Chapter II (2)

"Ah, ha! the fine fellow," he cries, "what an air he has! good color, no fever. Get up and go take a good cup of coffee; but no fooling, you know! don't go running after the girls; I will sign for you your _Exeat_; you will return to-morrow to your regiment."

Sick or not sick, he sent back three a day. That morning he stops in front of me and says:

"Ah! saperlotte, my boy, you look better!"

I exclaim that never have I suffered so much.

He sounds my stomach. "But you are better," he murmurs; "the stomach is not so hard." I protest--he seems astonished, the interne then says to him in an undertone:

"We ought perhaps to give him an injection; and we have here neither syringe nor stomach-pump; if we send him to the hospital--?"

"Come, now, that's an idea!" says the good man, delighted at getting rid of me, and then and there he signs the order for my admission. Joyfully I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of one of the servants of the lyceum I make my entrance at the hospital. I find Francis again! By incredible good luck the St. Vincent corridor, where he sleeps, in default of a room in the wards, contains one empty bed next to his. We are at last reunited! In addition to our two beds, five cots stretch, one after the other, along the yellow glazed walls. For occupants they have a soldier of the line, two artillerymen, a dragoon, and a hussar. The rest of the hospital is made up of certain old men, crack-brained and weak-bodied, some young men, rickety or bandy-legged, and a great number of soldiers--wrecks from MacMahon's army--who, after being floated on from one military hospital to another, had come to be stranded on this bank. Francis and I, we are the only ones who wear the uniform of the Seine militia; our bed neighbors were good enough fellows; one, to tell the truth, quite as insignificant as another; they were, for the most part, the sons of peasants or farmers called to serve under the flag after the declaration of war.

While I am taking off my vest, there comes a sister, so frail, so pretty that I can not keep from looking at her; the beautiful big eyes! the long blond lashes! the pretty teeth! She asks me why I have left the lyceum; I explain to her in roundabout phrases how the absence of a forcing pump caused me to be sent back from the college. She smiles gently and says to me: "Ah, sir soldier, you could have called the thing by its name; we are used to everything." I should think she was used to everything, unfortunate woman, for the soldiers constrained themselves but little in delivering themselves of their indiscreet amenities before her. Yet never did I see her blush. She passed among them mute, her eyes lowered, seeming not to hear the coarse jokes retailed around her.

Heavens! how she spoiled me! I see her now in the morning, as the sun breaks on the stone floor the shadows of the window bars, approaching slowly from the far end of the corridor, the great wings of her bonnet flapping at her face. She comes close to my bed with a dish that smokes, and on the edge of which glistens her well-trimmed finger nail. "The soup is a little thin to-day," she says with her pretty smile, "so I bring you some chocolate. Eat it quick while it's hot!"

In spite of the care she lavished upon me, I was bored to death in that hospital. My friend and I, we had reached that degree of brutishness that throws you on your bed, trying to kill in animal drowsiness the long hours of insupportable days. The only distractions offered us consisted in a breakfast and a dinner composed of boiled beef, watermelon, prunes, and a finger of wine--the whole of not sufficient quantity to nourish a man.

Thanks to my ordinary politeness toward the sisters and to the prescription labels that I wrote for them, I obtained fortunately a cutlet now and then and a pear picked in the hospital orchard. I was, then, on the whole, the least to be pitied of all the soldiers packed together, pell-mell, in the wards, but during the first days I could not succeed even in swallowing the meagre morning dole. It was inspection hour, and the doctor chose that moment to perform his operations. The second day after my arrival he ripped a thigh open from top to bottom; I heard a piercing cry; I closed my eyes, not enough, however, to avoid seeing a red stream spurt in great jets on to the doctor's apron. That morning I could eat no more. Little by little, however, I grew accustomed to it; soon I contented myself by merely turning my head away and keeping my soup.

In the mean while the situation became intolerable. We tried, but in vain, to procure newspapers and books; we were reduced to masquerading, to donning the hussar's vest for fun. This puerile fooling quickly wore itself out, and stretching ourselves every twenty minutes, exchanging a few words, we dive our heads into the bolsters.

There was not much conversation to be drawn from our comrades. The two artillerymen and the hussar were too sick to talk. The dragoon swore by the name of heaven, saying nothing, got up every instant, enveloped in his great white mantle, and went to the wash-bowls, whose sloppy condition he reported by means of his bare feet. There were some old saucepans lying about in which the convalescents pretended to cook, offering their stew in jest to the sisters.

There remained, then, only the soldier of the line: an unfortunate grocer's clerk, father of a child, called to the army, stricken constantly by fever, shivering under his bedclothes.

Squatting, tailor-fashion, on our bed, we listen to him recount the battle in which he was picked up. Cast out near Froeschwiller, on a plain surrounded with woods, he had seen the red flashes shoot by in bouquets of white smoke, and he had ducked, trembling, bewildered by the cannonading, wild with the whistling of the balls. He had marched, mixed in with the regiments, through the thick mud, not seeing a single Prussian, not knowing in what direction they were, hearing on all sides groans, cut by sharp cries, then the ranks of the soldiers placed in front of him, all at once turned, and in the confusion of flight he had been, without knowing how, thrown to the ground. He had picked himself up and had fled, abandoning his gun and knapsack, and at last, worn out by the forced marches endured for eight days, undermined by fear, weakened by hunger, he had rested himself in a trench. He had remained there dazed, inert, stunned by the roar of the bombs, resolved no longer to defend himself, to move no more; then he thought of his wife, and, weeping, demanded what he had done that they should make him suffer so; he picked up, without knowing why, the leaf of a tree, which he kept, and which he had about him now, for he showed it to us often, dried and shriveled at the bottom of his pockets.

An officer had passed meanwhile, revolver in hand, had called him "coward," and threatened to break his head if he did not march. He had replied: "That would please me above all things. Oh, that this would end!" But the officer at the very moment he was shaking him on to his feet was stretched out, the blood bursting, spurting from his neck. Then fear took possession of him; he fled and succeeded in reaching a road far off, overrun with the flying, black with troops, furrowed by gun-carriages whose dying horses broke and crushed the ranks.

They succeeded at last in putting themselves under shelter. The cry of treason arose from the groups. Old soldiers seemed once more resolved, but the recruits refused to go on. "Let them go and be killed," they said, indicating the officers; "that's their profession. As for me I have children; it's not the State that will take care of them if I die!" And they envied the fate of those who were slightly wounded and the sick who were allowed to take refuge in the ambulances.

"Ah, how afraid one gets, and, then, how one holds in the ear the voices of men calling for their mothers and begging for something to drink," he added, shivering all over. He paused, and, looking about the corridor with an air of content, he continued: "It's all the same, I am very happy to be here; and then, as it is, my wife can write to me," and he drew from his trousers pocket some letters, saying with satisfaction: "The little one has written, look!" and he points out at the foot of the paper under his wife's labored handwriting, some up-and-down strokes forming a dictated sentence, where there were some "I kiss papas" in blots of ink.

We listened twenty times at least to that story, and we had to suffer during mortal hours the repetitions of that man, delighted at having a child. We ended by stopping our ears and by trying to sleep so as not to hear him any more.

This deplorable life threatened to prolong itself, when one morning Francis, who, contrary to his habit, had been prowling around the whole of the evening before in the courtyard, says to me: "I say, Eugène, come out and breathe a little of the air of the fields." I prick my ears. "There is a field reserved for lunatics," he continued; "that field is empty; by climbing onto the roofs of the outhouses, and that is easy, thanks to the gratings that ornament the windows, we can reach the coping of the wall; we jump and we tumble into the country. Two steps from the wall is one of the gates of Evreux. What do you say?"

I say--I say that I am quite willing to go out, but how shall we get back?

"I do not know anything about that; first let us get out, we will plan afterward. Come, get up, they are going to serve the soup; we jump the wall after."

I get up. The hospital lacked water, so much so that I was reduced to washing in the seltzer water which the sister had had sent to me. I take my siphon, I mark the painter who cries fire, I press the trigger, the discharge hits him full in his face; then I place myself in front of him, I receive the stream in my beard, I rub my nose with the lather, I dry my face. We are ready, we go downstairs. The field is deserted; we scale the wall; Francis takes his measure and jumps. I am sitting astride the coping of the wall, I cast a rapid glance around me; below, a ditch and some grass, on the right one of the gates of the town; in the distance, a forest that sways and shows its rents of golden red against a band of pale blue. I stand up; I hear a noise in the court; I jump; we skirt the walls; we are in Evreux!

Shall we eat? Motion adopted.

Making our way in search of a resting-place, we perceive two little women wagging along. We follow them and offer to breakfast with them; they refuse; we insist; they answer no less gently; we insist again; they say yes. We go home with them, with a meat-pie, bottles of wine, eggs, and a cold chicken. It seems odd to us to find ourselves in a light room, hung with paper, spotted with lilac blossoms and green leaves; there are at the casements damask curtains of red currant color, a mirror over the fireplace, an engraving representing a Christ tormented by the Pharisees. Six chairs of cherry wood and a round table with an oil-cloth showing the kings of France, a bedspread with eiderdown of pink muslin. We set the table, we look with greedy eye at the girls moving about. It takes a long time to get things ready, for we stop them for a kiss in passing; for the rest, they are ugly and stupid enough. But what is that to us? It's so long since we have scented the mouth of woman!

I carve the chicken; the corks fly, we drink like topers, we eat like ogres. The coffee steams in the cups; we gild it with cognac; my melancholy flies away, the punch kindles, the blue flames of the Kirschwasser leap in the salad bowl, the girls giggle, their hair in their eyes. Suddenly four strokes ring out slowly from the church tower. It is four o'clock. And the hospital! Good heavens, we had forgotten it! I turn pale. Francis looks at me in fright, we tear ourselves from the arms of our hostesses, we go out at double quick.

"How to get in?" says the painter.

Alas! we have no choice; we shall get there scarcely in time for supper. Let's trust to the mercy of heaven and make for the great gate!

We get there; we ring; the sister concièrge is about to open the door for us and stands amazed. We salute her, and I say loud enough to be heard by her:

"I say, do you know, they are not very amiable at that commissariat; the fat one specially received us only more or less civilly."

The sister breathes not a word. We run at a gallop for the messroom; it was time, I heard the voice of Sister Angèle who was distributing the rations. I went to bed as quickly as possible, I covered with my hand a spot my beauty had given me the length of my neck; the sister looks at me, finds in my eyes an unwonted sparkle, and asks with interest: "Are your pains worse?"

I reassure her and reply: "On the contrary, sister, I am better; but this idleness and this imprisonment are killing me."

When I speak of the appalling ennui that is trying me, sunk in this company, in the midst of the country, far from my own people, she does not reply, but her lips close tight, her eyes take on an indefinable expression of melancholy and of pity. One day she said to me in a dry tone: "Oh, liberty's worth nothing to you," alluding to a conversation she had overheard between Francis and me, discussing the charming allurements of Parisian women; then she softened and added with her fascinating little moue: "You are really not serious, Mr. Soldier."

The next morning we agreed, the painter and I, that as soon as the soup was swallowed, we would scale the wall again. At the time appointed we prowl about the field; the door is closed. "Bast, worse luck!" says Francis, "_En avant!_" and he turns toward the great door of the hospital. I follow him. The sister in charge asks where we are going. "To the commissariat." The door opens, we are outside.

Arrived at the grand square of the town, in front of the church, I perceive, as we contemplate the sculptures of the porch, a stout gentleman with a face like a red moon bristling with white mustaches, who stares at us in astonishment. We stare back at him, boldly, and continue on our way. Francis is dying of thirst; we enter a café, and, while sipping my demi-tasse, I cast my eyes over the local paper, and I find there a name that sets me dreaming. I did not know, to tell the truth, the person who bore it, but that name recalled to me memories long since effaced. I remembered that one of my friends had a relation in a very high position in the town of Evreux. "It is absolutely necessary for me to see him," I say to the painter; I ask his address of the café-keeper; he does not know it; I go out and visit all the bakers and the druggists that I meet with. Every one eats bread and takes medicine; it is impossible that one of those manufacturers should not know the address of Monsieur de Fréchêdé. I did find it there, in fact; I dust off my blouse, I buy a black cravat, gloves, and I go and ring gently, in the Rue Chatrain, at the iron grating of a private residence which rears its brick façade and slate roofs in the clearing of a sunny park. A servant lets me in. Monsieur de Fréchêdé is absent, but Madame is at home. I wait for a few seconds in a salon; the portière is raised and an old lady appears. She has an air so affable that I am reassured. I explain to her in a few words who I am.

"Sir," she says with a kind smile, "I have often heard speak of your family. I think, even, that I have met at Madame Lezant's, madame, your mother, during my last journey to Paris; you are welcome here."

We talked a long time; I, somewhat embarrassed, covering with my képi the spot on my neck; she trying to persuade me to accept some money, which I refuse.

She says to me at last: "I desire with all my heart to be useful to you. What can I do?" I reply: "Heavens, Madame, if you could get them to send me back to Paris, you would render me a great service; communications will be interrupted very soon, if the newspapers are to be believed; they talk of another _coup d'état_, or the overthrow of the Empire; I have great need of seeing my mother again; and especially of not letting myself be taken prisoner here if the Prussians come."

In the mean while Monsieur de Fréchêdé enters. In two words he is made acquainted with the situation.

"If you wish to come with me to the doctor of the hospital," he says, "you have no time to lose."

To the doctor! Good heavens! and how account to him for my absence from the hospital? I dare not breathe a word; I follow my protector, asking myself how it will all end. We arrive; the doctor looks at me with a stupefied air. I do not give him time to open his mouth, and I deliver with prodigious volubility a string of jeremiads over my sad position.

Monsieur de Fréchêdé in his turn takes up the argument, and asks him, in my favor, to give me a convalescent's leave of absence for two months.

"Monsieur is, in fact, sick enough," says the doctor, "to be entitled to two months' rest; if my colleagues and if the General look at it as I do your protégé will be able in a few days to return to Paris."

"That's good," replies Monsieur de Fréchêdé. "I thank you, doctor; I will speak to the General myself to-night."

We are in the street; I heave a great sigh of relief; I press the hand of that excellent man who shows so kindly an interest in me. I run to find Francis again. We have but just time to get back; we arrive at the gate of the hospital; Francis rings; I salute the sister. She stops me: "Did you not tell me this morning that you were going to the commissariat?"

"Quite right, sister."

"Very well! the General has just left here. Go and see the director and Sister Angèle; they are waiting for you; you will explain to them, no doubt, the object of your visits to the commissariat."

We remount, all crestfallen, the dormitory stairs. Sister Angèle is there, who waits for us, and who says:

"Never could I have believed such a thing! You have been all over the city, yesterday and to-day, and Heaven knows what kind of life you have been leading!"

"Oh, really!" I exclaim.

She looked at me so fixedly that I breathed not another word.

"All the same," she continued, "the General himself met you on the Grand Square to-day. I denied that you had gone out, and I searched for you all over the hospital. The General was right, you were not here. He asked me for your names; I gave him the name of one of you, I refused to reveal the other, and I did wrong, that is certain, for you do not deserve it!"

"Oh, how much I thank you, my sister!" But Sister Angèle did not listen to me. She was indignant over my conduct! There was but one thing to do; keep quiet and accept the downpour without trying to shelter myself.

In the mean time Francis was summoned before the director, and since, I do not know why, they suspected him of corrupting me; and since he was, moreover, by reason of his foolery, in bad odor with the doctor and the sisters, he was informed that he must leave the hospital the following day and join his corps at once.

"Those huzzies with whom we dined yesterday are licensed women, who have sold us; it was the director himself who told me," he declared furiously.

All the time we are cursing the jades and lamenting over our uniforms which made us so recognizable, the rumor runs that the Emperor is taken prisoner and that the Republic has been proclaimed at Paris; I give a franc to an old man who was allowed to go out and who brings me a copy of the "Gaulois." The news is true. The hospital exults. Badinguet fallen! it is not too soon; good-by to the war that is ended at last.

The following morning Francis and I, we embrace and he departs. "Till we meet again," he shouts to me as he shuts the gate; "and in Paris!"

Oh, the days that followed that day! What suffering! what desolation! Impossible to leave the hospital; a sentinel paced up and down, in my honor, before the door. I had, however, spirit enough not to try to sleep. I paced like a caged beast in the yard. I prowled thus for the space of twelve hours. I knew my prison to its smallest cranny. I knew the spots where the lichens and the mosses pushed up through the sections of the wall which had given way in cracking. Disgust for my corridor, for my truckle-bed flattened out like a pancake, for my linen rotten with dirt, took hold of me. I lived isolated, speaking to no one, beating the flint stones of the courtyard with my feet, straying, like a troubled soul, under the arcades whitewashed with yellow ochre the same as the wards, coming back to the grated entrance gate surmounted by a flag, mounting to the first floor where my bed was, descending to where the kitchen shone, flashing the sparkle of its red copper through the bare nakedness of the scene. I gnawed my fists with impatience, watching at certain hours the mingled coming and going of civilians and soldiers, passing and repassing on every floor, filling the galleries with their interminable march.

I had no longer any strength left to resist the persecution of the sisters, who drove us on Sunday into the chapel. I became a monomaniac; one fixed idea haunted me; to flee as quickly as possible that lamentable jail. With that, money worry oppressed me. My mother had forwarded a hundred francs to me at Dunkirk, where it seems I ought to be. The money never appeared. I saw the time when I should not have a sou to buy either paper or tobacco.

Meanwhile the days passed. The De Fréchêdés seemed to have forgotten me, and I attributed their silence to my escapades, of which they had no doubt been informed. Soon to all these anxieties were added horrible pains: ill-cared for and aggravated by my chase after petticoats, my bowels became inflamed. I suffered so that I came to fear I should no longer be able to bear the journey. I concealed my sufferings, fearing the doctor would force me to stay longer at the hospital. I keep my bed for a few days; then, as I felt my strength diminishing, I wished to get up, in spite of all, and I went downstairs into the yard. Sister Angèle no longer spoke to me, and in the evening, while she made her rounds in the corridor and in the mess, turning so as not to notice the sparks of the forbidden pipes that glowed in the shadows, she passed before me, indifferent, cold, turning away her eyes. One morning, however, when I had dragged myself into the courtyard and sunk down on every bench to rest, she saw me so changed, so pale, that she could not keep from a movement of compassion. In the evening, after she had finished her visit to the dormitories, I was leaning with one elbow on my bolster, and, with eyes wide open, I was looking at the bluish beams which the moon cast through the windows of the corridor, when the door at the farther end opened again, and I saw, now bathed in silver vapor, now in shadow, and as if clothed in black crepe, according as to whether she passed before the casements or along the walls, Sister Angèle, who was coming toward me. She was smiling gently. "To-morrow morning," she said to me, "you are to be examined by the doctors. I saw Madame de Fréchêdé to-day; it is probable that you will start for Paris in two or three days." I spring up in my bed, my face brightens, I wanted to jump and sing; never was I happier. Morning rises. I dress, and uneasy, nevertheless, I direct my way to the room where sits a board of officers and doctors.

One by one the soldiers exhibit their bodies gouged with wounds or bunched with hair. The General scraped one of his finger nails, the Colonel of the Gendarmerie[13] fans himself with a newspaper; the practitioners talk among themselves as they feel the men. My turn comes at last. They examine me from head to foot, they press down on my stomach, swollen and tense like a balloon, and with a unanimity of opinion the council grants me a convalescent's leave of sixty days.

I am going at last to see my mother, to recover my curios, my books! I feel no more the red-hot iron that burns my entrails; I leap like a kid!

I announce to my family the good news. My mother writes me letter after letter, wondering why I do not come. Alas! my order of absence must be countersigned at the division headquarters at Rouen. It comes back after five days; I am "in order"; I go to find Sister Angèle; I beg her to obtain for me before the time fixed for my departure permission to go into the city to thank De Fréchêdés, who have been so good to me. She goes to look for the director and brings me back permission. I run to the house of those kind people, who force me to accept a silk handkerchief and fifty francs for the journey. I go in search of my papers at the commissariat. I return to the hospital, I have but a few minutes to spare. I go in quest of Sister Angèle, whom I find in the garden, and I say to her with great emotion:

"Oh, dear Sister, I am leaving; how can I ever repay you for all that you have done for me?"

I take her hand which she tries to withdraw, and I carry it to my lips. She grows red. "Adieu!" she murmurs, and, menacing me with her finger, she adds playfully, "Be good! and above all do not make any wicked acquaintances on the journey."

"Oh, do not fear, my Sister. I promise you!"

The hour strikes; the door opens; I hurry off to the station; I jump into a car; the train moves; I have left Evreux. The coach is half full, but I occupy fortunately, one of the corners. I put my nose out of the window; I see some pollarded trees, the tops of a few hills that undulate away into the distance, a bridge astride of a great pond that sparkles in the sun like burnished glass. All this is not very pleasing. I sink back in my corner, looking now and then at the telegraph wires that stripe the ultramarine sky with their black lines, when the train stops, the travellers who are about me descend, the door shuts, then opens again and makes way for a young woman. While she seats herself and arranges her dress, I catch a glimpse of her face under the displacing of her veil. She is charming; with her eyes full of the blue of heaven, her lips stained with purple, her white teeth, her hair the color of ripe corn. I engage her in conversation. She is called Reine; embroiders flowers; we chat like old friends. Suddenly she turns pale, and is about to faint. I open the windows, I offer her a bottle of salts which I have carried with me ever since my departure from Paris; she thanks me, it is nothing, she says, and she leans on my knapsack and tries to sleep. Fortunately we are alone in the compartment, but the wooden partition that divides into equal parts the body of the carriage comes up only as far as the waist, and one can see and above all hear the clamor and the coarse laughter of the country men and women. I could have thrashed them with hearty good will, these imbeciles who were troubling her sleep! I contented myself with listening to the commonplace opinions which they exchanged on politics. I soon have enough of it; I stop my ears. I, too, try to sleep; but that phrase which was spoken by the station-master of the last station, "You will not get to Paris, the rails are torn up at Mantes," returned in all my dreams like an obstinate refrain. I open my eyes. My neighbor wakes up, too; I do not wish to share my fears with her; we talk in a low voice. She tells me that she is going to join her mother at Sèvres. "But," I say to her, "the train will scarcely enter Paris before eleven o'clock to-night. You will never have time to reach the landing on the left bank."

"What shall I do?" she says, "if my brother is not down at my arrival?"

Oh, misery, I am as dirty as a comb and my stomach burns! I can not dream of taking her to my bachelor lodgings, and then I wish before all to see my mother. What to do? I look at Reine with distress. I take her hand; at that moment the train takes a curve, the jerk throws her forward; our lips approach, they touch, I press mine; she turns red. Good heavens, her mouth moves imperceptibly; she returns my kiss; a long thrill runs up my spine; at contact of those ardent embers my senses fail. Oh! Sister Angèle, Sister Angèle! a man can not make himself over! And the train roars and rolls onward, without slackening speed; we are flying under full steam toward Mantes; my fears are vain; the track is clear. Reine half shuts her eyes; her head falls on my shoulder; her little waves of hair tangle with my beard and tickle my lips. I put my arm about her waist, which yields, and I rock her. Paris is not far; we pass the freight-depots, by the roundhouses where the engines roar in red vapor, getting up steam; the train stops; they take up the tickets. After reflection, I will take Reine to my bachelor rooms, provided her brother is not waiting her arrival. We descend from the carriage; her brother is there. "In five days," she says, with a kiss, and the pretty bird has flown. Five days after I was in my bed, atrociously sick, and the Prussians occupy Sèvres. Never since then have I seen her.

My heart is heavy. I heave a deep sigh; this is not, however, the time to be sad! I am jolting on in a fiacre. I recognize the neighborhood; I arrive before my mother's house; I dash up the steps, four at a time. I pull the bell violently; the maid opens the door. "It's Monsieur!" and she runs to tell my mother, who darts out to meet me, turns pale, embraces me, looks me over from head to foot, steps back a little, looks at me once more, and hugs me again. Meanwhile the servant has stripped the buffet. "You must be hungry, M. Eugène?" I should think I was hungry! I devour everything they give me. I toss off great glasses of wine; to tell the truth, I do not know what I am eating and what I am drinking!

At length I go to my rooms to rest. I find my lodging just as I left it. I run through it, radiant, then I sit down on the divan and I rest there, ecstatic, beatific, feasting my eyes with the view of my knickknacks and my books. I undress, however; I splash about in a great tub, rejoicing that for the first time in many months I am going to get into a clean bed with white feet and toenails trimmed. I spring onto the mattress, which rebounds. I dive my head into the feather pillow, my eyes close; I soar on full wings into the land of dreams.

I seem to see Francis, who is lighting his enormous wooden pipe, and Sister Angèle, who is contemplating me with her little moue; then Reine advances toward me, I awake with a start, I behave like an idiot, I sink back again up to my ears, but the pains in my bowels, calmed for a moment, awake, now that the nerves become less tense, and I rub my stomach gently, thinking that the horrors of dysentery are at last over! I am at home. I have my rooms to myself, and I say to myself that one must have lived in the promiscuosity of hospitals and camps to appreciate the value of a basin of water, to appreciate the solitude where modesty may rest at ease.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Military hats.

[7] Badinguet, nickname given to Napoleon III; Henri Rochefort, anti-Napoleon journalist and agitator.

[8] A suburb of Chalons.

[9] Canrobert, a brave and distinguished veteran, head of the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Rhine.

[10] Panier seats used in the French army to transport the wounded.

[11] Tringlots are the soldiers detailed for this duty.

[12] Brandy of thirty-six degrees.

[13] Armed police.

"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR"
BY JEAN RICHEPIN

_This poet and teller of tales was born at Médéa, Algeria, in
1849. His tremendous exuberance of spirits at first found an
outlet in military service during the war of 1870, and later in
a collection of vagabond songs called "La Chanson des Gueux,"
for which shock to the conventions he was sent to prison for a
month. Between 1877 and 1879 he published a variety of ballads
while pursuing in picturesque flashes the careers of sailor and
lighterman._

_Richepin has written many stories, more or less with a
penchant for extraordinary sensations and psychological
anomalies. "Nana Sahib" is a play he wrote in 1883, in which,
for a short time, he acted the principal rôle with Sarah
Bernhardt._

_Richepin is distinguished by his truly subtle use of words, by
an unbridled, almost truculent, eloquence, clothed in rich and
savory language._

"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR"
BY JEAN RICHEPIN

"Modernity, the essence of inquietude!"
--_Adrien Juvigny._

Translated by Mason Carnes.
Copyright, 1894, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

Ferdinand Octave Bruat awoke one morning with an idea. Ferdinand Octave Bruat was what one commonly calls a man of letters. He had written verses that no one would publish, novels that all the publishers had returned unread, theatrical effusions that even the director of the Funambules had refused. However, he had, in default of talent, a theory, an ideal. He thought himself called to be a leader, and firmly believed that he had invented a modern school. He meant by that, all that constitutes our daily life, so bizarre on this side, so practical on that, so foolish on others. He maintained that the time had come to attack boldly all imitations, classic as well as romantic, and that he should ransack contemporaneous society to derive therefrom ideas, forms, a language absolutely new and original. He said that as each epoch had had its own expression so ours should have its own also.

He was not wrong. Unfortunately he had not the strength to carry to battle the standard he had raised, and all his valiance merely ended in debating much and haranguing in the cafés. He overthrew more fools than bigots and made more debts than masterpieces. But one morning, on rising, he found the masterpiece which he had sought. When I say he had found it, I am mistaken. _He had given birth to a title!_

What to do with it? As yet he did not know. But the title seemed to him eloquent, sonorous, easy to remember, rich in variations, full of modernity, epitomizing the whole century in a manner at once simple and complex. The title was the more wonderful that it was so common. It was a phrase of two words, spoken thousands of times each morning; a phrase without affectation, without pretense, without pedantry, neither classic nor romantic. It was simply, "_Bonjour, Monsieur!_"

Under this title he wrote first a sonnet. This sonnet was read to his friends, naturally accompanied by prefaces and commentaries philological as well as philosophical, destined not only to make them the better enjoy its essence, but also to make them thoroughly comprehend its import. With one voice it was pronounced admirable.

"It must be published at once," cried the most enthusiastic; "it will give the keynote to the poetry of the future."

One crabbed old fellow, who did not dare to give his opinion frankly, but who was irritated by this success, turned his criticism into a compliment.

"As for me," he said, "I believe the subject demands greater development. Certainly the sonnet is beautiful; but does it not strike you that it is not sufficient for a subject of such importance. Think of it! A thing so profound, so varied, so complicated can not be confined in fourteen lines. A thought so powerful breaks its mold. Were I Bruat, I would turn my sonnet into a drama."

The assemblage adopted his opinion, enchanted at heart to see the famous sonnet thus criticized. Bruat did not perceive the irony of the grumbler. "You are right," said he with an air of superiority. "I have compressed my idea into this narrow mold. Thanks for your criticism, which proves how much you esteem me. Truly my idea deserves more than fourteen lines. I will write a drama in five acts and nine tableaux." And, in spite of the hypocritical protestations of his friends, he tore into pieces his masterpiece of a sonnet.

He lived for five years on the memory of his sonnet. He was always promising the astonishing drama--"Bonjour, Monsieur!" He was becoming almost celebrated by this piece in embryo. They knew that he had but a few scenes to finish; they said that the work was advancing. The simple-minded and the prejudiced who had never seen the author were convinced of his genius and spread his renown. To believe them, there was a great future, a marvelous hope; one must wait for the thunderclap. No doubt he was taking his time; but do not aloes take a hundred years to flower?

At last the drama was finished. This was a great event for the daily papers. What theatre would be the battlefield of the new school? Without doubt the directors would dispute for the honor of presenting to the public the principal work of the nineteenth century? Would there be artists capable of interpreting it?

First of all, Bruat assembled his little court, wishing to give them the first-fruits of his victory. The drama did not meet with the success of the sonnet. Perhaps the wits had conceived in advance too high an idea of it? Perhaps Bruat had not been as brilliant as they had expected? Perhaps there was a little envy mingled with their judgment? Perhaps, also, the auditors were less young and therefore less enthusiastic? In short, the reading was a failure. The grumbler alone protested against the general coldness, and made a parade of an unlimited admiration.

"Well and good," said he; "here is something that expresses the idea in quest, here is movement, life, research, keenness. Away with the sonnet! My friend, you have found the new drama, the modern drama, the drama of the future."

But Bruat was disheartened. At least he mistrusted the grumbler, who had counseled him to substitute the drama for the sonnet. He owed him a grudge because the drama had produced no effect in comparison with the sonnet. "Well," said he to the others, "where am I at fault?"

"Oh, in nothing, nothing at all," replied the chorus of friends.

"However, my drama does not meet with your approval; I see it clearly."

"Do you wish me to tell you the truth?" interrupted one, emboldened by Bruat's failure.

"Say it, my friend, for you know it is my principle to seek truth everywhere."

"Well, I think that modern life is too complicated for the drama. There are casualties, phenomena of the heart, complications of sentiment, descriptions material and spiritual, inquiries physiological and psychological, which can not be expressed in action. You have striven against the difficulty. Sometimes you have avoided it, which has caused a lack of unity. Sometimes you have been overwhelmed by it, which has caused a lack of polish. In spite of all your talents you have not been able to control this monster. Your plot is obscure, your characters badly drawn, your conclusion unnatural. But, on the other hand, what observation! what brilliant analysis! what force of penetration! what language! Oh! to be inspired in spite of the obstacles, you must be a man of genius. What would you? The impossible can not be achieved. In your case I would recast everything; I would expand, I would clarify, I would develop, I would take my time, I would enlarge my frame to the size of my idea. I would turn my drama into a novel."

"He is right," said the chorus, "he is right. That is the point. You must make a novel of 'Bonjour, Monsieur!'"

The opinion was unanimous. Bruat was too sincere not to be guided by it. Heroically he burned his drama, and set to work on his novel. In this work he spent ten years. To him it was the time of apotheosis. He had more prophets than God. Some exalted him from real admiration; others, because they thought he would accomplish nothing, and that, therefore, he would not be a dangerous adversary, spread his praises. Critics used his name to crush budding authors. Journalists filled up spaces with notices of his novel, with anecdotes of the labor in the thousand and one alterations in his work. The ignorant, the foolish, the gossips chattered about him without knowing why. He became as famous as the obelisk.

Nevertheless, they finished by waiting. The echo of his glory became fainter as it passed from one generation to another. At sixty he was about forgotten. He was only spoken of from time to time, and then merely as an eccentric, almost a lunatic. They remembered vaguely that he was working at a great novel, but they doubted whether he would ever finish it, or, rather, they were sure that he would never reach the end. They never spoke but with a smile of his gigantic undertaking, of the twenty volumes which would epitomize the nineteenth century, of this creation which would be the babel and pandemonium of modern life.

They would have laughed much more could they have known on what Bruat was engaged in his old age.

The unhappy man had finished his formidable novel. He had written twenty-seven volumes under the wonderful title, "Bonjour, Monsieur!" But at the end of his labor, frightened at having spoken at such length, he did not dare the trial of the reading. Then he set to work to abridge, to cut, to condense. By this means he had, little by little, reduced the book first to ten volumes, then to two, then to one. Finally, he had epitomized everything into a story of one hundred pages.

Ferdinand Octave Bruat was then eighty years old. One friend alone remained to him, the confidant of his undying ambition.

"Publish your story," said his friend: "I assure you it will make a sensation in the world. It is the paragon of modernity."

"No, no," cried Bruat, "I have not yet condensed it sufficiently. You see, I know myself; I know the public. To hold it, to leave something to posterity, to create a lasting work, one must be intense. To be intense--that is everything. A hundred pages! That is too prolix. In my first inspiration I found the true form for my thought--a form short, precise, chiseled, straight, fitting the idea like a cuirass; I mean the sonnet. Oh! if I could recall the marvelous sonnet of my youth! But it has been abandoned too long. To-day I will do better. I will put into it my experience, my life. Could I but live ten years longer, men would see what fourteen lines could express, and posterity would know our modern life, so vast, in this poem so small, as one inhales a subtle essence prisoned in a diamond."

He lived those ten years, and the story was abandoned like the novel and the drama; and slowly, letter by letter, word by word, line by line, was written the colossal sonnet which was to contain everything.

At ninety-two Ferdinand Octave Bruat lay on his deathbed.

His faithful friend was at his side, weeping, sobbing, in despair at seeing so high an intelligence laid so low.

"Weep not, my friend," said Bruat, "weep not. I die, but my idea dies not with me. I have destroyed my first sonnet, I have burnt my drama, I have burnt, one by one, the twenty-seven volumes of my novel: the ten, then the five, then the two, then the one and only, then the story. But, at last, I have created my masterpiece."

"The sonnet! the immortal sonnet! Give it me! You have not read it to me, but I know that it is a masterpiece. Give it me; I will publish it. If necessary, I will ruin myself that it may be written on gold in letters of diamonds. It merits it, it will dazzle the world. Give it me!"

"The sonnet! What sonnet?" stammered Bruat, gasping for breath.

"Your great sonnet!" sighed the friend, who saw the delirium of death approaching.

"Ah! yes, yes, the sonnet, the great sonnet. Too great, my friend, too long! It must be made more intense."

"What! have you burnt your last sonnet also?"

"I have found something better. I have found everything. Modern life, modernity, I hold it, I have it, I express it. It is not in a sonnet, nor in a quatrain, nor even in a line, it is--"

His voice grew weaker, became hoarse, wheezy, lost.

His friend, with bloodshot eyes, gaping mouth, leaned over the bed to drink in his last word, the word that would give the key to the mystery, the Open Sesame to art in the future.

"Speak, speak!" he cried.

"Everything in one phrase, everything in one phrase!" murmured Bruat.

And the old man raised himself up in a paroxysm of agony. His look was ecstatic. One felt that over the threshold of death he saw his ideal. He made a terrible effort to express it, and the wondrous phrase fell from his lips with his last sigh.

It was, "Bonjour, Monsieur!"

THE BIT OF STRING AND THE NECKLACE
BY HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT

_Guy de Maupassant, writer of the short story par excellence,
was born at the Château of Miromesnil in 1850, and died
insane at Paris in 1893. His godfather Flaubert said of
his first story, the "Boule de Suif," which appeared in a
miscellany called "Les Soirées de Médan": "I consider it a
chef-d'oeuvre--that little story will stay, you may be sure."
De Maupassant was for a few years connected with the Ministry
of Marine and Public Instruction. Besides his almost perfect
short stories, he has written plays and novels._

_De Maupassant describes himself admirably in one of his
heroes, "armed with an eye that gathers images, attitudes,
manners with the precision of a camera." His style is calm,
robust, sober, clean-cut, impersonal. "The Bit of String" and
"The Necklace" are two famous examples of De Maupassant at his
best._

THE BIT OF STRING
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Translated by Emar Soule.
Copyright, 1899, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

Along all the roads leading to Goderville the peasants and their wives were going toward the town, for it was market-day. The men walked at an easy pace, the whole body thrown ahead at each movement of the long, crooked legs, men deformed by rude labor, by guiding the plow, which at once forces the right shoulder upward and twists the waist; by reaping, which spreads the knees, for solid footing; by all the patient and painful toil of the country. Their blue blouses, glossy with starch, as though varnished, ornamented at the neck and wrists by a simple pattern in white, swelled out round their bony chests, like captive balloons from which heads, arms, and legs were protruding.

Some were leading by a cord a cow or calf, and their wives behind the animals were hastening their pace by the strokes of branches stripped of their leaves. The women carried on their arms great baskets, out of which hung, here and there, heads of chickens or ducks. They walked with shorter steps than their husbands, and at a more rapid pace, spare, erect and wrapped in scant shawls pinned across their flat chests, their heads enveloped in white linen drawn closely over the hair and surmounted by a bonnet.

Now a pleasure wagon passed at a jerky pony trot, shaking fantastically two men seated side by side, and a woman at the back of the vehicle, holding on to its sides to soften the hard jolts.

In the square of Goderville was a crowd--a jam of mingled human beings and beasts. The horns of cattle, the high hats of the rich farmers and the head-dresses of the women, emerged from the surface of the assembly; and discordant voices, clamorous, bawling, kept up a continuous and savage babel, overtopped now and then by a shout from the robust lungs of a merry countryman, or the lowing of a cow attached to the wall of a house. All this mass was redolent of the stable and soilure, of milk, of hay, of sweat, and diffused that rank, penetrating odor, human and bestial, peculiar to people of the fields.

Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté had just arrived at Goderville, and was going toward the square when he saw on the ground a bit of string. Master Hauchecorne, economist, like every true Norman, thought anything that might be of use worth picking up, and he bent down painfully, for he suffered from rheumatism. He took up the piece of string, and was winding it carefully, when he noticed Malandin, the harness-maker, watching him from his doorway. The two men had long ago had a quarrel about a halter, and both being vindictive, had remained unfriendly. Hauchecorne was seized with a kind of shame, at thus being seen by his enemy picking a bit of twine out of the mud. He quickly hid his prize under his blouse, then in his breeches pocket; then he pretended to search the ground again for something which he did not find, and he went off toward the market, his head in advance, bent double by his infirmities.

He was forthwith lost in the noisy, shuffling crowd everywhere in motion from innumerable buyings and sellings. The peasants examined the cows, went away, came back, hesitated, always fearful of being outwitted, never daring to decide, peering into the face of the vender, endlessly searching to discover the ruse in the man and the fault in the beast.

The women, putting their great baskets down at their feet, had drawn out their fowls, which were lying on the ground, legs bound, eyes wild, combs scarlet. They listened to offers, held to their prices unmoved, their faces inscrutable; or suddenly deciding to accept an offer, cried out to the would-be purchaser slowly moving away:

"Agreed, Master Hutine; I will give it at your price."

Then little by little the square emptied, and the Angelus sounding noon, those who lived too far to go home dispersed in the various public houses.