was for it, and so was the last. Here the cherries ripened in May, and the currants often earlier, and a week before Assumption, 1 usually, you could not pass within a hundred feet without breathing among the hedges the heavy odor of the melons. But you must not think that the abbe of St. Philemon was a gourmand. He had reached the age when appetite is only a memory. His shoulders were bent, his face was wrinkled, he had two little gray eyes, one of which could not see any longer, and he was so deaf in one ear that if you happened to be on that side you just had to get round on the other. Mercy, no ! he did not eat all the fruits in his orchard. 1. August 15. BIRDS IN THE LETTER BOX 293 The boys got their share — and a big share — but the biggest share, by all odds, was eaten by the birds — the blackbirds, who lived there comfortably all the year, and sang in return the best they could ; the orioles, pretty birds of passage, who helped them in summer, and the sparrows, and the warblers of every variety; and the tomtits, swarms of them, with feathers as thick as your finger, and they hung on the branches and pecked at a grape or scratched a pear — veri- table little beasts of prey, whose only "thank you" was a shrill cry like a saw. Even to them, old age had made the abbe of St. Philemon indulgent. "The beasts cannot correct their faults/' he used to say; "if I got angry at them for not changing, I'd have to get angry with a good many of my parishioners !" And he contented himself with clapping his hands together loud when he went into his orchard, so he should not see too much stealing. Then there was a spreading of wings, as if all the silly flowers cut off by a great wind were flying away ; gray, and white, and yellow, and mottled, a short flight, a rustling of leaves, and then quiet for five minutes. But what minutes ! Fancy, if you can, that there was not one factory in the village, not a weaver or a blacksmith, and that the noise of men with their horses and cattle, spreading over the wide, distant plains, melted into the whispering of the breeze and was lost. Mills were unknown, the roads were little fre- quented, the railroads were very far away. Indeed, if the ravagers of his garden had repented for long the abbe would have fallen asleep of the silence over his breviary. Fortunatety, their return was prompt ; a sparrow led the way, a jay followed, and then the whole swarm was back at work. And the abbe could walk up and down, close his book or open it, and murmur : "They'll not leave me a berry this vear!" 294 FRENCH SHORT STORIES It made no difference ; not a bird left his prey, any more than if the good abbe had been a cone-shaped pear-tree, with thick leaves, balancing himself on the gravel of the walk. The birds know that those who complain take no action. Everjr year they built their nests around the parsonage of St. Philemon in greater numbers than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apples-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a whisp of straw between all the, rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of the parsonage gate. She slipped in, was satisfied with the result of her explorations, and brought the materials to build a nest. There was nothing she neglected that would make it warm, neither the feathers, nor the horsehair, nor the wool, nor even the scales of lichens that cover old wood. One morning the housekeeper came in, perfectly furious, carrying a paper. She had found it under the laurel bush, at the foot of the garden. "Look, sir, a paper, and dirty, too! They are up to fine doings !" "Who, Philomene?" "Your miserable birds; all the birds that you let stay here! Pretty soon they'll be building their nests in your soup-tureens !" "I haven't but one." "Haven't they got the idea of laying their eggs in your letter-box! I opened it because the postman rang and that doesn't happen every day. It was full of straw and horse- hair and spiders' webs, with enough feathers to make a quilt, and, in the midst of all that, a beast that I didn't see hissed at me like a viper !" BIRDS IN THE LETTER BOX 295 The abbe of St. Philemon began to laugh like a grand- father when he hears of a baby's pranks. "That must be a tomtit," said he; "they are the only birds clever enough to think of it. Be careful not to touch it, Philomene." "No fear of that; it is not nice enough!" The abbe went hastily through the garden, the house, the court planted with asparagus, till he came to the wall which separated the parsonage from the public road, and there he carefully opened the letter-box, in which there would have been room enough for all the mail received in a year by all the inhabitants of the village. Sure enough, he was not mistaken. The shape of the nest, like a pine-cone, its color and texture, and the lining, which showed through, made him smile. He heard the hiss of the brooding bird inside, and replied : "Rest easy, little one; I know you. Twenty-one days to hatch your eggs and three weeks to raise your family; that is what you want? You shall have it. I'll take away the key.". He did take away the key, and when he had finished the morning's duties — visits to his parishioners who were ill or in trouble; instructions to a boy who was to pick him out some fruit at the village; a climb up the steeple because a storm had loosened some stones — he remembered the tomtit and began to be afraid she would be troubled by the arrival of a letter while she was hatching her eggs. The fear was almost groundless, because the people of St. Philemon did not receive any more letters than they sent. The postman had little to do on his rounds but to eat soup at one house, to have a drink at another, and, once in a long while, to leave a letter from some conscript, or a bill for taxes at some distant farm. Nevertheless, since St. Robert's Day was near, which, as you know, comes on the 29th of 296 FRENCH SHORT STORIES April, the abbe thought it wise to write to the only three friends worthy of that name, whom death had left him, a layman and two priests: "My friend, do not congratulate me on my saint's day this year, if you please. It would inconvenience me to receive a letter at this time. Later I shall explain, and you will appreciate my reasons." They thought that his eye was worse, and did not write. The abbe of St. Philemon was delighted. For three weeks he never entered his gate one time without thinking of the eggs, speckled with pink, that were lying in the letter-box. and when the twenty-first day came round he bent down and listened with his ear close to the slit of the box. Then he stood up, beaming: "I hear them chirp, Philomene; I hear them chirp. They owe their lives to me, sure enough, and they'll not be the ones to regret it any more than I." He had in his bosom the heart of a child that had never grown old. Now, at the same time, in the green room of the palace, at the chief town of the department, the bishop was deliber- ating over the appointments to be made with his regular councilors, his two grand vicars, the dean of the chapter, the secretary-general of the palace, and the director of the great academy. After he had appointed several vicars and priests, he made this suggestion : "Gentlemen of the council, I have in mind a candidate suitable in all respects for the parish of X ; but I think it would be well, at least, to offer that charge and that honor to one of our oldest priests, the abbe of St. Philemon. He will undoubtedly refuse it, and his modesty, no less than his age, will be the cause; but we shall have shown, as far as we could, our appreciation of his virtues." The five councilors approved unanimously, and that very evening a letter was sent from the palace, signed by the BIRDS IN THE LETTER BOX 297 bishop, and which contained in a postscript: "Answer at once, my dear abbe; or, better, come to see me, because I must submit my appointments to the government within three days." The letter arrived at St. Philemon the very day the tom- tits were hatched. The postman had difficulty in slipping it into tne slit of the box, but it disappeared inside and lay, touching the base of the nest, like a white pavement at the bottom of the dark chamber. The time came when the tiny points on the wings of the little tomtits began to be covered with down. There were fourteen of them, and they twittered and staggered on their little feet, with their beaks open up to their eyes, never ceasing, from morning till night, to wait for food, eat it, digest it, and demand more. That was the first period, when the baby birds hadn't any sense. But in birds it doesn't last long. Very soon they quarreled in the nest, which began to break with the fluttering of their wings, then they tumbled out of it and walked along the side of the box, peeped through the slit at the big world outside, and at last they ventured out. The abbe of St. Philemon, with a neighboring priest, attended this pleasant garden party. When the little ones appeared beneath the roof of the box — two, three — together, and took their flight, came back, started again, like bees at the door of a hive, he said : "Behold, a babyhood ended and a good work accom- plished. They are hardy and strong, every one." The next day, during his hour of leisure after dinner, the abbe came to the box with the key in his hand. "Tap, tap," he went. There was no answer. "I thought so," said he. Then he opened the box, and, mingled with the debris of the nest, the letter fell into his hands. "Good Heavens !" said he, recognizing the writing. "A 298 FRENCH SHORT STORIES letter from the bishop ; and in what a state ! How long has it been here?" His cheek grew pale as he read. "Philomene, harness Robin quickly." She came to see what was the matter before obeying. "What have you there, sir?" "The bishop has been waiting for me three weeks !" "You've missed your chance/' said the old woman. The abbe was away until the next evening. When he came back he had a peaceful air, but sometimes peace is not attained without effort, and we have to struggle to keep it. When he had helped to unharness Robin and had given him some hay, had changed his cassock and unpacked his box, from which he took a dozen little packages of things bought on his visit to the city, it was the very time that the birds assembled in the branches to tell each other about the day. There had been a shower and the drops still fell from the leaves as they were shaken hy these bohemian couples look- ing for a good place to spend the night. Recognizing their friend and master as he walked up and down the gravel path, they came down, fluttered about him, making an unusually loud noise, and the tomtits, the four- teen of the nest, whose feathers were still not quite grown, essayed their first spirals about the pear-trees and their first cries in the open air. The abbe of St. Philemon watched them with a fatherly eye, but his tenderness was sad, as we look at things that have cost us dear. "Well, my little ones, without me you would not be here, and without you I would be dead. I do not regret it at all, but don't insist. Your thanks are too noisy." He clapped his hands impatiently. He had never been ambitious, that is very sure, and, even at that moment, he told the truth. Nevertheless, the next BIRDS IN THE LETTER BOX 299 day, after a night spent in talking to Philomene^ he said to her : "Next year,, Philomene, if the tomtit comes back,, let me know. It is decidedly inconvenient." But the tomtit never came again — and neither did the letter from the bishop ! CLARETIE (1840- ) Arsene Arnaud, who writes under the pen name Jules Claretie, was born in 1840 at Limoges, in southern France. He was educated in Paris. He began his literary career as a journalist, acting as war correspondent in the Franco- Prussian war. Claretie has had a long and varied career both as a writer and as editor of Le Temps. He also has written plays and served as dramatic critic for the foremost Parisian journals; his ability in this direction secured him the appointment as director of the Comedie Francaise in 1885, a post which he held creditably for many years. Claretie has written many novels and tales. Among his novels are: U Assassin, 1866; Madeleine Bertin, 1868; Le Train 17, 1877; Monsieur le Ministre, 1882; and L'Accusa- ieur. He has also written extensively on historical subjects : Cinq ans Apres, 1877; Les Prussiens chez eux, 1872; and La Vie a Paris, 1896. In France and among French readers in other countries Claretie enjoys a generous popularity; unfortunately, however, few of his works have been trans- lated into English. Practically all he wrote is of the kind that is read, enjoyed, and then forgotten, much like the ordinary so-called "popular novel" of our own country. His creative talent has suffered through over-production, for Claretie has always remained a professional journalist. The story of Boum-Boum, in this book, shows him a mas- ter in a difficult field, that of writing about children without being either sentimental or silly. The directness of his style is due to his long journalistic career. 300 BOUM-BOUM 1 By JULES CLARETIE The child was lying stretched out in his little white bed, and his eyes, grown large through fever, looked straight before him, always with the strange fixity of the sick, who already perceive what the living do not see. The mother at the foot of the bed, torn by suffering and wringing her hands to keep herself from crying, anxiously followed the progress of the disease on the poor, emaciated face of the little being. The father, an honest workman, kept back the tears which burned his eyelids. The day broke clear and mild, a beautiful morning in June, and lighted up the narrow room in the street of the Abessess where little Francois, the child of Jacques and Madeleine Legrand, lay dying. He was seven years old and was very fair, very rosy, and so lively. Not three weeks ago he was gay as a sparrow; but a fever had seized him and they had brought him home one evening from the public school with his head heavy and his hands very hot. From that time he had been here in this bed, and some- times, in his delirium, when he looked at his little well- blackened shoes, which his mother had carefully placed in a corner on a board, he said : "You can throw them away now, little Francois* shoes ! Little Francois will not put them on any more! Little Francois will not go to school any more — never, never !" Then the father cried out and said: "Wilt thou be still!" And the mother, very pale, buried her blond head in his pillow so that little Francois could not hear her weep. 1. Translated by Mary Symonds. Reprinted by the kind permission of Current Opinion, New York. 301 302 FRENCH SHORT STORIES This night the child had not been delirious; but for the two days past the doctor had been uneasy over an odd sort of prostration which resembled abandon, it was as if at seven years the sick one already felt the weariness of life. He was tired, silent, sad, and tossed his little head about on the bolster. He had no longer a smile on his poor, thin lips, and with haggard eyes he sought, seeing they knew not what, something there beyond, very far off — In Heaven! Perhaps! thought Madeleine, trembling. When they wished him to take some medicine, some sirup, or a little soup, he refused. He refused everything. "Dost thou wish anything, Francois?" "No, I wish nothing!" "We must draw him out of this," the doctor said. "This torpor frightens me ! — you are the father and the mother, you know your child well — Seek for something to re- animate this little body, recall to earth this spirit which runs after the clouds !" Then he went away. "Seek!" Yes, without doubt they knew him well, their Francois, these worthy people! They knew how it amused him, the little one, to plunder the hedges on Sunday and to come back to Paris on his father's shoulders laden with hawthorne — Jacques Legrand had bought some images, some gilded sol- diers, and some Chinese shadows for Francois; he cut them out, put them on the child's bed and made them dance before the bewildered eyes of the little one, and with a desire to weep himself he tried to make him laugh. "Dost thou see, Francois, it is the broken bridge! — And that is a general ! — Thou rememberest we saw one, a general, once, in the Bois de Boulogne? 2 — If thou takest thy medicine well I will buy thee a real one with a 2. A well-known public park in Paris. BOUM-BOUM 303 cloth tunic and gold epaulets — Dost thou wish for him, the general^ say?" "No/' replied the child, with the dry voice which fever gives. v "Dost thou wish a pistol, some marbles — a cross-bow?" "No," repeated the little voice, clearly and almost cruelly. And to all that they said to him, to all the jumping- jacks, to all the balloons that they promised him, the little voice — while the parents looked at each other in despair — responded: "No."— "No."— "No!" "But what dost thou wish, my Francois?" asked the mother. "Let us see, there is certainly something thou wouldst like to have — Tell it, tell it to me! to me! — thy mother !" And she laid her cheek on the pillow of the sick boy and whispered this softly in his ear as if it were a secret. Then the child, with an odd accent, straightening himself up in his bed and stretching out his hand eagerly toward some invisible thing, replied suddenly in an ardent tone, at the same time supplicating and imperative : "I want Boum-Boum!" Boum-Boum. Poor Madeleine threw a frightened look toward her hus- band. What did the little one say? Was it the delirium, the frightful delirium, which had come back again? Boum-Boum ! She did not know what that meant, and she was afraid of these singular words which the child repeated with a sickly persistence, as if, not having dared until now to for- mulate his dream, he grasped the present time with invinc- ible obstinacy: . "Yes, Boum-Boum! Boum-Boum! I want Boum-Boum!" The mother had seized Jacques's hand and spoke very low, as if demented. 304 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "What does that mean, Jacques ? He is lost !" v But the father had on his rough, workingman's face a smile almost happy, but astonished too, the smile of a con- demned man who foresees a possibility of liberty. Boum-Boum ! He remembered well the morning of Easter Monday when he had taken Francois to the circus. He had still in his ears the child's outburst of joy, the happy laugh of the amused boy, when the clown, the beautiful clown, all spangled with gold and with a great gilded butterfly sparkling, manj^-colored, on the back of his black costume, skipped across the track, gave the trip to a rider or held himself motionless and stiff on the sand, his head down and his feet in the air. Or, again, he tossed up to the chan- delier some soft, felt hats which he caught adroitly on his head, where they formed, one by one, a pyramid; and at each jest, like a refrain brightening up his intelligent and droll face, he uttered the same cry, repeated the same word, accompanied now and then by a burst from the orchestra: Boum-Boum ! Boum-Boum! and each time that it rang out, Boum- Boum, the audience burst into hurrahs and the little one joined in with his hearty little laugh. Boum-Boum! It was this Boum-Boum, it was the clown of the circus, it was this favorite of a large part of the city, that little Francois wished to see and to have and whom he could not have and could not see since he was lying here without strength in his white bed. In the evening Jacques Legrand brought the child a jointed clown, all stitched with spangles, which he had bought in a passageway and which was very expensive. It was the price of four of his working days ! But he would have given twenty, thirty — he would have given the price of a year's labor to bring back a smile to the pale lips of the sick child. BOUM-BOUM 305 The child looked at the plaything a moment as it glistened on the white cover of the bed; then said, sadly : "It is not Boum-Boum! — I want to see Boum-Boum!" Ah! if Jacques could have wrapped him up in his blan- kets, could have carried him to the circus, could have shown him the clown dancing under the lighted chandelier, and have said to him, Look! He did better, Jacques, he went to the circus, demanded the address of the clown, and timidly, his legs shaking with fear, he climbed, one by one, the steps which led to the apartment of the artist, at Mont- martre. 3 It was very bold, this that Jacques was going to do ! But after all the comedians go to sing and recite their monologues in drawing-rooms, at the houses of the great lords. Perhaps the clown — oh ! if he only would — would consent to come and say good-day to Francois. No matter ; how would they receive him, Jacques Legrand, here at Boum-Boum's house? He was no longer Boum-Boum ! He was Monsieur Moreno, and, in the artistic dwelling, the books, the engrav- ings, the elegance was like a choice decoration around the charming man who received Jacques in his office like that of a doctor. Jacques looked, but did not recognize the clown, and turned and twisted his felt hat between his fingers. The other waited. Then the father excused himself. "It was astonishing, what he came there to ask, it could not be — pardon, excuse — But in short, it was concerning the little one — A nice little one, monsieur. And so intelligent! Always the first at school, except in arithmetic, which he did not understand — A dreamer, this little one, do you see ! Yes, a dreamer. And the proof — wait — the proof — " Jacques now hesitated, stammered ; but he gathered up his courage and said briskly : 3. A section of Paris in which artists and literary men live. 306 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "The proof is that he wishes to see you, that he thinks only of you, and that you are there before him like a star which he would like to have, and that he looks — " When he had finished, the father was deadly pale, and he had great drops on his forehead. He dared not look at the clown, who remained with his eyes fixed on the workman. And what was he going to say, this Boum-Boum? Was he going to dismiss him, take him for a fool and put him out the door? "You live?" asked Boum-Boum. "Oh ! very near ! Street of the Abessess !" "Come!" said the other. "Your boy wants to see Boum- Boum? Ah, well, he is going to see Boum-Boum." When the door opened and showed the clown, Jacques Legrand cried out joyfully to his son: "Francois, be happy, child! See, here he is, Boum- Boum !" A look of great joy came over the child's face. He raised himself on his mother's arm and turned his head toward the two men who approached, questioning, for a moment, who it was by the side of his father ; this gentleman in an over- coat, whose good, pleasant face he did not know. When they said to him, "It is Boum-Boum!" he slowly fell back on the pillow, and remained there, his eyes fixed, his beauti- ful large, blue eyes, which looked beyond the walls of the little room, and were always seeking the spangles and the butterfly of Boum-Boum, like a lover who pursues his dream. "No," replied the child with a voice which was no longer dry, but full of despair, "no, it is not Boum-Boum." The clown, standing near the little bed, threw upon the child an earnest look, very grave, but of an inexpressible sweetness. BOUM-BOUM 307 He shook his head, looked at the anxious father, the grief-stricken mother, and said, smiling, "He is right; this is not Boum-Boum !" and then he went out. "I cannot see him, I will never see Boum-Boum any more!" repeated the child, whose little voice spoke to the angels. "Boum-Boum is perhaps there, there, where little Francois will soon go." And suddenly — it was only a half-hour since the clown had disappeared — the door opened quickly, and in his black, spangled clothes, his yellow cap on his head, the gilded butterfly on his breast and on his back, with a smile as big as the mouth of a money-box, and a powdered face, Boum- Boum, the true Boum-Boum, the Boum-Boum of the circus, tl|e Boum-Boum of the popular neighborhood, the Boum- Boum of little Francois — Boum-Boum appeared ! Lying on his little white bed, the child clapped his thin little hands, laughing, crying, happy, saved, with a joy of life in his eyes, and cried "Bravo !" with his seven-year gaiety, which all at once kindled up like a match: "Boum-Boum ! It is he, it is he, this time ! Here is Boum-Boum ! Long live Boum-Boum ! Good-day, Boum- Boum." And when the doctor came back, he found seated by little Francois' bedside, a clown with a pale face, who made the little one laugh again and again, and who said to the child while he was stirring a piece of sugar into a cup of medicine : "Thou knowest, if thou dost not drink, little Francois, Boum-Boum will not come back any more." So the child drank. "Is it not good?" "Very good ! — thanks, Boum-Boum !" "Doctor/' said the clown to the doctor, "do not be jeal- ous — It seems to me that my grimaces will do him as much good as your prescriptions !" 308 FRENCH SHORT STORIES The father and the mother wept, but this time from joy. Until little Francois was on his feet again a carriage stopped every day before the dwelling of a workman in the street of the Abessess, at Montmartre, and a man got out with a gay powdered face, enveloped in an overcoat with a collar turned back, and underneath it one could see a clown's costume. "What do I owe you, monsieur?" said Jacques, at last, to 'he master-clown when the child took his first walk, "for now [ owe you something !" The clown stretched out his two soft, herculean hands to '.he parents. "A shake of the hand !" said he. Then placing two great kisses on the once more rosy cheeks of the child : "And" (laughing) "permission to put on my visiting- •ard : "Boum-Boum "Acrobatic Doctor and Physician in ordinary to little Francois!" LEMAITRE (1853-1914) Francois Elie Jules Lemaitre was born at Vennecy, in the Department of Loiret, central France, April 27, 1853. After some preliminary schooling at home he went to Paris and completed his studies there. He was inter- ested in educational work and taught for a number of years, holding positions in various schools and colleges. In 1882 he received his doctor's degree and two years later he abandoned the teaching profession so that he might devote his whole attention to literary pursuits. Lemaitre had always been interested in literature, as befitted a Professor of Rhetoric, and early in his career began to contribute poems and articles to various journals. By 1879 he was already attracting attention as a critic through a number of articles in the Revue Bleue, especially one on Flaubert, whom he had known well at Havre while teaching. A small volume of poems made him known more widely, but his real forte seemed to lie in criticism, a field for which he was eminently fitted by virtue of his wide reading and splendid scholarship. For many years he shared high honors as a critic with Brunetiere, Faguet, and Doumic, of whom Doumic is now the only survivor. Unlike the others, Lemaitre did not limit his interest to criticism alone; he made original contributions to poetry, the drama, and fiction, with considerable success in each. It is, however, as a critic that Lemaitre will be best remembered. He kept up a continuous series of critical essays on the drama and other literary subjects. Of the Impressions de Theatre there are ten volumes, while of the second series, entitled Les Contemporains, there are seven volumes. The story of The Siren, selected for this volume, is taken 309 310 FRENCH SHORT STORIES from the first series of En Marge des Vieux Livres. The idea of the stories and sketches in these two volumes is unique; each one begins with an episode or character from some well known old story and then diverges as the imagi- nation of the author dictates. The stories are very readable because of Lemaitre's direct style, and because of the novelty of the underlying idea. THE SIREN 1 By JULES LEMAITRE As they neared the Islet of the Sirens 2 the wind calmed down and the waves were hushed. The sailors furled the sails. Ulysses/ remembering the warning counsel of Circe, 2 kneaded a lump of wax in his sturdy hands and stopped the ears of his companions with it. They in turn tied him to the mast and then struck the foaming sea with their oars. From the depths of their grotto the Sirens had observed the vessel. When it came within range of their voices they came down to the shore and began to sing : "Come hither, beloved wanderers, come ! No seafarer has ever passed our island without listening to our voice; then they depart filled with joy, having learned many things; for we know all that happens on the bountiful earth." Rising erect out of the still water, their bodies gleaming and moist, they made appealing gestures with their beautiful arms. And an irresistible witchery lay in their voices, soft as a milky sea, pervasive as the odor of sea-weed, tender, and a little wistful as though it were the voice of longing. Ulysses writhed within his bands, but his companions, forewarned, only bound them tighter around his arms and thighs. 1. Translated by H. C. Schweikert. 2. See Homer's Odyssey, Book XII, or Gayley's Classic Myths. THE SIREN 311 However, one of the sailors, Euphorion by name, declared that even at the price of his life it was worth while to listen to songs that could shake the feelings of a man so profound in wisdom as the crafty Ulysses. He removed the wax from his ears, and hearkened. What he heard was such that he leaned over the railing of the ship, further and further, until after a few seconds he dropped into the salt waves. The sailors hesitated about abandoning their companion, but Ulysses, with a glance of the eye, ordered them to pass on beyond the headland. With all the strength of his longing, Euphorion swam to- ward the voices. The sea, glistening in the sun, became darker as it receded into the blue grotto. At the entrance the Sirens, all seven of them, raised themselves upright. Down to the waist they were like young women; they had eyes of grayish blue, golden hair, sharp teeth in mouths that were rather large, and their faces were like those of children. Their hips were enclosed in a sheath of scales, and the swimmer noticed the glittering brilliance of their tails moving level with the water's surface. When he came quite close to them the Sirens stopped singing; then, with a loud cry, they seized him, dragged him back to the rear of the grotto, placed him upon a jutting rock strewn with bones, and prepared to attack him. For these beautiful creatures were accustomed to tear to pieces the bodies of the shipwrecked sailors and to suck their blood with puckered mouths. It chanced that one of the Sirens seemed to Euphorion more beautiful than the others, with a countenance less im- passive. Turning to her, he said : "I shall die happy, having heard the song of the daughters 312 FRENCH SHORT STORIES of the sea. But I should be happier still if death should come to me at your hands alone." The Siren looked at him in surprise. It was the first time she had ever seen a wish or a thought illuminate the face of a man ; for usually the features and eyes of the shipwrecked mariners showed nothing but terror; or indeed, more often, utterly exhausted bjr their exertions, they displayed no emotion at all. She made a sign to her sisters to keep away, saying: "The stranger belongs to me." The rest of the Sirens withdrew, either because she who spoke in this manner had some authority over her com- panions, or because some tacit agreement among them deter- mined the allotment of these derelicts of the sea. Alone with the crafty Greek, she asked: "What is your name ?" And when she had learned it she at once replied: "Euphorion, I love you. And, although immortal, that is the first time I have ever spoken that word or felt that which it signifies." "And what is your name?" asked the Greek. "Leucosia." The other Sirens, faithful to the pact agreed upon, let Euphorion and Leucosia live together by themselves as thev liked. Back of the grotto there was a secluded meadow in which a fountain gently played. Euphorion drank its water and lived on shell-iish. Leucosia never left him. As a pastime they enjoyed being rocked on the crest of a wave, to be lifted up and carried along amid its watery caresses. At times the Siren would let herself drop from the summit of a high rock, her finny tail straight out like an arrow; he would catch her in his arms and together they would dive deep into the salty pool. At THE SIREN 313 other times, in the basins of the coves, they reveled in the sunshine among the foaming eddies. Or again, they gam- boled with the dolphins, playing merry pranks upon them. At night, when the other Sirens went to sleep on the grass, their unwieldy tails stretching out side by side, Euphorion and Leucosia retired to a remote nook in the meadow, and the wanderer fell asleep in the cold arms of this quaint goddess of the sea. They conversed but little. Leucosia was familiar with words which pertained to things necessary to nymph life on the reefs of the Mediterranean. She knew how to name the sky, the sea, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rocks, the fish, and the various parts of the body. She also knew how to say: "I see; I hear; I feel; I love; I desire something; I hope; I want." But that was practically all the vocabulary of this young immortal. One day Euphorion said to her: "When from the swift ship I heard the voices of the Sirens you boasted that you knew many things not known to man. Tell me about them now, Leucosia." But she gave him to understand that they spoke untruths, only to excite the curiosity of travelers. And, in truth, the words they chanted, which he now heard every evening, did not evidence an intelligent understanding of the spirit of things, but only such exceeding emotion as arises from rejoicing at the coming of the dawn, the glory of the setting sun, the boundlessness and beauty of the sea ; or, simply the joy of possessing an agile body incapable of fatigue. Sometimes the artful singers seemed to suggest the pain of a longing, purposely left vague, but which pre- cisely defined the gloom in the soul of Euphorion, burdened with memories of his life as a human being. Leucosia noticed the melancholy of her companion and soothed him with her cool kisses. On the sea and in the 314 FRENCH SHORT STORIES hollow grotto she was stronger than he, and more supple, and helped him along and watched over him every moment. But on the beach and in the fragrant meadow, obliged to walk on her hands and drag her cumbersome tail along, she wondered at her comrade because of his feet which enabled him to walk erect, and envied him. In such moments she felt that his experiences had been more varied than hers, that his mind must be filled with pictures and ideas which she could not even surmise. He resolved to teach her, attempting to give her some idea how human beings lived on the continent and the larger islands. But he soon saw that she did not understand him because the words he used had no relation to any obj ect upon which she could put her eyes. Then he began to grow a trifle weary. Leucosia no longer had the charm of novelty. There was too great a difference between them because of the primitiveness of her mind. What had at first fascinated him now made him tired. He felt a sort of resentment towards Leucosia on account of her ignorance — and because of her cold, briny skin. He remembered his life as it used to be, his homesickness becoming constantly more acute. At night, in the quiet meadow, while the strange goddess with the scaly body lay asleep near him he once again saw the fields, the woods, the streams, the oxen at their work, the dwelling-places of human beings, the booths of the merchants, the temples on the hills, the ships in port, and the taverns where one drinks the sparkling wine; the little dancing-girls, dark-eyed, be- spangled, who stick red flowers in their hair, and whose hands are warm and who have pretty feet. About this time a vessel which happened along was lured by the song of the Sirens and wrecked on a nearby reef. Euphorion was horrified when he saw those graceful maidens set their piercing teeth into the bodies of the seamen, and THE SIREN 315 swell up with the blood which they sucked from them. Leu- cosia showed no desire either to sing with her sisters or to share in their orgy. Euphorion was pleased; but on ques- tioning her he learned that she had refrained solely not to displease him, and that — although love, common to nearly all animals, could touch her — pity, peculiar to man alone, had remained a stranger to her. The Sirens could breathe with equal ease under the water and in the air. With the help of his companion, Euphorion had learned how to hold his breath under water longer than a diver. Often he liked to swim with Leucosia across the coral groves and the gardens of undersea plants, uncertain whether the shapes imperceptibly changing their colors in the glass-like brightness of the sea were precious stones, flowers, or living creatures. On one of these excursions he discovered, in a dell at the bottom of the sea, the remains of a vessel, and, amid the wreckage, some vases, large urns, household articles, neck- laces, jewels, girdles, silver mirrors, small painted tablets showing various scenes in the life of human beings — and a small chest filled with gold. With the assistance of Leucosia he brought these objects to shore. He placed a necklace around her throat, put brace- lets on her arms, a belt about her waist, and handed her a looking-glass. She was struck by her own beauty, and smiled. Then he explained the use of the various other articles as well as the meaning of the pictures on the colored tablets. Now, Leucosia seemed to form some idea of a life other than her own. She said, a little wistfully: "I should like to see all that; but I am only a nymph of the sea, and the sea is all that I shall ever understand." An idea suggested itself to Euphorion. By further excit- ing her curiosity about the earth, he might make it a means 316 FRENCH SHORT STORIES of escape from the island of the Sirens. So, he was planning a separation from his companion at the very moment when she was becoming more intelligent and beginning to under- stand him. He continually told her entrancing tales of life among men. "If you care to come with me/' he said one day, "we can swim across the sea until we come to a city called Athens, scarcely three days' journey from here." "But I cannot walk very far on land." "I will help you," replied Euphorion; "and when we've arrived in the city, a splendid chariot, like those you saw in the pictures, will carry you wheresoever you wish to go. And we will live happily together with the gold in that chest." But he did not say all that was in his mind. A three days' journey was mere play for the Siren. At times they swam along side by side, while again, Euphorion was helped by her, so they reached the shore of the main- land without his being exhausted by fatigue. They landed at an unfrequented spot, but in the distance saw signs of a city, approached by a long road, which was rugged and covered with dust. The Siren crawled along for a while on her hands, but she was bruised by the stones and weakened by the scorching rays of the sun. Euphorion was already far in advance of her. She called to him : "The land upon which men live is hard and rough. In the sea I helped to carry you ; now, in turn, should you not help me?" He did not have the heart to refuse. Retracing his steps, he stooped down and offered to assist her. The Siren put her arms around his neck; he rose, and as he walked along THE SIREN . 317 the road the end of her scale-covered tail dragged in the dust. Perspiring under his burden, Euphorion muttered words of annoyance. He began to ask himself what he was to do with this fin-tailed woman, now that they were in the country of men. Suddenly he roughly unclasped from his neck the arms of Leucosia, let her fall at full length to the ground, and ran away with rapid strides. "Euphorion ! Euphorion !" cried the Siren, plaintively. That cry was so touching that he stopped. "Be patient," he said. "I am going to the city, and will return with a chariot to fetch you." "No, no," she moaned. "You will not return. I know it. You no longer love me because I am not like other women. To me you owe your life, and it is through you that I am doomed to lose mine, for surely the gods have deprived me of immortality as punishment for having fallen in love with a human being." She wrung her hands, and for the first time tears flowed from her pale eyes. Her tail, whose beautiful shiny colors were soiled by the dust, beat feebly on the hard road. "Euphorion! Euphorion! Have pity on me!" she re- sumed. " 'Pity'?" he exclaimed. "You have never before spoken that word !" "That is because I have never before suffered," she re- plied. "Listen to me, dear friend and comrade. I clearly see that I shall always be an embarrassment to you. And as for me, I know I would be uneasy among women who have feet. Alas ! that which I longed for, now terrifies me. But I am too weak to regain the sea. Carry me to the shore, and I'll return alone to my cruel sisters." " 'Cruel' ?" said Euphorion. "Still another word which you have never before used !" 318 FRENCH SHORT STORIES "Alas !" she answered, "it is you who have revealed its meaning to me." Euphorion, without saying anything, lifted her into his arms, while her long flowing hair entwined itself about his knees. She smiled at him amid her tears, and then she sighed so tenderly that he felt his resolution weakening. He placed Leucosia gently on the beach, near the water's edge. "Adieu, dear friend," she said. "Ah," he sobbed, "if only you were like other women." "But why hope! I am not. Besides, I have no need of limbs in the waters of the sea. I shall try to forget — forget, and become once more like my sisters. For I shall be exceed- ingly unhappy if I remember you and all the things you have taught me. But then, can I forget ? — Alas, I fear I cannot, and I shall be a poor forsaken nymph, no longer even Siren." Euphorion wept: "Become what you will," said he. "I know that I love you, and I do not want you to go away without me. Let happen whatsoever may please the gods — you and I are go- ing away together !" Euphorion would really have committed that folly had it not been for Thetis, kindhearted goddess of the sea, who appeared before the two lovers. "I have long been interested in you," she said, "and I wish you well. You, Leucosia, have been kind to one who but lately fought at the side of my son Achilles; while you, Euphorion, have shown compassion to one of my daughters of the sea at the very moment when you were about to realize your dearest hope — that of once more seeing your native land ; and finally, because you have elevated each other, the one through greater knowledge, the other by increased forti- tude. THE SIREN 319 "There are several ways in which I can reward you. Be- fore letting you depart alone, Leucosia, I can remove from your memory all that you have experienced, so that from now on it will never cause you any suffering. Or, Euphorion, I can give you the fins and the form of a dolphin, preserving your human mind with all its associations, and you can live pleasantly with Leucosia in the boundless sea. But it is my wish to make you happy in the manner you yourselves are thinking of this minute. Leucosia, dear daughter of the sea, would you give up your immortality to live with him?" "Yes," answered the Siren. "For to be immortal, and happy, one must not think of anything." "Thank you !" said Thetis. "Oh!" Leucosia exclaimed, "I was not thinking of you when I said that. I had in mind only an insignificant little goddess like myself." "You need make no excuses, my child. Then, do I under- stand that you are willing to become mortal?" "With all my heart!" "Become a woman then, and follow him whom you love." Thetis touched the Siren lightly with her trident ; and the transformation took place forthwith. "My child," added the kindly goddess, "go now and ask for a fitting garment from the priestess of the little temple which you see, a hundred paces from here, on the hill. . . . And proceed together toward the city." Euphorion and Leucosia beamed with joy. But Thetis, on leaving them, smiled somewhat doubtfully; for after all, could she be absolutely certain that she had made them happy ? APPENDIX Prepared by George L. Marsh, author of the Manual for the Study of English Classics HELPS TO STUDY The Short Story Form The essence of the distinction now usually made between the ar- tistic short story as a literary form, and other brief narratives, is found in Poe's review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales (men- tioned p. 7), which appeared in Graham's Magazine in 1842. The most important parts of Poe's essay are as follows: "The tale proper, in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the vide domains of mere prose. . . . Were I called upon ... to designate that class" of composition which, next to such a poem as I have suggested [a rimed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour], should best fulfill the demands of high genius — should offer it the most advan- tageous field of exertion — I should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I allude to the short prose narrative requiring from a half -hour to one or two hours in its perusal. ... A skillful literary artist has con- structed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned, his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such events' as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented un- 320 APPENDIX 321 blemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the novel. . . . Thus the field of this species of composition, if not in so elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a table- land of far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. Its products are never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. The writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflec- tions of thought and expression — (the ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the humorous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable adjuncts; we allude, of course, to rhythm. ' ; This fundamental statement has been much elaborated in books on the short story, which are very numerous. A good list may be found in the Introduction and the Appendix to Types of the Short Story, Lake English Classics. Plan for the Study of a Short Story (Condensed from Types of the Short Story) The following list of types is not exhaustive, nor are all the types coordinate or mutually exclusive; but the list is given for its suggestiveness : Tale. Story of Dramatic Incident. Story of Romantic Adventure. Love Story. Story of Terror. Story of the Supernatural. Humorous Story. Story of Local Color. Apologue. Story of Ingenuity. Character Sketch. Animal Story. Psychological Story. Story of Fantasy. Story of Youth. II. PURPOSE Has the author a purpose beyond that of entertaining his readers ? If so, state this purpose. 322 APPENDIX III. TITLE The title of a short story may serve various purposes, of which the following are the most common: To name the principal character, as Mateo Falcone (Merimee) ; or to characterize him, as The Thief (Dostoevski). To give the scene or setting of the story, as The Wreck (Mau- passant) . To suggest the chief incident, as The Atheist's Mass (Balzac). To name some object which plays an important part in the story, as The NecMace (Maupassant). To suggest the type of the story, as The Haunted and the Haunters (Lytton). To give the tone of the story, as Fear (Maupassant). To arouse curiosity, as . 007 (Kipling). a. Which of these purposes does the title of the story in hand serve? Has it a purpose not mentioned above? o. Is the title well chosen? IV. BEGINNING The opening paragraphs of a story may serve various purposes, of which the following are among the most common: To start the action of the story, either with incident or with conversation. To introduce characters, by description or by comment. To give the setting, describing the scene of the story. To state or suggest the central idea of the story. To tell how the story came to be written or published. a. What purpose or purposes are served by the first paragraph or two of the story? Do they serve any purpose not mentioned above? b. Is interest aroused at the beginning? V. PLOT The plot of a story may be described as ''what happens to the characters." Plots may be classified on the basis of their proba- bility in three groups: probable, improbable, or impossible. In realistic fiction the plot is always probable; in romantic fiction it may be improbable or impossible. a. Is the plot of this story probable, improbable, or impossible? APPENDIX 323 b. Is the movement of the story, i. e., the way events succeed each other, swift, gradual, or slow? c. Is the story interesting? Are there any points where the interest flags? The climax of a story is the point where the interest is at the highest pitch. In many modern short stories, the whole plot is built upon the climax; the story exists for this, and when it is reached, the story ends. But in the tale, and in some modern stories, the climax is less important. d. Where is the climax in the story in hand? Does' the whole story converge upon this point? In most stories, besides the principal climax there are minor ones. e. Are these minor climaxes in the story read? Where? An incident in a story that helps in plot development is called a contributing incident. An incident that does not help in plot de- velopment is called an episode. Episodes may be omitted without affecting the main story. /. Are there any episodes in the story read? Can you see why they are introduced? VI. CHARACTERS a. Are the characters many or few? ~b. Are the characters lifelike? From what class of society are they drawn? There are four ways of showing character: (1) by author's com- ment; (2) by comment of other characters; (3) by what a char- acter does; (4) by what he says. c. In the story read, which of the foregoing methods are used? Is any one of them used more than the others? Find good exam- ples of each method, if possible. VII. SETTING a. Are the time and place of the story definitely stated, or do you infer them from casual hints? t. Are the surroundings made clear? Does the author give in much detail the appearance of a village street, the interior of a house, etc.? If so, why? c. Is there much description of nature? 324 APPENDIX d. In describing people, does the author give their features? Their figure? Their dress? In some stories the characters or the settings are purposely vague, just as in a picture an artist may give us softened outlines or a shadowy background, to impart a certain atmosphere or tone to the picture. e. Is this the case in the story read? /. Is there sufficient description to make you see clearly the persons in the story? g. Is there much use of local color? VIII. STYLE a. Is the story told chiefly through conversation, or chiefly through direct narration? Z>. Is dialect used? If it is, what is gained by its use? c. Is the style clear, or are there sentences that you must read a second time? d. Does the author possess a wide vocabulary? e. Does he use unfamiliar or technical terms? If so, does he gain or lose by this? /. Are figures of speech frequent? Point out a figure of -speech, and show what is gained by its use. g. Does the style possess individuality, so that you feel that after reading several of the writer's 1 stories you could recognize his work? h. Which of the following terms describe the style of the story: swift; graphic; picturesque; easy; flowing; abrupt; epigram- matic; intense; transparent; involved; careful; polished; tame; wordy; flat? Can you characterize it by any other term? Stories in This Volume "What reasons have there been for the remarkable development of the short story in the last century (p. 8) ? Sum up the main differences between the short story and the novel (p. 9) and illustrate them by reference to specific stories in this collection. What story in this volume approaches closest to the scope and manner of the novel? Do you think this particular story could APPENDIX 325 be expanded into a novel? If so, what would be the process? Could any other stories in the book be similarly expanded? Study the differences between the extremely short story (of the type mentioned on p. 11) and the longer "short story," and dis- cuss the advantages and the disadvantages of each kind. Discuss the question (implied on p. 17) of French preeminence in the short story. Take into account the importance of Irving and Hawthorne and Poe (all Americans) in developing and ex- plaining the technique of the form, and the remarkable work of, for example, Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad (in England), Bret Harte, Henry James, and "O. Henry" (in America). For the importance of Irving and Hawthorne and Poe as pioneers, see the Lake Classic edition of The Sketch Boole (pp. 31-32) and the passage from Poe's review of Hawthorne on page 320 above. Stevenson once declared that there are only three ways of writing a story : ' ' You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or . . . you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express and realize it. ' ' As an example of the third class he mentions his own story, ' ' The Merry Men ' ' ; the other classes are self-explanatory. It will be interesting to apply this classification to the stories in the text. AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR Find examples in this story (and also in the others from Balzac) of the "trick" of realism mentioned at the top of page 20. Trace hints of the sinister; devices to keep up suspense. Had you any definite idea who the mysterious stranger was, before you were told? "Were you completely surprised? If not, point out exactly what gave you your idea. Are there any hints before page 29 that the woman first intro- duced is a nun? Why were not nuns and priests safe? Who is meant by the "sacred personage" mentioned on page 31? When do you find out definitely, and how? THE ATHEIST'S MASS Are you deceived by the beginning of this story? Do you think it objectionable to begin as if the story were about Dr. Bianchon 326 APPENDIX when it is really about Desplein? What purpose is served by so many details about the former? Find indications that the translation was made by an English- man (p. 57). Do you see any defense for the use of purely English terms in a story of which the scene is in France? COLONEL CHABERT What do you think of the amount of legal detail in the early part of this story? How do you account for it (p. 19) ? Do you find any indication of a general opinion as to lawyers (p. 71) ? What is the purpose and effect of such description as that on page 99? Trace carefully the steps leading up to and accounting for Colonel Chabert's final action; that of his wife. On the basis of all this make a brief characterization of each. MATEO FALCONE Do you notice any difference in directness and conciseness be- tween Balzac and Merimee? In the personal note (p. 144)? Is any defense or any condemnation of the father's action im- plied in this story? How do you find the action accounted for in his character as presented? Is the boy's action made to seem natural, reasonable? CROISILLES Trace the steps in accounting for the final action of Mile. Godeau. Is it made to seem -reasonable? Do you consider all the formal description and explanation of this story necessary or important? MAUPASSANT IN GENERAL Which of these stories by Maupassant deal with the supreme moment in a life? Are all such stories complete dramas? Do you find any admission of non-essentials; any wasting of words; any digressions? Answer specifically. Do you find any stories in which the movement is not perpetu- ally forward? Answer specifically. Which of these stories are realistic? Are there any that are not realistic at least in details? APPENDIX 327 Find examples of the characteristics mentioned on page 193. Which do you consider most remarkable of these stories' for swiftness, directness, compression? Do you notice any faulty idiom apparently due to imperfect translation? Point out examples if you find any. Comment on the paragraphing. How does it differ from the usual English paragraphing? Has it any advantages over the latter? THE NECKLACE Criticize or defend a choice of this story as the best representa- tive of Maupassant's powers, especially in making a short story present a complete drama. Point out in how many ways irony is the main idea. THE WRECK Why do we have the description of La Eochelle on page 206? Would it be unjustifiable if much longer? Should the Englishman's presence on the wreck be accounted for ? Should the narrator 's business report be mentioned at or near the end? Do you find any indication of the attitude or feeling of the girl? Would any other ending of the story be reasonable? FRIGHT Are the two different examples of "fright" in this story suffi- ciently related for unity? Is enough explanation given or im- plied ? TWO FRIENDS Do you find any comment here? Any apparent bias of the narrator? Any definite indication that he thinks the Prussians were cruel or unjustifiable? What, nevertheless, is the effect of the story? THE HAND What do you find to be Maupassant's attitude toward the super- natural — or the apparently supernatural? Which of these "hor- ror stories" seems to you most impressive? THE LAST LESSON Specify the various ways in which the style of this story is made suitable to its central idea and its subject matter. 328 APPENDIX THE POPE'S MULE Explain the historical setting. Find the best examples of the mock-heroic or burlesque in mate- rial or style. How is being kicked by a mule made to seem worthy of treat- ment in a story of eleven pages? THE REVEREND FATHER GAUCHER 'S ELIXIR Note how Daudet's good-natured but sly and insinuating atti- tude toward worldliness in churchmen resembles that of Chaucer in the Prologue to Canterbury Tales. A PIECE OP BREAD Observe the sympathetic attitude toward the poor which is very characteristic of Coppee. What would you think of omitting all after the climax (near the top of p. 281) ? What does the rest add to the story? THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME Students who are acquainted with Massenet's opera on the them® of this story may study and report on the ways in which so simple a tale has been elaborated for the stage. Can you account reasonably for such paragraphing as that near the bottom of page 287 and the top of 288? THE BIRDS IN THE LETTER-BOX Note how an impression of great familiarity with the habits of birds is given. Write a brief character sketch of the abbe. BOUM-BOUM Does the use of thou in translation of French tu — a distinction not now made in English — seem natural and effective? Is the kindness of the clown adequately accounted for? The recovery of the child? 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