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Title: The Devil's Pool
Author: George Sand
Illustrator: Eugène-Michel-Joseph Abot
Translator: Ellery Sedgwick
Jane Minot Sedgwick
Release date: July 4, 2007 [eBook #21993]
Most recently updated: September 6, 2022
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL'S POOL ***
THE DEVIL’S POOL
[Illustration: (Frontispiece)]
THE DEVIL’S POOL
By
George Sand
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
JANE MINOT SEDGWICK
AND
ELLERY SEDGWICK
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
WITH AN ETCHING BY E. ABOT
[Illustration: (Publisher colophon)]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO.
1901
Copyright, 1894, by
GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER
I THE TILLAGE OF THE SOIL
II FATHER MAURICE
III GERMAIN, THE SKILLED HUSBANDMAN
IV MOTHER GUILLETTE
V PETIT-PIERRE
VI ON THE HEATH
VII UNDERNEATH THE BIG OAKS
VIII THE EVENING PRAYER
IX DESPITE THE COLD
X BENEATH THE STARS
XI THE BELLE OF THE VILLAGE
XII THE MASTER
XIII THE OLD WOMAN
XIV THE RETURN TO THE FARM
XV MOTHER MAURICE
XVI LITTLE MARIE
APPENDIX
I A COUNTRY WEDDING
II THE WEDDING FAVORS
III THE WEDDING
IV THE CABBAGE
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
THE DEVIL’S POOL
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
A la sueur de ton visaige,
Tu gagnerais ta pauvre vie.
Après long travail et usaige,
Voicy la _mort_ qui te convie.[1]
This quaint old French verse, written under one of Holbein’s
pictures, is profoundly melancholy. The engraving represents a
laborer driving his plow through the middle of a field. Beyond him
stretches a vast horizon, dotted with wretched huts; the sun is
sinking behind the hill. It is the end of a hard day’s work. The
peasant is old, bent, and clothed in rags. He is urging onward a
team of four thin and exhausted horses; the plowshare sinks into
a stony and ungrateful soil. One being only is active and alert
in this scene of toil and sorrow. It is a fantastic creature.
A skeleton armed with a whip, who acts as plowboy to the old
laborer, and running along through the furrow beside the terrified
horses, goads them on. This is the specter Death, whom Holbein
has introduced allegorically into that series of religious and
philosophic subjects, at once melancholy and grotesque, entitled
“The Dance of Death.”
In this collection, or rather this mighty composition, where Death,
who plays his part on every page, is the connecting link and
predominating thought, Holbein has called up kings, popes, lovers,
gamesters, drunkards, nuns, courtesans, thieves, warriors, monks,
Jews, and travelers,--all the people of his time and our own; and
everywhere the specter Death is among them, taunting, threatening,
and triumphing. He is absent from one picture only, where Lazarus,
lying on a dunghill at the rich man’s door, declares that the
specter has no terrors for him; probably because he has nothing to
lose, and his existence is already a life in death.
Is there comfort in this stoical thought of the half-pagan
Christianity of the Renaissance, and does it satisfy religious
souls? The upstart, the rogue, the tyrant, the rake, and all those
haughty sinners who make an ill use of life, and whose steps are
dogged by Death, will be surely punished; but can the reflection
that death is no evil make amends for the long hardships of the
blind man, the beggar, the madman, and the poor peasant? No! An
inexorable sadness, an appalling fatality brood over the artist’s
work. It is like a bitter curse, hurled against the fate of
humanity.
Holbein’s faithful delineation of the society in which he lived
is, indeed, painful satire. His attention was engrossed by crime
and calamity; but what shall we, who are artists of a later date,
portray? Shall we look to find the reward of the human beings of
to-day in the contemplation of death, and shall we invoke it as the
penalty of unrighteousness and the compensation of suffering?
No, henceforth, our business is not with death, but with life. We
believe no longer in the nothingness of the grave, nor in safety
bought with the price of a forced renunciation; life must be
enjoyed in order to be fruitful. Lazarus must leave his dunghill,
so that the poor need no longer exult in the death of the rich. All
must be made happy, that the good fortune of a few may not be a
crime and a curse. As the laborer sows his wheat, he must know that
he is helping forward the work of life, instead of rejoicing that
Death walks at his side. We may no longer consider death as the
chastisement of prosperity or the consolation of distress, for God
has decreed it neither as the punishment nor the compensation of
life. Life has been blessed by Him, and it is no longer permissible
for us to leave the grave as the only refuge for those whom we are
unwilling to make happy.
There are some artists of our own day, who, after a serious survey
of their surroundings, take pleasure in painting misery, the
sordidness of poverty, and the dunghill of Lazarus. This may belong
to the domain of art and philosophy; but by depicting poverty as
so hideous, so degraded, and sometimes so vicious and criminal,
do they gain their end, and is that end as salutary as they would
wish? We dare not pronounce judgment. They may answer that they
terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to him the yawning pit
that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just as in the time
of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave, and Death
standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they show
him the thief breaking open his doors, and the murderer stealthily
watching his sleep. We confess we cannot understand how we can
reconcile him to the human nature he despises, or make him sensible
of the sufferings of the poor wretch whom he dreads, by showing him
this wretch in the guise of the escaped convict or the nocturnal
burglar. The hideous phantom Death, under the repulsive aspect in
which he has been represented by Holbein and his predecessors,
gnashing his teeth and playing the fiddle, has been powerless to
convert the wicked and console their victims. And does not our
literature employ the same means as the artists of the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance?
The revelers of Holbein fill their glasses in a frenzy to dispel
the idea of Death, who is their cup-bearer, though they do not see
him. The unjust rich of our own day demand cannon and barricades to
drive out the idea of an insurrection of the people which Art shows
them as slowly working in the dark, getting ready to burst upon the
State. The Church of the Middle Ages met the terrors of the great
of the earth with the sale of indulgences. The government of to-day
soothes the uneasiness of the rich by exacting from them large sums
for the support of policemen, jailors, bayonets, and prisons.
Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, and Goya have made
powerful satires on the evils of their times and countries, and
their immortal works are historical documents of unquestionable
value. We shall not refuse to artists the right to probe the wounds
of society and lay them bare to our eyes; but is the only function
of art still to threaten and appall? In the literature of the
mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have brought
into fashion, we prefer the sweet and gentle characters, which can
attempt and effect conversions, to the melodramatic villains, who
inspire terror; for terror never cures selfishness, but increases
it.
We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and
love, that the novel of to-day should take the place of the parable
and the fable of early times, and that the artist has a larger and
more poetic task than that of suggesting certain prudential and
conciliatory measures for the purpose of diminishing the fright
caused by his pictures. His aim should be to render attractive the
objects he has at heart, and, if necessary, I have no objection
to his embellishing them a little. Art is not the study of
positive reality, but the search for ideal truth, and the “Vicar
of Wakefield” was a more useful and healthy book than the “Paysan
Perverti,” or the “Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Forgive these reflections of mine, kind reader, and let them stand
as a preface, for there will be no other to the little story I am
going to relate to you. My tale is to be so short and so simple,
that I felt obliged to make you my apologies for it beforehand, by
telling you what I think of the literature of terror.
I have allowed myself to be drawn into this digression for the sake
of a laborer; and it is the story of a laborer which I have been
meaning to tell you, and which I shall now tell you at once.
[1]
In toil and sorrow thou shalt eat
The bitter bread of poverty.
After the burden and the heat,
Lo! it is Death who calls for thee.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
I
The Tillage of the Soil
I had just been looking long and sadly at Holbein’s plowman, and
was walking through the fields, musing on rustic life and the
destiny of the husbandman. It is certainly tragic for him to spend
his days and his strength delving in the jealous earth, that so
reluctantly yields up her rich treasures when a morsel of coarse
black bread, at the end of the day’s work, is the sole reward and
profit to be reaped from such arduous toil. The wealth of the soil,
the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and
fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but
instruments of the drudgery and slavery of the many. The man of
leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows,
the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into
gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health or for
change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his
vassal’s labor.
On the other hand, the peasant is too abject, too wretched, and too
fearful of the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the
charms of pastoral life. To him, also, the yellow harvest-fields,
the rich meadows, the fine cattle represent bags of gold; but
he knows that only an infinitesimal part of their contents,
insufficient for his daily needs, will ever fall to his share. Yet
year by year he must fill those accursed bags, to please his master
and buy the right of living on his land in sordid wretchedness.
Yet nature is eternally young, beautiful, and generous. She pours
forth poetry and beauty on all creatures and all plants that are
allowed free development. She owns the secret of happiness, of
which no one has ever robbed her. The happiest of men would be he
who, knowing the full meaning of his labor, should, while working
with his hands, find his happiness and his freedom in the exercise
of his intelligence, and, having his heart in unison with his
brain, should at once understand his own work and love that of
God. The artist has such delights as these in contemplating and
reproducing the beauties of nature; but if his heart be true and
tender, his pleasure is disturbed when he sees the miseries of
the men who people this paradise of earth. True happiness will
be theirs when mind, heart, and hand shall work in concert in
the sight of Heaven, and there shall be a sacred harmony between
God’s goodness and the joys of his creatures. Then, instead of the
pitiable and frightful figure of Death stalking, whip in hand,
across the fields, the painter of allegories may place beside the
peasant a radiant angel, sowing the blessed grain broadcast in the
smoking furrow.
The dream of a serene, free, poetic, laborious, and simple life
for the tiller of the soil is not so impossible that we should
banish it as a chimera. The sweet, sad words of Virgil: “Oh, happy
the peasants of the field, if they knew their own blessings!” is a
regret, but, like all regrets, it is also a prophecy. The day will
come when the laborer too may be an artist, and may at least feel
what is beautiful, if he cannot express it,--a matter of far less
importance. Do not we know that this mysterious poetic intuition
is already his, in the form of instinct and vague reverie? Among
those peasants who possess some of the comforts of life, and
whose moral and intellectual development is not entirely stifled
by extreme wretchedness, pure happiness that can be felt and
appreciated exists in the elementary stage; and, moreover, since
poets have already raised their voices out of the lap of pain
and of weariness, why should we say that the labor of the hands
excludes the working of the soul? Without doubt this exclusion is
the common result of excessive toil and of deep misery; but let it
not be said that when men shall work moderately and usefully there
will be nothing but bad workers and bad poets. The man who draws
in noble joy from the poetic feeling is a true poet, though he has
never written a verse all his life.
My thoughts had flown in this direction, without my perceiving that
my confidence in the capacity of man for education was strengthened
by external influences. I was walking along the edge of a field,
which some peasants were preparing to sow. The space was vast as
that in Holbein’s picture; the landscape, too, was vast and framed
in a great sweep of green, slightly reddened by the approach of
autumn. Here and there in the great russet field, slender rivulets
of water left in the furrows by the late rains sparkled in the
sunlight like silver threads. The day was clear and mild, and the
soil, freshly cleft by the plowshare, sent up a light steam. At the
other extremity of the field, an old man, whose broad shoulders and
stern face recalled Holbein’s plowman, but whose clothes carried
no suggestion of poverty, was gravely driving his plow of antique
shape, drawn by two placid oxen, true patriarchs of the meadow,
tall and rather thin, with pale yellow coats and long, drooping
horns. They were those old workers who, through long habit, have
grown to be _brothers_, as they are called in our country, and who,
when one loses the other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and
pine away with grief. People who are unfamiliar with the country
call the love of the ox for his yoke-fellow a fable. Let them come
and see in the corner of the stable one of these poor beasts, thin
and wasted, restlessly lashing his lean flanks with his tail,
violently breathing with mingled terror and disdain on the food
offered him, his eyes always turned toward the door, scratching
with his hoof the empty place at his side, sniffing the yokes and
chains which his fellow used to wear, and incessantly calling him
with melancholy lowings. The ox-herd will say: “There is a pair of
oxen gone; this one will work no more, for his brother is dead. We
ought to fatten him for the market, but he will not eat, and will
soon starve himself to death.”
The old laborer worked slowly, silently, and without waste of
effort His docile team were in no greater haste than he; but,
thanks to the undistracted steadiness of his toil and the judicious
expenditure of his strength, his furrow was as soon plowed as that
of his son, who was driving, at some distance from him, four less
vigorous oxen through a more stubborn and stony piece of ground.
My attention was next caught by a fine spectacle, a truly noble
subject for a painter. At the other end of the field a fine-looking
youth was driving a magnificent team of four pairs of young oxen,
through whose somber coats glanced a ruddy, glow-like flame. They
had the short, curly heads that belong to the wild bull, the same
large, fierce eyes and jerky movements; they worked in an abrupt,
nervous way that showed how they still rebelled against the yoke
and goad, and trembled with anger as they obeyed the authority so
recently imposed. They were what is called “newly yoked” oxen.
The man who drove them had to clear a corner of the field that
had formerly been given up to pasture, and was filled with old
tree-stumps; and his youth and energy, and his eight half-broken
animals, hardly sufficed for the Herculean task.
A child of six or seven years old, lovely as an angel, wearing
round his shoulders, over his blouse, a sheepskin that made him
look like a little Saint John the Baptist out of a Renaissance
picture, was running along in the furrow beside the plow, pricking
the flanks of the oxen with a long, light goad but slightly
sharpened. The spirited animals quivered under the child’s light
touch, making their yokes and head-bands creak, and shaking
the pole violently. Whenever a root stopped the advance of the
plowshare, the laborer would call every animal by name in his
powerful voice, trying to calm rather than to excite them; for
the oxen, irritated by the sudden resistance, bounded, pawed the
ground with their great cloven hoofs, and would have jumped aside
and dragged the plow across the fields, if the young man had not
kept the first four in order with his voice and goad, while the
child controlled the four others. The little fellow shouted too,
but the voice which he tried to make of terrible effect, was as
sweet as his angelic face. The whole scene was beautiful in its
grace and strength; the landscape, the man, the child, the oxen
under the yoke; and in spite of the mighty struggle by which the
earth was subdued, a deep feeling of peace and sweetness reigned
over all. Each time that an obstacle was surmounted and the plow
resumed its even, solemn progress, the laborer, whose pretended
violence was but a trial of his strength, and an outlet for his
energy, instantly regained that serenity which is the right of
simple souls, and looked with fatherly pleasure toward his child,
who turned to smile back at him. Then the young father would raise
his manly voice in the solemn and melancholy chant that ancient
tradition transmits, not indeed to all plowmen indiscriminately,
but to those who are most perfect in the art of exciting and
sustaining the spirit of cattle while at work. This song, which
was probably sacred in its origin, and to which mysterious
influences must once have been attributed, is still thought to
possess the virtue of putting animals on their mettle, allaying
their irritation, and of beguiling the weariness of their long,
hard toil. It is not enough to guide them skilfully, to trace a
perfectly straight furrow, and to lighten their labor by raising
the plowshare or driving it into the earth; no man can be a
consummate husbandman who does not know how to sing to his oxen,
and that is an art that requires taste and especial gifts.
To tell the truth, this chant is only a recitative, broken off and
taken up at pleasure. Its irregular form and its intonations that
violate all the rules of musical art make it impossible to describe.
But it is none the less a noble song, and so appropriate is it to
the nature of the work it accompanies, to the gait of the oxen, to
the peace of the fields, and to the simplicity of the men who sing
it, that no genius unfamiliar with the tillage of the earth, and
no man except an accomplished laborer of our part of the country,
could repeat it. At the season of the year when there is no work or
stir afoot except that of the plowman, this strong, sweet refrain
rises like the voice of the breeze, to which the key it is sung in
gives it some resemblance. Each phrase ends with a long trill, the
final note of which is held with incredible strength of breath, and
rises a quarter of a tone, sharping systematically. It is barbaric,
but possesses an unspeakable charm, and anybody, once accustomed to
hear it, cannot conceive of another song taking its place at the
same hour and in the same place, without striking a discord.
So it was that I had before my eyes a picture the reverse of that
of Holbein, although the scene was similar. Instead of a wretched
old man, a young and active one; instead of a team of weary and
emaciated horses, four yoke of robust and fiery oxen; instead of
death, a beautiful child; instead of despair and destruction,
energy and the possibility of happiness.
Then the old French verse, “À la sueur de ton visaige,” etc., and
Virgil’s “O fortunatos . . . agricolas,” returned to my mind,
and seeing this lovely child and his father, under such poetic
conditions, and with so much grace and strength, accomplish a task
full of such grand and solemn suggestions, I was conscious of deep
pity and involuntary respect. Happy the peasant of the fields! Yes,
and so too should I be in his place, if my arm and voice could
be endowed with sudden strength, and I could help to make Nature
fruitful, and sing of her gifts, without ceasing to see with my
eyes or understand with my brain harmonious colors and sounds,
delicate shades and graceful outlines; in short, the mysterious
beauty of all things. And above all, if my heart continued to
beat in concert with the divine sentiment that presided over the
immortal sublimity of creation.
But, alas! this man has never understood the mystery of beauty;
this child will never understand it. God forbid that I should not
think them superior to the animals which are subject to them, or
that they have not moments of rapturous insight that soothe their
toil and lull their cares to sleep. I see the seal of the Lord upon
their noble brows, for they were born to inherit the earth far more
truly than those who have bought and paid for it. The proof that
they feel this is that they cannot be exiled with impunity, that
they love the soil they have watered with their tears, and that the
true peasant dies of homesickness under the arms of a soldier far
from his native field. But he lacks some of my enjoyments, those
pure delights which should be his by right, as a workman in that
immense temple which the sky only is vast enough to embrace. He
lacks the consciousness of his sentiment. Those who condemned him
to slavery from his mother’s womb, being unable to rob him of his
vague dreams, took away from him the power of reflection.
Yet, imperfect being that he is, sentenced to eternal childhood, he
is nobler than the man in whom knowledge has stifled feeling. Do
not set yourselves above him, you who believe yourselves invested
with a lawful and inalienable right to rule over him, for your
terrible mistake shows that your brain has destroyed your heart,
and that you are the blindest and most incomplete of men! I love
the simplicity of his soul more than the false lights of yours; and
if I had to narrate the story of his life, the pleasure I should
take in bringing out the tender and touching side of it would be
greater than your merit in painting the degradation and contempt
into which he is cast by your social code.
I knew the young man and the beautiful child; I knew their history,
for they had a history. Everybody has his own, and could make the
romance of his life interesting, if he could but understand it.
Although but a peasant and a laborer, Germain had always been aware
of his duties and affections. He had related them to me clearly
and ingenuously, and I had listened with interest. After some time
spent in watching him plow, it occurred to me that I might write
his story, though that story were as simple, as straightforward,
and unadorned as the furrow he was tracing.
Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one.
Thus disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of
human life. A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we
have dug succeed one another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the
furrow of the laborer of as much value as that of the idler, even
if that idler, by some absurd chance, have made a little noise in
the world, and left behind him an abiding name?
I mean, if possible, to save from oblivion the furrow of Germain,
the skilled husbandman. He will never know nor care, but I shall
take pleasure in my talk.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
II
Father Maurice
“Germain,” said his father-in-law one day, “you must decide
about marrying again. It is almost two years now since you lost
my daughter, and your eldest boy is seven years old! You are
almost thirty, my boy, and you know that in our country a man is
considered too old to go to housekeeping again after that age;
you have three nice children, and thus far they have not proved a
burden to us at all. My wife and my daughter-in-law have looked
after them as well as they could, and loved them as they ought.
Here is Petit-Pierre almost grown up. He goads the oxen very
well; he knows how to look after the cattle; and he is strong
enough to drive the horses to the trough. So it is not he that
worries us. But the other two, love them though we do, God knows
the poor little innocents give us trouble enough this year; my
daughter-in-law is about to lie in, and she has yet another baby
to attend to. When the child we are expecting comes, she will not
be able to look after your little Solange, and above all your
Sylvain, who is not four years old, and who is never quiet day or
night. He has a restless disposition like yours; that will make
a good workman of him, but it makes a dreadful child, and my old
wife cannot run fast enough to save him when he almost tumbles
into the ditch, or when he throws himself in front of the tramping
cattle. And then with this other that my daughter-in-law is going
to bring into the world, for a month at least her next older child
will fall on my wife’s hands. Besides, your children worry us, and
give us too much to do; we hate to see children badly looked after,
and when we think of the accidents that may befall them, for want
of care, we cannot rest. So you need another wife, and I another
daughter-in-law. Think this over, my son. I have called it to your
mind before. Time flies, and the years will not wait a moment for
you. It is your duty to your children and to the rest of us, who
wish all well at home, to marry as soon as you can.”
“Very well, father,” answered the son-in-law, “if you really wish
it, I must do as you say. But I do not wish to hide it from you
that it will make me very sad, and that I hardly wish for anything
but to drown myself. We know who it is we lose, we never know whom
we find. I had a good wife, a pretty wife, sweet, brave, good to
her father and mother, good to her husband, good to her children,
good to toil in the fields and in the house, well fitted to
work,--in short, good for everything; and when you had given her to
me, and I took her, we did not place it among our promises that I
should go and forget about her if I had the misfortune to lose her.”
“What you say shows your good heart, Germain,” answered Father
Maurice. “I know that you loved my daughter and that you made her
happy, and that had you been able to satisfy Death by going in her
place, Catherine would be alive to-day, and you would be in the
graveyard. She deserved all your love, and if you are not consoled,
neither are we. But I do not speak to you of forgetting her: God
wished her to leave us, and we do not let a day go by without
telling him in our prayers and thoughts, and words and actions,
that we keep her memory and still sorrow for her loss. But if she
could speak to you from the other world, and let you know what she
wishes, she would tell you to find a mother for her little orphans.
So the question is to find a woman who will be worthy to take her
place. It will not be easy, but it is not impossible. And when
we shall find her for you, you will love her as you used to love
my daughter, because you are a good man, and because you will be
thankful to her for helping us and for loving your children.”
“Very well, Father Maurice, I shall do as you wish, as I have
always done.”
“It is only justice, my son, to say that you have always listened
to the friendly advice and good judgment of the head of the house.
So let us consult about your choice of a new wife. First, I don’t
advise you to take a young girl. That is not what you need. Youth
is careless, and, as it is hard work to bring up three children,
especially when they are of another bed, you must have a good soul,
wise and gentle, and well used to work. If your wife is not about
the same age as you, she will have no reason to accept such a duty.
She will find you too old and your children too young. She will be
complaining, and your children will suffer.”
“This is just what makes me uneasy. Suppose the poor little things
should be badly treated, hated, beaten?”
“God grant not,” answered the old man. “But bad women are more rare
with us than good, and we shall be stupid if we cannot pick out
somebody who will suit us.”
“That is true, father. There are good girls in our village. There
is Louise, Sylvaine, Claudie, Marguerite--yes, anybody you want.”
“Gently, gently, my boy. All these girls are too young, or too
poor, or too pretty; for surely we must think of that too, my son.
A pretty woman is not always as well behaved as another!”
“Then you wish me to take an ugly wife?” said Germain, a little
uneasy.
“No, not ugly at all, for this woman will bear you other children,
and there is nothing more miserable than to have children who are
ugly and weak and sickly. But a woman still fresh and in good
health, who is neither pretty nor ugly, would suit you exactly.”
“I am quite sure,” said Germain, smiling rather sadly, “that to get
such a woman as you wish, you must have her made to order. All the
more because you don’t wish her to be poor, and the rich are not
easy to get, particularly for a widower.”
“And suppose she were a widow herself, Germain? A widow without
children and with a good portion?”
“For the moment, I cannot think of anybody like this in our parish.”
“Nor I either. But there are others elsewhere.”
“You have somebody in mind, father. Then tell me, at once, who it
is.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
III
Germain, the Skilled Husbandman
“Yes, I have somebody in mind,” replied Father Maurice. “It is a
Leonard, the widow of a Guérin. She lives at Fourche.”
“I know neither the woman nor the place,” answered Germain,
resigned, but growing more and more melancholy.
“Her name is Catherine, like your dead wife’s.”
“Catherine? Yes, I shall be glad to have to pronounce that name,
Catherine; and yet if I cannot love one as much as the other, it
will pain me all the more. It will bring her to my mind more often.”
“I tell you, you will love her. She is a good soul, a woman with
a warm heart. I have not seen her for a long time. She was not an
ugly girl then. But she is no longer young. She is thirty-two. She
comes of a good family, honest people all of them, and for property
she has eight or ten thousand francs in land which she would sell
gladly in order to invest in the place where she settles. For
she, too, is thinking of marrying again, and I know that if your
character pleases her, she will not be dissatisfied with your
situation.”
“So you have made all the arrangements?”
“Yes, except that I have not had an opinion from either of you, and
that is what you must ask each other when you meet. The woman’s
father is a distant connection of mine, and he has been a good
friend to me. You know Father Leonard well?”
“Yes, I have seen you two talking at the market, and at the last
you lunched together. Then it was about her that he spoke to you so
long?”
“Certainly. He watched you selling your cattle and saw that you
drove a shrewd bargain, and that you were a good-looking fellow and
appeared active and intelligent; and when I told him what a good
fellow you were and how well you have behaved toward us, without
one word of vexation or anger during the eight years we have been
living and working together, he took it into his head to marry you
to his daughter. This suits me, too, I admit, when I think of her
good reputation and the honesty of her family and the prosperous
condition I know her affairs are in.”
“I see, Father Maurice, that you have an eye to money.”
“Of course I do; you have, too, have you not?”
“I do look toward it, if you wish, for your sake; but you know
that, for my own part, I don’t worry whether I gain or not in what
we make. I don’t understand about profit-sharing; I have no head
for that sort of thing. I understand the ground; I understand
cattle, horses, carts, sowing, threshing, and provender. As for
sheep, and vineyards, and vegetables, petty profits, and fine
gardening, you know that is your son’s business. I don’t have much
to do with it. As to money, my memory is short, and I should rather
give up everything than fight about what is yours and what is mine.
I should be afraid of making some mistake and claiming what does
not belong to me, and if business were not so clear and simple I
should never find my way in it.”
“So much the worse, my son; and this is the reason I wish you to
have a wife with a clear head to fill my place when I am gone. You
never wished to understand our accounts, and this might lead you
into a quarrel with my son, when you don’t have me any longer to
keep you in harmony and decide what is each one’s share.”
“May you live long, Father Maurice. But do not worry about what
will happen when you die. I shall never quarrel with your son. I
trust Jacques as I do you; and as I have no property of my own, and
all that might accrue to me comes from your daughter and belongs to
our children, I can rest easy, and you, too. Jacques would never
rob his sister’s children for the sake of his own, for he loves
them all equally.”
“You are right, Germain. Jacques is a good son, a good brother,
and a man who loves the truth. But Jacques may die before you,
before your children grow up; and in a family we must always
remember never to leave children without a head to look after them
and govern their disagreements; otherwise, the lawyer-people mix
themselves up in it, stir them up to fight, and make them eat up
everything in law-suits. So we ought not to think of bringing home
another person, man or woman, without remembering that some day or
other that person may have to control the behavior and business
of twenty or thirty children and grandchildren, sons-in-law and
daughters-in-law. We never know how big a family can grow, and
when a hive is so full that the bees must form new swarms, each
one wishes to carry off her share of the honey. When I took you
for my son, although my daughter was rich and you were poor, I
never reproached her for choosing you. I saw that you were a hard
worker, and I knew very well that the best fortune for people in
such a country as ours is a pair of arms and a heart like yours.
When a man brings these into a family, he brings enough. But with
a woman it is different. Her work indoors saves, but it does not
gain. Besides, now that you are a father, looking for a second
wife, you must remember that your new children will have no claim
on the property of your children by another wife; and if you should
happen to die they might suffer very much--at least, if your wife
had no money in her own right. And then the children which you
will add to our colony will cost something to bring up. If that
fell on us alone, we should surely take care of them without a
word of complaint; but the comfort of everybody would suffer, and
your eldest children would bear their share of hardship. When
families grow too large, if money does not keep pace, misery comes,
no matter how bravely you bear up. This is what I wished to say,
Germain; think it over, and try to make the widow Guérin like you;
for her discretion and her dollars will help us now and make us
feel easy about the future.”
“That is true, Father. I shall try to please her and to like her.”
“To do that you must go to find her, and see her.”
“At her own place? At Fourche? That is a great way from here, is
it not? And we scarcely have time to run off at this season of the
year.”
“When it is a question of a love-match you must make up your mind
to lose time, but when it is a sensible marriage of two people, who
take no sudden fancies and know what they want, it is very soon
decided. To-morrow is Saturday; you will make your day’s work a
little shorter than usual. You must start after dinner about two
o’clock. You will be at Fourche by nightfall. The moon rises early.
The roads are good, and it is not more than three leagues distant.
It is near Magnier. Besides, you will take the mare.”
“I had just as lief go afoot in this cool weather.”
“Yes, but the mare is pretty, and a suitor looks better when he
comes well mounted. You must put on your new clothes and carry a
nice present of game to Father Leonard. You will come from me and
talk with him, pass all of Sunday with his daughter, and come back
Monday morning with a yes or no.”
“Very well,” answered Germain calmly, and yet he did not feel very
calm.
Germain had always lived soberly, as industrious peasants do.
Married at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and
after her death, impulsive and gay as his nature was, he had
never played nor trifled with another. He had borne a real sorrow
faithfully in his heart, and it was not without misgiving nor
without sadness that he yielded to his father-in-law; but that
father had always governed the family wisely, and Germain, entirely
devoted as he was to the common welfare and so, by consequence, to
the head of the house, who represented it, could not understand
that he might have wronged his own good sense and hurt the
interests of all. Nevertheless, he was sad. Few days went by when
he did not cry in secret, for his wife, and although loneliness
began to weigh on him, he was more afraid of entering into a new
marriage than desirous of finding a support in his sorrow. He had a
vague idea that love might have consoled him by coming to him of a
sudden, for this is the only way love can console. We never find it
when we seek it; it comes over us unawares.
This cold-blooded scheme of marriage that Father Maurice had opened
to him, this unknown woman he was to take for his bride, perhaps
even all that had been said to him of her virtue and good sense,
made him pause to think. And he went away musing as men do whose
thoughts are too few to divide into hostile factions, not scraping
up fine arguments for rebellion and selfishness but suffering from
a dull grief, submissive to ills from which there is no escape.
Meanwhile, Father Maurice had returned to the farm, while Germain,
between sunset and dark, spent the closing hour of the day in
repairing gaps the sheep had made in the hedge of a yard near the
farm-buildings. He lifted up the branches of the thorn-bushes
and held them in place with clods of earth, whilst the thrushes
chattered in the neighboring thicket and seemed to call to him to
hurry, for they were eager to come and see his work as soon as he
had gone.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
IV
Mother Guillette
Father Maurice found at his house an old neighbor who had come to
talk with his wife, seeking at the same time to secure a few embers
to light her fire. Mother Guillette lived in a wretched hut two
gunshots away from the farm. Still she was a willing and an orderly
woman. Her poor dwelling was clean and neat, and the care with
which her clothes were mended showed that she respected herself in
the midst of her penury.
“You have come to fetch your evening fire, Mother Guillette,” said
the old man to her. “Is there anything else you want?”
“No, Father Maurice,” answered she; “nothing for the present. I am
no beggar, as you know, and I take care not to abuse the kindness
of my friends.”
“That is very true. Besides, your friends are always ready to do
you a service.”
“I was just talking to your wife, and I was asking her if Germain
had finally decided to marry again.”
“You are no gossip,” replied Father Maurice; “we can talk in your
presence without having any foolish tale-bearing to fear. So I will
tell my wife and you that Germain has made up his mind absolutely.
To-morrow morning he starts for the farm at Fourche.”
“Good enough!” cried Mother Maurice; “poor child! God grant he may
find a woman as good and true as he.”
“So he is going to Fourche?” remarked Mother Guillette; “how lucky
that is! It is exactly what I want. And since you were just asking
me if there were anything I wished for, I am going to tell you,
Father Maurice, how you can do me a service.”
“Tell me what it is; we like to help you.”
“I wish Germain would be so kind as to take my daughter along with
him.”
“Where? To Fourche?”
“No, not to Fourche, but to Ormeaux. She is to stay there the rest
of the year.”
“What!” exclaimed Mother Maurice, “are you going to separate from
your daughter?”
“She must go out to work and earn her living. I am sorry enough,
and she is too, poor soul. We could not make up our minds to part
Saint John’s Day, but now that Saint Martin’s is upon us, she
finds a good place as shepherdess at the farms at Ormeaux. On his
way home from the fair the other day, the farmer passed by here.
He caught sight of my little Marie tending her three sheep on the
common.
“‘You have hardly enough to do, my little girl,’ said he; ‘three
sheep are not enough for a shepherdess: would you like to take care
of a hundred? I will take you along. Our shepherdess has fallen
sick. She is going back to her family, and if you will be at our
farm before a week is over, you shall have fifty francs for the
rest of the year up to Saint John’s Day.’
“The child refused, but she could not help thinking it over and
telling me about it, when she came home in the evening, and found
me downhearted and worried about the winter, which was sure to be
hard and long; for this year the cranes and wild ducks were seen
crossing the sky a whole month before they generally do. We both
of us cried, but after a time we took heart. We knew that we could
not stay together, since it is hard enough for one person to get
a living from our little patch of ground. Then since Marie is old
enough,--for she is going on to sixteen,--she must do like the
rest, earn her own living and help her poor mother.”
“Mother Guillette,” said the old laborer, “if it were only fifty
francs you needed to help you out of your trouble, and save you
from sending away your daughter, I should certainly find them for
you, although fifty francs is no trifle for people like us. But in
everything we must consult common sense as well as friendship. To
be saved from want this year will not keep you from want in the
future, and the longer your daughter takes to make up her mind, the
harder you both will find it to part. Little Marie is growing tall
and strong. She has not enough at home to keep her busy. She might
get into lazy habits....”
“Oh, I am not afraid of that!” exclaimed Mother Guillette. “Marie
is as active as a rich girl at the head of a large family can be.
She never sits still with her arms folded for an instant, and
when we have no work to do, she keeps dusting and polishing our
old furniture until it shines like a mirror. The child is worth
her weight in gold, and I should much rather have her enter your
service as a shepherdess than go so far away to people I don’t
know. You would have taken her at Saint John’s Day; but now you
have hired all your hands, and we cannot think of that till Saint
John’s Day next year.”
“Yes, I consent with all my heart, Guillette. I shall be very glad
to take her. But in the mean time she will do well to learn her
work, and accustom herself to obey others.”
“Yes, that is true, no doubt. The die is cast. The farmer at
Ormeaux sent to ask about her this morning; we consented, and she
must go. But the poor child does not know the way, and I should
not like to send her so far alone. Since your son-in-law goes to
Fourche to-morrow, perhaps he can take her. It seems that Fourche
is close to her journey’s end. At least, so they tell me, for I
have never made the trip myself.”
“It is very near indeed, and my son will show her the way.
Naturally, he might even take her up behind him on the mare. That
will save her shoes. Here he comes for supper. Tell me, Germain,
Mother Guillette’s little Marie is going to become a shepherdess at
Ormeaux. Will you take her there on your horse?”
“Certainly,” answered Germain, who, troubled as he was, never felt
indisposed to do a kindness to his neighbor.
In our community a mother would not think of such a thing as to
trust a girl of sixteen to a man of twenty-eight. For Germain was
really but twenty-eight, and although according to the notions
of the country people he was considered rather old to marry, he
was still the best-looking man in the neighborhood. Toil had not
wrinkled and worn him as it does most peasants who have passed ten
years in tilling the soil. He was strong enough to labor for ten
more years without showing signs of age, and the prejudices of
her time must have weighed heavily on the mind of a young girl to
prevent her from seeing that Germain had a fresh complexion, eyes
sparkling and blue as skies in May, ruddy lips, fine teeth, and a
body well shaped and lithe as a young horse that has never yet left
his pasture.
But purity of manners is a sacred custom in some districts far
distant from the corrupted life of great cities, and amongst all
the households of Belair, the family of Maurice was known to be
honest and truth-loving. Germain was on his way to find a wife.
Marie was a child, too young and too poor to be thought of in this
light, and unless he were a heartless and a bad man he could not
entertain one evil thought concerning her. Father Maurice felt
no uneasiness at seeing him take the pretty girl on the crupper.
Mother Guillette would have thought herself doing him a wrong had
she asked him to respect her daughter as his sister. Marie embraced
her mother and her young friends twenty times, and then mounted the
mare in tears. Germain, sad on his own account, felt all the more
sympathy for her sorrow, and rode away with a melancholy air, while
all the people of the neighborhood waved good-by to Marie without a
thought of harm.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
V
Petit-Pierre
The gray was young, good-looking, and strong. She carried her
double burden with ease, laying back her ears and champing her
bit like the high-spirited mare she was. Passing in front of the
pasture, she caught sight of her mother, whose name was the Old
Gray as hers was the Young Gray, and she whinnied in token of
good-by. The Old Gray came nearer the hedge, and striking her shoes
together she tried to gallop along the edge of the field in order
to follow her daughter; then seeing her fall into a sharp trot, the
mare whinnied in her turn and stood in an uneasy attitude, her nose
in the air and her mouth filled with grass that she had no thought
of eating.
“That poor beast always knows her offspring,” said Germain, trying
to keep Marie’s thoughts from her troubles. “That reminds me, I
never kissed Petit-Pierre before I started. The naughty boy was
not there. Last night he wished to make me promise to take him
along, and he wept for an hour in bed. This morning again, he tried
everything to persuade me. Oh, how sly and coaxing he is! But when
he saw that he could not gain his point, the young gentleman got
into a temper. He went off to the fields, and I have not seen him
all day.”
“I have seen him,” said little Marie, striving to keep back her
tears; “he was running toward the clearing with Soulas’ children,
and I felt sure that he had been away from home a long time, for
he was hungry and was eating wild plums and blackberries. I gave
him the bread I had for lunch, and he said, ‘Thank you, dear Marie;
when you come to our house, I will give you some cake.’ He is a
dear little child, Germain.”
“Yes, he is,” answered the laborer; “and there is nothing I would
not do for him. If his grandmother had not more sense than I, I
could not have helped taking him with me, when I saw him crying as
though his poor little heart would burst.”
“Then why did you not take him, Germain? He would have been very
little trouble. He is so good when you please him.”
“He would probably have been in the way in the place where I am
going. At least Father Maurice thought so. On the other hand, I
should have thought it well to see how they received him. For no
one could help being kind to such a nice child. But at home they
said that I must not begin by showing off all the cares of the
household. I don’t know why I speak of this to you, little Marie;
you can’t understand.”
“Oh, yes, I do; I know that you are going away to marry; my mother
spoke to me about it, and told me not to mention it to a soul,
either at home or at my destination, and you need not be afraid; I
shall not breathe a word about it.”
“You are very right. For the deed isn’t done yet. Perhaps I shall
not suit this woman.”
“I hope you will, Germain; why should you not suit her?”
“Who knows? I have three children, and that is a heavy burden for a
woman who is not their mother.”
“Very true. But are not your children like other children?”
“Do you think so?”
“They are lovely as little angels, and so well brought up that you
can’t find better children.”
“There’s Sylvain. He is none too obedient.”
“He is so very little. He can’t help being naughty. But he is very
bright.”
“He is bright it is true, and very brave. He is not afraid of cows
nor bulls, and if he were given his own way, he would be climbing
on horseback already with his elder brother.”
“Had I been in your place, I would have taken the eldest boy along.
Surely people would have liked you at once for having such a pretty
child.”
“Yes, if a woman is fond of children. But if she is not.”
“Are there women who don’t love children?”
“Not many, I think, but still there are some, and that is what
troubles me.”
“You don’t know this woman at all, then?”
“No more than you, and I fear that I shall not know her better
after I have seen her. I am not suspicious. When people say nice
things to me, I believe them, but more than once I have had good
reason to repent, for words are not deeds.”
“They say that she is a very good woman.”
“Who says so? Father Maurice?”
“Yes, your father-in-law.”
“That is all very well. But he knows her no more than I.”
“Well, you will soon see. Pay close attention, and let us hope that
you will not be deceived.”
“I have it. Little Marie, I should be very much obliged if you
would come into the house for a minute before you go straight on
to Ormeaux. You are quick-witted; you have always shown that you
are not stupid, and nothing escapes your notice. Should you see
anything to rouse your suspicions, you must warn me of it very
quietly.”
“Oh! no, Germain, I will not do that; I should be too much afraid
of making a mistake; and, besides, if a word lightly spoken were to
turn you against this marriage, your family would bear me a grudge,
and I have plenty of troubles now without bringing any more on my
poor dear mother.”
As they were talking thus, the gray pricked up her ears and shied;
then returning on her steps, she approached the bushes, where she
began to recognize something which had frightened her at first.
Germain cast his eye over the thicket, and in a ditch, beneath the
branches of a scrub-oak, still thick and green, he saw something
which he took for a lamb.
“The little creature is strayed or dead, for it does not move.
Perhaps some one is looking for it; we must see.”
“It is not an animal,” cried little Marie; “it is a sleeping child.
It is your Petit-Pierre.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed Germain; “see the little scamp asleep so far
away from home, and in a ditch where a snake might bite him!”
He lifted up the child, who smiled as he opened his eyes and threw
his arms about his father’s neck, saying: “Dear little father, you
are going to take me with you.”
“Oh, yes; always the same tune. What were you doing there, you
naughty Pierre?”
“I was waiting for my little father to go by. I was watching the
road, and I watched so hard that I fell asleep.”
“And if I had passed by without seeing you, you would have been out
of doors all night, and a wolf would have eaten you up.”
“Oh, I knew very well that you would see me,” answered
Petit-Pierre, confidently.
“Well, kiss me now, bid me good-by, and run back quickly to the
house, unless you wish them to have supper without you.”
“Are you not going to take me, then?” cried the little boy,
beginning to rub his eyes to show that he was thinking of tears.
“You know very well that grandpapa and grandmama do not wish it,”
said Germain, fortifying himself behind the authority of his
elders, like a man who distrusts his own.
The child would not listen. He began to cry with all his might,
saying that as long as his father was taking little Marie, he might
just as well take him too. They replied that they must pass through
great woods filled with wicked beasts who eat up little children.
The gray would not carry three people; she had said so when they
were starting, and in the country where they were going there was
no bed and no supper for little boys. All these good reasons could
not persuade Petit-Pierre; he threw himself on the ground, and
rolled about, shrieking that his little father did not love him any
more, and that if he did not take him he would never go back to the
house at all, day or night.
Germain had a father’s heart, as soft and weak as a woman’s. His
wife’s death, and the care which he had been obliged to bestow
all alone on his little ones, as well as the thought that these
poor motherless children needed a great deal of love, combined to
make him thus. So such a sharp struggle went on within him, all
the more because he was ashamed of his weakness and tried to hide
his confusion from little Marie, that the sweat started out on his
forehead, and his eyes grew red and almost ready to weep. At last
he tried to get angry, but as he turned toward little Marie in
order to let her witness his strength of mind, he saw that the good
girls face was wet with tears; all his courage forsook him and he
could not keep back his own, scold and threaten as he would.
“Truly your heart is too hard,” said little Marie at last, “and for
myself I know that I never could refuse a child who felt so badly.
Come, Germain, let’s take him. Your mare is well used to carrying
two people and a child, for you know that your brother-in-law and
his wife, who is much heavier than I, go to market every Saturday
with their boy on this good beast’s back. Take him on the horse in
front of you. Besides, I should rather walk on foot all alone than
give this little boy so much pain.”
“Never mind,” answered Germain, who was dying to allow himself to
give way. “The gray is strong, and could carry two more if there
were room on her back. But what can we do with this child on the
way? He will be cold and hungry, and who will take care of him
to-night and to-morrow, put him to bed, wash him, and dress him?
I don’t dare give this trouble to a woman I don’t know, who will
think, doubtless, that I am exceedingly free and easy with her to
begin with.”
“Trust me, Germain, you will know her at once by the kindness or
the impatience that she shows. If she does not care to receive your
Pierre, I will take charge of him myself. I will go to her house
and dress him, and I will take him to the fields with me to-morrow.
I will amuse him all day long, and take good care that he does not
want for anything.”
“He will tire you, my poor girl, and give you trouble. A whole day
is a long time.”
“Not at all; it will give me pleasure; he will keep me company, and
that will make me less sad the first day that I must pass in a new
place. I shall fancy that I am still at home.”
Seeing that little Marie was pleading for her, the child seized
upon her skirt and held it so tight that they must have hurt him
in order to tear it away. When he perceived that his father was
weakening, he took Marie’s hand in both his tiny sunburned fists
and kissed her, leaping for joy, and pulling her toward the mare
with the burning impatience children feel in their desires.
“Come along,” said the young girl, lifting him in her arms; “let us
try to quiet his poor little heart. It is fluttering like a little
bird; and if you feel the cold when night comes on, tell me, my
Pierre, and I will wrap you in my cape. Kiss your little father,
and beg his pardon for being naughty. Tell him that you will never,
never be so again. Do you hear?”
“Yes, yes, provided that I always do just as he wishes. Isn’t
it so?” said Germain, drying the little boy’s eyes with his
handkerchief. “Marie, you are spoiling the little rascal. But
really and truly, you are too good, little Marie. I don’t know why
you did not come to us as shepherdess last Saint John’s Day. You
would have taken care of my children, and I should much rather
pay a good price for their sake than try to find a woman who will
think, perhaps, she is doing me a great kindness if she does not
detest them.”
“You must not look on the dark side of things,” answered little
Marie, holding the horse’s bridle while Germain placed his son in
front of the big pack-saddle covered with goatskin. “If your wife
does not care for children, take me into your service next year,
and you may be sure I shall amuse them so well that they will not
notice anything.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
VI
On the Heath
“Dear me,” said Germain, after they had gone a few steps farther,
“what will they think at home when they miss the little man? The
family will be worried, and will be looking everywhere for him.”
“You can tell the man who is mending the road up there that you are
taking him along, and ask him to speak to your people.”
“That is very true, Marie; you don’t forget anything. It never
occurred to me that Jeannie must be there.”
“He lives close to the farm, and he will not fail to do your
errand.”
When they had taken this precaution, Germain put the mare to a
trot, and Petit-Pierre was so overjoyed that for a time he forgot
that he had gone without his dinner; but the motion of the horse
gave him a hollow feeling in his stomach, and at the end of a
league, he began to gape and grow pale, and confessed that he was
dying of hunger.
“This is the way it begins,” exclaimed Germain. “I was quite sure
that we should not go far without this young gentleman crying with
hunger or thirst.”
“I am thirsty, too!” said Petit-Pierre.
“Very well, then, let’s go to Mother Rebec’s tavern at Corlay, the
sign of ‘The Dawn’--a pretty sign, but a poor lodging. You will
take something to drink, too, will you not, Marie?”
“No, no; I don’t want anything. I will hold the mare while you go
in with the child.”
“But I remember, my good girl, that this morning you gave the bread
from your own breakfast to my Pierre. You have had nothing to eat.
You would not take dinner with us at home; you would do nothing but
cry.”
“Oh, I was not hungry; I felt too sad, and I give you my word that
even now I have no desire to eat.”
“You must oblige yourself to eat, little girl, else you will fall
sick. We have a long way to go, and it will not do to arrive
half-starved and beg for bread before we say how d’ ye do. I shall
set you a good example myself, although I am not very hungry: and
I am sure that I can, for, after all, I did not eat any dinner. I
saw you crying, you and your mother, and it made me feel sad. Come
along. I am going to tie the gray at the door. Get down; I wish you
to.”
All three entered the inn, and in less than fifteen minutes the
fat, lame hostess was able to place before them a nice-looking
omelette, some brown bread, and a bottle of light wine.
Peasants do not eat quickly, and little Pierre had such a good
appetite that a whole hour passed before Germain could think of
starting out again. At first little Marie ate in order to be
obliging; then little by little she grew hungry. For, at sixteen, a
girl cannot fast for long, and country air is dictatorial.
The kind words with which Germain knew how to comfort her and
strengthen her courage, produced their effect. She tried hard to
persuade herself that seven months would soon be over, and to think
of the pleasure in store for her when she saw once more her family
and her hamlet; for Father Maurice and Germain had both promised to
take her into their service. But just as she began to cheer up and
play with little Pierre, Germain was so unfortunate as to point out
to her from the inn window the lovely view of the valley which can
all be seen from this height, and which looks so happy and green
and fertile.
Marie looked and asked if the houses of Belair were in sight.
“No doubt,” said Germain, “and the farm, too, and even your
house--see! that tiny gray spot not far from Godard’s big poplar,
below the belfry.”
“Ah, I see it,” said the little girl; and then she began to cry.
“I ought not to have made you think of it,” said Germain. “I can do
nothing but stupid things to-day. Come along, Marie; let’s start,
and in an hour, when the moon rises, it will not be hot.”
They resumed their journey across the great heath, and for fear of
tiring the young girl and the child by too rapid a trot, Germain
did not make the gray go very fast. The sun had set when they left
the road to enter the wood.
Germain knew the way as far as Magnier, but he thought it would be
shorter to avoid the Chantaloube road and descend by Presles and La
Sépulture, a route he was not in the habit of taking on his way to
the fair. He lost his way, and wasted more time before he reached
the wood. Even then he did not enter it on the right side, although
he did not perceive his mistake, so that he turned his back on
Fourche, and took a direction higher up on the way to Ardente.
He was prevented still further from finding his way by a thick
mist which rose as the night fell; one of those mists which come
on autumn evenings when the whiteness of the moonlight renders
them more undefined and more treacherous. The great pools of water
scattered through the glades gave forth a vapor so dense that when
the gray crossed them, their presence was known only by a splashing
noise, and the difficulty with which she drew her feet from the mud.
At last they found a good straight road, and when they came to the
end of it, and Germain tried to discover where he was, he saw that
he was lost. For Father Maurice had told him, when he explained
the way, that on leaving the wood he must descend a very steep
hillside, cross a wide meadow, and ford the river twice. He had
even warned him to cross this river carefully; for, early in the
season, there had been great rains, and the water might still
be higher than usual. Seeing neither hillside nor meadows, nor
river, but a heath, level and white as a mantle of snow, Germain
stopped, looked about for a house, and waited for a passer-by,
but could find nothing to set him right. Then he retraced his
steps and reentered the wood. But the mist thickened yet more,
the moon was completely hidden, the roads were execrable, and the
quagmires deep. Twice the gray almost fell. Her heavy load made
her lose courage, and although she kept enough sagacity to avoid
the tree-trunks, she could not prevent her riders from striking
the great branches which overhung the road at the height of their
heads and caused them great danger. In one of these collisions
Germain lost his hat, and only recovered it after much difficulty.
Petit-Pierre had fallen asleep, and, lying like a log in his
father’s arms, hampered him so that he could no longer hold up nor
direct the horse.
“I believe we are bewitched,” exclaimed Germain, stopping; “for the
wood is not large enough to get lost in, if a man is not drunk,
and here we have been turning round and round for two hours at
least, without finding a way out. The gray has but one idea in her
head, and that is to get home. It is she who is deceiving me. If we
wish to go home, we have only to give her the bit. But when we are
perhaps but two steps from our journey’s end, it would be foolish
to give up and return such a long road; and yet I am at a loss what
to do. I can’t see sky or earth, and I am afraid that the child
will catch the fever if we remain in this cursed fog, or that he
will be crushed beneath our weight if the horse falls forward.”
“We must not persist longer,” said little Marie. “Let’s dismount,
Germain. Give me the child; I can carry him perfectly well, and I
know better than you how to keep the cloak from falling open and
leaving him exposed. You lead the mare by her bridle. Perhaps we
shall see more clearly when we are nearer the ground.”
This precaution was of service only in saving them from a fall, for
the fog hung low and seemed to stick to the damp earth.
Their advance was painfully slow, and they were soon so weary that
they halted when they reached a dry spot beneath the great oaks.
Little Marie was in a violent sweat, but she uttered not a word of
complaint, nor did she worry about anything. Thinking only of the
child, she sat down on the sand and laid it upon her knees, while
Germain explored the neighborhood, after having fastened the gray’s
reins to the branch of a tree.
But the gray was very dissatisfied with the journey. She reared
suddenly, broke the reins loose, burst her girths, and giving,
by way of receipt, half a dozen kicks higher than her head, she
started across the clearing, showing very plainly that she needed
no one to show her the way home.
“Well, here we are afoot,” said Germain, after a vain attempt to
catch the horse, “and it would do us no good now if we were on the
good road, for we should have to ford the river on foot, and since
these paths are filled with water, we may be sure that the meadow
is wholly submerged. We don’t know the other routes. We must wait
until this fog clears. It can’t last more than an hour or two; as
soon as we can see clearly, we shall look about for a house, the
first we come to near the edge of the wood. But for the present
we can’t stir from here. There is a ditch and a pond over there.
Heaven knows what is in front of us, and what is behind us is more
than I can say now, for I have forgotten which way we came.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
VII
Underneath the Big Oaks
“Well, we must be patient, Germain,” said little Marie. “We are
not badly off on this little hillock. The rain does not pierce the
leaves of these big oaks, and we can light a fire, for I can feel
old stumps which stir readily and are dry enough to burn. You have
a light, Germain, have you not? You were smoking your pipe a few
minutes ago.”
“I did have; my tinderbox was in my bag on the saddle with the game
that I was bringing to my bride that is to be, but that devilish
mare has run away with everything, even with my cloak, which she
will lose and tear to bits on every branch she comes to.”
“No, no, Germain; saddle and cloak and bag are all there on the
ground at your feet. The gray burst her girths, and threw off
everything as she ran away.”
“That’s true, thank God,” exclaimed the laborer; “if we can
grope about and find a little dead wood, we shall be able to dry
ourselves and get warm.”
“That’s not difficult,” said little Marie; “dead wood always
cracks when you step on it. But will you give me the saddle?”
“What do you want of it?”
“To make a bed for the child. No, not that way. Upside down. He
will not roll off into the hollow, and it is still very warm from
the horse’s back. Prop it up all around with the stones that you
see there.”
“I can’t see a stone; you must have cat’s eyes.”
“There, it is all done, Germain. Hand me your cloak so that you can
wrap up his little feet, and throw my cape over his body. Just see
if he is not as comfortable as though he were in his own bed, and
feel how warm he is.”
“You certainly know how to take care of children, Marie.”
“I need not be a witch to do that; now get your tinderbox from your
bag, and I will arrange the wood.”
“This wood will never catch fire; it is too damp.”
“You are always doubting, Germain. Don’t you remember when you were
a shepherd, and made big fires in the fields right in the midst of
the rain?”
“Yes, that is a knack that belongs to children who take care of
sheep; but I was made to drive the oxen as soon as I could walk.”
“That is what has made your arms strong and your hands quick! Here,
the fire is built; you shall see whether it does not burn. Give me
the light and a handful of dry ferns. That is all right. Now blow;
you are not consumptive, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” said Germain, blowing like a smith’s bellows.
In an instant the flame leaped up, and throwing out a red glare,
it rose finally in pale blue jets under the oak branches, battling
with the fog, and gradually drying the atmosphere for ten feet
around.
“Now I am going to sit by the child, so that the sparks may not
fall on him,” said the young girl. “Pile on the wood and stir up
the fire, Germain; we shall not catch cold nor fever here, I will
answer for it.”
“Upon my word, you are a clever girl,” said Germain; “and you know
how to make a fire like a little fairy of the night. I feel quite
revived, and my courage has come back again; for with my legs
drenched up to the knees, and with the thought of staying this way
till daylight, I was in a very bad temper just now.”
“And when people are in a bad temper they don’t think of anything,”
answered little Marie.
“And are you never bad-tempered?”
“No, never; what is the good of it?”
“Oh, of course, there is no good; but how can you help it when you
have troubles? Yet Heaven knows that you have not lacked them, my
little girl; for you have not always been happy.”
“It is true that my mother and I have suffered. We have had
sorrows, but we have never lost heart.”
“I should never lose heart, no matter how hard my work was,” said
Germain, “but poverty would make me very sad; for I have never
wanted for anything. My wife made me rich, and I am rich still; I
shall be so as long as I work on the farm; and that will be always,
I hope. But everybody must suffer his share! I have suffered in
another way.”
“Yes; you have lost your wife. That is very sad.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Oh! Germain, I have wept for her many a time. She was so very
kind! But don’t let us talk about her longer, for I shall burst out
crying. All my troubles are ready to come back to me to-day.”
“It is true, she loved you dearly, little Marie. She used to make a
great deal of you and your mother. Are you crying? Come, my girl, I
don’t want to cry....”
“But you are crying, Germain! You are crying as hard as I. Why
should a man be ashamed to weep for his wife? Don’t let me trouble
you. That sorrow is mine as well as yours.”
“You have a kind heart, Marie, and it does me good to weep with
you. Put your feet nearer the fire; your skirts are all soaked,
too, poor little girl. I am going to take your place by the boy.
You move nearer the fire.”
“I am hot enough,” said Marie; “and if you wish to sit down, take a
corner of the cloak. I am perfectly comfortable.”
“The truth is that it is not so bad here,” said Germain, as he sat
down beside her. “Only I feel very hungry again. It is almost nine
o’clock, and I have had such hard work in walking over these vile
roads that I feel quite tired out. Are you not hungry, too, little
Marie?”
“I?--not at all. I am not accustomed like you to four meals a day,
and I have been to bed so often without my supper that once more
does not trouble me.”
“A woman like you is very convenient; she costs nothing,” said
Germain, smiling.
“I am not a woman,” exclaimed Marie, naïvely, without perceiving
the direction the husbandman’s ideas had taken. “Are you dreaming?”
“Yes, I believe I must be dreaming,” answered Germain. “Perhaps
hunger is making my mind wander.”
“How greedy you are,” answered she, brightening in her turn. “Well,
if you can’t live five or six hours without eating, have you not
game in your bag and fire to cook it?”
“By Jove, that’s a good idea! But how about the present to my
future father-in-law?”
“You have six partridges and a hare! I suppose you do not need all
of them to satisfy your appetite.”
“But how can we cook them without a spit or andirons. They will be
burned to a cinder!”
“Not at all,” said little Marie; “I warrant that I can cook them
for you under the cinders without a taste of smoke. Have you never
caught larks in the fields, and cooked them between two stones?
Oh! that is true--I keep forgetting that you have never been a
shepherd. Come, pluck the partridge. Not so hard! You will tear the
skin.”
“You might be plucking the other to show me how!”
“Then you wish to eat two? What an ogre you are! They are all
plucked. I am going to cook them.”
“You would make a perfect little sutler’s girl, Marie, but
unhappily you have no canteen, and I shall have to drink water from
this pool!”
“You would like some wine, would you not? Possibly you might prefer
coffee. You imagine yourself under the trees at the fair. Call out
the host. Some wine for the good husbandman of Belair!”
“You little witch, you are making fun of me! Would not you drink
some wine if you had it?”
“I? At Mother Rebec’s, with you to-night, I drank some for the
second time in my life. But if you are very good, I shall give you
a bottle almost full, and excellent too.”
“What? Marie, I verily believe you are a witch!”
“Were you not foolish enough to ask for two bottles of wine at the
inn? You and your boy drank one, and the other you set before me. I
hardly drank three drops, yet you paid for both without looking.”
“What then?”
“Why, I put the full one in my basket, because I thought that you
or your child would be thirsty on the journey. And here it is.”
“You are the most thoughtful girl I have ever met. Although the
poor child was crying when we left the inn, that did not prevent
her from thinking of others more than of herself. Little Marie, the
man who marries you will be no fool.”
“I hope not, for I am not fond of fools. Come, eat up your
partridges; they are done to a turn; and for want of bread, you
must be satisfied with chestnuts.”
“Where the deuce did you find chestnuts, too?”
“It is extraordinary! All along the road I picked them off the
branches as we went along, and filled my pockets.”
“And are they cooked, too?”
“Where would my wits have been had I not had sense enough to put
the chestnuts in the fire as soon as it was lighted? That is the
way we always do in the fields.”
“So we are going to take supper together, little Marie. I want to
drink your health and wish you a good husband, just the sort of a
man that will suit you. Tell me what kind you want.”
“I should find that very difficult, Germain, for I have not thought
about it yet.”
“What, not at all? Never?” said Germain, as he began to eat with a
laborer’s appetite, yet stopping to cut off the more tender morsels
for his companion, who persisted in refusing them and contented
herself with a few chestnuts.
“Tell me, little Marie,” he went on, seeing that she had no
intention of answering him, “have you never thought of marrying?
Yet you are old enough?”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but I am too poor. I need at least a hundred
crowns to marry, and I must work five or six years to scrape them
together.”
“Poor girl, I wish Father Maurice were willing to give me a hundred
crowns to make you a present of.”
“Thank you kindly, Germain. What do you suppose people would say of
me?”
“What do you wish them to say of you? They know very well that I am
too old to marry you. They would never believe that I--that you--”
“Look, Germain, your child is waking up,” said little Marie.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
VIII
The Evening Prayer
Petit-Pierre had raised his head and was looking about him with a
thoughtful air.
“Oh, that is the way he always does, whenever he hears the sound of
eating,” said Germain. “The explosion of a cannon would not rouse
him, but if you work your jaws near him, he opens his eyes at once.”
“You must have been just like him at his age,” said little Marie,
with a sly smile. “See! my Petit-Pierre, you are looking for your
canopy. To-night it is made all of green, my child; but your father
eats his supper none the less. Do you wish to sup with him? I have
not eaten your share; I thought that you might claim it.”
“Marie, I wish you to eat,” cried the husbandman; “I shall not
touch another morsel. I am a greedy glutton. You are depriving
yourself for our sake. It is not fair. I am ashamed. It takes away
all my appetite. I will not have my son eat his supper unless you
take some too.”
“Leave us alone,” said little Marie; “you have not the key to our
appetites. Mine is tight shut to-day, but your Pierre’s is as wide
open as a little wolf’s. Just see how he seizes his food. He will
be a strong workman too, some day!”
In truth, Petit-Pierre showed very soon whose son he was, and
though scarcely awake and wholly at a loss to know where he was and
how he had come there, he began to eat ravenously. As soon as his
hunger was appeased, feeling excited as children do who break loose
from their wonted habits, he had more wit, more curiosity, and more
good sense than usual. He made them explain to him where he was,
and when he found that he was in the midst of a forest, he grew a
little frightened.
“Are there wicked beasts in this forest?” he demanded of his father.
“No, none at all. Don’t be afraid.”
“Then you told a story when you said that if I went with you into
the great forest, the wolves would carry me off.”
“Just see this logician,” said Germain, embarrassed.
“He is right,” replied little Marie. “That is what you told him. He
has a good memory, and has not forgotten. But, little Pierre, you
must learn that your father never tells a story. We passed through
the big forest whilst you were sleeping, and now we are in the
small forest where there are no wicked beasts.”
“Is the little forest very far away from the big one?”
“Far enough; besides, the wolves never go out of the big forest.
And then, if some of them should come here, your father would kill
them.”
“And you too, little Marie?”
“Yes, we, too, for you would help also, my Pierre. You are not
frightened, are you? You would beat them soundly?”
“Yes, indeed, I would,” said the child, proudly, as he struck a
heroic attitude; “we would kill them.”
“There is nobody like you for talking to children and for making
them listen to reason,” said Germain to little Marie. “To be sure,
it is not long ago since you were a small child yourself, and you
have not forgotten what your mother used to say to you. I believe
that the younger one is, the better one gets on with children. I am
very much afraid that a woman of thirty who does not yet know what
it is to be a mother, would find it hard to prattle to children and
reason with them.”
“Why, Germain? I don’t know why you have such a bad idea of this
woman; you will change your mind.”
“The devil take the woman!” exclaimed Germain. “I wish I were going
away from her forever. What do I want of a wife whom I don’t know?”
“Little father,” said the child, “why is it that you speak so much
of your wife to-day, since she is dead?”
“Then you have not forgotten your poor, dear mother?”
“No; for I saw her placed in a beautiful box of white wood, and my
grandmother led me up to her to kiss her and say good-by. She was
very white and very stiff, and every evening my aunt made me pray
God that she might go to him in Heaven and be warm. Do you think
that she is there now?”
“I hope so, my child; but you must always pray. It shows your
mother that you love her.”
“I am going to say my prayers,” answered the boy. “I forgot them
to-night. But I can’t say them all alone, for I always forget
something. Little Marie must help me.”
“Yes, my Pierre, I will help you,” said the young girl. “Come and
kneel down in my lap.”
The child knelt down on the girl’s skirt. He clasped his little
hands and began to say his prayers, at first with great care and
earnestness, for he knew the beginning very well, then slowly
and with more hesitation, and finally repeating word by word
after Marie, when he came to that place in his prayer where sleep
overtook him so invariably that he had never been able to learn the
end. This time again the effort of close attention and the monotony
of his own accent produced their wonted effect. He pronounced the
last syllables with great difficulty, and only after they were
thrice repeated.
His head grew heavy and fell on Marie’s breast; his hands
unclasped, divided, and fell open on his knees. By the light of the
camp-fire, Germain watched his little darling hushed at the heart
of the young girl, who, as she held him in her arms and warmed his
fair hair with her sweet breath, had herself fallen into a holy
reverie, and prayed in quiet for the soul of Catherine.
Germain was touched. He tried to express to little Marie the
grateful esteem which he felt for her, but he could find no fitting
words.
He approached her to kiss his son, whom she held close to her
breast, and he could scarcely raise his lips from little Pierre’s
brow.
“You kiss too hard,” said Marie, gently pushing away the
husbandman’s head. “You will wake him. Let me put him back to bed,
for the boy has left us already for dreams of paradise.”
The child allowed Marie to lay him down, but feeling the goatskin
on the saddle, he asked if he were on the gray. Then opening his
big blue eyes, and keeping them fixed on the branches for a minute,
he seemed to be dreaming, wide-awake as he was, or to be struck
with an idea which had slipped his mind during the daytime, and
only assumed a distinct form at the approach of sleep.
“Little father,” said he, “if you wish to give me a new mother, I
hope it will be little Marie.”
And without waiting for an answer, he closed his eyes and slept.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
IX
Despite the Cold
Little Marie seemed to give no more heed to the child’s odd words
than to regard them as a proof of friendship. She wrapped him
up with care, stirred the fire, and as the fog resting on the
neighboring pool gave no sign of lifting, she advised Germain to
lie near the fire and take a nap.
“I see that you are sleepy already,” said she, “for you don’t say a
word and you gaze into the fire, just as your little boy was doing.”
“It is you who must sleep,” answered the husbandman, “and I will
take care of both of you, for I have never felt less sleepy than I
do now. I have fifty things to think of.”
“Fifty is a great many,” said the little girl, with a mocking
accent. “There are lots of people who would be delighted to have
one.”
“Well, if I am too stupid to have fifty, I have one, at least,
which has not left me for the past hour.”
“And I shall tell it to you as well as I told you those you thought
of before.”
“Yes, do tell me if you know, Marie. Tell me yourself. I shall be
glad to hear.”
“An hour ago,” she answered, “your idea was to eat--and now it is
to sleep.”
“Marie, I am only an ox-driver, but, upon my word, you take me for
an ox. You are very perverse, and it is easy to see that you do not
care to talk to me, so go to sleep. That will be better than to
pick flaws in a man who is out of sorts.”
“If you wish to talk, let’s talk,” said the girl, half reclining
near the child and resting her head against the saddle. “You
torment yourself, Germain, and you do not show much courage for a
man. What wouldn’t I say if I didn’t do my best to fight my own
troubles?”
“Yes, that’s very true, and that’s just what I am thinking of,
my poor child. You are going to live, away from your friends, in
a horrid country full of moors and fens, where you will catch the
autumn fevers. Sheep do not pay well there, and this is always
discouraging for a shepherdess if she means well. Then you will be
surrounded by strangers who may not be kind to you and will not
know how much you are worth. It makes me more sorry than I can tell
you, and I have a great desire to take you home to your mother
instead of going on to Fourche.”
“You talk very kindly, but there is no reason for your misgivings,
my poor Germain. You ought not to lose heart on your friend’s
account, and instead of showing me the dark side of my lot, you
should show me the bright side, as you did after lunch at Rebec’s.”
“What can I do? That’s the way it appeared to me then, and now my
ideas are changed. It is best for you to take a husband.”
“That cannot be, Germain, and as it is out of the question, I think
no more about it.”
“Yet such a thing might happen. Perhaps if you told me what kind of
a man you want, I might imagine somebody.”
“Imagining is not finding. For myself, I never imagine, for it does
no good.”
“You are not looking for a rich man?”
“Certainly not, for I am as poor as Job.”
“But if he were comfortably off, you wouldn’t be sorry to have a
good house, and good food, and good clothes, and to live with an
honest family who would allow you to help your mother.”
“Oh, yes indeed! It is my own wish to help my mother.”
“And if this man were to turn up, you would not be too hard to
please, even if he were not so very young.”
“Ah! There you must excuse me, Germain. That is just the point I
insist on. I could never love an old man.”
“An old man, of course not; but a man of my age, for example!”
“Your age is too old for me, Germain. I should like Bastien’s age,
though Bastien is not so good-looking as you.”
“Should you rather have Bastien, the swineherd?” said Germain,
indignantly. “A fellow with eyes shaped like those of the pigs he
drives!”
“I could excuse his eyes, because he is eighteen.”
Germain felt terribly jealous.
“Well,” said he, “it’s clear that you want Bastien, but, none the
less, it’s a queer idea.”
“Yes, that would be a queer idea,” answered little Marie, bursting
into shouts of laughter, “and he would make a queer husband. You
could gull him to your heart’s content. For instance, the other
day, I had picked up a tomato in the curate’s garden. I told him
that it was a fine, red apple, and he bit into it like a glutton.
If you had only seen what a face he made. Heavens! how ugly he was!”
“Then you don’t love him, since you are making fun of him.”
“That wouldn’t be a reason. But I don’t like him. He is unkind to
his little sister, and he is dirty.”
“Don’t you care for anybody else?”
“How does that concern you, Germain?”
“Not at all, except that it gives me something to talk about. I see
very well, little girl, that you have a sweetheart in your mind
already.”
“No, Germain, you’re wrong. I have no sweetheart yet. Perhaps one
may come later, but since I cannot marry until I have something
laid by, I am destined to marry late in life and with an old man.”
“Then take an old man without delay.”
“No. When I am no longer young, I shall not care; for the present,
it is different.”
“I see that I displease you, Marie; that’s clear enough,” said
Germain, impatiently, and without stopping to weigh his words.
Little Marie did not answer. Germain bent over her. She was
sleeping. She had fallen back, overcome, stricken down, as it were,
by slumber, as children are who sleep before they cease to babble.
Germain was glad that she had not caught his last words. He felt
that they were unwise, and he turned his back to distract his
attention and change his thoughts.
It was all in vain. He could neither sleep nor think of anything
except the words he had just spoken. He walked about the fire
twenty times; he moved away; he came back. At last, feeling himself
tremble as though he had swallowed gunpowder, he leaned against the
tree which sheltered the two children, and watched them as they
slept.
“I know not how it is,” thought he; “I have never noticed that
little Marie is the prettiest girl in the countryside. She has
not much color, but her little face is fresh as a wild rose. What
a charming mouth she has, and how pretty her little nose is! She
is not large for her age, but she is formed like a little quail
and is as light as a bird. I cannot understand why they made so
much fuss at home over a big, fat woman with a bright red face.
My wife was rather slender and pale, and she pleased me more than
any one else. This girl is very frail, but she is healthy, and
she is pretty to watch as a white kid. And then she has such a
gentle, frank expression. You can read her good heart in her eyes
even though they are closed in sleep. As to wit, I must confess
she has more than ever my dear Catherine had, and she would never
become wearisome. She is gay, wise, industrious, loving, and she is
amusing. I don’t know what more I could wish for....
“But what is the use of thinking of all this?” Germain went on,
trying to look in another direction. “My father-in-law would not
hear of it, and all the family would think me mad! Besides, she
would not have me herself, poor child! She thinks me too old; she
told me so. She is unselfish, and does not mind poverty and worry,
wearing old clothes, and suffering from hunger for two or three
months every year, so long as she can satisfy her heart some day
and give herself to the man she loves. She is right. I should do
the same in her place, and even now, if I had my own way, instead
of marrying a wife whom I don’t care for, I would choose a girl
after my own heart.”
The more Germain tried to compose himself by reasoning, the further
he was from succeeding. He walked away a dozen steps, to lose
himself in the fog; then, all of a sudden, he found himself on his
knees beside the two sleeping children. Once he wished to kiss
Petit-Pierre, who had one arm about Marie’s neck, and made such a
mistake that Marie felt a breath, hot as fire, cross her lips, and
awaking, looked about her with a bewildered expression, totally
ignorant of all that was passing within his mind.
“I didn’t see you, my poor children,” said Germain, retreating
rapidly. “I almost stumbled over you and hurt you.”
Little Marie was so innocent that she believed him, and fell asleep
again. Germain walked to the opposite side of the fire, and swore
to God that he would not stir until she had waked. He kept his
word, but not without a struggle. He thought that he would go mad.
At length, toward midnight, the fog lifted, and Germain could see
the stars shining through the trees. The moon freed herself from
the mist which had hidden her, and began to sow her diamonds over
the damp moss. The trunks of the oak-trees remained in impressive
darkness, but beyond, the white branches of the birch-trees seemed
a long line of phantoms in their shrouds. The fire cast its
reflection in the pool; and the frogs, growing accustomed to the
light, hazarded a few shrill and uneasy notes; the rugged branches
of the old trees, bristling with dim-colored lichens, crossed and
intertwined themselves, like great gaunt arms, above the travelers’
heads. It was a lovely spot, but so lonely and so sad that Germain,
unable to endure it more, began to sing and throw stones into the
water to forget the dread weariness of solitude. He was anxious
also to wake little Marie, and when he saw her rise and look about
at the weather, he proposed that they start on their journey.
“In two hours,” said he, “the approach of morning will chill the
air so that we can’t stay here in spite of our fire. Now we can see
our way, and we shall soon find a house which will open its doors
to us, or at least a barn where we can pass the rest of the night
under shelter.”
Marie had no will of her own, and although she was longing to
sleep, she made ready to follow Germain. The husbandman took his
boy in his arms without awaking him, and beckoned Marie to come
nearer, in order to cover her with his cloak. For she would not
take her own mantle, which was wrapped about the child.
When he felt the young girl so close to him, Germain, who for a
time had succeeded in distracting his mind and raising his spirits,
began to lose his head once more. Two or three times he strode
ahead abruptly, leaving her to walk alone. Then seeing how hard it
was for her to follow, he waited, drew her quickly to his side, and
pressed her so tight that she was surprised, and even angry, though
she dared not say so.
As they knew not the direction whence they had come, they had no
idea of that in which they were going. So they crossed the wood
once more, and found themselves afresh before the lonely moor. Then
they retraced their steps, and after much turning and twisting they
spied a light across the branches.
“Good enough! Here’s a house,” exclaimed Germain. “And the people
are already astir, for the fire is lighted. It must be very late.”
It was no house, but the camp-fire, which they had covered before
they left, and which had sprung up in the breeze.
They had tramped for two hours, only to find themselves at the very
place from which they had started.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
X
Beneath the Stars
“This time I give up,” said Germain, stamping his foot. “We are
bewitched, that is certain, and we shall not get away from here
before broad day. The devil is in this place!”
“Well, it’s of no use to get angry,” said Marie. “We must take what
is given us. Let us make a big fire. The child is so well wrapped
up that he is in no danger, and we shall not die from a single
night out of doors. Where have you hidden the saddle, Germain?
Right in the midst of the holly-bushes,--what a goose you are! It’s
very convenient to get it from there!”
“Stop, child; hold the boy while I pull his bed from the thorns. I
didn’t want you to scratch your hands.”
“It’s all done. Here’s the bed, and a few scratches are not
saber-cuts,” replied the brave girl.
She proceeded to put the child to bed again, and Petit-Pierre was
so sound asleep this time that he knew nothing of his last journey.
Germain piled so much wood on the fire that the forest all about
glowed with the light.
Little Marie had come to the end of her powers, and although she
did not complain, her legs would support her no longer. She was
white, and her teeth chattered with cold and weakness. Germain took
her in his arms to warm her. The uneasiness, the compassion, the
tenderness of movement he could not repress, took possession of
his heart and stilled his senses. As by a miracle his tongue was
loosened, and every feeling of shame vanished.
“Marie,” said he, “I like you, and I am very sorry that you don’t
like me. If you would take me for your husband, there are no
fathers, nor family, nor neighbors, nor arguments which could
prevent me from giving myself to you. I know how happy you would
make my children, and that you would teach them to love the memory
of their mother, and with a quiet conscience I could satisfy the
wishes of my heart. I have always been fond of you, and now I love
you so well that were you to ask me to spend all my life in doing
your pleasure, I would swear to do it on the instant. Please think
how much I love you, and try to forget my age. Think that it is a
wrong notion to believe that a man of thirty is old. Besides, I
am but twenty-eight. A young girl is afraid that people will talk
about her if she takes a man ten or twelve years older than she,
simply because that is not the custom in our country, but I have
heard say that in other countries people don’t look at it in this
light, and that they had rather allow a sensible man of approved
courage to support a young girl, than trust her to a mere boy, who
may go astray, and, from the honest fellow they thought him, turn
into a good-for-nothing. And then years don’t always make age. That
depends on the health and strength a person has. When a man is used
up by overwork and poverty, or by a bad life, he is old before
twenty-five. While I--but Marie, you are not listening....”
“Yes I am, Germain; I hear you perfectly,” answered little Marie,
“but I am thinking over what my mother used to tell me so often:
that a woman of sixty is to be pitied greatly when her husband is
seventy or seventy-five and can no longer work to support her. He
grows feeble, and it becomes her duty to nurse him at the very age
when she begins to feel great need of care and rest herself, and so
it is that the end comes in a garret.”
“Parents do well to say so, I admit,” answered Germain, “but then
they would sacrifice all their youth, the best years of their
life, to calculating what will become of them at the age when a
person is no longer good for anything, and when it is a matter
of indifference which way death comes. But I am in no danger of
starving in my old age. I am even going to lay by something, since
I live with my wife’s parents and spend nothing. And then, you
see, I shall love you so well that I can never grow old. They say
that when a man is happy he keeps sound, and I know well that in
love for you, I am younger than Bastien; for he does not love you;
he is too stupid, too much of a child to understand how pretty
and how good you are, and how you were made for people to court.
Do not hate me, Marie. I am not a bad man. I made my Catherine
happy, and on her death-bed she swore before God that she had had
only happiness of me, and she asked me to marry again. Her spirit
must have spoken to her child to-night. Did you not hear the words
he said? How his little lips quivered as his eyes stared upward,
watching something that we could not see! He was surely looking at
his mother, and it was she who made him say that he wished you to
take her place.”
“Germain,” answered Marie, amazed and yet thoughtful, “you speak
frankly, and everything that you say is true. I am sure that I
should do well to love you if it did not displease your parents
too much. But what can I do? My heart does not speak for you. I
am very fond of you, but though your age does not make you ugly,
it makes me afraid. It seems as if you were some such relation to
me, as an uncle or a godfather, that I must be respectful toward
you, and that there might be moments when you would treat me like a
little girl rather than like your wife and your equal. And perhaps
my friends would make fun of me, and although it would be silly
to give heed to that, I think that I should be a little sad on my
wedding-day.”
“Those are but childish reasons, Marie; you speak like a child.”
“Yes, that is true; I am a child,” said she, “and it is on that
account I am afraid of too sensible a man. You must see that I am
too young for you, since you just found fault with me for speaking
foolishly. I can’t have more sense than my age allows.”
“O Heavens! How unlucky I am to be so clumsy and to express so ill
what I think!” cried Germain. “Marie, you don’t love me. That is
the long and short of it. You find me too simple and too dull. If
you loved me at all, you would not see my faults so clearly. But
you do not love me. That is the whole story.”
“That is not my fault,” answered she, a little hurt that he was
speaking with less tenderness. “I am doing my best to hear you, but
the more I try the less I can get it into my head that we ought to
be husband and wife.”
Germain did not answer. His head dropped into his hands, and
little Marie could not tell whether he wept or sulked or was fast
asleep. She felt uneasy when she saw him so cast down, and could
not guess what was passing in his mind. But she dared not speak to
him more, and as she was too astonished at what had passed to have
any desire to sleep, she waited impatiently for dawn, tending the
fire with care and watching over the child, whose existence Germain
appeared to forget. Yet Germain was not asleep. He did not mope
over his lot. He made no plans to encourage himself, nor schemes to
entrap the girl. He suffered; he felt a great weight of grief at
his heart. He wished that he were dead. The world seemed to turn
against him, and if he could have wept at all, his tears would have
come in floods. But mingled with his sorrow there was a feeling of
anger against himself, and he felt choked, without the power or the
wish to complain.
When morning came, and the sounds of the country brought it to
Germain’s senses, he lifted his head from his hands and rose. He
saw that little Marie had slept no more than he, but he knew no
words in which to tell her of his anxiety. He was very discouraged.
Hiding the gray’s saddle once more in the thicket, he slung his
sack over his shoulder and took his son by the hand.
“Now, Marie,” said he, “we are going to try to end our journey. Do
you wish me to take you to Ormeaux?”
“Let us leave the woods together,” answered she, “and when we know
where we are, we shall separate, and go our different ways.”
Germain did not answer. He felt hurt that the girl did not ask him
to take her as far as Ormeaux, and he did not notice that he had
asked her in a tone well fitted to provoke a refusal.
After a few hundred steps, they met a wood-cutter, who pointed out
the highroad, and told them that when they had crossed the plain,
one must turn to the right, the other to the left, to gain their
different destinations, which were so near together that the houses
of Fourche were in plain sight from the farm of Ormeaux, and _vice
versa_.
When they had thanked him and passed on, the wood-cutter called
them back to ask whether they had not lost a horse.
“Yes,” he said, “I found a pretty gray mare in my yard, where
perhaps a wolf had driven her to seek refuge; my dogs barked the
whole night long, and at daybreak I saw the mare under my shed. She
is there now. Come along with me, and if you recognize her, you may
take her.”
When Germain had given a description of the gray, and felt
convinced that it was really she, he started back to find his
saddle. Little Marie offered to take his child to Ormeaux, whither
he might go to get him after he had introduced himself at Fourche.
“He is rather dirty after the night that we have passed,” said she.
“I will brush his clothes, wash his pretty face, and comb his hair,
and when he looks neat and clean, you can present him to your new
family.”
“Who told you that I wish to go to Fourche?” answered Germain,
petulantly. “Perhaps I shall not go.”
“But truly, Germain, it is your duty to go there. You will go
there,” replied the girl.
“You seem very anxious to have me married off, so that you may be
quite sure that I shall not trouble you again?”
“Germain, you must not think of that any more. It is an idea which
came to you in the night, because this unfortunate mishap took away
your spirits. But now you must come to your senses. I promise you
to forget everything that you said to me, and not to breathe it to
a soul.”
“Oh, say what you wish. It is not my custom to deny what I have
spoken. What I told you was true and honest, and I shall not blush
for it before anybody.”
“Yes, but if your wife were to know that just before you came you
were thinking of another woman, it would prejudice her against you.
So take care how you speak now. Don’t look at me before everybody
with such a rapt expression. Think of Father Maurice, who relies on
your obedience, and who would be enraged at me if I were to turn
you from his will. Good-by, Germain. I take Petit-Pierre in order
to force you to go to Fourche. He is a pledge which I keep on your
behalf.”
“So you want to go with her?” said the husbandman to his son,
seeing that the boy had clasped Marie’s hands and was following her
resolutely.
“Yes, father,” answered the child, who had heard the conversation
and understood after his own fashion the words spoken so
unguardedly before him. “I am going away with my dearest little
Marie. You shall come to find me when you have done marrying, but I
wish Marie to be my little mother.”
“You see how much he wishes it,” said Germain to the girl. “Listen
to me, Petit-Pierre,” he added. “I wish her to be your mother and
to stay with you always. It is she who does not wish to. Try to
make her grant you what she has denied me.”
“Don’t be afraid, father, I shall make her say yes. Little Marie
does everything that I wish.”
He walked away with the young girl. Germain stood alone, sadder and
more irresolute than ever.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XI
The Belle of the Village
And after all, when he had brushed the dust of travel from his
clothes and from his horse’s harness, when he had mounted the gray,
and when he had learned the road, he felt that there was no retreat
and that he must forget that anxious night as though it had been a
dangerous dream.
He found Father Leonard seated on a trim bench of spinach-green.
The six stone steps leading up to the door showed that the house
had a cellar. The walls of the garden and of the hemp-field were
plastered with lime and sand. It was a handsome house, and might
almost have been mistaken for the dwelling of a bourgeois.
Germain’s future father-in-law came forward to meet him, and having
plied him, for five minutes, with questions concerning his entire
family, he added that conventional phrase with which one passer-by
addresses another concerning the object of his journey: “So you are
taking a little trip in this part of the country?”
“I have come to see you,” replied the husbandman, “to give you this
little present of game with my father’s compliments, and to tell
you from him that you ought to know with what intentions I come to
your house.”
“Oh, ho!” said Father Leonard, laughing and tapping his capacious
stomach, “I see, I understand, I am with you, and,” he added with a
wink, “you will not be the only one to pay your court, young man.
There are three already in the house dancing attendance like you.
I never turn anybody away, and I should find it hard to say yes or
no to any of them, for they are all good matches. Yet, on account
of Father Maurice and for the sake of the rich fields you till, I
hope that it may be you. But my daughter is of age and mistress
of her own affairs. She will do as she likes. Go in and introduce
yourself. I hope that you will draw the prize.”
“I beg your pardon,” answered Germain, amazed to find himself an
extra when he had counted on being alone in the field. “I was not
aware that your daughter was supplied already with suitors, and I
did not come to quarrel over her.”
“If you supposed that because you were slow in coming, my daughter
would be left unprovided for, you were greatly mistaken, my son,”
replied Father Leonard with unshaken good humor. “Catherine has
the wherewithal to attract suitors, and her only difficulty lies
in choosing. But come in; don’t lose heart. The woman is worth a
struggle.”
And pushing in Germain by the shoulders with boisterous gaiety, he
called to his daughter as they entered the house:
“So, Catherine, here is another!”
This cordial but unmannerly method of introduction to the widow, in
the presence of her other devotees, completed Germain’s distress
and embarrassment. He felt the awkwardness of his position, and
stood for a few moments without daring to look upon the beauty and
her court.
The Widow Guérin had a good figure and did not lack freshness, but
her expression and her dress displeased Germain the instant he saw
her. She had a bold, self-satisfied look, and her cap, edged with
three lace flounces, her silk apron, and her fichu of fine black
lace were little in accord with the staid and sober widow he had
pictured to himself.
Her elaborate dress and forward manners inclined Germain to judge
the widow old and ugly, although she was certainly not either. He
thought that such finery and playful manners might well suit little
Marie’s years and wit, but that the widow’s fun was labored and
over bold, and that she wore her fine clothes in bad taste.
The three suitors were seated at a table loaded with wines and
meats which were spread out for their use throughout the Sunday
morning; for Father Leonard liked to show off his wealth, and the
widow was not sorry to display her pretty china and keep a table
like a rich lady. Germain, simple and unsuspecting as he was,
watched everything with a penetrating glance, and for the first
time in his life he kept on the defensive when he drank. Father
Leonard obliged him to sit down with his rivals, and taking a chair
opposite he treated him with great politeness, and talked to him
rather than to the others.
The present of game, despite the breach Germain had made on his
own account, was still plenteous enough to produce its effect. The
widow did not look unaware of its presence, and the suitors cast
disdainful glances in its direction.
Germain felt ill at ease in this company, and did not eat heartily.
Father Leonard poked fun at him.
“You look very melancholy,” said he, “and you are ill-using your
glass. You must not allow love to spoil your appetite, for a
fasting lover can make no such pretty speeches as he whose ideas
are brightened with a drop of wine.”
Germain was mortified at being thought already in love, and the
artificial manner of the widow, who kept lowering her eyes with a
smile as a woman does who is sure of her calculations, made him
long to protest against his pretended surrender; but fearing to
appear uncivil, he smiled and held his peace.
He thought the widow’s beaus, three bumpkins. They must have been
rich for her to admit of their pretensions. One was over forty,
and fat as Father Leonard; another had lost an eye, and drank like
a sot. The third was a young fellow, and nice-looking too; but he
kept insisting on displaying his wit, and would say things so silly
that they were painful to hear. Yet the widow laughed as though she
admired all his foolishness, and made small proof of her good taste
thereby. At first Germain thought her infatuated with him, but soon
he perceived that he himself was especially encouraged, and that
they wished him to make fresh advances. For this reason he felt an
increasing stiffness and severity which he took no pains to conceal.
The time came for mass, and they rose from table to go thither
in company. It was necessary to walk as far as Mers, a good
half-league away, and Germain was so tired that he longed to take a
nap before they went; but he was not in the habit of missing mass,
and he started with the others.
The roads were filled with people, and the widow marched proudly
along, escorted by her three suitors, taking an arm, first of one
and then of another, and carrying her head high with an air of
importance. She was eager to display the fourth to the eyes of the
passers-by; but Germain felt so ridiculous to be dragged along in
the train of a petticoat where all the world might see, that he
kept at a respectable distance, chatting with Father Leonard, and
succeeded in occupying his attention so well that they did not look
at all as if they belonged to the party.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XII
The Master
When they reached the village, the widow halted to allow them to
catch up. She was bent upon making her entry with all her train;
but Germain, denying her this pleasure, deserted Father Leonard,
and after conversing with several acquaintances, he entered the
church by another door. The widow was vexed.
When mass was over, she made her appearance in triumph on the lawn,
where dancing was going on, and she began her dance with her three
lovers in turn. Germain watched her and saw that she danced well,
but with affectation.
“So, you don’t ask my daughter?” said Leonard, tapping him on the
shoulder. “You are too easily frightened.”
“I have not danced since I lost my wife,” answered the husbandman.
“But now that you are looking for another, mourning’s over in
heart as well as in clothes.”
“That’s no reason, Father Leonard. Besides, I am too old and I
don’t care for dancing.”
“Listen,” said Father Leonard, drawing him toward a retired
corner, “when you entered my house you were vexed to see the place
already besieged, and I see that you are very proud. But that is
not reasonable, my boy. My daughter is used to a great deal of
attention, particularly since she left off her mourning two years
ago, and it is not her place to lead you on.”
“Has your daughter been thinking of marrying for two years already
without making her choice?” asked Germain.
“She doesn’t wish to hurry, and she is right. Although she has
lively manners, and although you may not think that she reflects
a great deal, she is a woman of excellent common sense, and knows
very well what she is about.”
“It does not appear to me so,” said Germain ingenuously, “for she
has three suitors in her train, and if she knew her own mind, there
are two of them, at least, whom she would find superfluous and
request to stay at home.”
“Why, Germain, you don’t understand at all. She doesn’t wish the
old man, nor the blind man, nor the young man, I am quite certain;
yet if she were to turn them off, people would think that she
wished to remain a widow, and nobody else would come.”
“Oh, I see. These three are used for a guide-post.”
“As you like. What is the harm if they are satisfied?”
“Every man to his taste,” said Germain.
“I see that yours is different. Now supposing that you are chosen,
then they would leave the coast clear.”
“Yes, supposing! and meanwhile how much time should I have to
whistle?”
“That depends on your persuasive tongue, I suppose. Until now, my
daughter has always thought that she would pass the best part of
her life while she was being courted, and she is in no hurry to
become the servant of one man when she can order so many others
about. So she will please herself as long as the game amuses her;
but if you please her more than the game, the game will cease. Only
you must not lose courage. Come back every Sunday, dance with her,
let her know that you are amongst her followers, and if she finds
you more agreeable and better bred than the others, some fine day
she will tell you so, no doubt.”
“Excuse me, Father Leonard. Your daughter has the right to do as
she pleases, and it is not my business to blame her. If I were in
her place, I should do differently. I should be more frank, and
should not waste the time of men who have, doubtless, something
better to do than dancing attendance on a woman who makes fun of
them. Still, if that is what amuses her and makes her happy, it is
no affair of mine. Only there is one thing I must tell you which is
a little embarrassing, since you have mistaken my intentions from
the start, for you are so sure of what is not so, that you have
given me no chance to explain. You must know, then, that I did not
come here to ask for your daughter in marriage, but merely to buy a
pair of oxen which you are going to take to market next week, and
which my father-in-law thinks will suit him.”
“I understand, Germain,” answered Leonard very calmly; “you changed
your plans when you saw my daughter with her admirers. It is as you
please. It seems that what attracts some people repels others, and
you are perfectly welcome to withdraw, for you have not declared
your intentions. If you wish seriously to buy my cattle, come and
see them in the pasture, and whether we make a bargain or not, you
will come back to dinner with us before you return.”
“I don’t wish to trouble you,” answered Germain. “Perhaps you have
something to do here. I myself am tired of watching the dancing and
standing idle. I will go to see your cattle, and I will soon join
you at your house.”
Then Germain made his escape, and walked away toward the meadows
where Leonard had pointed out to him some of his cattle. It was
true that Father Maurice intended to buy, and Germain thought that
if he were to bring home a fine pair of oxen at a reasonable price,
he might more easily receive a pardon for wilfully relinquishing
the purpose of his journey. He walked rapidly, and soon found
himself at some distance from Ormeaux. Then of a sudden, he felt a
desire to kiss his son and to see little Marie once again, although
he had lost all hope and even had chased away the thought that he
might some day owe his happiness to her. Everything that he had
heard and seen: this woman, flirtatious and vain; this father, at
once shrewd and short-sighted, encouraging his daughter in habits
of pride and untruth; this city luxury, which seemed to him a
transgression against the dignity of country manners; this time
wasted in foolish, empty words; this home so different from his
own; and above all, that deep uneasiness which comes to a laborer
of the fields when he leaves his accustomed toil: all the trouble
and annoyance of the past few hours made Germain long to be with
his child and with his little neighbor. Even had he not been in
love, he would have sought her to divert his mind and raise his
spirits to their wonted level.
But he looked in vain over the neighboring meadows. He saw neither
little Marie nor little Pierre, and yet it was the hour when
shepherds are in the fields. There was a large flock in a pasture.
He asked of a young boy who tended them whether the sheep belonged
to the farm of Ormeaux.
“Yes,” said the child.
“Are you the shepherd? Do boys tend the flocks of the farm, amongst
you?”
“No, I am taking care of them to-day, because the shepherdess went
away. She was ill.”
“But have you not a new shepherdess, who came this morning?”
“Yes, surely; but she, too, has gone already.”
“What! gone? Did she not have a child with her?”
“Yes, a little boy who cried. They both went away after they had
been here two hours.”
“Went away! Where?”
“Where they came from, I suppose. I didn’t ask them.”
“But why did they go away?” asked Germain, growing more and more
uneasy.
“How the deuce do I know?”
“Did they not agree about wages? Yet that must have been settled
before.”
“I can tell you nothing about it. I saw them come and go, nothing
more.”
Germain walked toward the farm and questioned the farmer. Nobody
could give him an explanation; but after speaking with the farmer,
he felt sure that the girl had gone without saying a word, and had
taken the weeping child with her.
“Can they have been ill-treating my son?” cried Germain.
“It was your son, then? How did he happen to be with the little
girl? Where do you come from, and what is your name?”
Germain, seeing that after the fashion of the country they were
answering him with questions, stamped his foot impatiently, and
asked to speak with the master.
The master was away. Usually, he did not spend the whole day when
he came to the farm. He was on horseback, and he had ridden off to
one of his other farms.
“But, honestly,” said Germain, growing very anxious, “can’t you
tell me why this girl left?”
The farmer and his wife exchanged an odd smile. Then the former
answered that he knew nothing, and that it was no business of his.
All that Germain could learn was that both girl and child had
started off toward Fourche. He rushed back to Fourche. The widow
and her lovers were still away; so was Father Leonard. The maid
told him that a girl and a child had come to ask for him, but that
as she did not know them, she did not wish to let them in, and had
advised them to go to Mers.
“And why did you refuse to let them in?” said Germain, angrily.
“People are very suspicious in this country, where nobody opens the
door to a neighbor.”
“But you see,” answered the maid, “in a house as rich as this, I
must keep my eyes open. When the master is away, I am responsible
for everything, and I cannot open the door to the first person that
comes along.”
“It is a bad custom,” said Germain, “and I had rather be poor than
to live in constant fear like that. Good-by to you, young woman,
and good-by to your vile country.”
He made inquiries at the neighboring house. The shepherdess
and child had been seen. As the boy had left Belair suddenly,
carelessly dressed, with his blouse torn, and his little lambskin
over his shoulders, and as little Marie was necessarily poorly clad
at all times, they had been taken for beggars. People had offered
them bread. The girl had accepted a crust for the child, who was
hungry, then she had walked away with him very quickly, and had
entered the forest.
Germain thought a minute, then he asked whether the farmer of
Ormeaux had not been at Fourche.
“Yes,” they answered, “he passed on horseback a few seconds after
the girl.”
“Was he chasing her?”
“Oh, so you understand?” answered the village publican, with a
laugh. “Certain it is that he is the devil of a fellow for running
after girls. But I don’t believe that he caught her; though, after
all, if he had seen her--”
“That is enough, thank you!” And he flew rather than ran to
Leonard’s stable. Throwing the saddle on the gray’s back, he leaped
upon it, and set off at full gallop toward the wood of Chanteloube.
His heart beat hard with fear and anger; the sweat poured down his
forehead; he spurred the mare till the blood came, though the gray
needed no pressing when she felt herself on the road to her stable.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XIII
The Old Woman
Germain came soon to the spot where he had passed the night on the
border of the pool. The fire was smoking still. An old woman was
gathering the remnants of the wood little Marie had piled there.
Germain stopped to question her. She was deaf and mistook his
inquiries.
“Yes, my son,” said she, “this is the Devil’s Pool. It is an evil
spot, and you must not approach it without throwing in three stones
with your left hand, while you cross yourself with the right. That
drives away the spirits. Otherwise trouble comes to those who go
around it.”
“I am not asking about that,” said Germain, moving nearer her, and
screaming at the top of his lungs. “Have you seen a girl and a
child walking through the wood?”
“Yes,” said the old woman, “a little child was drowned there.”
Germain shook from head to foot; but happily the hag added:
“That happened a long time ago. In memory of the accident they
raised a handsome cross there. But one stormy night, the bad
spirits threw it into the water. You can still see one end of it.
If anybody were unlucky enough to pass the night here, he could
never find his way out before daylight. He must walk and walk, and
though he went two hundred leagues into the forest, he must always
return to the same place.”
The peasant’s imagination was aroused in spite of himself, and the
thought of the evils that must come in order that the old woman’s
assertions might be vindicated, took so firm a hold of his mind
that he felt chilled through and through. Hopeless of obtaining
more news, he remounted, and traversed the woods afresh, calling
Pierre with all his might, whistling, cracking his whip, and
snapping the branches that the whole forest might reëcho with the
noise of his coming; then he listened for an answering voice, but
he heard no sound save the cowbells scattered through the glades,
and the wild cries of the swine as they fought over the acorns.
At length Germain heard behind him the noise of a horse following
in his traces, and a man of middle age, dark, sturdy, and dressed
after the city fashion, called to him to stop. Germain had never
seen the farmer of Ormeaux, but his instinctive rage told him at
once that this was the man. He turned, and eyeing him from head to
foot, waited for him to speak.
“Have not you seen a young girl of fifteen or sixteen go by with a
small boy?” asked the farmer, with an assumed air of indifference,
although he was evidently ill at ease.
“What do you want of her?” answered Germain, taking no pains to
conceal his anger.
“I might tell you that that is none of your business, my friend.
But as I have no reasons for secrecy, I shall tell you that she is
a shepherdess whom I engaged for a year, before I knew her. When
I saw her, she looked too young and frail to work on the farm. I
thanked her, but I wished to pay the expenses of her short journey,
and while my back was turned, she went off in a huff. She was in
such a hurry that she forgot even some of her belongings and her
purse, which has certainly not much in it, probably but a few
pennies; but since I was going in this direction, I hoped to meet
her, and give her back the things which she left behind, as well as
what I owe her.”
Germain had too honest a heart not to pause at hearing a story
which, however unlikely, was not impossible. He fastened his
penetrating gaze on the farmer, who submitted to the examination
with a plentiful supply of impudence or of good faith.
“I wish to get at the bottom of this matter,” said Germain; “and,”
continued he, suppressing his indignation, “the girl lives in
my village. I know her. She can’t be far away. Let’s ride on
together; we shall find her, no doubt.”
“You are right,” said the farmer; “let’s move on; but if we do not
find her before we reach the end of this road, I shall give up, for
I must turn off toward Ardentes.”
“Oh, oh!” thought the peasant, “I shall not part with you, even if
I have to follow you around the Devil’s Pool for twenty-four hours.”
“Stop,” said Germain suddenly, fixing his eyes on a clump of broom
which waved in a peculiar manner. “Halloa! halloa! Petit Pierre, is
that you, my child?”
The boy recognized his father’s voice, and came out from the broom
leaping like a young deer; but when he saw Germain in company with
the farmer, he stopped dismayed, and stood irresolute. “Come, my
Pierre, come. It is I,” cried the husbandman, as he leaped from his
horse and ran toward his boy to take him in his arms; “and where is
little Marie?”
“She is hiding there, because she is afraid of that dreadful black
man, and so am I.”
“You needn’t be afraid. I am here. Marie, Marie. It is I.”
Marie crept toward them, but the moment she saw Germain with the
farmer close behind, she sprang forward, and throwing herself into
his arms, clung to him as a daughter to her father.
“Oh, my brave Germain!” she cried, “you will defend me. I am not
afraid when you are near.”
Germain shuddered. He looked at Marie. She was pale; her clothes
were torn by the thorns which had scratched her as she passed,
rushing toward the brake like a stag chased by the hunters. But
neither shame nor despair were in her face.
“Your master wishes to speak to you,” said he, his eyes fixed on
her features.
“My master!” she exclaimed fiercely; “that man is no master of
mine, and he never shall be. You, Germain, you are my master. I
want you to take me home with you. I will be your servant for
nothing.”
The farmer advanced, feigning impatience. “Little girl,” said he,
“you left something behind at the farm, which I am bringing back to
you.”
“No, you are not, sir,” answered little Marie. “I didn’t forget
anything, and I have nothing to ask of you.”
“Listen a moment,” returned the farmer. “It’s I who have something
to tell you. Come with me. Don’t be afraid. It’s only a word or
two.”
“You may say them aloud. I have no secrets with you.”
“At any rate, do take your money.”
“My money? You owe me nothing, thank God!”
“I suspected as much,” said Germain under his breath, “but I don’t
care, Marie. Listen to what he has to say to you, for--I am curious
to know. You can tell me afterward. Go up to his horse. I shall not
lose sight of you.”
Marie took three steps toward the farmer. He bent over the pommel
of his saddle, and lowering his voice he said:
“Little girl, here is a bright golden louis for you. Don’t say
anything about it; do you hear? I shall say that I found you too
frail to work on my farm. There will be no more talk about that. I
shall be passing by your house one of these days; and if you have
not said anything, I will give you something more; and then if you
are more sensible, you have only to speak. I will take you home
with me, or I will come at dusk and talk with you in the meadows.
What present would you like me to bring you?”
“Here, sir, is the present I have for you,” answered little Marie,
aloud, as she threw the golden louis in his face with all her
might. “I thank you heartily, and I beg that if you come anywhere
near our house, you will be good enough to let me know. All the
boys in the neighborhood will go out to welcome you, because, where
I live, we are very fond of gentlemen who try to make love to poor
girls. You shall see. They will be on the lookout for you.”
“You lie with your dirty tongue,” cried the farmer, raising his
stick with a dangerous air. “You wish to make people believe what
is not so, but you shall never get a penny out of me. We know what
kind of a girl you are.”
Marie drew back, frightened, and Germain sprang to the bridle of
the farmer’s horse and shook it violently.
“I understand now,” said he; “it is easy to see what is going on.
Get down, my man, get down; I want to talk to you.”
The farmer was not eager to take up the quarrel. Anxious to escape,
he set spurs to his horse and tried to loosen the peasant’s grasp
by striking down his hands with a cane; but Germain dodged the
blow, and seizing hold of his antagonist’s leg, he unseated him and
flung him to the earth. The farmer regained his feet, but although
he defended himself vigorously, he was knocked down once more.
Germain held him to the ground. Then he said:
“Poor coward, I could thrash you if I wished. But I don’t want to
do you an injury, and, besides, no amount of punishment would help
your conscience--but you shall not stir from this spot until you
beg the girl’s pardon, on your knees.”
The farmer understood this sort of thing, and wished to take it all
as a joke. He made believe that his offense was not serious, since
it lay in words alone, and protested that he was perfectly willing
to ask her pardon, provided he might kiss the girl afterward.
Finally, he proposed that they go and drink a pint of wine at the
nearest tavern, and so part good friends.
“You are disgusting!” answered Germain, rubbing his victim’s head
in the dirt, “and I never wish to see your nasty face again. So
blush, if you are able, and when you come to our village, you had
better slink along Sneak’s Alley.”[2]
He picked up the farmer’s holly-stick, broke it over his knee to
show the strength of his wrists, and threw away the pieces with
disgust. Then giving one hand to his son and the other to little
Marie, he walked away, still trembling with anger.
[2] This is the road, which, diverging from the principal street at
the entrance of villages, makes a circuit about them. Persons who
are in dread of receiving some well deserved insult, are supposed
to take this route to escape attention.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XIV
The Return to the Farm
At the end of fifteen minutes they had left the heath behind them.
They trotted along the highroad, and the gray whinnied at each
familiar object. Petit-Pierre told his father as much as he could
understand of what had passed.
“When we reached the farm,” said he, “that man came to speak to my
Marie in the fold where we had gone to see the pretty sheep. I had
climbed into the manger to play, and that man did not see me. Then
he said good morning to Marie, and he kissed her.”
“You allowed him to kiss you, Marie?” said Germain, trembling with
anger.
“I thought it was a civility, a custom of the place to new-comers,
just as at your farm the grandmother kisses the young girls who
enter her service to show that she adopts them and will be a mother
to them.”
“And next,” went on little Pierre, who was proud to have an
adventure to tell of, “_that man_ told you something wicked, which
you have told me never to repeat and not even remember; so I forgot
it right away. Still, if father wishes, I will tell him what it
was--”
“No, Pierre, I don’t wish to hear, and I don’t wish you ever to
think of it again.”
“Then I will forget it all over again,” replied the child. “Next,
_that man_ seemed to be growing angry because Marie told him that
she was going away. He told her he would give her whatever she
wanted,--a hundred francs! And my Marie grew angry too. Then he
came toward her as if he wished to hurt her. I was afraid, and I
ran to Marie and cried. Then _that man_ said: ‘What’s that? Where
did that child come from? Put it out,’ and he raised his cane to
beat me. But my Marie prevented him, and she spoke to him this
way: ‘We will talk later, sir; now I must take this child back to
Fourche, and then I shall return.’ And as soon as he had left the
fold, my Marie spoke to me this way: ‘We must run, my Pierre; we
must get away as quickly as we can, for this is a wicked man and
he is trying to do us harm.’ Then when we had gone back of the
farm-houses, we crossed a little meadow, and we went to Fourche to
find you. But you were not there, and they wouldn’t let us wait.
And then _that man_, riding his black horse, came behind us, and
we ran on as fast as we could and hid in the woods. And then he
followed us, and when we heard him coming, we hid again. And then,
when he had passed, we began to run toward home, and then you came
and found us, and that is how it all happened. I haven’t forgotten
anything, have I, my Marie?”
“No, my Pierre, that is the whole truth. Now, Germain, you must be
my witness, and tell everybody in the village that if I did not
stay there it was not from want of courage and industry.”
“And, Marie, I want to ask of you whether a man of twenty-eight is
too old when there is a woman to be defended and an insult to be
revenged. I should like to know whether Bastien or any other pretty
boy, ten years better off than I, would not have been knocked to
pieces by _that man_, as Petit-Pierre says. What do you think?”
“I think, Germain, that you have done me a great service, and that
I shall be grateful all my life.”
“Is that all?”
“Little father,” said the child, “I forgot to ask little Marie what
I promised. I have not had time yet, but I will speak to her at
home, and I will speak to my grandmother too.”
The child’s promise set Germain to thinking. He must explain his
conduct to his family and give his objections to the widow Guam,
and all the while conceal the true reasons which had made him
so judicious and so decided. When a man is proud and happy, it
seems an easy task to thrust his happiness upon others, but to be
repulsed on one side and blamed on the other is not a very pleasant
position.
Fortunately, Petit-Pierre was fast asleep when they reached the
farm, and Germain put him to bed undisturbed. Then he began upon
all sorts of explanations, Father Maurice, seated on a three-legged
stool before the door, listened with gravity; and, although he
was ill-content with the result of the journey, when Germain told
him about the widow’s systematic coquetry, and demanded of his
father-in-law whether he had the time to go and pay his court
fifty-two Sundays in the year at the risk of being dismissed in the
end, the old man nodded his head in assent and answered: “You were
not wrong, Germain; that could never be.” And then, when Germain
described how he had been obliged to bring back little Marie, with
the utmost haste, in order to protect her from the insults or
perhaps from the violence of a wicked master, Father Maurice nodded
approvingly again and said: “You were not wrong, Germain; that was
right.”
When Germain had told his story, and had set forth all his reasons,
the old farmer and his wife heaved deep, simultaneous sighs of
resignation, and looked at each other. Then the head of the house
rose and said: “God’s will be done. Love can’t be made to order.”
“Come to supper, Germain,” said his mother-in-law. “It is
unfortunate that this did not come to a better end, but, after all,
it seems that God did not wish it. We must look elsewhere.”
“Yes,” added the old man, “as my wife says, we must look elsewhere.”
There was no more noise at the house, and on the morrow, when
Petit-Pierre rose with the larks at dawn, he was no longer
excited by the extraordinary events of the preceding days. Like
other little peasants of his age, he became indifferent, forgot
everything that had been running in his head, and thought only of
playing with his brothers, and of pretending to drive the horses
and oxen like a man. Germain plunged into his work, and tried
to forget, too; but he became so absent-minded and so sad that
everybody noticed it. He never spoke to little Marie, he never
even looked at her, and yet had anybody asked him in what meadow
she was, or by what road she had passed, there was not a moment in
the day when he could not have answered if he would. He dared not
ask his family to take her in at the farm during the winter, and
yet he knew well how she must suffer from want. But she did not
suffer; and Mother Guillette could not understand how her little
store of wood never grew less, and how her shed was full in the
morning, although she had left it almost empty at night. It was the
same with the wheat and potatoes. Somebody entered by the garret
window, and emptied a sack on the floor without awaking a soul or
leaving a trace of his coming. The widow was at once uneasy and
delighted. She made her daughter promise to tell nobody, and said
that were people to know of the miracle performed at her house they
would take her for a witch. She felt confident that the devil had
a share in it, but she was in no hurry to pick a quarrel with him
by calling down the priest’s exorcisms on the house. It would be
time enough, she said, when Satan should come to demand her soul in
return for his gifts.
Little Marie understood the truth better, but she dared not
speak to Germain, for fear of seeing him return to his dreams of
marriage, and, before him, she pretended to perceive nothing.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XV
Mother Maurice
One day, Mother Maurice was alone in the orchard with Germain, and
spoke to him kindly:
“My poor son, I believe you are not well. You don’t eat as well as
usual; you never laugh; you talk less and less. Perhaps one of us,
or all of us, have hurt your feelings, without knowing and without
wishing it.”
“No, my mother,” answered Germain, “you have always been as kind
to me as the mother who brought me into the world, and I should be
very ungrateful if I were to complain of you or your husband, or of
anybody in the household.”
“Then, my child, it is the sorrow for your wife’s death which comes
back to you. Instead of growing lighter with time, your grief
becomes worse, and as your father has said very wisely, it is
absolutely necessary for you to marry again.”
“Yes, my mother, that is my opinion, but the women whom you advised
me to ask don’t suit me. Whenever I see them, instead of forgetting
my Catherine, I think of her all the more.”
“Apparently that’s because we haven’t been able to understand
your taste. You must help us by telling us the truth. There must
be a woman somewhere who is made for you, for God doesn’t make
anybody without placing his happiness in somebody else. So if you
know where to find this woman whom you need, take her, and be she
pretty or ugly, young or old, rich or poor, we have made up our
minds, my husband and I, to give our consent, for we are tired
of seeing you so sad, and we can never be happy while you are
sorrowful.”
“My mother, you are as kind as the kind Lord, and so is my father,”
answered Germain; “but your compassion brings small help to my
troubles, for the girl I love doesn’t care for me.”
“She is too young, then? It’s foolish for you to love a young girl.”
“Yes, mother dear, I have been foolish enough to love a young girl,
and it’s my fault. I do my best to stop thinking of it, but,
working or sleeping, at mass or in bed, with my children or with
you, I can think of nothing else.”
“Then it’s like a fate cast over you, Germain. There’s but one
remedy, and it is that this girl must change her mind and listen
to you. It’s my duty to look into this, and see whether it’s
practicable. Tell me where she lives, and what’s her name.”
“Oh, my dear mother, I dare not,” said Germain, “because you will
make fun of me.”
“I shall not make fun of you, Germain, because you are in trouble,
and I don’t wish to make it harder for you. Is it Fanchette?”
“No, mother, of course not.”
“Or Rosette?”
“No.”
“Tell me, then, for I shall never finish if I must name every girl
in the countryside.”
Germain bowed his head, and could not bring himself to answer.
“Very good,” said Mother Maurice, “I shall let you alone for
to-day; to-morrow, perhaps, you will be more confidential with me,
or possibly your sister-in-law will question you more cleverly.”
And she picked up her basket to go and spread her linen on the
bushes.
Germain acted like children who make up their minds when they see
that they are no longer attracting attention. He followed his
mother, and at length, trembling, he named Marie of Guillette.
Great was the surprise of Mother Maurice. Marie was the last person
she would have dreamed of. But she had the delicacy not to cry out,
and made her comments to herself. Then seeing that her silence hurt
Germain, she stretched out her basket toward him and said:
“Is there any reason for not helping me at my work. Carry this
load, and come and talk with me. Have you reflected well, Germain?
Are you fully decided?”
“Alas, dear mother, you mustn’t speak in that way. I should be
decided if I had a chance of success, but as I could never be
heard, I have only made up my mind to cure myself, if I can.”
“And if you can’t.”
“There is an end to everything, Mother Maurice: when the horse is
laden too heavily, he falls, and when the cow has nothing to eat,
she dies.”
“Do you mean to say that you will die, if you do not succeed. God
grant not, Germain. I don’t like to hear a man like you talk of
those things; for what he says, he thinks. You are very brave, and
weakness is dangerous for strong men. Take heart; I can’t conceive
that a poverty-stricken girl, whom you have honored so much as to
ask her to marry you, will refuse you.”
“Yet it’s the truth: she does refuse me.”
“And what reasons does she give you?”
“That you have always been kind to her, and that her family owes a
great deal to yours, and that she doesn’t wish to displease you by
turning me away from a rich marriage.”
“If she says that, she proves her good sense, and shows what an
honest girl she is. But, Germain, she doesn’t cure you; for of
course she tells you that she loves you and would marry you if we
were willing?”
“That’s the worst part of all. She says that her heart can never be
mine.”
“If she says what she doesn’t think in order to keep you at a
safer distance, the child deserves our love, and we should pass
over her youth on account of her great good sense.”
“Yes,” said Germain, struck by a hope he had never held before;
“that would be very wise and right of her! But if she is so
sensible, I am sure it is because I displease her.”
“Germain,” said Mother Maurice, “you must promise me not to worry
for a whole week. Keep from tormenting yourself, eat, sleep, and be
as gay as you used to be. For my part, I’ll speak to my husband,
and if I gain his consent, you shall know the girl’s real feelings
toward you.”
Germain promised, and the week passed without a single word in
private from Father Maurice, who seemed to suspect nothing. The
husbandman did his best to look calm, but he grew ever paler and
more troubled.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
XVI
Little Marie
At length, on Sunday morning, when mass was over, his mother-in-law
asked Germain what encouragement he had had from his sweetheart
since the conversation in the orchard.
“Why, none at all,” answered he; “I haven’t spoken to her.”
“How can you expect to win her if you don’t speak to her?”
“I have spoken to her but once,” replied Germain. “That was when we
were together at Fourche, and since then I haven’t said a single
word. Her refusal gave me so much pain that I had rather not hear
her begin again to tell me that she doesn’t love me.”
“But, my son, you must speak to her now; your father gives his
approval. So make up your mind. I tell you to do it, and, if
need be, I shall order you to do it, for you can’t rest in this
uncertainty.”
Germain obeyed. He reached Mother Guillette’s house, hanging his
head with a hopeless air. Little Marie sat alone before the hearth
so thoughtful that she did not hear Germain’s step. When she saw
him before her, she started from her chair in surprise and grew
very red.
“Little Marie,” said he, sitting down near her, “I come to trouble
you and to give you pain. I know it very well, but the man and
his wife at home [it was thus after the peasant fashion that he
designated the heads of the house] wish me to speak to you, and beg
you to marry me. You don’t care for me. I am prepared for it.”
“Germain,” answered little Marie, “are you sure that you love me?”
“It pains you, I know, but it isn’t my fault. If you could change
your mind, I should be so very happy, and certain it is that I
don’t deserve it. Look at me, Marie; am I very terrible?”
“No, Germain,” she answered, with a smile, “you are better looking
than I.”
“Don’t make fun of me; look at me charitably; as yet, I have never
lost a single hair nor a single tooth. My eyes tell you plainly how
much I love you. Look straight into my eyes. It is written there,
and every girl knows how to read that writing.”
Marie looked into Germain’s eyes with playful boldness; then of a
sudden she turned away her head and trembled.
“Good God,” exclaimed Germain, “I make you afraid; you look at me
as though I were the farmer of Ormeaux. Don’t be afraid of me,
please don’t; that hurts me too much. I shall not say any bad words
to you, I shall not kiss you if you will not have me, and when you
wish me to go away, you have only to show me the door. Must I go in
order to stop your trembling?”
Marie held out her hand toward the husbandman, but without turning
her head, which was bent on the fireplace, and without saying a
word.
“I understand,” said Germain. “You pity me, for you are kind; you
are sorry to make me unhappy; but you can’t love me.”
“Why do you say these things to me, Germain?” answered little
Marie, after a pause. “Do you wish to make me cry?”
“Poor little girl, you have a kind heart, I know; but you don’t
love me, and you are hiding your face for fear of letting me see
your dislike and your repugnance. And I? I dare not even clasp your
hand! In the forest, when my boy was asleep and you were sleeping
too, I almost kissed you very gently. But I would have died of
shame rather than ask it of you, and that night I suffered as a man
burning over a slow fire. Since that time I have dreamed of you
every night. Ah! how I have kissed you, Marie! Yet during all that
time you have slept without a dream. And now, do you know what I
think? I think that were you to turn and look at me with the eyes
I have for you, and were you to move your face close to mine, I
believe I should fall dead for joy. And you, you think that if such
a thing were to happen, you would die of anger and shame!”
Germain spoke as in a dream, not hearing the words he said. Little
Marie was trembling all the time, but he was shaking yet more
and did not notice it. Of a sudden, she turned. Her eyes were
filled with tears, and she looked at him reproachfully. The poor
husbandman thought that this was the last blow, and without waiting
for his sentence, he rose to go, but the girl stopped him, and
throwing both her arms about him, she hid her face in his breast.
“Oh, Germain,” she sobbed, “didn’t you feel that I loved you?”
Then Germain had gone mad, if his son, who came galloping into
the cottage on a stick, with his little sister on the crupper,
scourging the imaginary steed with a willow branch, had not brought
him to his senses. He lifted the boy and placed him in the girl’s
arms.
“See,” said he, “by loving me, you have made more than one person
happy.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
APPENDIX
I
A Country Wedding
Here ends the history of Germain’s marriage as he told it to me
himself, good husbandman that he is. I ask your forgiveness, kind
reader, that I know not how to translate it better; for it is a
real translation that is needed by this old-fashioned and artless
language of the peasants of the country “that I sing,” as they
used to say. These people speak French that is too true for us,
and since Rabelais and Montaigne, the advance of the language has
lost for us many of its old riches. Thus it is with every advance,
and we must make the best of it. Yet it is a pleasure still to
hear those picturesque idioms used in the old districts in the
center of France; all the more because it is the genuine expression
of the laughing, quiet, and delightfully talkative character of
the people who make use of it. Touraine has preserved a certain
precious number of patriarchal phrases. But Touraine was civilized
greatly during the Renaissance, and since its decline she is filled
with fine houses and highroads, with foreigners and traffic. Berry
remained as she was, and I think that after Brittany and a few
provinces in the far south of France, it is the best preserved
district to be found at the present day. Some of the costumes are
so strange and so curious that I hope to amuse you a few minutes
more, kind reader, if you will allow me to describe to you in
detail a country wedding--Germain’s, for example--at which I had
the pleasure of assisting several years ago.
For, alas! everything passes. During my life alone, more change
has taken place in the ideas and in the customs of my village than
had been seen in the centuries before the Revolution. Already half
the ceremonies, Celtic, Pagan, or of the Middle Ages, that in my
childhood I have seen in their full vigor, have disappeared. In
a year or two more, perhaps, the railroads will lay their level
tracks across our deep valleys, and will carry away, with the
swiftness of lightning, all our old traditions and our wonderful
legends.
It was in winter about the carnival season, the time of year when,
in our country, it is fitting and proper to have weddings. In
summer the time can hardly be spared, and the work of the farm
cannot suffer three days’ delay, not to speak of the additional
days impaired to a greater or to a less degree by the moral and
physical drunkenness which follows a gala-day. I was seated beneath
the great mantelpiece of the old-fashioned kitchen fireplace when
shots of pistols, barking of dogs, and the piercing notes of the
bagpipe told me that the bridal pair were approaching. Very soon
Father and Mother Maurice, Germain, and little Marie, followed by
Jacques and his wife, the closer relatives, and the godfathers and
godmothers of the bride and groom, all made their entry into the
yard.
Little Marie had not yet received her wedding-gifts,--favors, as
they call them,--and was dressed in the best of her simple clothes,
a dress of dark, heavy cloth, a white fichu with great spots of
brilliant color, an apron of carnation,--an Indian red much in
vogue at the time, but despised nowadays,--a cap of very white
muslin after that pattern, happily still preserved, which calls to
mind the head-dress of Anne Boleyn and of Agnes Sorrel. She was
fresh and laughing, but not at all vain, though she had good reason
to be so. Beside her was Germain, serious and tender, like young
Jacob greeting Rebecca at the wells of Laban. Another girl would
have assumed an important air and struck an attitude of triumph,
for in every rank it is something to be married for a fair face
alone. Yet the girl’s eyes were moist and shone with tenderness. It
was plain that she was deep in love and had no time to think of the
opinions of others. Her little air of determination was not absent,
but everything about her denoted frankness and good-will. There was
nothing impertinent in her success, nothing selfish in her sense of
power. Never have I seen so lovely a bride, when she answered with
frankness her young friends who asked if she were happy:
“Surely I have nothing to complain of the good Lord.”
Father Maurice was spokesman. He came forward to pay his
compliments, and give the customary invitations. First he fastened
to the mantelpiece a branch of laurel decked out with ribbons; this
is known as the _writ_--that is to say, the letter of announcement.
Next he gave to every guest a tiny cross made of a bit of blue
ribbon sewn to a transverse bit of pink ribbon--pink for the bride,
blue for the groom. The guests of both sexes were expected to
keep this badge to adorn their caps or their button-holes on the
wedding-day. This is the letter of invitation, the admission ticket.
Then Father Maurice paid his congratulations. He invited the
head of the house and all his _company_,--that is to say, all
his children, all his friends, and all his servants,--to the
benediction, _to the feast, to the sports, to the dance, and to
everything that follows_. He did not fail to say, “I have come _to
do you the honor of inviting you_”; a very right manner of speech,
even though it appears to us to convey the wrong meaning, for it
expresses the idea of doing honor to those who seem worthy of it.
Despite the generosity of the invitation carried from house to
house throughout the parish, politeness, which is very cautious
amongst peasants, demands that only two persons from each family
take advantage of it--one of the heads of the house, and one from
the number of their children.
After the invitations were made, the betrothed couple and their
families took dinner together at the farm.
Little Marie kept her three sheep on the common, and Germain tilled
the soil as though nothing had happened.
About two in the afternoon before the day set for the wedding,
the music came. The music means the players of the bagpipe and
hurdy-gurdy, their instruments decorated with long streaming
ribbons, playing an appropriate march to a measure which would
have been rather slow for feet foreign to the soil, but admirably
adapted to the heavy ground and hilly roads of the country.
Pistol-shots, fired by the young people and the children, announced
the beginning of the wedding ceremonies. Little by little the
guests assembled, and danced on the grass-plot before the house in
order to enter into the spirit of the occasion. When evening was
come they began strange preparations; they divided into two bands,
and when night had settled down they proceeded to the ceremony of
the _favors_.
All this passed at the dwelling of the bride, Mother Guillette’s
cottage. Mother Guillette took with her her daughter, a dozen
pretty shepherdesses, friends and relatives of her daughter, two or
three respectable housewives, talkative neighbors, quick of wit and
strict guardians of ancient customs. Next she chose a dozen stout
fellows, her relatives and friends; and last of all the parish
hemp-dresser, a garrulous old man, and as good a talker as ever
there was.
The part which, in Brittany, is played by the bazvalon, the village
tailor, is taken in our part of the country by the hemp-dresser and
the wool-carder, two professions which are unusually combined in
one. He is present at all ceremonies, sad or gay, for he is very
learned and a fluent talker, and on these occasions he must always
figure as spokesman, in order to fulfil with exactitude certain
formalities used from time immemorial. Traveling occupations, which
bring a man into the midst of other families, without allowing him
to shut himself up within his own, are well fitted to make him
talker, wit, storyteller, and singer.
The hemp-dresser is peculiarly skeptical. He and another village
functionary, of whom we have spoken before, the grave-digger, are
always the daring spirits of the neighborhood. They have talked so
much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which
these malicious spirits are capable, that they fear them scarcely
at all. It is especially at night that all of them--grave-diggers,
hemp-dressers, and ghosts--do their work. It is also at night when
the hemp-dresser tells his melancholy stories. Permit me to make a
digression.
When the hemp has reached the right stage, that is to say, when
it has been steeped sufficiently in running water, and half dried
on the bank, it is brought into the yard and arranged in little
upright sheaves, which, with their stalks divided at the base, and
their heads bound in balls, bear in the dusk some small resemblance
to a long procession of little white phantoms, standing on their
slender legs, and moving noiselessly along the wall.
It is at the end of September, when the nights are still warm,
that they begin to beat it by the pale light of the moon. By day
the hemp has been heated in the oven; at night they take it out to
beat it while it is still hot. For this they use a kind of horse
surmounted by a wooden lever which falls into grooves and breaks
the plant without cutting it. It is then that you hear in the night
that sudden, sharp noise of three blows in quick succession. Then
there is silence; it is the movement of the arm drawing out the
handful of hemp to break it in a fresh spot. The three blows begin
again; the other arm works the lever, and thus it goes on until the
moon is hidden by the early streaks of dawn. As the work continues
but a few days in the year, the dogs are not accustomed to it, and
yelp their plaintive howls toward every point of the horizon.
It is the time of unwonted and mysterious sounds in the country.
The migrating cranes fly so high that by day they are scarcely
visible. By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing
voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls
in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an
unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of
men; for these errant birds have strange uncertainties, and many a
mysterious anxiety in the course of their airy flight. Sometimes
they lose the wind when the capricious gusts battle, or come and go
in the upper regions. When this confusion comes by day, you can see
the leader of the file fluttering aimlessly in the air, then turn
about and take his place at the tail of the triangular phalanx,
while a skilful manœuver of his companions forms them soon in good
order behind him. Often, after vain efforts, the exhausted leader
relinquishes the guidance of the caravan; another comes forward,
tries in his turn, and yields his place to a third, who finds the
breeze, and continues the march in triumph. But what cries, what
reproaches, what protests, what wild curses or anxious questionings
are exchanged in an unknown tongue amongst these winged pilgrims!
Sometimes, in the resonant night, you can hear these sinister
noises whirling for a long time above the housetops, and as you
can see nothing, you feel, despite your efforts, a kind of dread
and kindred discomfort, until the sobbing multitude is lost in
boundless space.
There are other noises too which belong to this time of year, and
which sound usually in the orchards. Gathering the fruit is not
yet over, and the thousand unaccustomed cracklings make the tree
seem alive. A branch groans as it bends beneath a burden which has
reached, of a sudden, the last stage of growth; or perhaps an apple
breaks from the twig, and falls on the damp earth at your feet with
a dull sound. Then you hear rush by, brushing the branches and the
grass, a creature you cannot see; it is the peasant’s dog, that
prowling and uneasy rover, at once impudent and cowardly, always
wandering, never sleeping, ever seeking you know not what, spying
upon you, hiding in the brush, and taking flight at the sound of a
falling apple, which he thinks a stone that you are throwing at him.
It is during those nights, nights misty and gray, that the
hemp-dresser tells his weird stories of will-o’-the-wisps and
milk-white hares, of souls in torment and wizards changed to
wolves, of witches’ vigils at the cross-roads, and screech-owls,
prophetesses of the graveyard. I remember passing the early hours
of such a night while the hemp-dressing was going on, and the
pitiless strokes, interrupting the dresser’s story at its most
awful place, sent icy shivers through our veins. And often too the
good man continued his story as he worked, and four or five words
were lost, terrible words, no doubt, which we dared not make him
repeat, and whose omission added a mystery yet more fearful to the
dark mysteries of the story which had gone before. It was in vain
the servants warned us that it was too late to stay without doors,
and that bedtime had sounded for us long since; they too were dying
to hear more; and then with what terror we crossed the hamlet on
our way home! How deep did the church porch appear to us, and how
thick and black the shadows of the old trees! The graveyard we
dared not see; we shut our eyes tight as we passed it.
But no more than the sacristan is the hemp-dresser gifted solely
with the desire of frightening; he loves to make people laugh; he
is sarcastic and sentimental at need, when love and marriage are
to be sung. It is he who collects and keeps stored in his memory
the oldest songs, and who transmits them to posterity. And so it
is he who acts at weddings the part we shall see him play at the
presentation of little Marie’s favors.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
II
The Wedding Favors
When all the guests were met together in the house, the doors
and windows were closed with the utmost care; even the garret
window was barricaded; boards and benches, logs and tables were
placed behind every entrance, just as if the inhabitants were
making ready to sustain a siege; and within these fortifications
solemn stillness prevailed until at a distance were heard songs
and laughter and the sounds of rustic music. It was the band of
the bridegroom, Germain at the head, followed by his most trusty
companions and by the grave-digger, relatives, friends, and
servants, who formed a compact and merry train. Meanwhile, as they
came nearer the house they slackened their pace, held a council
of war, and became silent. The girls, shut up in the house, had
arranged little loop-holes at the windows by which they could see
the enemy approach and deploy in battle array. A fine, cold rain
was falling, which added zest to the situation, while a great
fire blazed on the hearth within. Marie wished to cut short the
inevitable slowness of this well-ordered siege; she had no desire
to see her lover catch cold, but not being in authority she had
to take an ostensible share in the mischievous cruelty of her
companions.
When the two armies met, a discharge of firearms on the part of the
besiegers set all the dogs in the neighborhood to barking. Those
within the house dashed at the door with loud yelps, thinking that
the attack was in earnest, and the children, little reassured by
the efforts of their mothers, began to weep and to tremble. The
whole scene was played so well that a stranger would have been
deceived, and would have made his preparations to fight a band of
brigands. Then the grave-digger, bard and orator of the groom, took
his stand before the door, and with a rueful voice, exchanged the
following dialogue with the hemp-dresser, who was stationed above
the same door:
_The Grave-digger_: “Ah, my good people, my fellow-townsmen, for
the love of Heaven, open the door.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Who are you, and what right have you to call
us your dear fellow-townsmen? We don’t know you.”
_The Grave-digger_: “We are worthy folk in great distress. Don’t
be afraid of us, my friends. Extend us your hospitality. Sleet is
falling; our poor feet are frozen, and our journey home has been so
long that our sabots are split.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “If your sabots are split, you can look on the
ground; you will find very soon a sprig of willow to make some
_arcelets_ [small curved blades of iron which are fastened on split
sabots to hold them together].”
_The Grave-digger_: “Willow _arcelets_ are scarcely strong enough.
You are making fun of us, good people, and you would do better
to open your doors. We can see a splendid fire blazing in your
dwelling. The spit must be turning, and we can make merry with you,
heart and belly. So open your doors to poor pilgrims who will die
on the threshold if you are not merciful.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Ah ha! so you are pilgrims? You never told us
that. And what pilgrimage do you come from, may I ask?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We shall tell you that when you open the door,
for we come from so far that you would never believe it.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Open the door to you? I rather think not. We
can’t trust you. Tell us, is it from Saint Sylvain of Pouligny that
you come?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have been at Saint Sylvain of Pouligny, but
we have been farther still.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Then you have been as far as Saint Solange?”
_The Grave-digger_: “At Saint Solange we have been, sure enough,
but we have been farther yet.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “You are lying. You have never been as far as
Saint Solange.”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have been farther, for now we are come from
Saint Jacques of Compostelle.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “What absurdity are you telling us? We don’t
know that parish. We can easily see that you are bad people,
brigands, nobodies, and liars. Go away with your nonsense. We are
on our guard. You can’t come in.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Ah, my poor fellow, take pity on us. We are
not pilgrims, as you have guessed, but we are unlucky poachers
pursued by the keepers. Even the police are after us, and if you
don’t hide us in your hay-loft, we shall be taken and led off to
prison.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “And who will prove you are what you say you
are, this time? For you have told us one lie already that you can’t
maintain.”
_The Grave-digger_: “If you will let us in, we shall show you a
pretty piece of game we have killed.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Show it right away, for we have our
suspicions.”
_The Grave-digger_: “All right, open the door or a window to let us
pass the creature in.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Oh, no, not quite so foolish. I am looking at
you through a little chink, and I can see neither hunters nor game
amongst you.”
Here an ox-driver, a thick-set fellow of herculean strength,
detached himself from a group where he had stood unperceived, and
raised toward the window a plucked goose, spitted on a strong iron
bar decorated with tufts of straw and ribbons.
“Ho, ho!” cried the hemp-dresser, after cautiously extending an arm
to feel the roast. “That isn’t a quail nor a partridge; it isn’t
a hare nor a rabbit; it’s something like a goose or a turkey. Upon
my word, you’re clever hunters, and that game didn’t make you run
very far. Move on, you rogues; we know all your lies, and you had
best go home and cook your supper. You are not going to eat ours.”
_The Grave-digger_: “O Heavens, where can we go to cook our game?
It is very little for so many as we, and, besides, we have neither
place nor fire. At this time every door is closed, and every soul
asleep. You are the only people who are celebrating a wedding at
home, and you must be hardhearted indeed to let us freeze outside.
Once again, good people, open the door; we shall not cost you
anything. You can see that we bring our own meat; only a little
room at your hearth, a little blaze to cook with, and we shall go
on our way rejoicing.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Do you suppose that we have too much room
here, and that wood is bought for nothing?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have here a small bundle of hay to make the
fire. We shall be satisfied with that; only grant us leave to place
the spit across your fireplace.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “That will never do. We are disgusted, and
don’t pity you at all. It is my opinion that you are drunk, that
you need nothing, and that you only wish to come in and steal away
our fire and our daughters.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Since you won’t listen to reason, we shall
make our way in by force.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Try, if you want; we are shut in well enough
to have no fear of you, and since you are impudent fellows, we
shall not answer you again.”
Thereupon the hemp-dresser shut the garret window with a bang, and
came down into the room below by a step-ladder. Then he took the
bride by the hand, the young people of both sexes followed, and
they all began to sing and chatter merrily, while the matrons sang
in piercing voices, and shrieked with laughter in derision and
bravado at those without who were attempting an attack.
The besiegers, on their side, made a great hubbub. They discharged
their pistols at the doors, made the dogs growl, whacked the walls,
shook the blinds, and uttered frightful shrieks. In short, there
was such a pandemonium that nobody could hear, and such a cloud of
dust that nobody could see.
And yet this attack was all a sham. The time had not come for
breaking through the etiquette. If, in prowling about, anybody were
to find an unguarded aperture, or any opening whatsoever, he might
try to slip in unobserved, and then, if the carrier of the spit
succeeded in placing his roast before the fire, and thus prove the
capture of the hearth, the comedy was over and the bridegroom had
conquered.
The entrances of the house, however, were not numerous enough for
any to be neglected in the customary precautions, and nobody might
use violence before the moment fixed for the struggle.
When they were weary of dancing and screams, the hemp-dresser began
to think of capitulation. He went up to his window, opened it with
precaution, and greeted the baffled assailants with a burst of
laughter.
“Well, my boys,” said he, “you look very sheep-faced. You thought
there was nothing easier than to come in, and you see that our
defense is good. But we are beginning to have pity on you, if you
will submit and accept our conditions.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Speak, good people. Tell us what we must do to
approach your hearth.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “You must sing, my friends; but sing a song we
don’t know,--one that we can’t answer by a better.”
“That’s not hard to do,” answered the grave-digger, and he
thundered in a powerful voice:
“‘Six months ago, ’twas in the spring....’”
“‘I wandered through the sprouting grass,’”
answered the hemp-dresser in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice.
“You must be jesting, my poor friends, singing us such time-worn
songs. You see very well that we can stop you at the first word.”
“‘She was a prince’s daughter....’”
“‘Right gladly would she wed,’”
answered the hemp-dresser. “Come, move on to the next; we know that
a little too well.”
_The Grave-digger_: “How do you like this one?”--
“‘As I was journeying home from Nantes.’”
_The Hemp-dresser_:
“‘Weary, oh, weary, was I, was I.’”
“That dates from my grandmother’s time. Let’s have another.”
_The Grave-digger_:
“‘One day I went a-walking....’”
_The Hemp-dresser_:
“‘Along a lovely wood!’”
“That one is too stupid! Our little children wouldn’t take the
trouble to answer you. What! Are these all you know?”
_The Grave-digger_: “Oh, we shall sing you so many that you will
never be able to hear them all.”
In this way a full hour passed. As the two antagonists were
champions of the country round in the matter of songs, and as
their store seemed inexhaustible, the contest might last all night
with ease, all the more because the hemp-dresser, with a touch of
malice, allowed several ballads of ten, twenty, or thirty couplets
to be sung through, feigning by his silence to admit his defeat.
Then the bridegroom’s camp rejoiced and sang aloud in chorus, and
thought that this time the foe was worsted; but at the first line
of the last couplet, they heard the hoarse croaking of the old
hemp-dresser bellow forth the second rhyme. Then he cried:
“You need not tire yourselves by singing such a long one, my
children--we know that one to our finger-tips.”
Once or twice, however, the hemp-dresser made a wry face,
contracted his brow, and turned toward the expectant housewives
with a baffled air. The grave-digger was singing something so old
that his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never even
heard it; but instantly the good gossips chanted the victorious
refrain through their noses with voices shrill as a sea-mew’s, and
the grave-digger, forced to surrender, went on to fresh attempts.
It would have taken too long to wait for a decision of the victory.
The bride’s party declared itself disposed to be merciful, provided
that the bride were given a present worthy of her.
Then began the song of the favors to a tune solemn as a church
chant.
The men without sang together in bass voices:
“‘Open the door, true love,
Open the door;
I have presents for you, love,
Oh, say not adieu, love.’”
To this the women answered from within in falsetto, with mournful
voices:
“‘My father is sorry, my mother is sad,
And I am a maiden too kind by far
At such an hour my gate to unbar.’”
The men took up the first verse as far as the fourth line and
modified it thus:
“‘And a handkerchief new, love.’”
But, on behalf of the bride, the women answered in the same way as
at first.
For twenty couplets, at least, the men enumerated all the
wedding-presents, always mentioning something new in the last line:
a handsome apron, pretty ribbons, a cloth dress, laces, a golden
cross, and even a hundred pins to complete the modest list of
wedding-presents. The refusal of the women could not be shaken, but
at length the men decided to speak of
“A good husband, too, love.”
And the women answered, turning toward the bride and singing in
unison with the men:
“‘Open the door, true love,
Open the door;
Here’s a sweetheart for you, love,
Pray let us enter, too, love.’”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
III
The Wedding
Immediately the hemp-dresser drew back the wooden bolt which barred
the door within. At this time it was still the only fastening known
in most of the dwellings of our hamlet. The groom’s band burst into
the bride’s house, but not without a struggle; for the young men
quartered within, and even the old hemp-dresser and the gossips,
made it their duty to defend the hearth. The spit-bearer, upheld
by his supporters, had to plant the roast before the fireplace.
It was a regular battle, although people abstained from striking,
and there was no anger shown in this struggle. But everybody was
pushing and shoving so hard, and there was so much playful pride
in this display of muscular strength, that the results might well
have been serious, although they did not appear so across the
laughs and songs. The poor old hemp-dresser, fighting like a lion,
was pinned to the wall and squeezed by the crowd until his breath
almost left him. More than one champion was upset and trodden under
foot involuntarily; more than one hand, jammed against the spit,
was covered with blood. These games are dangerous, and latterly the
accidents have been so severe that our peasants have determined to
allow the ceremony of the favors to fall into disuse; I believe we
saw the last at the marriage of François Meillant, although there
was no real struggle on that occasion.
The battle was earnest enough, however, at Germain’s wedding. It
was a point of honor on one side to invade, on the other to defend,
Mother Guillette’s hearth. The great spit was twisted like a screw
beneath the strong fists which fought for it. A pistol-shot set
fire to a small quantity of hemp arranged in sheaves and laid on a
wicker shelf near the ceiling. This incident created a diversion,
and while some of the company crowded about to extinguish the
sparks, the grave-digger, who had climbed unbeknown into the
garret, came down the chimney and seized the spit, at the very
moment when the ox-driver, who was defending it near the hearth,
raised it above his head to prevent it from being torn away. Some
time before the attack, the women had taken the precaution to put
out the fire lest in the struggle somebody should fall in and get
burned. The jocular grave-digger, in league with the ox-driver,
grasped the trophy and tossed it easily across the andirons. It was
done! Nobody might interfere. The grave-digger sprang to the middle
of the room and lighted a few wisps of straw, which he placed about
the spit under pretense of cooking the roast, for the goose was in
pieces and the floor was strewn with its scattered fragments.
Then there was a great deal of laughter and much boastful dispute.
Everybody showed the marks of the blows he had received, and as it
was often a friend’s hand that had struck them, there was no word
of complaint nor of quarreling. The hemp-dresser, half flattened
out, kept rubbing the small of his back and saying that, although
it made small difference to him, he protested against the ruse of
his friend, the grave-digger, and that if he had not been half
dead, the hearth had never been captured so easily. The women swept
the floor and order was restored. The table was covered with jugs
of new wine. When the contestants had drunk together and taken
breath, the bridegroom was led to the middle of the chamber, and,
armed with a wand, he was obliged to submit to a fresh trial.
During the struggle, the bride and three of her companions had been
hidden by her mother, godmother, and aunts, who had made the four
girls sit down in a remote corner of the room while they covered
them with a large white cloth. Three friends of Marie’s height,
with caps of a uniform size, were chosen, so that when they were
enveloped from head to toe by the cloth it was impossible to tell
them apart.
The bridegroom might not touch them, except with the tip of his
staff, and then merely to designate which he thought to be his
wife. They allowed him time enough to make an examination with no
other help than his eyes afforded, and the women, placed on either
side, kept zealous watch lest cheating should occur. Should he
guess wrong, he might not dance with his bride, but only with her
he had chosen by mistake.
When Germain stood in front of these ghosts wrapped in the same
shroud, he feared he should make a wrong choice; and, in truth,
that had happened to many another, so carefully and conscientiously
were the precautions made. His heart beat loud. Little Marie did
her best to breathe hard and shake the cloth a little, but her
malicious companions followed her example, and kept poking the
cloth with their fingers, so that there were as many mysterious
signals as there were girls beneath the canopy. The square
head-dresses upheld the cloth so evenly that it was impossible to
discern the contour of a brow outlined by its folds.
After ten minutes’ hesitation, Germain shut his eyes, commended his
soul to God, and stretched out the wand at random. It touched the
forehead of little Marie, who cast the cloth from her, and shouted
with triumph. Then it was his right to kiss her, and lifting her
in his strong arms, he bore her to the middle of the room, where
together they opened the dance, which lasted until two in the
morning. The company separated to meet again at eight. As many
people had come from the country round, and as there were not beds
enough for everybody, each of the village maidens took to her bed
two or three other girls, while the men spread themselves pell-mell
on the hay in the barn-loft. You can imagine well that they had
little sleep, for they did nothing but wrestle and joke, and tell
foolish stories. Properly, there were three sleepless nights at
weddings, and these we cannot regret.
At the time appointed for departure, when they had partaken of
milk-soup, seasoned with a strong dose of pepper to stimulate the
appetite,--for the wedding-feast gave promise of great bounty,--the
guests assembled in the farm-yard. Since our parish had been
abolished, we had to go half a league from home to receive the
marriage blessing. It was cool and pleasant weather, but the
roads were in such wretched condition that everybody was on
horseback, and each man took a companion on his crupper, whether
she were young or old. Germain started on the gray, and the mare,
well-groomed, freshly shod, and decked out with ribbons, pranced
about and snorted fire from her nostrils. The husbandman went to
the cottage for his bride in company with his brother-in-law,
Jacques, who rode the old gray, and carried Mother Guillette on
the crupper, while Germain returned to the farm-yard in triumph,
holding his dear little wife before him.
Then the merry cavalcade set out, escorted by the children, who
ran ahead and fired off their pistols to make the horses jump.
Mother Maurice was seated in a small cart, with Germain’s three
children and the fiddlers. They led the march to the sound of their
instruments. Petit-Pierre was so handsome that his old grandmother
was pride itself. But the eager child did not stay long at her
side. During a moment’s halt made on the journey, before passing
through a difficult piece of road, he slipped away and ran to beg
his father to carry him in front on the gray.
“No, no,” replied Germain, “that will call forth some disagreeable
joke; we mustn’t do it.”
“It’s little that I care what the people of Saint Chartier say,”
said little Marie. “Take him up, Germain, please do; I shall be
prouder of him than I am of my wedding-gown.”
Germain yielded, and the pretty trio darted into the crowd borne by
the triumphant gallop of the gray.
And so it was; the people of Saint Chartier, although they were
very sarcastic, and somewhat disdainful of the neighboring parishes
which had been annexed to theirs, never thought of laughing when
they saw such a handsome husband, such a lovely wife, and a child
that a king’s wife might court. Petit-Pierre was all dressed in
light blue cloth, with a smart red waistcoat so short that it
descended scarcely below his chin. The village tailor had fitted
his armholes so tight that he could not bring his two little hands
together. But, oh, how proud he was! He wore a round hat, with a
black-and-gold cord, and a peacock’s plume which stuck out proudly
from a tuft of guinea feathers. A bunch of flowers, bigger than
his head, covered his shoulder, and ribbons fluttered to his feet.
The hemp-dresser, who was also the barber and hair-dresser of the
district, had cut his hair evenly, by covering his head with a
bowl, and clipping off the protruding locks, an infallible method
for guiding the shears. Thus arrayed, the poor child was less
poetic, certainly, than with his curls streaming in the wind, and
his Saint John Baptist’s sheepskin about him; but he knew nothing
of this, and everybody admired him and said that he had quite the
air of a little man. His beauty triumphed over everything, for what
is there over which the exceeding beauty of childhood could not
triumph?
His little sister, Solange, had, for the first time in her life,
a peasant’s cap in place of the calico hood which little girls
wear until they are two or three years old. And what a cap it was!
Longer and larger than the poor little thing’s whole body. How
beautiful she thought it! She dared not even turn her head; so she
kept quite still and thought the people would take her for the
bride.
As for little Sylvain, he was still in long clothes, and, fast
asleep on his grandmother’s knees, he did not even know what a
wedding was.
Germain looked at his children tenderly, and when they reached the
town hall, he said to his bride:
“Marie, I have come here with a happier heart than I had the day
when I brought you home from the forest of Chanteloube, thinking
that you could never love me. I took you in my arms to put you on
the ground as I do here; but I thought that never again should we
be mounted on the good gray with the child on our knees. I love you
so dearly, I love these little creatures so dearly, I am so happy
that you love me and that you love them, and that my family love
you, and I love your mother so well and all my friends so well,
and everybody else so well to-day, that I wish I had three or four
hearts to fill all of them; for surely one is too small to hold so
much love and so much happiness. It almost makes my stomach ache.”
There was a crowd at the door of the town hall and another at
the church to see the pretty bride. Why should we not tell about
her dress? it became her so well. Her muslin cap, without spot
and covered with embroidery, had lappets trimmed with lace. At
that time peasant women never allowed a single lock to be seen,
and, although they conceal beneath their caps splendid coils of
hair tied up with tape to hold the coif in place, even to-day it
would be thought a scandal and a shame for them to show themselves
bareheaded to men. Nowadays, however, they allow a slender braid
to appear over their foreheads, and this improves their appearance
very much. Yet I regret the classic head-dress of my time; its
spotless laces next the bare skin gave an effect of pristine purity
which seemed to me very solemn; and when a face looked beautiful
thus it was with a beauty of which nothing can express the charm
and unaffected majesty.
Little Marie wore her cap thus, and her forehead was so white and
so pure that it defied the whiteness of linen to cast it in the
shade. Although she had not closed an eye the night before, the
morning air and, yet more, the joy within of a soul pure as the
heaven, and, more than all, a small secret flame guarded with the
modesty of girlhood, caused a bloom to mount to her cheeks delicate
as the peach-blossom in the first beams of an April sun.
Her white scarf, modestly crossed over her breast, left visible
only the soft curves of a neck rounded like a turtle-dove’s; her
home-made cloth gown of myrtle-green outlined her pretty figure,
which looked already perfect, yet which must still grow and
develop, for she was but seventeen. She wore an apron of violet
silk with the bib our peasant women were so foolish as to suppress,
which added so much elegance and decency to the breast. Nowadays
they display their scarfs more proudly, but there is no longer in
their dress that delicate flower of the purity of long ago, which
made them look like Holbein’s virgins. They are more forward and
more profuse in their courtesies. The good old custom used to be a
kind of staid reserve which made their rare smile deeper and more
ideal.
During the offertory, after the fashion of the day, Germain placed
the “thirteen”--that is to say, thirteen pieces of silver--in his
bride’s hand. He slipped over her finger a silver ring of a form
unchanged for centuries, but which is replaced for henceforth by
the golden wedding-ring. As they walked out of church, Marie said
in a low voice:
“Is this really the ring I wanted? Is it the one I asked you for,
Germain?”
“Yes,” answered he, “my Catherine wore it on her finger when she
died. There is but one ring for both my weddings.”
“Thank you, Germain,” said the young woman, in a serious and
impressive tone. “I shall die with it on, and if I go before you,
you must keep it for the marriage of your little Solange.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
IV
The Cabbage
They mounted and returned very quickly to Belair. The feast was
bountiful, and, mingled with songs and dances, it lasted until
midnight. For fourteen hours the old people did not leave the
table. The grave-digger did the cooking, and did it very well. He
was celebrated for this, and he would leave his fire to come in
and dance and sing before and after every course. And yet this
poor Father Bontemps was epileptic. Who would have thought it? He
was fresh and strong, and merry as a young man. One day we found
him in a ditch, struck down by his malady at nightfall. We carried
him home with us, in a wheelbarrow, and we spent all night in
caring for him. Three days afterward, he was at a wedding, singing
like a thrush, jumping like a kid, and bustling about after his
old fashion. When he left a marriage, he would go to dig a grave,
and nail up a coffin. Then he would become very grave, and though
nothing of this appeared in his gay humor, it left a melancholy
impression which hastened the return of his attacks. His wife was
paralyzed, and had not stirred from her chair for twenty years. His
mother is living yet, at a hundred and forty, but he, poor man, so
happy and good and amusing, was killed last year by falling from
his loft to the sidewalk. Doubtless he died a victim to a fatal
attack of his disease, and, as was his habit, had hidden in the
hay, so as not to frighten and distress his family. In this tragic
manner he ended a life strange as his disposition--a medley of
things sad and mad, awful and gay; and, in the midst of all, his
heart was ever good and his nature kind.
Now we come to the third day of the wedding, the most curious of
all, which is kept to-day in all its vigor. We shall not speak of
the roast which they carry to the bridal bed; it is a very silly
custom, and hurts the self-respect of the bride, while it tends to
ruin the modesty of the attendant girls. Besides, I believe that it
is practised in all the provinces, and does not belong peculiarly
to our own.
Just as the ceremony of the wedding favors is a symbol that the
heart and home of the bride are won, that of the cabbage is a
symbol of the fruitfulness of marriage. When breakfast is over on
the day after the wedding, this fantastic representation begins.
Originally of Gallic derivation, it has passed through primitive
Christianity, and little by little it has become a kind of mystery,
or droll morality-play of the Middle Ages.
Two boys, the merriest and most intelligent of the company,
disappear from breakfast, and after costuming themselves, return
escorted by dogs, children, and pistol-shots. They represent a
pair of beggars--husband and wife--dressed in rags. The husband is
the filthier of the two; it is vice which has brought him so low;
the wife is unhappy and degraded only through the misdeeds of her
husband.
They are called the gardener and the gardener’s wife, and they
pretend it is their duty to guard and care for the sacred cabbage.
The husband has several names, each with a meaning. Sometimes they
call him the “scarecrow,” because his head is covered with straw or
hemp, and because his legs and a portion of his body are surrounded
with straw to hide his nakedness, ill concealed by his rags. He has
also a great belly, or hump, constructed of straw or hay underneath
his blouse. Then he is known as the “ragamuffin,” on account of his
covering of rags. Lastly he is termed the “infidel,” and this is
most significant of all, because by his cynicism and his debauchery
he is supposed to typify the opposite of every Christian virtue.
He comes with his face all smeared with soot and the lees of
wine, and sometimes made yet more hideous by a grotesque mask. An
earthenware cup, notched and broken, or an old sabot attached to
his girdle by a cord, shows that he has come to beg for alms of
wine. Nobody refuses him, and he pretends to drink; then he pours
the wine on the ground by way of libation. At every step he falls,
rolls in the mud, and feigns to be a prey to the most shameful
drunkenness. His poor wife runs after him, picks him up, calls for
help, arranges his hempen locks, which straggle forth in unkempt
wisps from beneath his filthy hat, sheds tears over her husband’s
degradation, and pours forth pathetic reproaches.
“Wretched man,” she cries, “see the misery to which your wickedness
has brought us. I have to spend all my time sewing and working
for you, mending your clothes. You tear and bedraggle yourself
incessantly. You have eaten up all my little property; our six
children lie on straw, and we are living in a stable with the
beasts. Here we are forced to beg for alms, and, besides, you are
so ugly and vile and despicable that very soon they will be tossing
us bread as if we were dogs. Ah, my poor people, take pity on us!
Take pity on me! I haven’t deserved my lot, and never had woman
a more dirty and detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, else
the wagons will run over him as they run over broken bottles, and
I shall be a widow, and that will end by killing me with grief,
though all the world says it would be an excellent riddance for
me.” Such is the part of the gardener’s wife, and her continued
lamentations last during the entire play. For it is a genuine
spontaneous comedy acted on the spur of the moment in the open
air, along the roads and across the fields, aided by every chance
occurrence that presents itself. Everybody shares in the acting,
people within the wedding-party and people without, wayfarers and
dwellers in houses, for three or four hours of the day, as we
shall see. The theme is always the same, but the variations are
infinite; and it is here that we can see the instinct of mimicry,
the abundance of droll ideas, the fluency, the wit at repartee, and
even the natural eloquence of our peasants.
The rôle of gardener’s wife is intrusted commonly to a slender
man, beardless and fresh of face, who can give a great appearance
of truth to his personification and plays the burlesque despair
naturally enough to make people sad and glad at once, as they are
in real life. These thin, beardless men are not rare among us, and,
strangely enough, they are sometimes most remarkable for their
muscular strength.
When the wife’s misfortunes have been explained, the young men of
the company try to persuade her to leave her drunken husband and
to amuse herself with them. They offer her their arms and drag her
away. Little by little she gives way; her spirits rise, and she
begins to run about, first with one and then with another, and
grows more scandalous in her behavior: a fresh “morality”; the
ill-conduct of the husband excites and aggravates the evil in the
wife.
Then the “infidel” wakes from his drunkenness. He looks about for
his companion, arms himself with a rope and a stick and rushes
after her. They make him run, they hide, they pass the wife from
one to another, they try to divert her attention and to deceive
her jealous spouse. His friends try to get him drunk. At length he
catches his unfaithful wife, and wishes to beat her. What is truest
and most carefully portrayed in this play is that the jealous
husband never attacks the men who carry off his wife. He is very
polite and prudent with them, and wishes only to take vengeance
on the sinning woman, because she is supposed to be too feeble to
offer resistance.
At the moment, however, when he raises his stick and prepares his
cord to strike the delinquent, all the men in the party interpose
and throw themselves between husband and wife.
“Don’t strike her! Never strike your wife,” is the formula repeated
to satiety during these scenes. They disarm the husband, and force
him to pardon and to kiss his wife, and soon he pretends to love
her better than ever. He walks along, his arm linked in hers,
singing and dancing until, in a new access of drunkenness, he rolls
upon the ground, and then begin all over again the lamentations
of the wife, her discouragements, her pretended unfaithfulness,
her husband’s jealousy, the interference of the neighbors, and
the reconciliation. In all this there is a simple and even coarse
lesson, which, though it savors strongly of its Middle-Age origin,
does not fail to fix its impression if not on the married folk,
who are too loving or too sensible to have need of it, at least
upon the children and the young people. The “infidel,” racing after
young girls and pretending to wish to kiss them, frightens and
disgusts them to such a degree that they fly in unaffected terror.
His dirty face and his great stick, harmless as it is, make the
children shriek aloud. It is the comedy of customs in their most
elementary but their most striking state.
When this farce is well under way, people make ready to hunt
for the cabbage. They bring a stretcher and place upon it the
“infidel,” armed with a spade, a cord, and a large basket. Four
powerful men raise him on their shoulders. His wife follows on
foot, and after her come the “elders” in a body with serious and
thoughtful looks; then the wedding-march begins by couples to
a step tuned to music. Pistol-shots begin anew, and dogs bark
louder than ever at the sight of the filthy “infidel” borne aloft
in triumph. The children swing incense in derision with sabots
fastened at the end of a cord.
But why this ovation to an object so repulsive? They are marching
to the capture of the sacred cabbage, emblem of the fruitfulness of
marriage, and it is this drunkard alone who can bear the symbolic
plant in his hand. Doubtless, there is in it a pre-Christian
mystery which recalls the Saturnalian feasts or some rout of the
Bacchanals. Perhaps this “infidel,” who is, at the same time,
preeminently a gardener, is none other than Priapus himself, god of
gardens and of drunkenness, a divinity who must have been pure and
serious in his origin as is the mystery of birth, but who has been
degraded bit by bit through license of manners and distraction of
thought.
However this may be, the triumphal procession arrives at the
bride’s house, and enters the garden. Then they select the choicest
cabbage, and this is not done very quickly, for the old people
keep consulting and disputing interminably, each one pleading for
the cabbage he thinks most suitable. They put it to vote, and when
the choice is made the gardener fastens his cord to the stalk, and
moves away as far as the size of the garden permits. The gardener’s
wife takes care that the sacred vegetable shall not be hurt in its
fall. The wits of the wedding, the hemp-dresser, the grave-digger,
the carpenter, and the sabot-maker, form a ring about the cabbage,
for men who do not till the soil, but pass their lives in other
people’s houses, are thought to be, and are really, wittier and
more talkative than simple farmhands. One digs, with a spade, a
ditch deep enough to uproot an oak. Another places on his nose a
pair of wooden or cardboard spectacles. He fulfils the duties of
“engineer,” walks up and down, constructs a plan, stares at the
workmen through his glasses, plays the pedant, cries out that
everything will be spoiled, has the work stopped and begun afresh
as his fancy directs, and makes the whole performance as long
and ridiculous as he can. This is an addition to the formula of
an ancient ceremony held in mockery of theorists in general, for
peasants despise them royally, or from hatred of the surveyors who
decide boundaries and regulate taxes, or of the workmen employed
on bridges and causeways, who transform commons into highways, and
suppress old abuses which the peasants love. Be this as it may,
this character in the comedy is called the “geometrician,” and does
his best to make himself unbearable to those who are toiling with
pickaxe and shovel.
After a quarter of an hour spent in mummery, and difficulties
raised in order to avoid cutting the roots, and to transplant the
cabbage without injury, while shovelfuls of dirt are tossed into
the faces of the onlookers,--so much the worse for him who does not
retreat in time, for were he bishop or prince he must receive the
baptism of earth,--the “infidel” pulls the rope, the “infidel’s
wife” holds her apron, and the cabbage falls majestically amidst
the applause of the spectators. Then a basket is brought, and
the “infidel” pair plant the cabbage therein with every care and
precaution. They surround it with fresh earth, and support it with
sticks and strings, such as city florists use for their splendid
potted camellias; they fix red apples to the points of the sticks,
and twist sprigs of thyme, sage, and laurel all about them; they
bedeck the whole with ribbons and streamers; they place the trophy
upon the stretcher with the “infidel,” whose duty it is to maintain
its equilibrium and preserve it from harm; and, at length, they
move away from the garden in good order and in marching step.
But when they are about to pass the gate, and again when they enter
the yard of the bridegroom’s house, an imaginary obstacle blocks
the way. The bearers of the burden stagger, utter loud cries,
retreat, advance once more, and, as though crushed by a resistless
force, they pretend to sink beneath its weight. While this is going
on, the bystanders shout loudly, exciting and steadying this human
team.
“Slowly, slowly, my child. There, there, courage! Look out! Be
patient! Lower your head; the door is too low! Close up; it’s too
narrow! A little more to the left; now to the right; on with you;
don’t be afraid; you’re almost there.”
Thus it is that in years of plentiful harvest, the ox-cart, loaded
to overflowing with hay or corn, is too broad or too high to enter
the barn door. Thus it is that the driver shouts at the strong
beasts, to restrain them or to urge them on; thus it is that with
skill and mighty efforts they force this mountain of riches beneath
the rustic arch of triumph. It is, above all, the last load,
called “the cart of sheaves,” which requires these precautions,
for this is a rural festival, and the last sheaf lifted from the
last furrow is placed on the top of the cart-load ornamented with
ribbons and flowers, while the foreheads of the oxen and the whip
of the driver are decorated also. The triumphant and toilsome entry
of the cabbage into the house is a symbol of the prosperity and
fruitfulness it represents.
Safe within the bridegroom’s yard, the cabbage is taken from its
stretcher and borne to the topmost peak of the house or barn.
Whether it be a chimney, a gable, or a dove-cote that crowns the
roof, the burden must, at any risk, be carried to the very highest
point of the building. The “infidel” accompanies it as far as this,
sets it down securely, and waters it with a great pitcher of wine,
while a salvo of pistol-shots and demonstrations of joy from the
“infidel’s wife” proclaim its inauguration.
Without delay, the same ceremony is repeated all over again.
Another cabbage is dug from the garden of the husband and is
carried with the same formalities and laid upon the roof which his
wife has deserted to follow him. These trophies remain in their
places until the wind and the rain destroy the baskets and carry
away the cabbage. Yet their lives are long enough to give some
chance of fulfilment to the prophecies which the old men and women
make with bows and courtesies.
“Beautiful cabbage,” they say, “live and flourish that our young
bride may have a fine baby before a year is over; for if you die
too quickly it is a sign of barrenness, and you will stick up there
like an ill omen.”
The day is already far gone when all these things are accomplished.
All that remains undone is to take home the godfathers and
godmothers of the newly married couple. When the so-called parents
dwell at a distance, they are accompanied by the music and the
whole wedding procession as far as the limits of the parish; there
they dance anew on the highroad, and everybody kisses them good-by.
The “infidel” and his wife are then washed and dressed decently, if
the fatigue of their parts has not already driven them away to take
a nap.
Everybody was still dancing and singing and eating in the Town Hall
of Belair at midnight on this third day of the wedding when Germain
was married. The old men at table could not stir, and for good
reason. They recovered neither their legs nor their wits until dawn
on the morrow. While they were regaining their dwellings, silently
and with uncertain steps, Germain, proud and active, went out to
hitch his oxen, leaving his young wife to slumber until daylight.
The lark, caroling as it mounted to the skies, seemed to him the
voice of his heart returning thanks to Providence. The hoar-frost,
sparkling on the leafless bushes, seemed to him the whiteness of
April flowers that comes before the budding leaves. Everything in
nature was laughing and happy for him. Little Pierre had laughed
and jumped so much the evening before that he did not come to
help lead his oxen; but Germain was glad to be alone. He fell on
his knees in the furrow he was about to plow afresh, and said his
morning prayer with such a burst of feeling that two tears rolled
down his cheeks, still moist with sweat.
Afar off he heard the songs of the boys from neighboring villages,
who were starting on their return home, singing again in their
hoarse voices the happy tunes of the night before.
THE END.
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