Chapter II (3)

At Jourdain's the great dining-room was full of feasters, as the vast court was full of vehicles of every pedigree--carts, gigs, tilburies, pleasure vans, carioles innumerable, yellow with mud, mended, out of order, lifting to heaven their shafts, like two arms, or nosing the ground, rear in the air.

Opposite the tables of diners the great chimney-piece, full of bright flame, threw a lively warmth on the backs of the row at the right. Three spits were turning, weighted with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton, and a delectable odor of roast flesh and of juice streaming over its golden brown skin, escaped from the hearth, put every one in gay humor, and made mouths water. All the aristocracy of the plow dined there with Master Jourdain, innkeeper and horse-dealer, a shrewd fellow, who had his dollars.

The platters were passed and emptied as were the tankards of yellow cider. Each one talked of his affairs, his purchases, his sales. The harvest was discussed. The weather was good for grass, but a little sharp for grain.

All at once the drum sounded in the court before the house. All save a few indifferent fellows were quickly on their feet, and running to the door or the windows, their mouths full, their napkins in their hands.

When he had finished his roulade the public crier held forth in a jerky voice, cutting his phrases at the wrong place:

"It is made known to the inhabitants of Goderville and in general to all--the people present at market, that there was lost this morning, on the Benzeville road between--nine and ten o'clock, a wallet containing five hundred francs and important papers. You are asked to return--it to the town hall, without delay, or to the house of Master Fortuné Houlebrèque, of Manneville. There will be twenty francs reward."

Then the crier went on. One heard once more far off the muffled beating of his drum, and his voice enfeebled by the distance. Then they all began to talk of the event, estimating Master Houlebrèque's chances of finding or not finding his wallet.

And the meal went on.

They were finishing their coffee when the chief of police appeared at the door.

"Where is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté?" he asked.

Hauchecorne, seated at the farther end of the table, replied:

"I'm here."

The chief proceeded:

"Master Hauchecorne, will you have the kindness to accompany me to the town hall? The mayor wishes to speak with you."

The countryman, surprised and disquieted, emptied at a draft his little glass of rum, arose, and, still more bent than in the morning, for the first movement after each relaxation was particularly difficult, he set out, repeating:

"I'm here, I'm here."

And he followed the chief.

The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his fauteuil. He was the notary of the vicinity, a big, solemn man, of pompous phrases.

"Master Hauchecorne," said he, "you were seen to pick up, on the Benzeville road, this morning, the wallet lost by Master Houlebrèque, of Manneville."

The peasant, astonished, looked at the mayor, frightened already, without knowing why, by this suspicion which had fallen on him.

"What! what! I picked up the wallet?"

"Yes; you yourself."

"Word of honor, I didn't even know of it."

"You were seen."

"Seen? What? Who saw me?"

"Monsieur Malandin, the harness-maker."

Then the old man remembered, understood, reddened with anger.

"He saw meh, th' lout? He saw meh pick up that string! See here, m'sieu mayor," and feeling in the bottom of his pocket, he drew out the bit of cord.

But the mayor, incredulous, shook his head.

"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Malandin, who is a man worthy of credence, took that thread for a wallet."

The peasant, furious, raised his hand, spit, to attest his innocence, and declared:

"Yet it's the truth of God, the sacred truth, m'sieu mayor. On my soul and my salvation, I repeat it."

The mayor continued:

"After picking up the object you went on searching in the mud a long time to see if some piece of money mightn't have escaped you."

The old man gasped with indignation and fear.

"May one tell--may one tell lies like that to injure an honest man? May one say--"

His protest was vain. He was not believed. He was confronted with Monsieur Malandin, who repeated and sustained his former affirmation. For an hour the two men hurled insults at each other. Hauchecorne was searched, at his demand, and nothing was found on him. Finally the mayor, greatly perplexed, sent him away, warning him that he should inform the council and await orders.

The news spread. When he came out of the town hall the old man was surrounded and questioned with a curiosity serious or mocking, but with no ill-will in it.

He began to recount the story of the string, but no one believed him--they only laughed.

He went on, stopped by everybody, stopping his acquaintances, beginning anew his tale and his protestations, turning his pockets inside out to prove that he had nothing.

"Move on, old quibbler," they said to him.

And he became angry, exasperated, feverish, sick at heart, at not being believed. He did not know what to do, but told his story over and over.

Night came. It was time to go home. He set out with three of his neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he had picked up the bit of cord, and all the way home he talked of his adventure. In the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté to tell it to everybody. He met only incredulity. He was ill all night from his trouble.

The next day, toward one o'clock in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm hand, of Ymanville, returned the wallet and its contents to Monsieur Houlebrèque, of Manneville. The man stated, in effect, that he had found the wallet in the road, but not knowing how to read, had taken it home to his employer.

The news spread all about. Master Hauchecorne was told of it. He at once set out again on his travels, and began to narrate his story, completed by the dénouement. He was triumphant.

"It's not the thing 'at grieved me most, you understand," he said, "but it's the lie. Nothing harms you like being charged with a lie."

All day long he talked of his adventure. He told it on the streets to men passing, in the taverns to men drinking, after church the next Sunday. He stopped strangers to tell it to them. Now he was tranquil, yet something half disturbed him, without his knowing exactly what. People had an amused air as they listened to him. They did not appear convinced. He thought he detected whispers behind his back.

Tuesday of the following week he betook himself to the market of Goderville, driven there by the need of exploiting his case. Malandin, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him passing. Why? He accosted a farmer of Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but giving him a blow in the pit of the stomach, cried in his face:

"Go your way, humbug!"

Master Hauchecorne was dumfounded, and more and more ill at ease. Why had he been called a humbug?

When he was seated at table in Jourdain's inn he again began to explain the affair. A jockey of Montivilliers cried to him:

"Come, come, old croaker, I know about your string!"

Hauchecorne stammered:

"But since it is found--the wallet?"

The other answered:

"Hold your tongue, father. One finds, another returns. I know nothing about it, but I implicate you."

The peasant was left choking. He understood at last. He was accused of having returned the wallet through an accomplice. He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh. He could not finish his dinner, and went out in the midst of mockeries.

He returned home, ashamed and disgraced, strangling with rage and confusion, so much the more overwhelmed, in that he was capable, with his Norman duplicity, of doing the very thing of which he was accused, and even boasting of it as a good stroke. Confusedly he saw his innocence impossible to prove, his chicanery being well known, and he felt himself cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.

Then he commenced again to recount his adventure, lengthening each day his story, adding each time new reasonings, more energetic protestations, more solemn oaths, which he invented and arranged in his hours of solitude, his mind occupied solely with the story of the string. He was believed the less in proportion to the complication of his defense and the subtlety of his argument.

"That's the reasoning of a liar," they said behind his back.

He felt it, spent himself, wore his life out in useless efforts. He wasted away visibly. Wags now made him tell "the string" for their amusement, as one makes a soldier who has fought recount his battle. His mind, harassed and unsettled, grew feeble.

Toward the end of December he took to his bed. He died early in January, and in the delirium of his agony he attested his innocence, repeating:

"A little string ... a little string ... wait, here it is, m'sieu mayor!"

THE NECKLACE
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Translated by Mathilde Weissenhorn.
Copyright, 1898, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

She was one of those charming girls, born by a freak of destiny in a family of toilers. She had no fortune, no expectations, no means of satisfying her ambitions, except by a marriage with a rich and distinguished man, and, as she knew none, in order to escape from her surroundings, she married a clerk in the office of the Minister of Public Instruction.

She dressed simply, because she had no means of adornment; but she was as unhappy as though she had fallen from a high social position, for the women who have neither caste nor race use their beauty, grace, and charm as stepping-stones to those heights from which they are otherwise barred, their natural tact and instinctive elegance and quick perceptions being their only inheritance, and, skilfully used, make them the equal of their more fortunate sisters. She suffered incessantly when she glanced around her humble home, and felt the absence of all those delicacies and luxuries which are enjoyed only by the rich. In short, all the little nothings, that another woman of her caste would not have seen, tortured and wounded her. The sight of the old Breton peasant woman who performed her simple household duties awakened in her vain longings and troubled dreams.

She dreamed of beautiful halls, discreetly lighted by candles in great bronze candlesticks, whose rich carpets gave back no sounds and whose walls were covered with silks from the Orient, and of obsequious footmen half asleep in their large armchairs, ready to attend to your every want at a moment's notice; of large salons draped in ancient silks; of "étagers" covered with priceless bric-à-brac. She thought also of coquettish small salons, made expressly for the "five o'clock," when one receives only one's intimates or distinguished men of letters, from whom it is every woman's ambition to receive attentions.

When she was seated at the table (whose cloth had already done duty for three days) or opposite her husband--who evinced his entire satisfaction with the evening's repast by such exclamations as: "Oh, the good 'pot-au-feu'! I know nothing better!"--her imagination carried her away to stately banquet halls, whose walls were covered with rich tapestries, portraying scenes in which ancient personages and strange birds were pictured in the middle of a fairy-like forest. She pictured the glittering silver, strange dishes, exquisitely served on marvelous plate, and gallantries whispered and listened to with the sphinx-like smile with which a woman of the world knows so well how to conceal her emotions, all the while eating a rosy trout or dallying with a wing of a lark. She had no toilets, no jewels, and it was for these things that she longed, as the fleet Arabian longs for his native desert. What pleasure to have pleased, been envied, to be seductive and sought after!

She had a rich friend, a comrade from the convent, whom she no longer visited, because she suffered from seeing the things she could not have, and on returning wept whole days for grief, regret, despair, and distress.

One evening her husband came home radiant, holding in his hand a large envelope.

"See," said he, "here is something for you."

She nervously tore open the envelope, drew out a card, on which these words were printed:

"The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponeau beg the honor of the company of Monsieur and Madame Loisel for the evening of Monday, January 18th."

Instead of being wild with delight, as he had expected, she threw the invitation on the table, with an exclamation of disgust, saying sullenly:

"What do you wish me to do with that?"

"But, my dear, I thought you would be so pleased. You never go out, and this is an event. I only obtained it after infinite trouble. Everybody wants one; they are much sought after, and they are not generally given to employees. You will see there all of the official world."

She looked at him with supreme disdain, and said impatiently:

"What would you like me to wear?" The secret was out. Manlike, he had not thought of that.

"But--the dress--that you wear to the theatre," stammered he. "You always look beautiful to me in that."

He stopped speaking, stupefied and dismayed on seeing his wife in tears. Two large tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.

"What is the matter? What is the matter?" asked he tenderly. By violent effort she conquered her grief and calmly said, while wiping her humid cheeks:

"Nothing; only I have no toilet, and, of course, can not go. Give the card to one of your comrades whose wife is fortunate enough to have something suitable for the occasion."

Despairingly he said:

"See, Mathilde, how much will a dress cost to wear to this ball; one which can also be used for other occasions--something very simple."

She reflected a few moments, figuring in her own mind the sum she could ask without danger of immediate refusal and frightening her economical husband. Finally she hesitatingly said:

"I do not know exactly; but it seems to me I might manage with about 400 francs."

He paled a little, because he had been saving just that sum to buy a gun for the following summer, when he would go with some of his friends to the plains of Nanterre on Sundays to shoot larks. Stifling his regrets, however, he replied:

"Very well, I will give you 400 francs, but try to have a beautiful dress."

The day of the fête drew near; but Madame Loisel seemed sad, anxious, and uneasy. Her toilet was ready, what could it be? Her husband said to her one evening:

"What is the matter? You have been so queer for the last few days!"

She replied: "It worries me that I have not one jewel, not a precious stone to wear. What a miserable figure I shall be! I think I would rather not go at all!"

"You can wear natural flowers; it is all the rage at this season, and for ten francs you can have two or three magnificent roses."

But she was not convinced.

"No; there is nothing more humiliating than to be poorly dressed among so many rich women."

"But how silly you are! Go to your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you her jewels. You are friendly enough with her to do that."

She gave a cry of joy.

"Yes; that is true--I had not thought of it."

The following day she went to her friend and explained her predicament. Madame Forestier went to a closet and took out a large casket, and, opening it, said:

"Choose, my dear; they are at your service."

She saw first bracelets, then a necklace of pearls, a Venetian cross, gold and precious stones of exquisite workmanship. She tried them on before the glass, unable to decide whether to wear them or not.

"Have you nothing else?" said she.

"Oh, yes; look them over, I don't know what might please you."

Suddenly she opened a black satin case, disclosing to view a superb rivière of diamonds, her heart beat furiously with the desire of possession. She took them in her trembling hands and put them on over her simple high-neck gown, and stood lost in an ecstasy of admiration of herself. Then, fearfully, hesitatingly, dreading the agony of a refusal:

"Can you lend me only that?"

"Why, certainly; if it pleases you."

She fell on her friend's neck, embraced her tempestuously, and then left hastily with her treasure.

The day of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. Among all the beautiful women she was the most beautiful, elegant, gracious, and smiling with joy. She attracted the attention of some of the most distinguished men present, and on all sides was heard:

"Who is she?"

All the attachés of the cabinet sought her dancing card eagerly, and even the Minister himself expressed his approval. She danced with pleasure, thinking of nothing but the triumph of her beauty and the glory of her success. Intoxicated by all the admiration, she seemed to float through a cloud of happiness, intensified by her complete victory and the tribute paid to her charms, so sweet to the hearts of women. She left about four o'clock in the morning; her husband had slept since midnight in a small room, deserted except by two or three gentlemen who also awaited their wives.

He threw over her shoulders the modest cloak which she had brought, whose shabbiness seemed to mock the elegance of the ball toilet. She felt the incongruity, and walked swiftly away in order not to be seen by those whose rich furs were more in accordance with the occasion.

"Wait," said her husband, "you will take cold; I will call a carriage."

But she heeded him not, and rapidly descended the staircase. When they reached the street, there was no carriage in sight, and they were obliged to look for one, calling to the drivers who passed by, but in vain. Shiveringly they walked toward the Seine and finally found on the quay one of those nocturnal coupés one finds only in Paris after dark, hovering about the great city like grim birds of prey, who conceal their misery during the day. It carried them to their door (Rue de Martyrs), and they slowly and sadly entered their small apartments. It was ended for her, and he only remembered that he would have to be at his desk at ten o'clock.

She took off her cloak in front of the glass in order to admire herself once more in all her bravery, but, suddenly, she cried out: "The diamonds are gone!" Her husband, almost half asleep, started at the cry and asked:

"What is the matter?"

She turned toward him with a frightened air.

"I--I have lost Madame Forestier's necklace!"

He rose dismayed.

"What--how! But it is not possible!" And they immediately began to search in the folds of the dress, the cloak, in the pockets--everywhere, and found nothing.

"Are you sure that you had it when you left the ball?"

"Yes; I felt it while still in the vestibule at the Minister's."

"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it drop. It ought to be in the carriage."

"Yes; it is possible. Did you take the number?"

"No; and you have not looked at it, either?"

"No."

They looked at each other fearfully; finally Loisel dressed himself.

"I shall go over the whole ground that we traveled on foot, to see whether I can not find it."

He went out. She sat still in her brilliant ball toilet; no desire to sleep, no power to think, all swallowed up in the fear of the calamity which had fallen upon them.

Her husband came in at seven o'clock. He had found nothing. He had been to the Prefecture of the Police, to the papers offering a reward, to all small cab companies, anywhere, in short, where he could have the shadow of hope of recovery.

She waited all day in the same state of fear in the face of this frightful disaster.

Loisel returned in the evening pallid and haggard. No news as yet.

"You must write to your friend that you have broken the clasp of the necklace and are having it repaired. That will give us time to look around."

* * * * *

At the end of the week they had lost all hope, and Loisel, to whom it seemed this care and trouble had added five years to his age, said:

"We must try and replace the jewels."

The following day they went to the jeweler whose name was stamped inside the case. He consulted his books: "I did not sell that necklace, madame, I only furnished the case."

Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, racking their memories to find the same, both of them sick with grief and agony. At last, in a small shop in the Palais Royal, they found one which seemed to them like the one they had lost. With beating hearts they asked the price.

Forty thousand francs; but they could have it for 36,000 francs.

They asked the jeweler not to dispose of it for three days, and he also promised to take it back at 34,000 francs if the first one was found before the end of February.

Loisel had inherited 18,000 francs from his father. He borrowed the rest.

He borrowed a thousand francs from one, five hundred from another, five louis here, five louis there--he gave notes, made ruinous engagements, had recourse to the usurers, ran the whole gamut of money-lenders. He compromised his whole existence risking his signature, without knowing that it would be honored, terrified by the agony of the future, by the black misery which enveloped him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures. He went for the new necklace and deposited on the counter his 36,000 francs.

When Madame Loisel returned the necklace to Madame Forestier, she coldly said:

"You should have returned it sooner, as I might have needed it."

She did not open the case, the one thing Madame Loisel had dreaded. What if she had discovered the change--what would she have thought? Would she not be taken for a thief?

* * * * *

From that time on Madame Loisel knew what life meant to the very poor in all its phases. She took her part heroically. This frightful debt must be paid. Her share of privations was bravely borne. They discharged their one domestic, changed their location, and rented smaller apartments near the roof.

She knew now what meant the duties of the household, the heavy work of the kitchen. Her pretty hands soon lost all semblance of the care of bygone days. She washed the soiled linen and dried it in her room. She went every morning to the street with the refuse of the kitchen, carrying the water, stopping at each flight of stairs to take breath--wearing the dress of the women of the people; she went each day to the grocer, the fruiterer, the butcher, carrying her basket on her arm, bargaining, defending cent by cent her miserable money.

They were obliged each month to pay some notes and renew others in order to gain time. Her husband worked in the evening balancing the books of merchants, and often was busy all night, copying at five cents a page.

And this life they endured for ten years.

At the end of this time they had paid all the tax of the usurers and compound interest.

Madame Loisel seemed an old woman now. She had become strong and hardy as the women of the provinces, and with tousled head, short skirts, red hands, she was foremost among the loud-voiced women of the neighborhood, who passed their time gossiping at their doorsteps.

But sometimes when her husband was at his office she seated herself at the window and thought of that evening in the past and that ball, where she had been so beautiful and so admired.

What would have happened if she had not lost the necklace? Who knows? Life is a singular and changeable thing, full of vicissitudes. How little it takes to save or wreck us!

* * * * *

One Sunday as she was walking in the Champs Elysées to divert herself from the cares and duties of the week she suddenly perceived a lady, with a little child, coming toward her. It was Madame Forestier, still young, beautiful and charming. Madame Loisel stopped short, too agitated to move. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that the necklace was paid for she would tell her everything. Why not?

She walked up to her and said: "Good day, Jeanne."

Madame Forestier did not recognize her and seemed astonished at being spoken to so familiarly by this woman of the people.

"But--madame--I do not--I think you are mistaken."

"No; I am Mathilde Loisel."

"Oh!--my poor Mathilde, how you are changed!"

"Yes; I have had lots of trouble and misery since last I saw you--and all for you."

"For me! And how was that?"

"Do you remember the necklace of diamonds you lent me, to wear to the Minister's ball?"

"Yes; well?"

"Well, I lost it."

"Lost it! How could you, since you returned it to me?"

"I returned you one just like it, and for ten years we have been paying for it. You know, it was not easy for us, who had nothing--but it is finished, and I am very happy."

"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine," said Madame Forestier.

"Yes; and you never found it out! They were so much alike," and she smiled proudly.

Touched to the heart, Madame Forestier took the poor, rough hands in hers, drawing her tenderly toward her, her voice filled with tears:

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine were false. They were not worth more than 500 francs at most."

THE WALL OPPOSITE
BY PIERRE LOTI

_Louis Marie Julien Viaud, known as Pierre Loti, was born at
Rochefort in 1850, of an old Protestant family. He shipped
aboard the "Borda" in 1867, and made many voyages to India
and elsewhere in the East. This young naval officer was so
modest and retiring that his comrades called him "Loti," after
the name of a little flower of India which discreetly hides
itself. In 1891 he was elected to the Academy. His chief works
are "Le Marriage de Loti," 1882, "Madame Chrysanthème," 1887,
"Japoneries d'Automne," "Le Roman d'un Spahi," etc._

_Loti is an impressionist, a personal psychologist--giving
reflections of the passing show, fleeting things. "He has an
exquisite instinct for the preservation of whatever is antique
and beautiful--a Pied Piper who draws his admirers after him
whether they will or no."_

_"The Wall Opposite" is an exquisite bit of symbolism, worthy
to stand, as it does, in the same volume with the author's
"Papillon de Mite."_

THE WALL OPPOSITE
BY PIERRE LOTI

Translated by R. W. Howes, 3d.
Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.

'Way at the farther end of a court they lived, in a modest little suite, the mother, the daughter, and a maternal parent already quite aged--their aunt and great-aunt--whom they had come to shelter.

The daughter was still very young, in the fleeting freshness of her eighteen years, when they were compelled, after a reverse of fortune, to withdraw there into the most secluded corner of their ancestral mansion. The rest of the familiar home, all the bright side that looked out on to the street, it had become necessary to let to some profane strangers, who changed there the aspect of things ancient and obliterated the cherished associations.

A judicial sale had stripped them of the most luxurious furniture of other days, and they had arranged their new little salon of recluses with objects a little incongruous: relics of ancestors, old things brought to light from the garret, the reserves of the house. But they fell in love with it at once, this salon so humble, which must now for years to come, on winter evenings, reunite all three around the same fire and around the same lamp. One found it comfortable there; it had an air cozy and intimate. One felt a little cloistered there, it is true, but without melancholy, for the windows, draped with simple muslin curtains, looked out on to a sunny court, whose walls, 'way at this farther end, were adorned with honeysuckle and roses.

And already were they forgetting the comfort, the luxury of other times, happy in their modest salon, when one day a communication was brought to them which left them in mournful consternation: the neighbor was about to raise his apartment two stories; a wall was going to rise there, in front of their windows, to steal away the air, to hide the sun.

And no means, alas! to turn aside that misfortune, more intimately cruel to their spirits than all the preceding disasters of fortune. To buy that house from their neighbor, a thing that had been easy at the time of their past affluence, was no longer to be dreamed of! Nothing to do, in their poverty, but to bow their heads.

* * * * *

And so the stories began to mount, line upon line; with anxiety they watched them grow; a silence of grief reigned among them, in the little salon, the depth of their melancholy measured day by day by the height of that obscuring object. And to think that that thing there, higher and still higher, would soon replace the background of blue sky or golden clouds, against which in days gone by the wall of their court trailed off in its network of branches!

In one month the masons had achieved their work: it was a glazed surface in freestone, which was next painted a grayish white, resembling almost a twilight sky of November, perpetually opaque, unchangeable and dead; and in the summers following the rose trees, the bushes of the court, took on their green again more palely in its shadow.

Into the salon the warm suns of June and July still penetrated, but more laggardly in the morning, fleeing more hurriedly in the evening; the twilights of autumn fell one hour earlier, bringing abruptly down the dull, chill melancholy.

* * * * *

And the times, the months, the seasons, passed. Between daylight and darkness, at the undecided hours of evening, when the three women left off one after the other their work of embroidery or sewing before lighting the evening lamp, the young daughter--who would soon be no longer young--lifted her eyes ever toward the wall, set up there in place of her sky of yesterday; often, even, in a sort of melancholy childishness that constantly returned to her like the sick fancy of a prisoner, she amused herself in watching from a certain place the branches of the rose trees, the tops of the bushes detach themselves in relief against the grayish background of the painted stones, and sought to give herself the illusion that the background there was a sky, a sky lower and nearer than the real one--after the manner of those who at night hang upon the deformed visions of dreams.

* * * * *

They had in expectation a heritage of which they often spoke around their lamp and their work-table, as of a day-dream, as of a fairy tale, so far away it seemed.

But, as soon as they possess it, that accession from America, at no matter what price, the house of the neighbor shall be bought in order to pull down all that new part, to reestablish things as in times past, and to restore to their court, to restore to their cherished rose bushes of the high walls, the sun of other times. To throw it down, that wall, this had become their sole earthly desire, their continual obsession.

And the old aunt was accustomed to say at such times:

"My dear daughters, may God grant that I live long enough, even I, to see that happy day!"

* * * * *

It tarried long in coming, that heritage.

The rains, and time, had traced on that glazed surface a sort of blackish stripes, melancholy, melancholy to look at, formed like a V, or like the trembling silhouette of a hovering bird. And the young girl contemplated that wearily every day, every day.

* * * * *

Once, in a very warm springtime, which, in spite of the shadow of the wall, made the roses more advanced than usual, and more spreading, a young man appeared at the farther end of that court, took his place for several evenings at the table of the three ladies without fortune. Passing through the village, he had been recommended by some friends in common, not without _arrière-pensée_ of marriage. He was handsome, with a high-spirited face, browned by the great blowings of the seas.

But he judged it too chimerical, that heritage; he found her too poor, the young girl, in whom, besides, the color began to fade for lack of sunlight.

So he departed, without return, he who had represented there for a time the sun, energy, and life. And she who already looked upon herself as his fiancée received from that departure a dumb and secret feeling as of death.

* * * * *

And the monotonous years continued their march, like the impassive rivers; there passed five; there passed ten, fifteen, even twenty. The freshness of the young girl without fortune finished little by little by fading away, useless and disdained; the mother took on some gray hairs; the old aunt became infirm, shaking her head, octogenarian in a faded armchair, forever seated at the same place, near the darkened window, her venerable profile cut out against the foliage of the court below that background of glazed wall where the blackish marbling accentuated itself in the form of a bird, traced by the sluggish gutters.

In the presence of the wall, of the inexorable wall, they grew old all three. And the rose bushes, the shrubs, grew old, too, with the less ominous age of plants, with their airs of rejuvenation at each return of spring.

"Oh! my daughters, my poor daughters," said the aunt continually in her broken voice that no longer finished the phrase, "provided I live long enough, even I."

And her bony hand, with a movement of menace, indicated that oppressive thing of stone.

* * * * *

She had been dead a twelvemonth, leaving a dreadful void in that little salon of recluses, and they had wept over her as the most cherished of grandmothers, when at last the inheritance came, very upsetting, one day when they had ceased longer to think of it.

The aged daughter--forty years struck now--found herself quite young in her joy at entering into possession of the returned fortune.

They drove out the lodgers, you may be sure, they reestablished themselves as before; but by preference they kept themselves ordinarily in the little salon of the days of moderate means: in the first place it was now full of souvenirs, and then besides it was again taking on a sunny cheerfulness, since they were to throw down that imprisoning wall which was to-day no more than a vain scarecrow, so easy to destroy by touch of louis d'or.

* * * * *

It took place at last, that downfall of brick and mortar, longed for during twenty gloomy years. It took place in April, at the moment of the first balmy airs of the first long evenings. Very quickly it was accomplished, in the midst of the noise of falling stones, of singing workmen, in a cloud of plaster and of ancient dust.

And at twilight of the second day, when the work was finished, the workmen gone, silence returned, they found themselves once more sitting at their table, the mother and the daughter, bewildered at seeing so clearly, at having need no longer of the lamp to begin their evening meal. Like a formal visit from familiar days gone by, they contemplated the rose bushes of their court spread out once more against the sky. But instead of the joy they had looked forward to there was at first an indefinable uneasiness: too much light all at once in their little salon, a sort of melancholy splendor, and the feeling of an unaccustomed void out of doors, of limitless change. No words there came to them in presence of the accomplishment of their dream; rapt, the one and the other, held by an ever-increasing melancholy, they remained there without talking, without touching the waiting meal. And little by little, their two hearts pressing still closer, that grew to be a kind of grief, like one of those regrets, dull and without hope, which the dead leave us.

When the mother, at length, perceived that the eyes of her daughter began to grow faded with crying, divining the unexpressed thoughts which must so perfectly resemble her own: "It can be built up again," she says. "It seems to me they can try, can they not, to make it the same again?"

"I, too, thought of that," replied the daughter. "But no, don't you see: _it would never be the same_!"

Mon Dieu! was it possible that such a thing could be; it was she, the very same, who had decreed it, the annihilation of that background of a familiar picture, below which, during one springtime, she had seen in high relief a certain fine face of a young man, and during so many winters the venerable profile of an old aunt dead.

And all at once, at recollection of that vague design in the form of the shadow of a bird, traced there by patient gutters, and which she would see again never, never, never, her heart was suddenly torn in a manner most pitiable; she wept the most melancholy tears of her life before the irreparable destruction of that wall.

THE ANCESTOR

BY CHARLES JOSEPH PAUL BOURGET

_Paul Bourget presents the greatest possible contrast to Anatole France. His style is involved, sentence is fitted into sentence, clothed like Henry James, and altogether un-French. Bourget's psychology, though penetrating, seems rather to clothe his characters than to create them, consequently his novels are long psychological treatises. It was a delight, therefore, to come upon this tale of Bourget's, in which the story is as absorbing as the psychology._

_Bourget was born at Amiens in 1852, and began his literary career, as usual, by writing verses, etc. Besides "Outre Mer," which he published in 1891 after his visit to America, his work consists chiefly of novels, "Mensonges," "Crime d'Amour," "Le Disciple," "Cosmopolis," etc. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1894._

THE ANCESTOR

BY PAUL BOURGET

Translated by V. Quiroga. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.

Alfred Boyer felt very happy that afternoon over the printer's proofs that the mail had just brought him. He could not take his eyes off the page containing the title:

"_Mémoires du Maréchal Frédet Prince d'Augsbourg, Duc d'Ivrea, with notes and introduction by Alfred Boyer, former student of the École de Chartres._" The work to which he had devoted himself during the last two years was nearing completion. His name was going to be associated for ever with that of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," who had begun as volunteer in 1792, and had died of a broken heart after Waterloo.

Need one recall Frédet's heroism in the wars in the North--then too, in the first campaign in Italy, just under the walls of Ivrea, and his brilliant services in Egypt and Germany; how after Ulm, he had surrounded and taken prisoner ten thousand of the enemy at the gates of Augsbourg, with a handful of hussars? Austerlitz, Iéna, Eylau, Wagram, and Spain in turn saw this indefatigable soldier maneuvre his troops with the skill to which the "Mémoires" bore testimony. "I sent Frédet to Catalonia," said the Emperor, "with twenty thousand men. It was like sending fifty thousand. He alone made up the difference."

A very severe wound prevented his joining Napoleon in Russia, he achieved wonders at Dresden, though scarcely reestablished in health, and at Leipzig, where he saved the retreat by checking during several hours, the main body of the Austrian cavalry. Like Ney, and like the Emperor himself, he was one of those who sought death at Waterloo, and whom death would not accept, in spite of prodigies of valor, exalted almost to madness by the despair of the defeat.

When peace was concluded, the veteran shut himself up at Combronde, near Riom, on a small estate that he had acquired in Auvergne, where he had been born. It was there where he commenced to write or rather to dictate his mémoires in a haphazard fashion, following his exalted fancy, accumulating a pile of rather incoherent notes, which had slept in their portfolios for eighty years--from 1821, at which date the old soldier died, until 1900 when his grandson, the present Prince of Augsbourg, had at last decided to publish those papers, a little influenced, it must be admitted, by his need of money. Having a scanty fortune and a very large family--five marriageable daughters--he had been tempted by the success of "Marbot's Mémoires." He summoned from Paris to his little Château of Combes, where the meagreness of his income and his misanthropy kept him prisoner the year round, a young man who was to put in order that mass of documents mostly without shape. That is how Alfred Boyer found himself with a task that developed into a passion. Whatever may be the political value accorded to the Napoleonic legend, its heroic character casts a magic spell that few historians of that fantastic epoch have been able to overthrow. That magic spell had acted so much the more on the young compiler, because the moral figure of Frédet was fully in accord with his military bearing. Among the portraits of those marshals, all equally brilliant, but not equally attractive, his was one of the most pure and exalted. The heroism of the Prince of Augsbourg retained to the last that antique charm that one imagines would have adorned Desaix had he lived long enough. It seems that Frédet never had any ambition for these dignities which his master delighted to shower upon him. When did he have a chance to enjoy them? Bonaparte, who knew men and their value, never ceased for a moment to keep him employed, in peace as well as in war. When he was not fighting, Frédet was an administrator. His proverbial integrity, his gentleness, and--a quality extremely rare in that army sprung from the Revolution--his religious fervor, gave to his countenance the look of a paladin. While he lived it was impossible to come in contact with him without loving him. He disarmed the envy of Marmont, the sour humor of Soult, and warmed the coldness of Macdonald. The writings of these three rivals in glory, give ample proof of it. Dead, his rare personality had just performed a similar miracle of seduction in his memorialist, who gazed as if hypnotized at the first page of the mémoires, and the bulky package of proofs. At that very minute he was living over again the two years of his arduous labor. He saw himself once more, after his thesis had been approved, hesitating between accepting a poorly paid post as librarian in an obscure corner of some province, and the offer that one of his professors had made him, to work on the mémoires of the famous marshal. It was food and lodging assured for some time, a means of becoming known, and of laying aside a few thousand francs with which he could support himself until he could obtain appointment to some good post. Beyond this, Boyer did not know anything about the soldier whose papers he had to classify.

In that old house at Combes, which had remained unchanged during three-quarters of a century, he had commenced to give himself up to that retrospective semi-hallucination known only to those who have a scholarly disposition. Taine has pictured it in that eloquent page, where he describes himself at the archives, following over the yellowed paper the old writings of the men of the Revolution. "I was," he says, "tempted to speak aloud to them." In that poor mansion where the old hero had sheltered himself in his last few days, the walls were covered with relics of his glorious adventures, brought together in confusion; here, swords of honor hung on the wall, next to them some engravings representing feats of arms; there, portraits of the marshal himself, the first Consul, the Emperor, Frédet's chosen companions, among others that of Ney, who had been one of the witnesses to his marriage. Frédet's wife was there, frail and delicate in her rich costume of a court lady, painted by Gérard, in an attitude identical with that of the Duchess of Rovigo, on the edge of a park leaning on a small column ornamented with helmets and cuirasses in high relief. She had survived her husband forty years, and to her piety was due the preservation of the home to which the eldest son of the family had not returned until 1875, after having served in the army and resigned while simple lieutenant-colonel, when another had--unjustly as he maintained--been promoted over him. His carelessness produced at least this advantage, that the species of family museum brought together through the sorrow of the grandmother had remained undisturbed.

In the mean while, that is to say, under the monarchy of July and the Second Empire, the Frédets had lived in Paris; the second Prince of Augsbourg as a peer of France, and then as Senator; the third, the present Prince, as an officer of the staff of Napoleon the Third. Physically the colonel was the living image of his illustrious grandfather. He had the leonine face, the calm and powerful mien, the grave eyes, the serious mouth, and also the athlete's muscles, broad shoulders and powerful neck. There the resemblance stopped. Was it lack of education or opportunity? Did he take morally after some ancestor on the mother's side? His father had married a girl of noble birth, but of that country nobility with whom hunting is the sole hereditary occupation. In his old age it was the only pleasure that seemed to survive in this heir to an illustrious name, the first ambition of a disappointed career.

Alfred Boyer recalled his strange impression during the first weeks of his sojourn when he saw the Prince start out in the early morning, with his gamekeeper and his dogs and not return until nightfall, covered with dust or mud, sunburned or else soaked in rain, according to the weather, his gun on his shoulder, and his game bag bulging with the pheasants hunted during the day. To his five daughters, left at home under the charge of an old aunt, who managed the household for him, this taciturn hunter seemed to give no thought.

They were pretty and refined girls, and if the memorialist had not been a poor pale-faced student, his presence in this isolation with these five young unmarried girls might not have been without danger. But Alfred belonged to that class of timid, intellectual men who have no need of disenchanting experiences to put in practise the advice the fair Venetian gave so amusingly to Rousseau: "Avoid women and study mathematics." Being of a sickly nature, knowing himself awkward and homely, he had early turned into intellectual channels the feverish ardor that young men of his age usually spend in sentimental adventures. His only pleasures were the discoveries of unpublished texts, of ingenious hypotheses on obscure historical points, and the patient conquest of a chair in the Institute by force of erudite publications. The marshal's papers fell in well with this program, and with something more--the poetry of the extraordinary imperial exploit incarnate in one of the most magnificent workers. Thus it was that after having engaged in the work as compiler of records, Alfred Boyer continued as enthusiast, identifying himself with his hero in each episode of his brilliant career, collating the smallest anecdotes about him, claiming for him the first place in all the events in which he had taken part, putting himself at infinite pains to make this great man greater still; possessed by one of those retrospective idolatries at which we can not smile, so disinterested and pathetic are they when their object is a name sunk in misfortune and oblivion, like that of this soldier who had died of the defeat of his master and of France. What a work it was to decipher the piles of notes and documents he had left, to make selection from among the texts, to complete them with commentaries! But those "Mémoires" were at last to appear, all the traits of that noble figure were to shine out in a brilliant light, and the author of this posthumous justice could not gaze enough on the printed characters that would soon shine forth in the cover of the first volume--the complete work would be in four volumes--in the booksellers' shop windows....

The sound of a door opening roused Boyer from his "semihypnotic"[14] trance. He raised his head and sprang suddenly to his feet. It was the Prince of Augsbourg who had just entered the library. Those visits, rare at first, had become more frequent as Alfred Boyer's work advanced. Not that the sportsman had ever ventured to give any advice to the memorialist, who had read to him some of the pages dictated or written by his grandfather--those, more frequently, in which the marshal told of the departure from his paternal roof (he was the son of a physician at Combronde), to join the army--the story of the first battle in which he had taken part, at Hondschoote--that of his last, and his farewell to the Emperor before the charge at Waterloo.

The manner in which he listened to those recitals, his head in his hands, never uttering a word, revealed an intense feeling in the hero's descendant. Evidently an almost religious cult for his ancestor burned in this obscure and wild nature, which Alfred Boyer pitied without quite comprehending. He could see that, overburdened by the weight of a great name, ruined by his father, discontented with his present circumstances, and knowing his inability to alter them, the colonel had fallen into that lethargy of the will in which for some years he had simply vegetated.

He had given up the society of his set, as well as his profession, turning countryman, and since his wife's death had not paid any attention to the small details in personal appearance that, even in the most ordinary surroundings, reveal the man who has been used to good company. It was evident that he loved his daughters, as proved by the sadness with which his eyes would sometimes rest on these pretty children, doomed by their portionless condition to some obscure marriage in that corner of Auvergne. The remnants of his fortune yielded an income of about thirty thousand francs a year. Was that enough to sustain the rank of a prince?

The colonel had said to himself that decadence would be better borne in the solitude of this house peopled with the memories of his grandfather. Thus he had reasoned.

Or at least that was the solution that Alfred Boyer had found in his mind to the enigma presented by that character; and his own constantly increasing cult for the marshal made him sympathize with the homage rendered by abdication to that ruinous heritage. The grandson felt the glory of the grandfather. That was enough to make the enthusiastic compiler of the "Mémoires" feel himself in sympathy with his taciturn patron, and on this occasion he felt keen pleasure at seeing him enter the library. He would show him the proofs just arrived by the courier. He welcomed the newcomer, and, handing to him the proofs, he said:

"I was just going to ask you to receive me, Prince. Our first volume is printed."