The Project Gutenberg EBook of Monsieur Bergeret in Paris, by Anatole France This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Monsieur Bergeret in Paris Author: Anatole France Editor: James Lewis May Bernard Miall Translator: B. Drillien Release Date: July 10, 2015 [EBook #49414] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONSIEUR BERGERET IN PARIS *** Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Cover THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION EDITED BY JAMES LEWIS MAY AND BERNARD MIALL MONSIEUR BERGERET IN PARIS MONSIEUR BERGERET IN PARIS BY ANATOLE FRANCE A TRANSLATION BY B. DRILLIEN LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD. NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMXXII SECOND EDITION PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. MONSIEUR BERGERET IN PARIS MONSIEUR BERGERET IN PARIS CHAPTER I ONSIEUR BERGERET was seated at table taking his frugal evening meal. Riquet lay at his feet on a tapestry cushion. Riquet had a religious soul; he rendered divine honours to mankind. He regarded his master as very good and very great. But it was chiefly when he saw him at table that he realized the sovereign greatness and goodness of Monsieur Bergeret. If, to Riquet, all things pertaining to food were precious and impressive, those pertaining to the food of man were sacred. He venerated the dining-room as a temple, the table as an altar. During meals he kept his place at his master’s feet, in silence and immobility. “It’s a spring chicken,” said old Angélique as she placed the dish upon the table. “Good. Be kind enough to carve it, then,” said Monsieur Bergeret, who was a poor hand with weapons and quite hopeless as a carver. “Willingly,” said Angélique, “but carving isn’t woman’s work, it’s the gentlemen who ought to carve poultry.” “I don’t know how to carve.” “Monsieur ought to know.” This dialogue was by no means new. Angélique and her master exchanged similar remarks every time that game or poultry came to the table. It was not flippantly, it was certainly not to save herself trouble, that the old servant persisted in offering her master the carving-knife as a token of the respect which was due to him. In the peasant class from which she had sprung and also in the little middle-class households where she had been in service, it was a tradition that it was the master’s duty to carve. The faithful old soul’s respect for tradition was profound. She did not think it right that Monsieur Bergeret should fall short of it, that he should delegate to her the performance of so authoritative a function, that he should fail to carve at his own table, since he was not grand enough to employ a butler to do it for him, like the Brécés, the Bonmonts and other such folk in town or country. She knew the obligations which honour imposes on a citizen who dines at home, and she never failed to impress them upon Monsieur Bergeret. “The knife has just been sharpened; Monsieur can easily cut off a wing. It’s not difficult to find the joint when the chicken is tender.” 1 2 3 “Angélique, be so good as to carve this chicken.” Reluctantly she obeyed, and, slightly crestfallen, she carved the chicken on a corner of the sideboard. With regard to human food she had ideas which were more accurate but no less respectful than those of Riquet. Meanwhile Monsieur Bergeret revolved within himself the reasons of the prejudice which had induced the worthy woman to believe that the right of wielding the carving-knife belonged to the master of the house alone. He did not look to find them in any gracious and kindly feeling on the man’s part that he should reserve to himself a tedious and unattractive task. It is, as a matter of fact, to be observed that throughout the ages the more laborious and distasteful household tasks have, by the common consent of all nations, been assigned to women. On the contrary, he attributed the tradition cherished by old Angélique to the ancient idea that the flesh of animals, prepared for the sustenance of man, is a thing so precious that the master alone may and should apportion and distribute it. And he called to mind the godlike swine-herd Eumæus receiving Ulysses in his pig-sty. He did not recognize him, but honoured him as a guest sent by Zeus: “Eumæus rose to divide the portions among his guests, for he had an equitable mind. He made seven portions, whereof he dedicated one to the Nymphs and to Hermes, son of Maia, and of the rest he gave one portion to each of his table companions; but to honour his guest Ulysses he offered him the whole chine of the pig. And the subtle Ulysses rejoiced thereat and said to Eumæus: ‘Eumæus, mayst thou remain for ever dear to our father Zeus for that thou hast honoured me, such as I am, by giving me the best portion!’” Thus Monsieur Bergeret, when in the company of his old servant, daughter of Mother Earth, felt himself carried back to the days of antiquity. “Will Monsieur help himself to a little more?” But he had not, like the divine Ulysses and the kings of Homer, an heroic appetite; and, as he ate, he read his paper, which lay open upon the table. This was another habit of which the servant did not approve. “Would you like a bit of chicken, Riquet?” asked Monsieur Bergeret. “It is very good.” Riquet made no reply. He never asked for food as long as he lay under the table. However good the dishes might smell he did not claim his share of them, and, what is more, he dared not touch anything that was offered him. He refused to eat in a human dining-room. Monsieur Bergeret, an affectionate and kindly man, would have liked to share his meals with his comrade. At first he had tried to smuggle down to him a few little scraps. He had spoken to him gently, but not without that arrogance which so often accompanies beneficence. He had said: “Lazarus, receive the crumbs of the good rich man, since for you, at all events, I am the good rich man.” But Riquet had always refused. The majesty of the place over-awed him; and perhaps in his former condition he had received a lesson that taught him to respect the master’s food. One day Monsieur Bergeret had been more pressing than usual. For a long while he had held a delicious piece of meat under his friend’s nose. Riquet had averted his head, and, emerging from beneath the table-cloth, had gazed at his master with his beautiful, humble eyes, full of gentleness and reproach; eyes that said: “Master, wherefore dost thou tempt me?” And with drooping tail and crouching legs he had dragged himself upon his belly as a sign of humility, and had gone dejectedly to the door, where he sat upon his haunches. He had remained there throughout the meal. And Monsieur Bergeret had marvelled at the saintly patience of his little black friend. He knew, then, what Riquet’s feelings were, and that is why he did not insist on this occasion. Moreover, he knew that Riquet, after the dinner at which he was a reverential spectator, would presently go to the kitchen and greedily devour his own mess under the kitchen sink, snuffling and blowing, entirely at his ease. His mind at rest on this point, he resumed the thread of his thoughts. “The heroes,” he reflected, “used to make a great business of eating and drinking. Homer does not forget to tell us that in the palace of the fair-haired Menelaus, Eteonteus, the son of Boethus, was wont to carve the meats and distribute the portions. A king was worthy of praise when, at his table, every man received his due portion of the roasted ox. Menelaus knew the customs of his times. With the aid of her servants the white-armed Helen saw to the cooking and the great Eteonteus carved the meats. The pride of so noble a function still shines upon the smooth faces of our butlers and maîtres d’hôtel. We are deep-rooted in the past. But I am not a hungry man: I am only a small eater, and Angélique Borniche, primitive woman that she is, makes that too a grievance against me. She would think far more of me had I the appetite of a son of Atreus or a Bourbon.” Monsieur Bergeret had just reached this stage in his reflections when Riquet got up from his cushion and ran barking 4 5 6 7 to the door. This action was remarkable because it was unusual. Riquet never left his cushion until his master rose from table. He had been barking for some moments when old Angélique, putting a bewildered face in at the door, announced that “those young ladies” had arrived. Monsieur Bergeret understood her to allude to his sister Zoe and his daughter Pauline, whom he had not expected so soon. He knew that his sister Zoe was brusque and sudden in her actions. He rose from the table; but Riquet, at the sound of footsteps, which were now heard in the passage outside, uttered terrible cries of warning; his aboriginal caution, unconquered by a liberal education, leading him to believe that every stranger must of necessity be an enemy. He scented a great danger, a hideous invasion of the dining-room, with the menace of ruin and desolation. Pauline flung her arms around her father’s neck. Napkin in hand, he kissed her, and then stood back to gaze at this young girl, a mysterious being, like all young girls, whom, after a year’s absence, he hardly recognized. She was at once very near and almost a stranger to him. She was his by virtue of the obscure sources of life, but she eluded him in the dazzling energy of youth. “How do you do, papa?” Her very voice had changed; it was lower and less uneven. “How you have grown, my child!” He thought her pretty, with her dainty nose, intelligent eyes and quizzical mouth. But this feeling was at once marred by the reflection that there is little peace in this world of ours, and that young people, seeking for happiness, are entering upon a difficult and uncertain enterprise. He gave Zoe a hasty kiss upon either cheek. “You have not altered, Zoe, my dear. I did not expect you to-day, but I am very glad to see you both again.” Riquet could not understand why his master gave so warm a welcome to strange folk. Had he violently driven them forth, he could have understood. However, he was used to not understanding all the ways of men. Suffering Monsieur Bergeret to do as he would, he continued to perform his duty, barking furiously to scare the evil-doers. Then, from the depths of his throat, he drew growls of hatred and anger; and a frightful contraction of his lips uncovered his white teeth. Backing away from his enemies, he hurled threats at them. “Is that your dog, papa?” “You were to have come on Saturday,” remarked Monsieur Bergeret. “Didn’t you get my letter?” inquired Zoe. “Yes,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “No, I mean the other one.” “I received only one.” “One cannot hear oneself speak here!” It is true that Riquet was barking at the top of his voice. “Your sideboard is dusty,” remarked Zoe, putting her muff on it. “Doesn’t your servant ever do any dusting?” Riquet could not bear anyone to lay hold of the sideboard like that. Either he had conceived a special aversion for Mademoiselle Zoe or he judged her the more important of the two, for it was to her that he addressed his loudest barks and growls. When he saw her place a hand upon the receptacle in which the human nutriment was stored he barked so shrilly that the glasses upon the table rang again. Mademoiselle Zoe, turning upon him suddenly, inquired ironically: “Are you going to eat me up?” Riquet fled in terror. “Is your dog vicious, papa?” “No, he is intelligent; he isn’t vicious.” “I don’t think he’s particularly intelligent,” said Zoe. 8 9 10 “Yes, he is,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “He does not understand all our ideas; but we don’t understand all his. No one can enter into the mind of another.” “You, Lucien, are no judge of persons,” said Zoe. Monsieur Bergeret turned to Pauline. “Come, let me have a look at you. I can hardly recognize you.” A bright idea struck Riquet. He made up his mind to go to the kitchen, to the kindly Angélique, and to warn her, if possible, of the disturbance taking place in the dining-room. She was his last hope for the restoration of order and the expulsion of the intruders. “What have you done with Father’s portrait?” inquired Mademoiselle Zoe. “Sit down and have something to eat,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “There is some chicken and various other things.” “Papa, is it really true that we are going to live in Paris?” “Next month, my child. Are you glad?” “Yes, but I should be just as happy in the country if I could have a garden.” She stopped eating her chicken and said: “I do admire you, papa. I’m proud of you. You are a great man.” “That is what my little dog Riquet thinks too,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. CHAPTER II NDER the supervision of Mademoiselle Zoe, the professor’s furniture was packed and taken to the railway station. During the days of the removal Riquet roamed sadly through the devastated rooms. He regarded Zoe and Pauline with suspicion, as their arrival had been closely followed by the complete upheaval of his formerly peaceful home. The tears of old Angélique, who wept all day long in her kitchen, increased his depression. His most cherished habits were set at naught; the strange, ill-clad, fierce and insulting men troubled his repose; they even went so far as to enter the kitchen and kick away his plate of food and bowl of fresh water. Chairs were taken from him as soon as he lay upon them, and carpets were abruptly dragged from beneath his persecuted body, so that in his own home he no longer knew where to lay his head. To his honour be it said that at first he had sought to resist. When the water-tank was removed he had barked furiously at the enemy, but no one heeded the alarm. No one gave him any encouragement; nay, he was, indeed, actually opposed. “Be quiet,” rapped out Mademoiselle Zoe, and Pauline had added, “Riquet, you are perfectly absurd!” Thenceforth he decided not to waste his time in giving warnings that fell on deaf ears or to labour unaided for the common good, and he grieved silently over the ruined house, and wandered from room to room vainly seeking a little peace. When the pantechnicon men entered the room in which he had taken refuge he would prudently hide beneath some table or sideboard which had not yet been taken away. But this precaution was more harmful than helpful to him, for presently the piece of furniture tottered above him, rose, and fell again, creaking ominously and threatening to crush him. With bristling coat and haggard features he took to his heels only to seek another place of refuge as precarious as the last. But these material inconveniences, nay, these perils, were trifling matters in comparison with the pain that filled his heart. It was his moral, so to speak, that was most affected. To him the articles of furniture were not inanimate objects but living and kindly beings, favourable genii whose departure was a presage of dire misfortune. Dishes and frying-pans, saucepans and sugar-basins, all the divinities of the kitchen; arm-chairs, carpets, cushions, all the fetishes of the fireside, his Lares and his household gods, had disappeared. He did not believe that so great a disaster could ever be made good, and his little soul grieved over it to 11 12 13 14 the very limit of its capacity. Happily, like the human soul, it was easily distracted and quick to forget its woes. During the lengthy absences of the thirsty removers, when old Angélique’s broom stirred up the ancient dust upon the floor, Riquet scented the smell of mice, or watched a scurrying spider, and his fickle fancy was diverted awhile; but he soon relapsed into melancholy. On the day of departure, seeing that matters were growing worse from hour to hour, he was utterly miserable. It seemed to him a peculiarly ominous thing that they should thrust the linen into dismal-looking chests. Pauline was packing her own boxes with joyful eagerness. He turned from her as though she were doing an evil thing, and huddled against the wall. “The worst has come,” he thought. “This is the end of all things!” Whether he believed that things ceased to exist when he saw them no longer, or whether he was only anxious to avoid a painful spectacle, he was careful not to look in Pauline’s direction. As she went to and fro she chanced to notice Riquet’s attitude, and its melancholy struck her as comical. Laughing, she called him: “Here, Riquet, here!” But he would neither stir from his corner nor turn his head. He hadn’t at that moment the heart to caress his young mistress, and a secret instinct, a kind of foreboding, warned him not to go too near to the gaping trunk. Pauline called him several times, and as he did not respond she went over to him and picked him up in her arms. “How miserable we are!” she said. “How much to be pitied!” Her tone was ironical; Riquet did not understand irony. He lay motionless and dejected in her arms, feigning to see nothing, to hear nothing. “Look at me, Riquet!” she demanded. Three times she bade him look at her, but in vain. Then, simulating violent anger, she threw him into the trunk, crying, “In you go, stupid!” and banged the lid on him. At that moment her aunt called her, and she went out of the room, leaving Riquet in the trunk. He felt exceedingly uneasy, for it never entered his head that Pauline had put him there for fun, and merely to tease him. Judging that his position was quite bad enough already, he endeavoured not to aggravate it by thoughtless behaviour. For some moments, therefore, he remained motionless without even drawing a breath. Then, feeling that no fresh disaster threatened him, he thought he had better explore his gloomy prison. He pawed the petticoats and chemises upon which he had been so cruelly precipitated, seeking some outlet by which he might escape. He had been busy for two or three minutes when Monsieur Bergeret, who was getting ready to go out, called him: “Riquet! Riquet! Here! we’re going to the bookshop to say good-bye to Paillot! Here! Where are you?” Monsieur Bergeret’s voice comforted Riquet greatly. He replied to it by a desperate scratching at the wicker sides of the trunk. “Where is the dog?” inquired Monsieur Bergeret of Pauline, who at that moment returned, carrying a pile of linen. “In my trunk, papa.” “Why in the trunk?” “Because I put him there.” Monsieur Bergeret went up to the trunk, and remarked: “It was thus that the child Comatas, who played upon the flute as he kept his master’s goats, was imprisoned in a chest, where he was fed on honey by the bees of the Muses. But not so with you, Riquet; you would have died of hunger in this trunk, for you are not dear to the immortal Muses.” Having spoken, Monsieur Bergeret freed his little friend, who with wagging tail followed him as far as the hall. Then a thought appeared to strike him. He returned to Pauline’s room, ran to her and jumped up against her skirt, and only when he had riotously embraced her as a sign of his adoration did he rejoin his master on the stairs. He would have felt that he was lacking in wisdom and piety had he failed to bestow these tokens of affection on a being whose power had plunged him into the depths of a trunk. Monsieur Bergeret thought Paillot’s shop a dismal, ugly place. Paillot and his assistant were busy “calling over” the list of goods supplied to the Communal School. This task prevented him from prolonging his farewell to the professor. He had never had very much to say for himself and as he grew older he was gradually losing the habit of speech. He was weary of selling books; he saw that it was all over with the trade and was longing for the time to come when he could give up his business and retire to his place in the country, where he always spent his Sundays. As was his wont, Monsieur Bergeret made for the corner where the old books were kept and took down volume XXXVIII of The World’s Explorers. The book opened as usual at pages 212 and 213, and once more he perused these uninspiring lines: 15 16 17 18 “... towards a northerly passage. ‘It was owing to this check,’ said he, ‘that we were able to revisit the Sandwich Islands and enrich our voyage by a discovery which, although the last, seems in many respects to be the most important which has yet been made by Europeans in the whole extent of the Pacific Ocean.’ The happy anticipations which these words appeared to announce were, unhappily, not realized....” These lines, which he was reading for the hundredth time, and which reminded him of so many hours of his commonplace and laborious existence, which was embellished, nevertheless, by the fruitful labours of the mind; these lines, for whose meaning he had never sought, filled him, on this occasion, with melancholy and discouragement, as though they contained a symbol of the emptiness of all human hopes, an expression of the universal void. He closed the book, which he had opened so often and was never to open again, and dejectedly left the shop. In the Place Saint-Exupère he cast a last glance at the house of Queen Marguerite. The rays of the setting sun gleamed upon its historic beams, and in the violent contrast of light and shade the escutcheon of Philippe Tricouillard proudly displayed the outlines of its gorgeous coat of arms, placed there as an eloquent example and a reproach to the barren city. Having re-entered the empty house, Riquet pawed his master’s legs, looking up at him with his beautiful sorrowing eyes, that said: “You, formerly so rich and powerful, have you, O master, become poor? Have you grown powerless? You suffer men clad in filthy rags to invade your study, your bedroom and your dining-room, to fall upon your furniture and drag it out of doors. They drag your deep arm-chair down the stairs, your chair and mine, in which we sat to rest every evening, and often in the morning, side by side. In the clutch of these ragged men I heard it groan, that chair which is so great a fetish and so benevolent a spirit. And you never resisted these invaders. If you have lost all the genii that used to fill your house, even to the little divinities, that you used to put on your feet every morning when you got out of bed, those slippers which I used to worry in my play, if you are poor and miserable, O my master, what will become of me?” “Lucien, we have no time to lose,” said Zoe. “The train goes at eight and we have had no dinner. Let us go and dine at the station.” “To-morrow you will be in Paris,” said Monsieur Bergeret to Riquet. “Paris is a famous and a generous city. To be honest, however, I must point out that this generosity is not vouchsafed alike to all its inhabitants. On the contrary, it is confined to a very small number of its citizens. But a whole city, a whole nation resides in the few who think more forcefully and more justly than the rest. The others do not count. What we call the spirit of a race attains consciousness only in imperceptible minorities. Minds which are sufficiently free to rid themselves of vulgar terrors and discover for themselves the veiled truths are rare in any place!” CHAPTER III PON Monsieur Bergeret’s arrival in Paris, with his daughter Pauline and his sister Zoe, he had lodged in a house which was soon to be pulled down, and which he began to like as soon as he knew that he could not remain in it. He was unaware of the fact that in any case he would have left it at the same time. Mademoiselle Bergeret had made up her mind as to that. She had taken these rooms only to give herself time to find better, and was opposed to the spending of any money upon the place. It was a house in the Rue de Seine, a hundred years old at least. Never beautiful, it had grown uglier with age. The porte cochère opened humbly on a damp courtyard between a shoemaker’s shop and a carrier’s office. Monsieur Bergeret’s rooms were on the second floor, and on the same floor lived a picture-restorer through whose open door glimpses could be caught of little unframed canvases set about an earthenware stove, landscapes, old portraits, and an amber-skinned woman asleep in a dark wood under a green sky. The staircase was fairly well lighted. Cobwebs hung in the corners, and at the turns the wooden stairs were embellished with tiles. Stray lettuce-leaves, dropped from some housewife’s string bag, were to be found there of a morning. Such things had no charm for Monsieur Bergeret, but he could not help feeling sad at the thought that he would become oblivious of these things as he had of so many others which, though they were not of any value, had made up the course of his life. Every day, when his work was done, he went house-hunting. He thought of living for preference on the left bank of the Seine, where his father had dwelt before him, where it seemed to him one breathed an atmosphere of quiet life and peaceful study. What made his search more difficult was the state of the roads, broken with deep trenches and covered 19 20 21 22 with mounds of earth. There were also the impassable and eternally disfigured quays. It will, of course, be remembered that, in the year 1899, the surface of Paris underwent a complete upheaval, either because the new conditions of life necessitated the execution of a great number of municipal undertakings, or because the approach of a huge international exhibition gave rise on every side to an exaggerated activity and a sudden ardour of enterprise. Monsieur Bergeret was grieved to see the town upset, for he did not sufficiently understand the necessity of such a proceeding, but, as he was a wise man, he endeavoured to console himself, to reassure himself by meditation. When he passed along his beautiful Quai Malaquais, so cruelly ravaged by merciless engineers, he pitied the uprooted trees and the banished keepers of bookstalls, and he reflected, not without a certain depth of feeling: “I have lost my friends, and now all that gave me delight in this city, her peace, her grace and her beauty, her old-time elegance and her noble historical vistas, is being violently swept away. It is always right and fitting, however, that reason should prevail over sentiment. We must not dally with vain regrets for the past, nor commiserate with ourselves over the changes that thrust themselves upon us, since change is the very condition of life. Perhaps these upheavals are necessary; it is needful that this city should lose some of her traditional beauty, so that the lives of the greater number of her inhabitants may become less painful and less hard.” And, in the company of idle errand-boys and indolent police-sergeants, Monsieur Bergeret would watch the navvies digging deep into the soil of the famous quay, and once again he would tell himself: “Here I see a vision of the city of the future, whose noblest buildings are as yet indicated only by deep excavations, which would suggest, to a shallow mind, that the labourers who are toiling to rear the city which we shall never behold are merely excavating abysmal pits, when in reality they may be laying the foundations of a prosperous home, the abode of joy and peace.” Thus did Monsieur Bergeret, who was a man of goodwill, look with a favouring eye upon the building of the ideal city; but he was much less at home amid the building operations of the real city, seeing that at every step he risked falling, through absence of mind, into a pit. Nevertheless he continued to go house-hunting, but he did so in a whimsical fashion. Old houses pleased him, in that their stones had for him a tongue. The Rue Gît-le-Cœur had a particular attraction for him, and whenever he saw beside the keystone of a gateway or on a door which had once been flanked by a wrought-iron railing a notice to the effect that there was a flat to let, he would mount the stairs, accompanied by a sordid concierge, in an atmosphere that reeked of countless generations of rats, which was aggravated from floor to floor by the smell of cooking from poverty-stricken kitchens. The workshops of bookbinders or box-makers enriched it at times with the horrible odour of sour glue, and Monsieur Bergeret would depart filled with sadness and discouragement. Home again, he would tell his sister and daughter, at the dinner-table, of the unfavourable results of his inquiries; Mademoiselle Zoe would listen calmly to his story. She had made up her mind to seek and to find a house herself. She regarded her brother as a superior person, but as one quite incapable of reasonable ideas concerning the practical affairs of life. “I went over a flat to-day on the Quai Conti. I don’t know what you two would think of it. It looks out on a courtyard with a well, some ivy, and a statue of Flora, moss-grown, mutilated, and headless, perpetually weaving a garland of flowers. I also saw a small flat in the Rue de la Chaise. That looks out on a garden with a great lime-tree, one branch of which, when the leaves have grown, would enter my study. There is a big room that Pauline could have; she would make it charming with a few yards of coloured cretonne.” “What about my room?” demanded Mademoiselle Zoe. “You never think of my room. Besides——” She did not finish her sentence, as she took no particular notice of her brother’s reports. “We may be obliged to move into a new house,” said Monsieur Bergeret, for he was a sensible man accustomed to subject his desires to reason. “I’m afraid so, papa,” said Pauline. “But never mind, we will find you a tree reaching up to your window, I promise you.” She followed her father’s investigations with perfect good nature, but without much personal interest, as a young girl undismayed by change, who vaguely feels that her fate is not yet determined, and lives the while in a species of anticipation. “The new houses are better fitted up than the old ones,” continued Monsieur Bergeret, “but I do not like them, perhaps because I am more conscious, in the midst of a luxury that one can measure, of the vulgarity of a straitened life. Not that the mediocrity of my fortune distresses me, even on your account. It is the banal and commonplace that I detest.... But you will think me absurd.” “Oh no, papa.” 23 24 25 26 “What I dislike in new houses is the precise sameness of their arrangement. The structure of the apartment is only too visible from the outside. For a long while dwellers in cities have been accustomed to live one above another, and as your aunt won’t hear of a small house in the suburbs I am quite willing to put up with a third or fourth-story flat, and that is precisely why I cannot but regret giving up the idea of an old house. The irregularity of old houses makes the piling of flat upon flat more endurable. When I walk down a new street I find myself thinking that this superposition of households in modern buildings is, in its uniformity, ridiculous. The small dining-rooms perched one above the other with the same little windows and the self-same copper gaselier lighted every evening at exactly the same time; the same tiny kitchens with larders looking on the yard, the same extremely dirty maidservants; the same drawing-rooms, with their pianos one over the other. To my mind, the precision of modern houses reveals the daily functions of the creatures enclosed in them as plainly as though the floors and ceilings were of glass. And all these people who dine one above another, play the piano one above another, and go to bed one above another, in a perfectly symmetrical fashion—when one thinks of it, they offer a spectacle both comical and humiliating.” “The tenants themselves would hardly think so,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, who had quite decided to settle in a new house. “It is true,” said Pauline thoughtfully, “it is true, it is comical.” “Of course, here and there, I see rooms that I like,” continued Monsieur Bergeret. “But the rent is always too high. And that makes me doubt the truth of a principle laid down by the admirable Fourier, which assures us that our tastes are so diverse that if only we lived in harmony with one another hovels would be as much in demand as palaces. It is quite true that we do not live in harmony; or we should all possess prehensile tails, so that we could hang suspended from the trees. Fourier has expressly said so. Another man of equal merit, the gentle Prince Kropotkin, has assured us more recently that some day we shall live rent-free in the mansions on the great avenues, for their owners will abandon them when they can no longer procure servants to keep them up. In those days, says the benevolent prince, they will be delighted to hand them over to the worthy women of the working-classes who will not object to a kitchen in the basement. In the meanwhile, the question of a house is both arduous and difficult. Zoe, please come with me to see that suite of rooms on the Quai Conti of which I told you. It is rather dilapidated, having served for thirty years as a chemical warehouse. The landlord won’t do any repairs as he expects to let the place as a warehouse. The windows are oval dormer-windows, but from them you see an ivy-covered wall, a moss-grown well and a headless statue of Flora which still seems to smile. Such things are not easily found in Paris.” CHAPTER IV T is to let,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, as they stopped before the gate. “It is to let, but we will not take it. It is too big. Besides——” “No, we will not take it, but will you look over it? I should be interested to see it again,” said Monsieur Bergeret timidly. They hesitated a moment. It seemed to them that in entering the deep dark vaulted way they were entering the region of the shades. Scouring the streets in search of a flat, they had chanced to cross the narrow Rue des Grands-Augustins, which has preserved its old-world aspect, and whose greasy pavements are never dry. They remembered that they had passed six years of their childhood in one of the houses in this street. Their father, a professor at the University, had settled there in 1856, after having led for four years a wandering and precarious existence, ceaselessly hunted from town to town by an inimical Minister of Instruction. And, as witnessed the battered notice-board, the very flat in which Lucien and Zoe had first seen the light of day, and tasted the savour of life, was now to let. As they passed down the path which led under the massive forefront of the building, they experienced an inexplicable feeling of melancholy and reverence. The damp courtyard was hemmed in by walls which since the minority of Louis XIV had slowly been crumbling in the rains and the fogs rising from the Seine. On the right as they entered was a small building, which served as a porter’s lodge. There, on the window-sill, a magpie hopped about in a cage, and in the lodge, behind a flowering plant, a woman sat sewing. “Is the second floor on the courtyard to let?” “Yes, do you wish to see it?” 27 28 29 30 “Yes, we should like to see it.” Key in hand, the concierge led the way. They followed her in silence. The gloomy antiquity of the house caused the memories which the blackened stones evoked for the brother and sister to recede into an unfathomable past. They climbed the stone stairs in a state of sorrowful eagerness, and when the concierge opened the door of the flat they remained motionless upon the landing, afraid to enter the rooms that seemed to be haunted by the host of their childish memories, like so many little ghosts. “You can go in; the flat is empty.” At first they could find nothing of the past in the wide empty rooms, freshly papered. They were amazed to find that they had become strangers to things which had formerly been so familiar. “Here is the kitchen,” said the concierge, “and here are the dining-room and the drawing-room.” A voice cried from the courtyard: “M’ame Falempin!” The concierge looked out of the window, apologized, and grumbling to herself went down the stairs with feeble steps, groaning. Then the brother and sister began to remember. Memories of inimitable hours, of the long days of childhood, began to return to them. “Here is the dining-room,” said Zoe. “The sideboard used to be there, against the wall.” “The mahogany sideboard, ‘battered by its long wanderings,’ as our father used to say, when he and his family and his furniture were ceaselessly hunted from north to south and from east to west by the Minister of the 2nd of December. It remained here a few years, however, maimed and crippled.” “There is the porcelain stove in its old corner.” “The flue is different.” “Do you think so?” “Yes, Zoe. Ours had a head of Jupiter Trophonius upon it. In those far-off days it was the custom of the stove- makers in the Cour du Dragon to decorate porcelain flues with a head of Jupiter Trophonius.” “Are you sure?” “Sure. Don’t you remember a crowned head with a pointed beard?” “No.” “Oh, well that is not surprising; you were always indifferent to the shapes of things. You don’t look at anything.” “I am more observant than you, my poor Lucien; it is you who never notice things. The other day, when Pauline had waved her hair, you didn’t notice it. If it were not for me——” She did not finish her sentence, but peered about the empty room with her green eyes and sharp nose. “Over there in that corner near the window, Mademoiselle Verpie used to sit with her feet on her foot-warmer. Saturday was the sewing-woman’s day, and Mademoiselle Verpie never missed a Saturday.” “Mademoiselle Verpie,” said Lucien with a sigh: “how old would she be to-day? She was getting on in life when we were children. She used to tell a story about a box of matches. I have always remembered that story and can repeat it now word for word just as she used to tell it. ‘It was when they were placing the statues on the Pont des Saints-Pères. It was so cold that my fingers were quite numb. Coming back from doing my marketing, I was watching the workmen. There was a whole crowd of people waiting to see how they would lift such heavy statues. I had my basket on my arm. A well-dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur and saw smoke pouring out of my basket. My threepenny box of matches had caught fire.’ That was how Mademoiselle Verpie related the adventure,” added Monsieur Bergeret. “She often used to tell us of it. Probably it was the greatest adventure of her life.” “You’ve forgotten an important part of the story, Lucien. These were Mademoiselle Verpie’s exact words: ‘A well- dressed gentleman said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” I answered “Go away and leave me alone.” “Just as you like, Mademoiselle.” Then I smelt a smell of sulphur.’” “You are quite right, Zoe. I was mutilating the text and omitted an important passage. By her reply, Mademoiselle Verpie, who was hump-backed, showed that she was a virtuous woman. It is a point that one should bear in mind. I 31 32 33 seem to recollect, too, that she was very easily shocked.” “Our poor mother,” said Zoe, “had a mania for mending. What an amount of darning used to be done!” “Yes, she was fond of her needle. But what I thought so charming was that before she sat down to her sewing she always placed a pot of wallflowers or daisies or a dish of fruit and green leaves on the table before her just where the light caught it. She used to say that rosy apples were as pretty as roses. I never met anyone who appreciated as she did the beauty of a peach or a bunch of grapes. When she went to see the Chardins at the Louvre, she knew by instinct that they were good pictures, but she could not help feeling that she preferred her own groups. With what conviction she would say to me: ‘Look, Lucien, have you ever seen anything so beautiful as this feather from a pigeon’s wing?’ I think no one ever loved nature more simply and frankly than she.” “Poor Mother,” sighed Zoe, “and in spite of that her taste in dress was dreadful. One day she chose a blue dress for me at the Petit-Saint-Thomas. It was called electric blue, and it was terrible. That frock was the burden of my childish days.” “You were never fond of dress, you.” “You think so, do you? Well, you are mistaken. I should have loved to have pretty dresses, but the elder sister had to go short because little Lucien needed tunics. It couldn’t be helped.” They passed into a narrow room, more like a passage. “This was Father’s study,” said Zoe. “Hasn’t it been cut in two by a partition? I thought it was much larger than this.” “No, it was always the same as it is now. His writing-desk was there, and above it hung the portrait of Monsieur Victor Leclerc. Why haven’t you kept that engraving, Lucien?” “What! do you mean to say that this narrow room held his motley crowd of books and contained whole nations of poets, orators and historians? When I was a child I used to listen to the silent eloquence that filled my ears with a buzz of glory. No doubt the presence of such an assembly pressed back the walls. I certainly remember it as a spacious room.” “It was very overcrowded. He would never let us tidy anything in his study.” “So it was here that our father used to work, seated in his old red arm-chair with his cat Zobeide on a cushion at his feet. Here it was that he used to look at us with the same slow smile that he never lost all through his illness, even up to the very last. I saw him smile gently at death itself, as he had smiled at life.” “You are mistaken in that, Lucien. Father did not know he was going to die.” Monsieur Bergeret did not speak for a moment, then he said: “It is strange. I can see him now, in memory, not worn out and white with age, but still young as he was when I was quite a little child. I can see his slight, supple figure and his long black wind-tossed hair. Such mops of hair, that seemed as though whipped up by a gust of wind, crowned many of the enthusiastic heads of the men of 1830 and ’48. I know it was only a trick of the brush that arranged their hair like that, but it made them look as though they lived upon the heights and in the storm. Their thoughts were loftier and more generous than ours. Our father believed in the advent of social justice and universal peace. He announced the triumph of the Republic and the harmonious formation of the United States of Europe. He would be cruelly disappointed were he to come back among us.” He was still speaking although Mademoiselle Bergeret was no longer in the study. He followed her into the empty drawing-room. There they both recalled the arm-chairs and sofa of green velvet, which as children, in their games, they used to turn into walls and citadels. “Oh, the taking of Damietta!” cried Monsieur Bergeret. “Do you remember it, Zoe? Mother, who allowed nothing to be wasted, used to collect all the silver paper round the bars of chocolate, and one day she gave me a pile which pleased me as much as if it had been a magnificent present. I gummed it to the leaves of an old atlas and made it into helmets and cuirasses. One day when Cousin Paul came to dinner I gave him one of these sets of armour, a Saracen’s, and put the other on myself: it was the armour of St. Louis. If one goes into the matter, neither Saracens nor Christian knights wore such armour in the thirteenth century, but such a consideration did not trouble us, and I took Damietta. “That recollection reminds me of the cruellest humiliation of my life. As soon as I had made myself master of Damietta, I took Cousin Paul prisoner and tied him up with skipping-ropes; then I pushed him with such enthusiasm that he fell on his nose, uttering piercing shrieks in spite of his courage. Mother came running in when she heard the noise, and when she saw Cousin Paul bound and prostrate on the floor she picked him up, kissed him and said: ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lucien, to hit a child so much smaller than yourself.’ And as a matter of fact Cousin Paul, who 34 35 36 37 never grew very big, was then very small. I did not say that it had happened in the wars. I said nothing at all, and remained covered with confusion. My shame was increased by the magnanimity of Cousin Paul who said, between his sobs, ‘I haven’t hurt myself.’ “Ah, our beautiful drawing-room,” sighed Monsieur Bergeret. “I hardly know it with this new paper. How I loved the ugly old paper with its green boughs! What a gentle shade, what a delicious warmth dwelt in the folds of the hideous claret-coloured rep curtains! Spartacus with folded arms used to look at us indignantly from the top of the clock on the mantelpiece. His chains, which I used idly to play with, came off one day in my hand. Our beautiful drawing-room! Mother would sometimes call us in there when she was entertaining old friends. We used to come here to kiss Mademoiselle Lalouette. She was over eighty years of age; her cheeks were covered with a mossy growth and her chin was bearded. One long yellow tooth protruded from her lips. They were spotted with black. What magic makes the memory of that horrible little old woman full of an attractive charm for me now? What force compels me to recall details of her queer far-away personality? Mademoiselle Lalouette and her four cats lived on an annuity of fifteen hundred francs, one half of which she spent in printing pamphlets on Louis XVII. She always had about a dozen of them in her hand-bag. The good lady’s mania was to prove that the Dauphin escaped from the Temple in a wooden horse. Do you remember the day she gave us lunch in her room in the Rue de Verneuil, Zoe? There, under layers of ancient filth, lay mysterious riches, boxes full of gold and embroideries.” “Yes,” said Zoe, “she showed us some lace that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.” “Mademoiselle Lalouette’s manners were excellent,” continued Monsieur Bergeret. “She spoke the purest French and adhered to the old pronunciation. She used to say ‘un segret, un fil, une do’; she made me feel as though I were living in the reign of Louis XVI. Mother used to send for us also to speak to Monsieur Mathalène who was not so old as Mademoiselle Lalouette; but he had a hideous face. Never did a gentler soul reveal itself in a more frightful shape. He was an inhibited priest whom my father had met in the clubs in 1848 and whom he esteemed for his Republican opinions. Poorer than Mademoiselle Lalouette, Monsieur Mathalène would go without food in order, like her, to print his pamphlets; but his went to prove that the sun and the moon move round the earth and are in reality no bigger than cheeses. That, by the way, was the opinion of Pierrot, but Monsieur Mathalène arrived at his conclusion only after thirty years of meditation and calculation. One still comes upon one of his pamphlets occasionally on the old bookstalls. Monsieur Mathalène was full of zeal for the happiness of mankind, whom he terrified by his dreadful ugliness. The only exceptions to his universal love were the astronomers, whom he suspected of the blackest designs on himself. He imagined that they wanted to poison him, and insisted on preparing his own food as much out of prudence as on account of his poverty.” Thus in the empty rooms, like Ulysses in the land of the Cimmerii, did Monsieur Bergeret evoke the shades. For a moment he remained sunk in thought; then he said: “Zoe, it must be one of two things; either in the days of our childhood there were more maniacs about than there are now, or our father befriended more than his fair share. I think he must have liked them. Pity probably drew him to them, or maybe he found them less tedious than other people; anyhow, he had a great following of them.” Mademoiselle Bergeret shook her head. “Our parents used to receive very sensible and deserving people. I should say rather that the harmless peculiarities of some old people impressed you, and that you have retained a vivid memory of them.” “Zoe, make no mistake; we were both brought up among people who did not think in a common or usual fashion. Mademoiselle Lalouette, Abbé Mathalène and Monsieur Grille were wanting in ordinary common sense, that is certain. Do you remember Monsieur Grille? He was tall and stout, with a red face and a close-clipped white beard. He had lost both his sons in an Alpine accident in Switzerland, and ever since, summer and winter alike, he had worn garments made of bed-ticking. Our father considered him an exquisite Hellenist. He had a delicate feeling for the poetry of the Greek lyrics. He touched with a light and sure hand the hackneyed text of Theocritus. It was his happy mania never to believe in the certain death of his two sons, and while with crazy confidence he awaited their return he lived, clad in the raiment of a carnival clown, in loving intimacy with Alcæus and Sappho.” “He used to give us caramels,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret. “His remarks were always wise, well-expressed and beautiful,” went on Monsieur Bergeret, “and that used to frighten us. Logic is what alarms us most in a madman.” “On Sunday nights the drawing room was ours,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret. “Yes,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “It was there we used to play games after dinner. We used to write verses and draw pictures, and mother would play forfeits with us. Oh, the candour and simplicity of those bygone days! The simple pleasures, the charm of the old-world manners! We used to pla...