Chapter III: Part 3

And do you know what happened the next day? Tistet Védène exchanged his old yellow jacket for a beautiful vestment of lace, a violet silk hood, and buckled shoes; and he entered the household of the Pope, where never before had any been received but sons of nobles and nephews of cardinals. There is an intrigue for you! But Tistet did not stop there.

Once in the service of the Pope, the rascal continued the game which had succeeded so well. Insolent with everyone else, he had nothing but attention, nothing but provident care for the mule; and one was always meeting him about the palace court with a handful of oats or a bunch of clover, whose rosy clusters he shook gently and glanced at the balcony of Saint Peter as if to say: “Ha! for whom is this?” And so it went on until the good Pope, who felt that he was growing old, ended by leaving it to him to watch over the stable and to carry to the mule her bowl of wine _à la Française_--which was no laughing matter for the cardinals.

No more was it for the mule--it did not make her laugh. Now, at the hour for her wine, she always saw coming to her stable five or six little clerks of the household, who hastily buried themselves in the straw with their hoods and their laces; then, after a moment, a delicious warm odor of caramel and spices filled the stable, and Tistet Védène appeared carefully carrying the bowl of wine _à la Française_. Then the martyrdom of the poor beast began.

That perfumed wine which she loved so well, which kept her warm, which gave her wings, they had the cruelty to place before her, there in her manger, and let her sniff it; then, when she had her nostrils full of it, it was gone--that lovely rose-flamed liquor all went down the gullets of those good-for-nothings. And yet if they had only stopped at taking her wine; but they were like devils, all these little clerks, when they had drunken. One pulled her ears, another her tail; Quinquet mounted himself upon her back, Béluguet tried his cap on her, and not one of those little scamps reflected that with a single good kick that excellent beast could have sent them all into the polar star, and even farther. But no! It is no vain thing to be the Pope’s mule, the mule of benedictions and indulgences. The children went blithely on, she did not get angry; and it was only against Tistet Védène that she bore malice. But that fellow, for instance, when she felt him behind her, her hoof itched, and truly she had excellent reason. That ne’er-do-well of a Tistet played her such villainous tricks! He had such cruel fancies after drinking!

One day he took it into his head to make her climb up with him into the clock tower, all the way up to the very top of the palace! And it is no myth that I am telling you--two hundred thousand Provençals saw it. Imagine for yourself the terror of that unhappy mule when, after having for a whole hour twisted like a snail blindly up the staircase, and having clambered up I know not how many steps, she found herself all at once on a platform dazzling with light, and saw, a thousand feet beneath her, a fantastic Avignon: the market booths no larger than walnuts, the papal soldiers before their barracks like red ants, and farther down, over a silver thread, a microscopically little bridge on which the people danced and danced. Ah! poor beast! What panic! At the bray she uttered all the windows of the palace trembled.

“What’s the matter? What are they doing to her?” cried the good Pope, and rushed out upon the balcony.

Tistet Védène was already in the courtyard, pretending to weep and tear out his hair.

“Ah! Holy Father, what is the matter? There is your mule.... _Mon Dieu!_ what will happen to us! Your mule has gone up into the belfry!”

“All by herself?”

“Yes, Holy Father, all by herself. Stay! Look there, up high. Don’t you see her ears waving? They look like two swallows.”

“Mercy on us!” cried the poor Pope on raising his eyes. “But she must have gone mad! Why, she will kill herself. Will you come down, you unhappy creature!”

_Pécaïre!_ She could have asked nothing better than to come down; but how? The stairs--they were not to be thought of: one could mount those things, but as to coming down, one could break one’s legs a hundred times. And the poor mule was disconsolate; but as she roamed about the platform with her great eyes filled with vertigo she thought of Tistet Védène.

“Ah, bandit, if I escape--what a kick tomorrow morning!”

That idea of a kick restored a little courage to her heart; except for that she could not have held out. At last they succeeded in getting her down, but it was not an easy affair. They had to lower her in a litter, with ropes and windlass, and you may imagine what a humiliation it must have been for a Pope’s mule to see herself hanging at that height, afloat with her legs in the air like a beetle at the end of a string. And all Avignon looking on!

The unhappy beast did not sleep that night. It seemed to her as though she were forever turning upon that accursed platform, with the laughter of the city below. Then she thought of that infamous Tistet Védène, and of the delightful kick that she proposed to turn loose the next morning. Ah, my friends, what a kick! They could see the smoke at Pampérigouste.

But, while this pretty reception was being prepared for him at the stable, do you know what Tistet Védène was doing? He was going singing down the Rhône on one of the papal galleys, on his way to the Court of Naples with a company of young nobles whom the city sent every year to Queen Joanna for exercise in diplomacy and in manners. Tistet was not of noble birth; but the Pope desired to recompense him for what he had done for his mule, and above all for the activity he had shown throughout the day of the rescue.

It was the mule who was disappointed the next day!

“Ah, the bandit! He suspected something!” she thought as she shook her bells in fury. “But it’s all the same; go, scoundrel! You will find it waiting for you on your return, that kick--I’ll save it for you!”

And she did save it.

After the departure of Tistet, the Pope’s mule once more found her course of tranquil life and her former habits. Neither Quinquet nor Béluguet came again to her stable. The delightful days of wine _à la Française_ had returned, and with them good-humor, the long siestas, and the little prancing step when she crossed the Avignon bridge. However, since her adventure she was always shown a slight coldness in the city. Folks whispered together as she passed; the old people shook their heads, the children laughed as they pointed to the belfry. Even the good Pope had no longer quite the same confidence in his friend, and whenever he permitted himself to take a little nap on her back on Sundays on returning from his vineyard, this thought always came to him: “What if I should awake 'way up there on the platform!” The mule discerned this and suffered, without saying a word; only, when any one near her mentioned the name of Tistet Védène, her long ears quivered, and with a little laugh she would sharpen the iron of her shoes on the paving.

Seven years passed thus; then at the end of those seven years Tistet Védène returned from the Court of Naples. His time there was not at an end; but he had learned that the Pope’s chief mustard-bearer had died suddenly at Avignon, and, since the post suited him well, he had come in great haste in order to apply for it.

When that intriguer of a Védène entered into the great hall of the palace, the Holy Father had difficulty in recognizing him, so tall had he grown, and stout of body. It must be said, too, that the worthy Pope had grown old and could no longer see well without spectacles.

Tistet was not frightened.

“What, Holy Father, you do not remember me any more? It is I, Tistet Védène!”

“Védène?”

“Why, yes, you know very well--the one who used to carry the wine _à la Française_ to your mule.”

“Oh--yes--yes--I remember. A good little fellow, that Tistet Védène! And now, what is it that he wants of us?”

“Oh, a very little thing, Holy Father. I came to ask you--by the way, do you still have your mule? And is she well? Ah, so much the better! I came to ask of you the post of the chief mustard-bearer, who has just died.”

“First mustard-bearer, you! Why, you are too young. How old are you, then?”

“Twenty years two months, illustrious Pontiff, just five years older than your mule. Ah! that excellent creature! If you only knew how I loved that mule! How I languished for her in Italy! Are you not going to let me see her?”

“Yes, my child, you shall see her,” said the good Pope, deeply moved. “And since you loved her so much, that excellent animal, I do not wish you to live apart from her. From this day, I attach you to my person as chief mustard-bearer. My cardinals will raise an outcry, but so much the worse! I am used to it. Come to meet us tomorrow as we return from vespers, we will deliver to you the insignia of your office in the presence of our chapter, and then--I will take you to see the mule, and you shall come to the vineyard with us two--ha! ha! Go along, now!”

If Tistet Védène was content upon leaving the grand hall, I need not tell you with what impatience he awaited the ceremony of the next day. Meanwhile, they had some one in the palace who was still more happy and more impatient than he: it was the mule. From the time of Védène’s return, until vespers on the following day, the terrible creature did not cease cramming herself with oats and kicking at the wall with her hind feet. She too was preparing herself for the ceremony.

Accordingly, on the morrow, when vespers had been said, Tistet Védène made his entrance into the courtyard of the papal palace. All the high clergy were there--the cardinals in red robes, the advocate of the devil in black velvet, the convent abbés with their little mitres, the church-wardens of the Saint-Agrico, the violet hoods of the members of the household, the lesser clergy also, the papal soldiers in full uniform, the three brotherhoods of penitents, the hermits from Mount Ventoux with their ferocious eyes and the little clerk who walks behind them carrying the bell, the Flagellant Brothers, naked to the waist, the blond sacristans in robes like judges--all, all, down to those who pass the holy water, and he who lights and he who extinguishes the candles--not one was missing. Ah! That was a beautiful installation, with bells, fireworks, sunlight, music, and, as always, those mad tambourine players who led the dance down by the Avignon Bridge.

When Védène appeared in the midst of the assemblage, his imposing deportment and fine appearance called forth a murmur of approbation. He was a magnificent Provençal of the blond type, with long hair curled at the ends and a small unruly beard which resembled the shavings of fine metal from the graving tool of his father, the carver of gold. The report was current that the fingers of Queen Joanna had now and then toyed with that blond beard; and the Sire de Védène had in truth the haughty air and the absent look of those whom queens have loved. That day, to do honor to his nation, he had replaced his Neapolitan garb by a jacket bordered with color-of-rose, in the Provençal fashion, and in his hood trembled a great plume of the Camargue ibis.

As soon as he had entered, the first mustard-bearer bowed with a gallant air, and directed his steps toward the grand dais, where the Pope awaited him in order to deliver to him the insignia of his office: the yellow wooden spoon and the saffron-colored coat. The mule was at the foot of the staircase, all caparisoned and ready to depart for the vineyard. When he passed her, Tistet Védène had a pleasant smile and paused to give her two or three friendly pats upon the back, looking out of the corner of his eye to see if the Pope noticed him. The situation was admirable. The mule let fly:

“There! You are trapped, bandit! For seven years I have saved that for you!”

And she let loose a kick so terrible, so terrible that at Pampérigouste itself one could see the smoke: a cloud of blond smoke in which fluttered an ibis plume--all that was left of the ill-fated Tistet Védène.

Mules’ kicks are not ordinarily so appalling; but then this was a papal mule; and besides, think of it! she had saved it up for seven years. There is no finer example of an ecclesiastical grudge.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The County of Avignon.

PROSPER MÉRIMÉE, IMPERSONAL ANALYST

Among French masters of the short-story, Prosper Mérimée easily holds rank in the first group. Both personality and genius are his, and both well repay scrutiny.

Stendhal has given us a picture of Mérimée as a “young man in a gray frock-coat, very ugly, and with a turned-up nose.... This young man had something insolent and extremely unpleasant about him. His eyes, small and without expression, had always the same look, and this look was ill-natured.... Such was my first impression of the best of my present friends.”

An examination of at least eight several portraits of Mérimée indicates that Stendhal’s picture is far from flattering, yet no one ever charged Mérimée with being pretty.

Our author was born in Paris, September 28, 1803. His father, Jean François, was a cultivated artist and a writer of some ability. While professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, the elder Mérimée married Anne Moreau, a pupil. She was a successful painter of children, and often kept them in quiet pose by telling them stories. Her grandmother, Madame de Beaumont, had long before endeared herself to children of all time by writing “Beauty and the Beast.” The Mérimée home naturally attracted the artists and celebrities of many lands, so that Prosper was reared in an air of refinement and inspiration.

Versatile from childhood, Mérimée took to drawing like a fine-arts pupil, passed through college, was successful in his law examinations, and at an early age took up literature as a vocation.

His career was seconded by many journeys abroad, where he served his country particularly as man of letters, art critic, and archæologist. At home he received important public recognition, notably membership in the French Academy and appointment as a Senator of France. This latter honor evidenced the warm personal esteem of the Empress Eugénie, whom he had known as a girl in Spain, and at whose court--in the reign of Napoleon III--he was received as an intimate rather than as a courtier. Notwithstanding his reticence, everywhere his friends were many and distinguished, for scarcely any other Frenchman ever labored so brilliantly in capacities collateral with literature and yet attained to such a pinnacle of many-sided authorship. He died at Cannes, September 23, 1870, lacking five days of rounding out his sixty-seventh year.

Those who would know somewhat of Mérimée’s spirit must read his _Letters to an Unknown Woman_--letters covering thirty-nine years of his life. For the first nine years the correspondents never met, but when at length they did, it was to love; and though during the succeeding thirty years the affection cooled, there never failed a solid attachment, and the last letter to his _Inconnue_ was penned but two hours before his death. True, in these epistles the author is always the literary artist expressing the moods of a man and a lover, and so is never to be taken quite unawares, yet all his traits are disclosed with sufficient openness to show the real man.

And this real man, who was he? An alert student of history, who yet was so fascinated by its anecdotal phases that he cared not at all for the large philosophy of events in sequence; a linguist who early delved into Greek and Latin, knew English well enough to memorize long passages from the poets, spoke Castilian Spanish as well as several dialects, and translated Russian--Pushkin, Gogol, and Turgenieff--with rare ability; an epicure in travel, keen for the curious and the novel; a connoisseur in art and archæology of sufficient distinction to warrant his appointment as the national “Inspector of Monuments;” a prejudiced scorner of priests and religion, yet bitterly distrustful of his own inner light; an orderly man, systematic even in his indulgences; a pagan in refined sensualism, which he always checked before its claims impinged too largely upon other domains; an aloof spirit, ironical and cold, yet capable of the warm friendship that made Stendhal happy for two days by receiving one of Mérimée’s letters, constant enough to pour out his best at the feet of his Unknown for more than half a lifetime, and so gentle as to crave with the tender heart of a father the love of little children.

The sum of all this is Enigma. We are not sure which is the real man; but this we know: his was a tender, susceptible heart beating under an outer garment of ironical coldness. To love deeply was to endure pain, to follow impulse was to court trouble, to cherish enthusiasms was to delude the mind--so he schooled himself to appear impassive and blasé. How much of this frosty withdrawal was genuine and how much a protective mask, no man can say.

Mérimée’s literary methods reflected his singularly composite personality, yet the author is not apparent in his work. He delighted to tell his tales in the impersonal, matter-of-fact manner of the casual traveller who had picked up a good story and passed it on just as it was told to him.

“They contain,” writes Professor Van Steenderen, “no lengthy descriptions. There are no reflections, dissertations, or explanations in them. They bring out in relief only the permanent features of a given situation, features interesting and intelligible to men of other ages and climes. They are lucid and well constructed. Their plots turn about a simple action with unique effect. Their style is alert, urbane, discreet, and rich, seeking its effect only through concrete and simple means. They deal but very slightly with lyrical emotion, they deal with passions and the will.”

Mérimée’s literary career began at the age of twenty-two, when he published a collection of eight of his short plays purporting to be translated from the Spanish. His portrait, disguised as a Spanish actress, serves as a frontispiece. He perpetuated a similar hoax two years later when he issued a volume of pseudo-Illyrian poems, “translated into French.” These brilliant jokes gulled the literary world as completely as did Chatterton.

His historical fiction, pure history, dramas, criticisms, essays, and works on art and archæology, we must pass. His shorter fiction claims attention now.

“Colomba”--a novelette in length, but a long short-story in structure--is the story of a Corsican vendetta, followed to the end by the heroine (from whom the story takes its title) with a wild ferocity tempered with a queer sort of piety. Mérimée’s fatalism underlies the whole--circumstances control the will, chance decides the brigand or the benefactor, virtue and crime are mere accidents.

When Mérimée published “Colomba,” in 1840, he was at the height of his genius, and notwithstanding the enervating philosophy in which the romance is steeped, it remains one of the most powerfully dramatic stories ever written--both terrible and sweet.

Of his twenty-some briefer fictions--mostly tales in form--eight at least are brilliant examples of the story-teller’s art, and all show marks of distinction. Six were published in one fruitful year--1829: “Mateo Falcone,” “The Vision of Charles XI,” “The Taking of the Redoubt,” “Tamango,” “Federigo,” and “The Pearl of Toledo.”

“Tamango” is a fine specimen of Mérimée’s artistic irony, yet underneath are compassion, and hatred of injustice. As does most of the author’s work, this tale reveals his tendency to tragedy, even his love for picturing the gruesome. There is in all literature no more terrible picture of the slave-trade and its revolting consequent evils.

“Mateo Falcone” is a technically perfect short-story. Mateo is a well-to-do sheep-raiser living in the plateau country of Corsica, whose thickets were often the resort of fugitives from justice. One day Mateo and his wife set out early to visit one of their flocks, leaving the little son, Fortunato, at home. Several hours later a bandit, limping painfully from a wound received from the pursuing soldiery, claims sanctuary as a Corsican and protection because of his friendship for Mateo. Fortunato hesitates, but at sight of a five-franc piece hides the man under a haystack. Soon the soldiers come, but threats cannot make the boy betray the bandit. A silver watch, however, proves an effective bribe. Just as the wounded bandit is dragged from the haystack, Mateo returns and learns the truth. When the soldiers have gone, bearing their contemptuous prisoner on a litter, the father takes out little Fortunato and, after giving him time to say a final prayer, shoots him as the first traitor in the family.

This, says Walter Pater, is “perhaps the cruellest story in the world.” But it is not all cruelty. So skilfully, so sincerely, does the narrator make us feel the whole spirit of the scene, the people, the crisis, that we are prepared to witness the awful penalty for violating the Corsican code of sanctuary. But oh, the hopelessness of that mother, as she stoically, yet with breaking heart, sees the inevitable tragedy closing in upon those whom she loves!

“The Venus of Ille” the author thought to be his best story. It is notable--as all of Mérimeé’s stories are--for its perfect local color, as well as for its subtle air of the weird. It is one of the classic “ghost” stories of the world--a tale of supreme distinction. It is also, structurally, the author’s most perfect short-story.

M. de Peyrehorade unearths a bronze statue of a woman, which is thereafter known as The Venus of Ille. From the beginning this statue is feared by the peasantry, for when it was dug up it fell upon and broke the leg of a workman. Peyrehorade’s son Alphonse is betrothed to a wealthy girl. On their wedding day, while playing tennis, he removes from his hand the bride’s diamond ring and places it on the finger of the statue. On arriving at the home of the bride-to-be, he discovers the absence of the ring, but replaces it with another, without mentioning the incident. After the wedding he returns with his bride to his father’s home and tries to remove the ring from the hand of the Venus; but her fingers are now bent and he cannot. That night the terrified bride hears the Venus enter their bed-chamber and lie down beside her. Thinking it to be her husband, she makes no comment. But presently the husband does come in and lies down upon the bed. Whereupon the bronze Venus crushes him to death in her embrace and then moves away as she came.

In “Arsene Guillot” (1844), Mérimée’s masterpiece of pathos, he has given freer rein to his sympathies, and the result is a tenderly moving tale illustrating the virtue of tolerance.

In early manhood Mérimée spent long stretches in Spain, there absorbing rich material for his stories. “Carmen”--the story on which Bizet founded his opera--is the greatest of these. It was published in 1845, and in length is almost a novelette.

Don José Lizzarrabengoa, Navarrese, and corporal in a cavalry regiment, meets at Seville the gypsy, Carmen. While taking her to prison for a murderous assault on another woman, he is induced to connive at her escape, and is punished by being reduced to the ranks. Through jealous infatuation for her, he kills his lieutenant, and joins a band of smugglers of which Carmen is the leading spirit. In a duel with Garcia, her _rom_, or husband, Don José kills Garcia, and becomes in his turn the _rom_ of the fascinating gypsy. Jealous of every man who sees her, Don José offers to forget everything if she will go with him to America. She refuses--for the sake of another lover, as he believes--and he threatens to kill her if she persists. She answers that it is so written, and that she has long known it, but that “free Carmen has been, and free she will always be.” Don José does kill her, buries her in the woods, and rides to Cordova, where he delivers himself to the authorities.

But it is now time to look particularly at one of Mérimée’s earlier tales--written when he was but twenty-six--“The Taking of the Redoubt.”

Technically it is a tale, with the picture-phrases of the sketch. It is a marvellous brief story rather than a marvellous short-story, which, as I have before remarked, must exhibit more plot, more complication, with its consequent dénouement, than is found in either the tale or the sketch. As a work of art, it ranks with the author’s most vivid stories. In the memorable phrase of Walter Pater, “Seldom or never has the mere pen of a writer taken us so close to the cannon’s mouth.”

Before reading the story itself in translation, some explanatory words may be helpful. It is interesting to note the device which Mérimée uses to add reality to his narrative--he tells us that the story, the characters, the place, the fight, are real. Even those who stand in the wings, flitting across the stage but once as if to say, “I am flesh and blood, and not a mere stuffed figure like the doll whose only pains were in her sawdust”--even they have names and personalities dimly veiled under the initial and the dash.

Mérimée’s friend, the “military man” from whom he got the story, is Henri Marie Beyle--who called himself de Stendhal. Stendhal was a somewhat prolific author, but it was _La Chartreuse de Parme_ (1839) that brought him fame. As a romantic tragi-comedy, dealing with Italy in the Napoleonic era, it is worth a reading, but particularly because the so-called _Épisode de Waterloo_ (in chapters 3 and 4) reveals the measurable debt which Mérimée owed to his friend.

Stendhal was indeed “a military man.” He first smelled powder in the Marengo campaign (1800), and served long in Napoleon’s armies. But he was actually present in 1812 at the assault upon Cheverino, in the Moscow campaign, and doubtless he afterward poured its dramatic story red-hot into the soul of Mérimée.

In another detail also Mérimée departs from fact--Stendhal died in Paris in 1842 of apoplexy, and not of “a fever in Greece;” but surely that is a mild variation for a fictionist. “The 4th September” is also true to the actual, since the battle of Borodino took place on the 7th, and the arrival at Moscow on the 14th, 1812. “General B----” is General Berthier, chief-of-staff for Napoleon in the Moscow campaign. “Madame de B----” has been identified as Madame de Boigne, the intimate of Madame Récamier, and a resident of the rue de Provence. In her salon Mérimée read aloud many of his stories before publication. Other critics suggest that “Madame B----” is Madame (la comtesse) de Beaulaincourt, and support this contention by referring to a collection of eleven letters addressed to this noble dame by Mérimée, and later published. Finally, “General C----” is that famous Napoleonic soldier, Jean Dominique Compans, who actually commanded the 57th and the 61st regiments at Cheverino.

But a volume might be written on the art of this master story-teller, on the life-experiences from which he drew his plots, and on the glowing praises which his work has called forth for three-quarters of a century. Doubtless, however, his own work will now serve better than further pages of introduction.

THE TAKING OF THE REDOUBT
(_L’ENLÈVEMENT DE LA REDOUTE_)

By Prosper Mérimée

_Done into English by the Editor_

A friend of mine, a military man, who died of a fever some years ago in Greece, described for me one day the first engagement in which he had taken part. His recital so struck me that I wrote it from memory as soon as I had the leisure. Here it is:

I joined the regiment the 4th September at evening. I found the colonel in the camp. He received me rather bruskly; but after having read the letter of recommendation from General B---- he changed his manner and spoke to me a few courteous words.

I was presented by him to my captain, who had returned at that instant from a reconnoissance. This captain, with whom I had had scarcely time to become acquainted, was a tall, dark man, of hard, repellent visage. He had been a private, and had won his epaulets and his cross upon the field of battle. His voice, which was hoarse and feeble, contrasted singularly with his almost gigantic stature. They told me he owed that strange voice to a ball which had pierced him through and through at the battle of Jena.

On learning that I had just left the school at Fontainebleau, he made a grimace and said:

“My lieutenant died yesterday.”

I understood that he meant to say, “It is you who must take his place, and you are not capable of it.” A sharp retort leaped to my lips, but I contained myself.

The moon was rising behind the redoubt of Cheverino, which was situated two cannon-shots from our bivouac. She was large and red, as usual at her rising. But, on this evening, she seemed to be of extraordinary grandeur. For one instant the redoubt stood out sharply in black against the glittering disk of the moon. It resembled the cone of a volcano at the moment of eruption.

An old soldier, beside whom I found myself, remarked upon the color of the moon.

“She is very red,” said he; “it’s a sign that it will cost us dear to take that famous redoubt!”

I have always been superstitious, and that augury, above all at that moment, affected me. I sought my couch, but I was not able to sleep. I arose, and for some time I walked, watching the immense line of fires which covered the heights above the village of Cheverino.

When I believed that the fresh and sharp air of the night had sufficiently cooled my blood, I returned to the fire; I enveloped myself carefully in my mantle, and I closed my eyes, hoping not to open them before day. But slumber refused to come. Insensibly my thoughts took on a doleful hue. I told myself that I had not one friend among the hundred thousand men who covered that plain. If I were wounded, I should be in a hospital, treated without regard by ignorant surgeons. All that I had heard said of surgical operations recurred to my memory. My heart thumped with violence, and mechanically I arranged like a kind of cuirass the handkerchief and the portfolio I had in my bosom. Weariness overwhelmed me, I nodded every instant, and every instant some sinister idea reproduced itself with renewed force and startled me out of my sleep.

However, fatigue carried the day, and when they beat the reveille, I was sound asleep. We were drawn up in battle array, the roll was called, then we stacked arms, and everything indicated that we should pass a tranquil day.

About three o’clock, an aide-de-camp arrived, bringing an order. We were ordered to take up arms again; our skirmishers spread themselves over the plain; we followed slowly, and in about twenty minutes we saw all the Russian advance-posts fall back and reënter the redoubt.

One battery of artillery was established on our right, another at our left, but both well in advance of us. They opened a very lively fire upon the enemy, who replied vigorously, and soon the redoubt of Cheverino disappeared under the dense clouds of smoke.

Our regiment was almost covered from the Russian fire by a rise of ground. Their bullets, rarely aimed at us (for they preferred to fire at our gunners), passed over our heads, or at worst showered us with earth and little stones.

As soon as we had received the order to march forward, my captain looked at me with an attention which obliged me to pass my hand two or three times over my youthful mustache with an air as unconcerned as was possible to me. In truth, I was not frightened, and the sole fear that I experienced was lest he should imagine that I was afraid. The harmless bullets contributed still more to maintain me in my heroic calm. My self-esteem told me that I was going into real danger, since at last I was under battery fire. I was enchanted to be so at my ease, and I dreamed with pleasure of telling in the salon of Madame B----, rue de Provence, how the redoubt of Cheverino was taken.

The colonel passed before our company; he said to me: “Well, you are going to have hot work for your début.”

I smiled with a perfectly martial air as I brushed the sleeve of my coat, on which a bullet that had struck the earth thirty yards away had cast a little dust.

It appeared that the Russians had observed the ill success of their cannon-balls; for they replaced them with shells, which could more easily reach us in the hollow where we were posted. One rather big explosion knocked off my shako, and killed a man near me.

“My compliments,” said the captain, as I picked up my shako. “You are safe now for the day.” I knew that military superstition which believes that the axiom, _non his in idem_[12], finds its application on a field of battle as in a court of justice. I jauntily replaced my shako.

“That is making a man salute, without ceremony,” I said, as gaily as I could. That bad joke, in the circumstances, seemed excellent.

“I felicitate you,” responded the captain. “You will get nothing worse, and to-night you will command a company; for well I know that the oven is being heated for me. Every time that I have been wounded the officer nearest me[13] has been touched by a spent ball, and,” he added, in a lower tone, and almost as though ashamed, “their names always commenced with a P.”

I pretended to feel brave; many persons would have done as I did; many persons too would have been as deeply impressed by those prophetic words. Conscript as I was, I realized that I could not confide my sentiments to any one, and that I must always appear coolly intrepid.

After about a half-hour, the Russian fire diminished perceptibly; whereupon we sallied from our cover to march upon the redoubt.

Our regiment was composed of three battalions. The second was ordered to turn the redoubt on the side of the entrance; the two others were to make the assault. I was in the third battalion.

In coming out from behind the species of ridge which had protected us, we were received by several discharges of musketry which did but little damage in our ranks. The whistling of the balls surprised me: often I turned my head, and so drew upon myself divers pleasantries on the part of my comrades who were more familiar with that sound.

“Take it all in all,” I said to myself, “a battle is not such a terrible matter.”

We advanced in double-time, preceded by skirmishers: all at once the Russians gave three hurrahs--three distinct hurrahs--then remained silent, and without firing.

“I don’t like this silence,” said my captain. “It bodes no good for us.”

I thought that our men were a trifle too noisy, and I could not help mentally comparing their tumultuous clamor with the imposing silence of the enemy.

We quickly attained the foot of the redoubt; the palisades had been shattered, and the earth ploughed up by our balls. The soldiers rushed upon these new ruins with cries of “_Vive l’Empereur!_” with more vigor than one would have expected to hear from men who had already cheered so much.

I raised my eyes, and never shall I forget the spectacle that I saw. Most of the smoke had lifted and remained suspended like a canopy about twenty feet above the redoubt. Through a bluish vapor, behind their half-ruined parapet, one could descry the Russian grenadiers, firearms raised, immobile as statues. I think I can see each soldier yet, the left eye fastened upon us, the right hidden behind his levelled musket. In an embrasure, a few feet from us, a man holding a lighted fuse stood beside a cannon.

I shuddered, and I believed that my last hour had come.

“The dance is about to commence,” cried out my captain. “Good-night!”

These were the last words that I heard him utter.

A roll of drums resounded within the redoubt. I saw every musket lowered. I closed my eyes, and I heard an appalling crash, followed by cries and groans. I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself still living. The redoubt was anew enveloped in smoke. I was surrounded with the bleeding and the dead. My captain was stretched out at my feet: his head had been crushed by a bullet, and I was covered with his brains and his blood. Of all my company none remained but six men and me.

To this carnage succeeded a moment of stupor. The colonel, putting his hat on the point of his sword, was the first to scale the parapet, crying: “_Vive l’Empereur!_” He was followed instantly by all the survivors. I do not remember clearly just what followed. We entered within the redoubt, how I do not know. We fought body to body amid a smoke so dense that we could not see one another. I believe that I smote, for I found my sabre was all bloody. At last I heard the cry, “Victory!” and, the smoke diminishing, I saw blood and dead bodies completely covering the earthworks of the redoubt. The cannons especially were buried beneath piles of corpses. About two hundred men, in the French uniform, were grouped without order, some loading their muskets, others wiping their bayonets. Eleven hundred Russian prisoners were with them.

The colonel was lying all covered with blood upon a broken caisson near the entrance. Several soldiers bestirred themselves around him: I approached.

“Where is the senior captain?” he inquired of a sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders in a manner most expressive.

“And the senior lieutenant?”

“This gentleman here, who arrived yesterday,” said the sergeant, in a perfectly calm tone.

The colonel smiled bitterly.

“Come, sir,” he said to me, “you are now in chief command; promptly fortify the entrance of the redoubt with these wagons, for the enemy is in force; but General C---- will see that you are sustained.”

“Colonel,” I said to him, “you are severely wounded?”

“Pish, my dear fellow, but the redoubt is taken!”

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Latin: not twice in the same (place).

[13] In rank.

PIERRE LOTI, COLORIST

Pierre Loti is a cosmopolitan. Halévy was a Parisian, Maupassant was a Norman acclimated to the habitudes of Paris, and Daudet carried with him throughout all his experiences in the French capital the dreamy soul of Provence; but Loti is essentially a modern. Man of the world, not alone by temperament but by reason of wide journeyings afield and minglings with men and women of all lands, he typifies the spirit of to-day in French literature as few other writers have done. He is a poetic idealist, or, perhaps more precisely, an idealistic realist, writing at a time when realism was most potent in France.

The externals of Loti’s life are soon recounted. Louis Marie Julien Viaud was born in Rochefort, January 14, 1850, the same year that gave Maupassant to the world of art. The name “Loti” is an invented derivative of that seductive tropical flower, the lotus, and therefore was not his by inheritance, but the affectionate gift of his South Sea enchantress, Queen Pomaré, of Tahiti, when the young naval officer visited the island in 1872.

The frail, prim, sensitive child described with so much self-insight in his autobiographic _Le Roman d’un enfant_ not only inbreathed his love for the sea in salt-scented Rochefort, but dreamed incessantly of the far-off lands he was destined to visit. These visions were stimulated, if not inspired, by early reading, and by the letters of an older brother who had long been in the navy. So at seventeen we naturally find him a midshipman, and in due course ensign and lieutenant, serving with distinguished bravery--as his Cross of the Legion of Honor testifies--in the Tonquin campaign, when France must needs re-subdue her protectorates in Asia.

M. Loti’s later life has been spent mostly ashore, serving in the Admiralty, yet the cravings of boyhood have been indulged so often as might be, and foreign lands, by preference oriental, visited year by year.

In 1891 M. Loti was elected to that all-coveted distinction, membership in the Academy, where he occupies the chair once honored by Racine and Scribe.

Loti’s portraits show us a Gallic face, a short, pointed beard, tired, melancholy eyes, and a general air of earnestness not quite substantiated by his pleasure-loving life. In stature somewhat below medium height, in form slender, he early gave himself to those bodily exercises which once caused a professional acrobat to wonder why our author had not begun his gymnastics early enough to turn his steel-like muscles to spectacular account!

So much for the more patent facts of his life. But how to make just presentment of his mental and spiritual traits I do not know, for the task gave pause even to Loti himself.

He never learned to write; his gift was native. With reading he had at first small commerce, preferring to turn page after page in human hearts, and to read deep in the tome of his own nature of bewildering variety. A composite is Loti--almost a chameleon, not only entering into the multi-life of lands and peoples where he chances to sojourn, but taking on their colors, and even their garbs and customs. But of this somewhat more in due order.

Here is a character inextricable from his work, much of which is autobiographical, since in most of his twenty-seven volumes the author himself appears either thinly disguised under some sobriquet, or frankly named in _propria persona_. So while we are at no time at a loss for material wherewith to make up an estimate, this material is both embarrassingly rich and--contradictory. Still, no one can mistake the main-travelled roads in this life, they are bold and distinct.

Loti wrote little verse, but he was a poet. He moved in the upper layers of feeling--feeling for nature, for animals, for man, for woman--and always he was the idealistic, though not the ideal lover. His sympathies were positively unquenchable, and each new passion found him fresh, tender, elemental--and as sincere as the temporary lover can be. In elemental, primitive folk he found his personal loves and his fictive characters; in the death of a little bird or in the lives of two cats he centred a genuine interest; in the moods of the uncompassed sea he felt a vast concern.

Inevitably, the religious life of such a temperament would not be constant: Protestantism the Huguenot youth found to be cold; his test of the ceremonial worship of Romanism satisfied him only for a little; at last his faith was doubt.

Loti’s direct disregard of the interests of conventional life, in favor of nature-children, constitutes one of his greatest literary charms. Freshness, simplicity of viewpoint, naïve boyishness of spirit--these excel all the accomplishments of the stylist’s art in an author whose style is as subtle as gossamer, as varicolored as the evening sea he painted with supernal beauty.

In all his work Loti greatly prefers description above dialogue. “Long and quiet stretches of writing” abound, but their minuteness leaves us unwearied, and though he repeats and re-repeats we are conjured into accepting his pictures as ever new.

In style, in delicacy of nature-feeling, where in all literature will you find aught to excel this passage from _Mon frère Yves_?

“Even the nights were luminous. When all was slumbering in
heavy immobility, in dead silence, the stars shone out above,
more dazzling than in any other region of earth, and the sea
also was illumined from beneath. There was a sort of immense
gleam diffused over the waters; the lightest motion, such as
the slow gliding of the boat, or a shark darting after it,
brought out upon the warm eddies flashes like the color of a
fire-fly. Then, over the great phosphorescent mirror of the
deep, there were millions of wild flames--they were like little
lamps lighting themselves everywhere, burning mysteriously for
a second or two, then dying out. These nights were swooning
with heat, full of phosphorescence; and in all this dim
immensity light was brooding, and all these seas held latent
life, in a rudimentary state, as did formerly the gloomy waters
of the primeval world.”

As in the foregoing, so in the following, see how this necromancer of words accomplishes the impossible--“the planks of the ship” are the only solid, palpable substances in this atmospheric delicacy from _Pecheur d’Islande_ (An Iceland Fisherman):

“Outside it was daylight, perpetual daylight. But it was
a pale, pale light, resembling nothing else; it threw dim
reflections over everything, as of a dead sun, and beyond
these, all was an immense void without color; everything
outside the planks of the ship seeming diaphanous, impalpable,
unreal.

“The eye could scarcely distinguish the sea. First it took
on the aspect of a sort of trembling mirror, with no image
reflected in it; as it spread further it seemed to become a
vaporous plain, and beyond this there was nothing--no outline
nor horizon.

“The damp freshness of the air was more intense, more
penetrating, than actual cold; and in breathing it one was
conscious of a taste of brine. All was calm, and it was no
longer raining; above, formless, colorless clouds seemed to
hold that latent, unexplained light; one could see plainly,
while conscious all the time that it was night, and all these
pallors were of no shade that can be named.”

This is not description--it is miracle; it is, in the fine phrase of M. Doumic, “evocation;” it is music, color, subtlety, spirit, all thrown upon the soul’s retina and sensed in some magic manner that refuses to be classified. No one but a pantheist, sensitive to all the moods of nature--and especially those of that abysmal enigma, the sea--could have evoked such visions, such realities, where other eyes see--water.

In form our author’s books are varied, following rarely any preconceived plan, we may well suppose--only this, that the literary wanderer with his new book every year takes us by the hand and shows us the intimacies of his own life-experiences, discloses the little-known beauties and sadnesses he has uncovered everywhere, and turns into simple yet exquisitely wrought fictions the poignant truths that have entered his own heart. Not one novel, technically considered, did he write, but sketches strung like pearls upon a thread: vivid impressions of home and foreign life, longer or shorter stories of simple folk whose days dawned to labor and were twilit with weariness, colorful pictures of men and women living under eastern skies--and beneath and about all, the many-spirited sea.

It would require a volume to deal adequately with Loti’s many books; but one point invites mention: each new annual volume for a score of years discloses his life in some new land, or in the Brittany of his affection.

His first volume, _Aziyadé_ (1879), is the record of his love for a beautiful Circassian slave while he sojourned in Turkey--the record, too, of how she died of grief after his departure. _Rarahu_--later issued as _Le Mariage de Loti_--recounts his loves in Tahiti, and much of charm and beauty besides. _Le Roman d’un Spahi_ transports us to the Sahara and Senegal, _Fleurs d’ennui_ to Montenegro, _Madame Chrysanthème_ to Japan, _Au Maroc_ to Fez and Tangier, and _Le désert_, and _Jérusalem_, and _La Galilée_, to Palestine.

I name these volumes not to attempt a catalogue of Loti’s works, but to show how world-broad were the scenes he chose for his impressionistic brush. Naturally, all of the foregoing works are more or less oriental in tone, and the moral code revealed is not that of “the most approved families.” But three masterpieces there are which breathe a more wholesome air--though heavy, each one, with the tragedy of life.

_Mon frère Yves_ is the plotless account of “a splendid Breton sailor and the author, his officer.” They enjoy “a sort of companionship which finds its analogy--in a way--in the friendly relations formerly [held] between young master and slave in our Southern States.” No picture of the robust rollicking sailor--superstitious, drink-loving, adventurous, warm-hearted--could be more real, none more pathetic, and none more rich in fragments of narrative.

In _Le livre de la pitié et de la mort_ eleven stories are brought together to harmonize with the saddening title--“The Book of Pity and of Death!” One of these, “The Sorrow of an Old Convict” is an impressionistic tale of an old highwayman who is being shipped away to exile. His only solace is a caged bird with a broken wing, and when one day the door is opened the little bird falls into the sea. That is all--but to read it is to feel with Yves the heart-break of that bereft old man.

“The Wall Opposite” is a study of human tendencies. A mother, a daughter, and an aged aunt are compelled by reverses to let out those rooms of their apartments that faced out upon the street, but their own little back suite had a cozy and intimate air. Its windows overlooked a court whose walls were covered with honeysuckle and roses. One day they were told that in the court a high wall was to be built which would steal away the air and hide the sun. They had no money wherewith to buy off the project, so in one short month a grayish-white wall--almost like a twilight sky of November--shut them in.

Long they had looked for an inheritance which would some day come to them. Then they would buy the house and tear down that wall--and always the old aunt used to pray that she might live to see that day. But the bequest was long in coming.

One day a young man came, introduced by friends, and for a while he sat at the table of these “three ladies without fortune.” He was handsome and high-spirited, and the young girl loved him, but she was poor, and for lack of sunlight the color had begun to fade from her cheeks. So he went away and never returned.

Twenty years passed--the aunt had died, the mother had grown gray, and the daughter was now past forty. Then at last the inheritance came. They sent away their lodgers, but somehow the two women remained in the little back _salon_. They had come to love it. At last the wall which for twenty years they had endured would be torn down. At twilight of the second day the wall was razed, but the mother and daughter sitting at their table were bewildered at seeing so clearly. The wall was gone--they had the light, the roses and vines! For twenty years they had hoped for this happiness, yet now--they were uneasy, something seemed to have gone wrong. A sort of melancholy had come over them.

The mother, looking into her daughter’s eyes, saw tears. “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!_”

And this was the secret: more than the power of custom in her Life was the fact that the wall had been the background of a picture--the face of a young man which she had watched through one short spring-time.

This is one of Loti’s few technically perfect short-stories. His sketchy, rambling, loosely-plotted “novels” and travel-reflections differ greatly in manner from the compact story of plot, but his writings do abound in easily separable fragments, or episodes--as to which a word must now be set down, before we take up the plot and the final scenes of Loti’s greatest work, _Pecheur d’Islande_.