Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“Very well,” replied the priest; “to-night, at midnight, return, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service which we can offer in expiation of the crime of which you speak.”

The Stranger started; but a satisfaction, at once gentle and solemn, seemed to triumph over some secret grief. After having respectfully saluted the priest and the two holy women, he disappeared, manifesting a sort of mute gratitude which was comprehended by those three noble hearts.

About two hours after this scene the Stranger returned, knocked discreetly at the attic door, and was admitted by Mademoiselle de Beauséant, who conducted him into the second room of that modest retreat, where everything had been prepared for the ceremony.

Between the flues of the chimney the two nuns had carried the old chest of drawers, whose decrepit outlines were concealed beneath a magnificent altar-cloth of green moiré silk. A large crucifix of ebony and ivory was fastened upon the yellow wall, which served to emphasize its nakedness, and irresistibly drew the eye. Four little fluttering wax-tapers, which the sisters had succeeded in fixing upon that improvised altar by means of sealing wax, threw a light pale and sickly, which was reflected by the wall. That feeble glow scarcely illuminated the rest of the room, but by shedding its glory only over those holy things upon that unadorned altar, it seemed a ray from the torch of heaven. The floor was damp. The roof, which on two sides declined abruptly, as in a loft, had several cracks, through which passed an icy wind.

Nothing displayed less pomp, and yet perhaps nothing could have been more solemn than that sad ceremony.

A profound silence that would have permitted them to hear the faintest sound on distant thoroughfares diffused a sort of sombre majesty over that nocturnal scene. In short, the grandeur of the occasion contrasted so strongly with the poverty of the surroundings that the result was a sentiment of religious awe. On either side of the altar, the two old nuns, kneeling on the damp floor, heedless of the deadly moisture, prayed in concert with the priest, who, clad in his pontifical vestments, prepared a golden chalice ornamented with precious stones, a consecrated vessel rescued doubtless from the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles. Beside that pyx, a monument of royal magnificence, were the water and wine destined for the sacrament, contained in two glasses scarcely worthy of the lowest tavern. In default of a missal, the priest had placed his breviary on a corner of the altar. A common plate was provided for the washing of those innocent hands, pure of bloodshed. All was majestic, and yet paltry; poor, but noble; profane and holy at the same time. The Stranger knelt piously between the two nuns. But suddenly, when he noticed a band of crape on the chalice and on the crucifix--for, having nothing to indicate the purpose of that mortuary mass, the priest had draped God Himself in mourning--he was assailed by such an overpowering memory that drops of sweat gathered upon his broad forehead. The four silent actors in that scene gazed at one another mysteriously; then their hearts, acting upon one another, communicated their sentiments to one another and flowed together into a single religious commiseration; it was as if their thoughts had evoked the martyr whose remains had been devoured by quicklime, and whose shade stood before them in all its royal majesty. They celebrated an _obit_ without the body of the deceased. Beneath those disjointed tiles and laths, four Christians had come to intercede before God for a king of France, and perform his obsequies without a bier. It was the purest of all possible devotions, an astounding act of fidelity, accomplished without a selfish thought. Doubtless, in the eyes of God, it was like the cup of cold water which balances the greatest virtues. The whole of monarchy was there, in the prayers of a priest and of two poor women; but perhaps also the Revolution was represented, by that man whose face betrayed too much remorse not to cause a belief that he was fulfilling the vows of an immense repentance.

In lieu of pronouncing the Latin words, “_Introibo ad altare Dei_,” etc., the priest, by a divine inspiration, looked at the three assistants who represented Christian France, and said to them, in order to efface the poverty of that wretched place:

“We are about to enter into the sanctuary of God!”

At these words, uttered with an impressive unction, a holy awe seized the assistant and the two nuns. Beneath the arches of St. Peter’s at Rome God could not have appeared with more majesty than He then appeared in that asylum of poverty, before the eyes of those Christians; so true is it that between man and Him every intermediary seems useless, and that He derives His grandeur from Himself alone. The fervor of the Stranger was genuine, and so the sentiment which united the prayers of those four servitors of God and the king was unanimous. The sacred words rang out like celestial music amid the silence. There was a moment when tears choked the Stranger; it was during the paternoster. The priest added to it this Latin prayer, which was evidently understood by the Stranger: “_Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse!_ (And pardon the guilt of the regicides even as Louis himself forgave them!)”

The two nuns saw two great tears leave a humid trace adown the manly cheeks of the Stranger, and fall upon the floor. The Office for the Dead was recited. The _Domine salvum fac regem_, chanted in a deep voice, touched the hearts of those faithful royalists, who reflected that the infant king, for whom at that moment they were supplicating the Most High, was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. The Stranger shuddered at the thought that there might yet be committed a new crime, in which he would doubtless be forced to participate. When the funeral service was terminated, the priest made a sign to the two nuns, who retired. As soon as he found himself alone with the Stranger, he walked towards him with a mild and melancholy expression, and said to him in a paternal voice:

“My son, if you have dipped your hands in the blood of the martyr king, confess yourself to me. There is no sin which, in the eyes of God, may not be effaced by repentance as touching and sincere as yours seems to be.”

At the first words pronounced by the ecclesiastic, the Stranger allowed an involuntary movement of terror to escape him; but he resumed a calm countenance, and regarded the astonished priest with assurance.

“Father,” he said to him in a perceptibly altered voice, “no one is more innocent than I of bloodshed.”

“I am bound to believe you,” said the priest.

There was a pause, during which he examined his penitent more closely; then, persisting in taking him for one of those timid members of the Convention who sacrificed an inviolable and consecrated head in order to preserve their own, he continued in a solemn voice:

“Remember, my son, that it is not enough, in order to be absolved from that great crime, not to have actually taken part in it. Those who, when they might have defended the king, left their swords in the scabbard, will have a very heavy account to render before the King of the Heavens.... Ah, yes!” added the old priest, shaking his head with an expressive movement, “yes, very heavy; for, by remaining idle, they became the involuntary accomplices of that hideous crime.”

“Do you think,” demanded the stupefied Stranger, “that an indirect participation will be punished?... The soldier who is ordered to join the shooting-squad, is he also culpable?”

The priest hesitated. Pleased with the dilemma in which he had placed that puritan of royalty by planting him between the dogma of passive obedience, which, according to the partisans of monarchy, dominates the military codes, and the no less important dogma which consecrates the respect due to the persons of kings, the Stranger was ready to see in the hesitation of the priest a favorable solution of the doubts by which he seemed to be tormented. Then, in order not to allow the venerable Jansenist any more time to reflect, he said to him:

“I should blush to offer you any sort of compensation for the funeral service which you have celebrated for the repose of the king’s soul and for the relief of my conscience. One cannot pay for an inestimable thing except by an offering which is also priceless. Deign, then, monsieur, to accept the gift of a blessed relic which I offer you. A day will come, perhaps, when you will understand its value.”

As he said these words, the Stranger handed the ecclesiastic a small box of light weight; the priest took it involuntarily, so to speak, for the solemnity of the man’s words, the tone in which he said them, and the respect with which he handled the box, had plunged him into a profound surprise. They then returned to the room where the two nuns were awaiting them.

“You are,” said the Stranger, “in a house whose owner, Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who occupies the first floor, is celebrated throughout the section for his patriotism; but he is secretly attached to the Bourbons. He used to be a huntsman of Monseigneur the Prince of Conti, and to him he owes his fortune. If you do not go out of his house, you are in greater safety here than in any place else in France. Stay here. Devout hearts will attend to your necessities, and you may await without danger less evil times. A year hence, on the twenty-first of January”--(in uttering these words he could not conceal an involuntary movement)--“if you continue to adopt this dismal place of asylum, I will return to celebrate with you the expiatory mass.”

He said no more. He bowed to the silent occupants of the attic, cast a last glance upon the evidences which testified of their indigence, and went away.

To the two innocent nuns, such an adventure had all the interest of a romance; and so, as soon as the venerable abbé informed them of the mysterious gift so solemnly bestowed upon him by that man, the box was placed upon the table and the three faces, unquiet, dimly lighted by the candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box, and found therein a handkerchief of very fine linen, drenched with perspiration; and, on unfolding it, they recognized stains.

“It is blood!” said the priest.

“It is marked with the royal crown!” cried the other nun.

The two sisters dropped the precious relic with horror. To those two naïve souls the mystery in which the Stranger was enveloped became altogether inexplicable; and as for the priest, from that day he did not even seek an explanation.

The three prisoners were not slow in perceiving that in spite of the Terror a powerful arm was stretched over them.

In the first place, they received some wood and some provisions; then the two nuns realized that a woman must be associated with their protector, when some one sent them linen and clothing which enabled them to go out without being remarked on account of the aristocratic fashion of the garments which they had been forced to retain; and lastly, Mucius Scaevola gave them two cards of citizenship. Often, advice necessary to the priest’s safety reached him by devious ways; and he found this advice so opportune that it could have been given only by one initiated in secrets of state.

Despite the famine which prevailed in Paris, the outcasts found at the door of their lodging rations of white bread which were regularly brought there by invisible hands; nevertheless, they believed that they could recognize in Mucius Scaevola the mysterious agent of that benefaction, which was always as ingenious as it was discerning. The noble occupants of the attic could not doubt that their protector was the person who had come to ask the priest to celebrate the expiatory mass on the night of the twenty-second of January, 1793; so that he became the object of a peculiar cult of worship to those three beings, who had no hope except in him, and lived only through him. They had added special prayers for him to their devotions; night and morning those pious hearts lifted their voices for his happiness, for his prosperity, for his health, and supplicated God to deliver him from all snares, to deliver him from his enemies, and to accord him a long and peaceable life. Their gratitude, renewed every day, so to speak, was necessarily accompanied by a sentiment of curiosity which became more lively from day to day. The circumstances which had accompanied the appearance of the Stranger were the subject of their conversations; they formed a thousand conjectures regarding him, and the diversion afforded them by their thoughts of him was a benefaction of a new kind. They promised themselves not to allow the Stranger to evade their friendship on the evening when he should return, according to his promise, to commemorate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.

That night, so impatiently awaited, came at last. At midnight the sound of the Stranger’s heavy steps was heard on the old wooden staircase; the room had been arrayed to receive him, the altar was dressed. This time the sisters opened the door beforehand and both pressed forward to light the stairway. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went down a few steps in order to see her benefactor the sooner.

“Come,” she said to him in a tremulous and affectionate voice, “come, we are waiting for you.”

The man raised his head, cast a sombre glance upon the nun, and made no reply. She felt as if a garment of ice had fallen upon her, and she said no more; at his aspect the gratitude and curiosity expired in all their hearts. He was perhaps less cold, less taciturn, less terrible, than he appeared to those hearts, the exaltation of whose feelings disposed to outpourings of friendliness. The three poor prisoners, understanding that the man desired to remain a Stranger to them, resigned themselves. The priest fancied that he detected upon the Stranger’s lips a smile that was promptly repressed the moment he saw the preparations that had been made to receive him. He heard the mass, and prayed; but he disappeared after having responded negatively to a few words of polite invitation upon the part of Mademoiselle de Langeais to partake of the little collation they had prepared.

After the ninth of Thermidor, the nuns and the Abbé de Marolles were able to go about Paris without incurring the least danger. The first errand of the old priest was to a perfumer’s shop, at the sign of _La Reine des Fleurs_, kept by Citizen and Citizeness Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, who had remained faithful to the royal family, and of whose services the Vendeans availed themselves to correspond with the princes and the royalist committee in Paris. The abbé, dressed according to the style of that epoch, was standing on the doorstep of that shop, between Saint-Roch and _Rue des Frondeurs_, when a crowd which filled the _Rue Saint-Honoré_ prevented him from going out.

“What is it?” he asked Madame Ragon.

“It is nothing,” she replied; “just the tumbril and the executioner, going to the Place Louis XV. Ah, we saw him very often last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, we can look at that horrible procession without distress.”

“Why so?” said the abbé. “It is not Christian, that which you say.”

“Eh, it’s the execution of the accomplices of Robespierre. They defended themselves as long as they could, but they’re going now themselves where they have sent so many innocents.”

The crowd passed like a flood. Over the sea of heads, the Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, saw standing on the tumbril the man who, three days before, had listened to his mass.

“Who is that?” he said, “that man who----”

“That is the headsman,” replied Monsieur Ragon, calling the executioner of the great by his monarchical name.

“My friend, my friend,” cried Madame Ragon, “_monsieur l’abbé_ is fainting!”

And the old woman seized a phial of salts, in order to bring the old priest to himself.

“Without doubt he gave me,” said he, “the handkerchief with which the King wiped his brow when he went to his martyrdom.... Poor man! ... That steel knife had a heart, when all France had none!”

The perfumers thought that the unhappy priest was delirious.

LUDOVIC HALÉVY, PARISIAN

That there is a real distinction between a short-story in French and a French short-story, Ludovic Halévy’s fictional work illustrates perfectly, for in theme, tone, and treatment it is French. More specifically still, it is Parisian. As Professor Brander Matthews observes in his discerning introduction to _Parisian Points of View_, a collection of our author’s stories, “Cardinal Newman once said that while Livy and Tacitus and Terence and Seneca wrote Latin, Cicero wrote Roman; so while M. Zola on the one side, and M. Georges Ohnet on the other, may write French, M. Halévy writes Parisian.” His was indeed the Parisian point of view, his the sympathetic understanding of the pursuits, the temperament, the ideals, of the dwellers in the Capital of Europe.

One service above others Halévy rendered to his Paris: while so many writers have given an unfortunate though piquant character to the French short-story by depicting chiefly the _roué_ and the woman of easy manners, the vulgar money-king and the broken-down noble, the complacent pander and the sordid tradesman of Paris, this writer mostly chose to depict other types. He knew the gay city as few other writers of his day knew it, yet nearly all of his little fictions may be read aloud in a mixed company. The explanation of this wholesome spirit is simple--unlike the others, Halévy had not come up from the provinces with eyes ready to pop out at the city sights. From boyhood he knew all sides of Parisian life, and saw things in correct perspective, so he did not interpret light-heartedness to be lightness, nor gayety to be abandon. All sorts and conditions of men move in his stories, but the vicious, the sensual, the mean, are no more prominent in the Paris he paints than they are in the real Paris--and that means that they exist in much the same numerical proportion as in any other metropolis.

Halévy’s life does not lend itself to anecdote, for it lacked stirring events, yet his every large step marked a specific advance in his work.

On the first day of January, 1834, he was born in Paris, of Hebrew parents. His father, Léon Halévy, had attained to some distinction as a poet, and his uncle, Fromental Halévy, was not only director of singing at the Opera, but a celebrated composer as well. Upon completing his formal education at the _lycée Louis-le-Grand_, the youth entered the civil service in the Ministry of State, in six years rose to be _chef de bureau_ at the Colonial Office, and finally became editor of the publications of the Legislative Corps. In these public offices he gained that inside view of official life which is apparent in his works.

Very early Halévy began to know the theatre, for through his uncle’s influence he was as a youngster of fourteen on the free-list of the principal theatres of Paris. Scarcely was he a man before he began the writing of numberless books for operas, burlesques, and dramas, the materials for which he had been gathering while meeting theatrical people of all grades. By and by some of these were published, some were acted, and at length he enjoyed a vogue. In collaboration with Henri Meilhac he wrote a number of opera books, notably _La Belle Hélène_, _Blue-Beard_, _The Grand-Duchess of Gerolstein_, _The Brigands_ (all with music by Offenbach), _Carmen_ (founded on Mérimée’s story), with music by Bizet, and _The Little Duke_, with music by Lecocq. These bright operettas and operas are typical of that mocking and practical spirit of the Second Empire which laughed away the old ideals with a zest worthy of a nobler occupation. His heavier play, _Frou-Frou_, though well known about a generation ago, is not so meritorious as his dramatic skits and sketches.

But Halévy’s work for the stage bore heavily upon his later success, for when he left the dramatic field to give almost exclusive service to the novel and shorter fiction, he by no means forgot the training of the earlier period. Always his understanding of the people of the stage is apparent. In many a tale these folk appear, and never is the hand that leads them forward ungentle, even when the words of the introducer are tinged with irony.

As for form, it is not especially in his plot-structure that we see traces of Halévy’s training in the drama, for he seldom emphasizes plot at all. But when he does depart from his favorite sketch form to attempt the short-story, he still writes simply; and so inevitably do the incidents succeed one another that there scarcely seems to be even a plot. Halévy’s early apprenticeship to the drama is most clearly seen, however, in his precision of outline, clear characterization, sense of dramatic values, unerring climax, and suppression of needless details.

Halévy took an active part in the Franco-Prussian War, vivid impressions of which he has given us in _Notes and Memories_ and _The Invasion_--volumes which are half chronicle, half story-telling, and wholly delightful. After the catastrophe of Sedan, his fictional work dealing with theatrical folk began to appear. _Madame Cardinal_ (1870), _Monsieur Cardinal_ (1871), _The Little Cardinals_ (1880), and _Criquette_ (1883), are not really novels, but connected stories and sketches, giving a panorama of people and affairs theatrical--naturally, not of the loftiest tone. Halévy has drawn no more vivid characters than the Cardinals, father and mother, with their comedy anxiety as to the immoralities of their young ballet-dancing daughters, Pauline and Virginie, whose love affairs are portrayed with gayety and comical reality. The little Criquette is an actress who makes her début at the Theatre Porte-Saint-Martin. About this interesting central figure flit a score of perfect types of player-folk--clown, provincial manager, ardent young actor, the demi-mondaine actress, authors, chorus girls, and all the rest. _Criquette_ is Halévy’s longest tale, and shows the sketch-artist and _raconteur_ at his best.

But American readers doubtless know Ludovic Halévy most affectionately by his “Abbé Constantin,” which has gone through more than one hundred and fifty editions in France, besides numberless printings in other lands. In its first year of issue, 1882, at least thirty-five editions were required to meet the demand. It is a novelette in length, and a simple story in plot. Charming, ingenuous, idyllic, popular with all classes, it is a refreshing breath from rural France. The large estate of Longueval, comprising the castle and its dependencies, two fine farms and a forest, is announced for sale at auction. The Abbé Constantin, a warm-hearted, genial, self-sacrificing priest, quite the typical Abbé of romance--“a Curé, neither young, nor gloomy, nor stern; a Curé with white hair, and looking kind and gentle”--has been for three decades the village priest. He is disconsolate at the thought that all his associations must be broken up, and is all the more distressed when he hears that an American millionaire has bought the property. Lieutenant Jean Renaud, his godson, the orphaned son of the Abbé’s old friend, the village doctor, is about to sit down at meat with the old priest when two ladies arrive--the wife of the millionaire purchaser of Longueval, Mrs. Scott, and her sister, Miss Bettina Percival. How these bright and fascinating women win the heart of the benevolent priest, and adapt themselves to their new surroundings, and how Lieutenant Jean and Miss Bettina find their happiness, furnish the incidents for this crystal little romance.

“A Marriage for Love” (1881) is the most popular of Halévy’s longer short-stories. A young French officer marries a well-bred and ingenuous girl. Soon each discovers that the other has kept a diary from childhood. Thinking that the declarations of love which she sees written in her husband’s journal refer to some other woman, the young wife cries out, but is consoled by his protests, and it is agreed that they shall read aloud passages from their own diaries, turn about. With all the naïveté which it seems the special province of English eighteenth-century and French nineteenth-century writers to depict, these young people disclose in this fashion the birth and growth of their mutual love. A simple story enough, yet refreshing in the midst of so many Gallic records of marital infidelity.

Of Halévy’s shorter stories several stand out in particular. “Princess” tells with admirable directness how “the bourgeois heroine ... contrives to escape the lawyers ... and marry a real prince.” “A Grand Marriage” is the equally uncomplicated narrative of how the betrothal of an alert young Parisienne is arranged by her parents, with the clever and worldly-wise assistance of the prospective bride.

“The Most Beautiful Woman in Paris” is more a study than a story, yet the firmly wrought, breezy narrative style of the author is here at its best. The story runs that a social connoisseur, Prince Agénor, upon seeing at the Opera the wife of a lawyer, pronounces her to be the most beautiful woman in Paris. Then ensue flattering newspaper notices, the inflamed ambition of the advertised beauty, costly gowns, a new coupé--all that madame may appear fittingly at a social function at which it is announced that she is to appear, as well as the Prince. Madame does appear, but she is neglected because the Prince forgets to come to make her acquaintance--he has already found another “most beautiful woman in Paris.” The author’s narration is lively, as always, and his social observation confident and minute, while his characteristic, playful irony is second only to that of another unique story, “The Chinese Ambassador.”

In this we have as a _motif_ the unsettled political conditions existing at the close of the Franco-Prussian War. The story is told with delightful humor, in diary form, by a Chinese Ambassador Extraordinary who has been sent to France and England with rich presents to placate the French and English governments, and also to arrange official reparation, for the massacre of some foreign residents in China. Then follow a series of confusions. There is no longer an Emperor in France, there are three rival French Republics, and another _coup d’état_ seems imminent. So the Ambassador, not knowing whom to approach, keeps the presents, and waits. Soon he goes to England, where he meets the Queen. She accepts the apologies as well as the presents, but in conversation with some French women at a social function in London he finds that there are three claimants to the French throne, Napoleon III, the Duke of Orleans, and the Count of Paris--all in exile--to say nothing of the three rival presidents, Gambetta, Thiers, and Favre. He is again much in doubt as to which to approach with his mission, as he receives such contrary advice from all quarters. Upon his return to Paris, however, he finds the government has again changed its capitol, and that a seventh government is in the ascendancy--the Commune. When he learns that Paris is burning, he concludes that it is “a dead, destroyed, and annihilated city.” In two weeks, however, order is restored, and the Ambassador decides that it is still the most beautiful city in Europe, and the most brilliant, for the Republic of M. Thiers is now undisputed. To him he delivers his mission.

“The Story of a Ball Dress” is couched in an old form--the ball dress tells its own story; but we have a kaleidoscopic picture of the change of affairs before, during, and after the war--that war which plays so large a part in the writings of both Daudet and Halévy.

“The Insurgent,” first published in 1872, follows, in translation. It is without doubt Ludovic Halévy’s most intense and dramatic short narrative, yet none is more simply told. In this expanded anecdote the writer actually becomes the Insurgent, and so vigorous, so sympathetic, is the portraiture that every word comes sincerely and naturally from the soul of the speaker. Halévy does not speak _as_ such a one would--he _is_ the Insurgent--life, breath, and word. It is a miracle of compression--not the compression of conscious literary art, but the tense, naïve, open brevity of one who has no embroideries for his words, no masks for his sentiment, no apologies for his acts, but goes, as with the cleavage of an axe, straight to the heart of what he means. Yet with all of this brusk, speedy simplicity, abrupt, halting and rudely frank in style, there is a note of poignant pathos at the close that leaves the eye misty and the heart warm.

In no one of Halévy’s stories do we see so clearly the application of his robust, sincere literary creed as confessed in his own words:

“We must not write simply for the refined, the blasé, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully into the Odéon omnibus. We must write courageously for the _bourgeois_, if it were only to try to refine them, to make them less _bourgeois_. And if I dared, I should say that we must write even for fools.”

THE INSURGENT
(_L’INSURGÉ_)

By Ludovic Halévy

_Done into English by the Editor_

“Prisoner,” said the president of the court-martial, “have you anything to add in your defense?”

“Yes, my colonel,” responded the accused; “you have given me a little advocate who has defended me according to his idea. I want to defend myself according to my own.

“My name is Martin--Louis Joseph; I am fifty-five years old. My father was a locksmith. He had a little shop in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and did a small business. We just about lived. I learned to read in _Le National_, which was, I believe, the paper of Monsieur Thiers.

“The 27th of July, 1830, my father went out early in the morning. That evening at ten o’clock they brought him back to us dying on a litter. He had received a bullet in the chest. By his side upon the litter was his musket.

“‘Take it,’ he said to me; ‘I give it to you, and every time there is to be an insurrection, be against the government--always! always! always!’

“An hour afterward he was dead. I went out in the night. At the first barricade I stopped and offered myself. A man examined me by the light of a lantern. ‘A child!’ he cried. I was not yet fifteen. I was very small, quite undersized. I answered: ‘A child, that’s possible; but my father was killed about two hours ago. He gave me his musket. Teach me how to use it.’

“Starting with that moment, I became what I have been always, for forty years: an insurgent! If I fought during the Commune, it was neither from compulsion nor for the thirty _sous_, it was from taste, from pleasure, from habit, from routine.

“In 1830, I bore myself rather bravely at the attack on the Louvre. That gamin who--the first--climbed the iron fence under the bullets of the Swiss--that was I. I received the medal of July; but the _bourgeoisie_ gave us a king. Everything had to be done over again. I joined a secret society, I learned to mould bullets, to make powder. In short, I completed my education--and I waited.

“I had to wait nearly two years. The 5th of June, 1832, at midday, before the Madeleine, I began by unhitching one of the horses from the hearse of General Lamarque. I passed the day shouting, ‘_Vive Lafayette!_’ and the night in making barricades. The next morning we were attacked by the soldiers. That afternoon towards four o’clock we were pocketed, cannonaded, fired upon with grape-shot, crushed, in the Church of St. Méry. I had a bullet and three bayonet thrusts in my body when I was picked up by the soldiers on the flag-stones of a little chapel on the right--the chapel of St. John. I used often to return to that little chapel--not to pray, I was not brought up in those ideas--but to see the trace of my blood which is still marked upon the stones.

“Because of my youth, I got only ten years in prison. I was sent to Mont-Saint-Michel. That was why I didn’t take any part in the uprisings of 1834. If I had been free, I should have been fighting in the Rue Transnonian as I had fought in the Rue St. Méry. Against the government--always!--always!--always! That was the last word of my father, that was my gospel, my religion! I called that my catechism in six words. I got out of prison in 1842 and again I began to wait.

“The revolution of ’48 made itself--without help. The _bourgeoisie_ were stupid and cowardly. They were neither for us nor against us. The City Guards alone defended themselves. We had a little trouble in capturing the post of the Château-d’Eau. The evening of the 24th of February I stayed three or four hours on the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. The members of the Provisional Government one after another made speeches to us, said to us that we were ‘heroes,’ ‘noble citizens,’ ‘the first people of the world;’ that we had shaken off the yoke of tyranny. After having regaled us with these fine words, they gave us a republic which wasn’t any better than the monarchy which we had tumbled to the ground.

“In June I took up my musket again--but that time things were not successful. I was arrested, condemned, sent to Cayenne. It seems that out there I behaved myself well. One day I saved a captain of marines who was drowning. They thought that very fine. Notice that I would very cheerfully have shot at that captain--if he had been on one side of a barricade and I on the other; but a man who is drowning, who is dying----. In short, I received my pardon. I got back to France in 1852, after the _Coup d’État_. I had missed the insurrection of 1851.

“At Cayenne I had made a friend, a tailor named Bernard. Six months after my departure for France, Bernard died. I went to see his widow. She was in destitution. I married her. We had a son in 1854. You will understand all in good time why I speak of my wife and of my son. Only, you ought already to suspect that an insurgent who marries the widow of an insurgent does not have royalist children.

“Under the Empire, nothing was going on. The police held a firm grip. We were dispersed, disarmed. I worked, I brought up my son in the ideas that my father had given me. The wait was long--Rochefort, Gambetta, public reunions; all those things put us in motion again.

“On the first serious occasion I showed myself. I was of that little band that assaulted the barracks of the firemen of Villette. Only, there a stupid thing was done. They killed a fireman unnecessarily. I was taken, thrown into prison; but the government of the Fourth of September set us free--from which I concluded that we had done quite right in attacking that barracks and in killing that fireman, even unnecessarily.

“The siege commenced. At once I was against the government, and for the Commune. I marched against the Hôtel-de-Ville on the 31st of October and the 22d of January. I loved revolt for the sake of revolt. An insurgent, I told you at the start, I am an insurgent. I cannot see a club without joining it, an insurrection without running after it, a barricade without bringing my paving-stone to it. That goes with my blood.

“And then, besides, I wasn’t altogether ignorant, and I said to myself: ‘We only need to succeed some day, clear to the foundations, and then in our turn we shall be the government and things will go a little better than with all these lawyers who get behind us during the battle, and who pass ahead of us after the victory.’

“The 18th of March came, and naturally I was in it. I cried ‘Hurrah for the military!’ I fraternized with the soldiers. I went to the Hôtel-de-Ville. I found there a government at work--absolutely as on the 24th of February.

“Now you tell me that that insurrection was not legitimate. That’s possible, but I don’t quite see why. I begin to be muddled, I do, between these insurrections which are a duty and those insurrections which are a crime! I do not clearly see the difference.

“I fired on the Versailles troops in 1871, as I fired on the Royal Guards in 1830, and on the City Guards in 1848. After 1830 I received the medal of July. After 1848, the compliments of Monsieur Lamartine. This time, I’m going to have transportation or death.

“There are some insurrections that please you. You raise columns to them, you give their names to streets, you distribute among yourselves the offices, the promotions, the big salaries; and we others, who made the revolution, you call us--noble citizens, heroes, a nation of brave men, etc., etc. It is with such money that we are paid.

“And then, there are some other insurrections that displease you. As a result of those, you distribute to us exile, transportation, death. Well, see here: if you hadn’t paid us so many compliments after the first, perhaps we would not have done the last. If you had not raised the Column of July at the entrance to our quarter, perhaps we should not have gone to demolish the Vendôme Column in your quarter. Those two penny-trumpets were not in harmony. The one had to discord with the other, and that is what came about.

“Now, I am going to tell you why I threw away my captain’s uniform at the street corner on the 26th of May, why I was in a blouse when I was arrested. When I learned that these gentlemen of the Commune, instead of coming to fire with us upon the barricades, were distributing thousand-franc notes to themselves at the Hôtel-de-Ville, shaving their beards, dyeing their hair, and going to hide themselves in caves, I didn’t wish to keep the shoulder-straps they had given me.

“Besides, they embarrassed me, those shoulder straps. ‘Captain Martin,’ that was silly. ‘Insurgent Martin,’ quite as it should be. I wanted to end as I had begun, to die as my father had died, an insurrectionist in an insurrection, a barricader in a barricade.

“I couldn’t get myself killed. I got taken. I belong to you. Only, I wish you would do me one favor. I have a son, a child of seventeen, he is at Cherbourg, on the hulks. He has fought, it is true, and he will not deny it; but it was I who put the musket in his hand, it was I who told him that his duty was there. He listened to me. He obeyed me. That alone is his crime. Do not condemn him too harshly.

“As for me, you have hold of me--do not let me go; that’s the advice I give you. I’m too old to mend, and, besides, what would you have? Nothing can change what is: I was born on the wrong side of the barricade.”

ANDRÉ THEURIET, HUMANIST

André Theuriet was evidently in sympathy with the doctrine that those lands and their dwellers are most happy which have the least history. Singular as the statement may seem when made of a contemporary French man of letters who had defeated Zola in a contest for election to the Academy, it is nevertheless true that the tone of Theuriet’s work is repose. “The short and simple annals of the poor” he penned with simplicity and charm, and rarely did the hurly-burly tempt him to fare among scenes either boisterous or sordid. Yet, he was never squeamish, but wrote of a real life in a real world. What Alphonse Daudet became when he occasionally left fevered Paris to lie on the turf at Montauban and feel in fancy the gentle fanning of the old windmill, that André Theuriet was by temperament. The bucolic, the gentle, the peaceful--all met response in his nature and were mirrored in the placid pool of his fiction.

Theuriet was born at Marly-le-Roi, September, 1833, and spent his childhood in that lovely province. He got his education at Bar-le-duc, and at Paris, where he took up the study of law, receiving the degree of _Licencée en Droit_ at the age of twenty-four. Instead of practising, however, he entered the Ministry of Finance the same year, and began the routine of public life--as the intensely private career of the bureaucrat is called.

At once he began to publish verse, winning a place, the very year of his appointment to the Ministry of Finance, in the pages of that distinguished exponent of letters, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. _In Memoriam_ was the title of his first success--a romance in verse, quickly appraised by critics at a value which it still maintains, and displaying the qualities for which the author’s writings are appreciated to-day.

We never tire of debating as to whether distinguished men are more the product of their times, than their era is moulded by its men. Doubtless something of both views is the ultimate truth. Theuriet, however, left no profound influence upon his age. During the ten years which succeeded the publication of _In Memoriam_--1857 to 1867--his work continued, unaffected by the French revolt, if that is not too strong a term, against romanticism. This is shown in his first volume of poems, _The Forest Path_ (_Le Chemin du Bois_), published in 1867, and awarded the Vitel prize by the Academy. Another ten years, and he received the coveted place among the Immortals, but the tone of his writings never changed--his was always a quiet romanticism clothed upon with the beauty of idealism.

Theuriet’s selection of themes is a happy index to his nature. The one and the other are clean, uncomplicated by intrigue, and in the main agreeable. Are there many to-day who will be attracted to this man when his fiction is called restful and gentle? I do not know, since we are all so busy and turbulent and--disillusioned. But we ought to be, if we are not, drawn by thoughts of a melodious rhythm of words portraying honest emotions, of country life that exhales the “perfume of new hay and of ripe wheat,” of woodsy ways and forest folk--in a word, thoughts of a world where, as in _La Bretonne_, the lowliest respond to human need, and even crime cannot stamp out the image of the beautiful, a world full of goodness rising out of the ooze of evil.

And so it was country-life--country-life in Lorraine, enriched and made beautiful by the Loire--that inspired not only his early poems, but also the numerous novels, plays, sketches, and short-stories which stand to his credit--and I use the word designedly.

After a notable if not brilliant career as author and journalist, Theuriet died in Paris, 1897.

Relatively little of Theuriet’s work is known to readers who know not French, but of this little probably the long short-story, “The Abbé Daniel,” is the most familiar. It is in the style of Ludovic Halévy’s “Abbé Constantin,” and of about the same length--a little classic of “polite rusticity,” of pastoral love, sorrow, loss, and happiness, limpid in style and artistically balanced in structure.

The plot is simple: Young Daniel loves his beautiful cousin Denise, but she marries Beauvais, the rough, hearty, typical bourgeois landed proprietor. A daughter is born--a second Denise--but the mother does not long survive. Young Daniel has entered the church and become “The Abbé Daniel.” His simple goodness leads him to adopt an orphaned lad, whom he cherishes as he would his own. One day the Abbé finds little Daniel, as he is called, feeding a threshing machine. In terror for the child’s danger, the Abbé shows his friends what the lad was doing, and the loss of his own arm is the penalty. He now resigns his parish and goes to live with the widowed father of the little Denise and assumes charge of her education, lavishing upon the child the affection he was forbidden to give to her mother. The children learn to love each other, but young Daniel goes away to the Crimean War and seems to forget. Meanwhile, Beauvais plans to marry his daughter Denise to a worthy young nobody of means, but the loving Abbé sends for his protégé, who promptly returns on leave, and the end is not difficult to surmise.

All this brief narration is but sketching the frame and omitting the picture, for who can feel the charm of the simple but never insipid story when it is bereft of the witchery of Theuriet’s style! It is worth while knowing at first hand a real French home, with the farmer-father, the daughter, the young soldier, and the Abbé Daniel.

That there are not many “intense thrills for jaded readers” in Theuriet’s straightforward work will be further illustrated by a reading of his novels--_Mademoiselle Guignon_, _Aunt Aurelia_, _Claudette_, _The Maugars_, _Angela’s Fortune_, and others--with which we have not here to deal; but it will also be quite evident in the simplicity of his shorter fiction, which must now be considered.

“An Easter Story” tells of Juanito, an orphan boy of fifteen. Like a weed on the pavement of Triana, he had grown up. Gipsy blood flowed in his veins and, like the gipsies, he loved his independence, vagrancy, and bull-fights. He earned a poor enough living by selling programmes at the doors of the theatres, but during Holy Week the theatres were closed, and now Good Friday finds him unhappy--for he has no money to go to the bull-fight on Easter Sunday! However, he follows the crowd until, tired and hungry, he lies down in a corner and sleeps. Two lovers pass. They put into the hand of the pretty youth a piece of silver, and so when he awakes his problem is solved. But as he starts down the street he sees a girl crying. He goes to her. It is Chata, whom he has known since childhood. Her mother is sick, she says, and the apothecary will not give her medicine because she has no money. Juanito looks into the girl’s eyes, hesitates a moment, then quickly puts into her hand the piece of silver. So Juanito did not see the bull-fight.

On Sunday Chata goes out to find her friend, and they go for a walk. Coming to a secluded corner, the girl looks into the young man’s eyes to thank him. But suddenly, moved by the sweetness of his deed, she throws her arms about his neck and cries, “I love you!”

Human interest--tenderness rather than strength--marks all Theuriet’s short fictions. “Little Gab” is quite without plot, which means that its delicacy defies condensed narration. It is a sympathetic sketch of a small hunchback whose parents are too hard-pressed in their struggle with poverty to look after the boy. The physician tells Little Gab’s sister that only the sea air and the baths at Berck can save her brother’s life. Through the unceasing labors and savings of the sister, this is at last accomplished, and both are on the heights of joy. The change is magical, and the lad returns with some prospect of recovery; but the dense air of the city is too much for Little Gab, and he dies still thinking of the beautiful sea.

Less tragic, but quite as simple in scheme, is “The Peaches,” which narrates how Herbelot is teased out of the service of the Ministry of Finance by being detected carrying home for his wife two peaches concealed in his hat.

Though its tone is not entirely typical of Theuriet, _La Bretonne_--which follows, in translation--is probably his most dramatic story, revealing, as it does, the good that lives in the worst of us.

LA BRETONNE
By André Theuriet

_Done into English by the Editor_

One evening in November, the Eve of Saint Catherine, the iron gate of the Central Prison of Auberive turned on its hinges and allowed a woman of about thirty years to pass out. She was clad in a faded woollen gown, and her head was surmounted by a bonnet of linen that in an odd fashion framed her face--pallid and puffed by that grayish fat which is born of prison fare.

She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated. Her fellow-convicts called her _La Bretonne_. Condemned for infanticide, it was just six years since the prison van had brought her to _la Centrale_. At length, after having donned again her street clothes, and drawing from the registry the stock of money which had been saved for her, she found herself once more free, with her road-pass viséed for Langres.

The post-cart for Langres had left; so, cowed and awkward, she directed her way stumblingly toward the principal inn of the place, and in scarcely a confident voice asked a lodging for the night. The inn was full, and the landlady, who did not care to harbor “one of those jail-birds,” advised her to push on as far as the little public-house situated at the other end of the village.

_La Bretonne_, more awkward and frightened than ever, went on her way, and knocked at the door of the public-house, which, to speak precisely, was only a drinking place for laborers. This proprietress also cast over her a distrustful eye, doubtless scenting a woman from _la Centrale_, and finally turned her away on the pretense that she did not keep lodgers. _La Bretonne_ dared not insist, she merely moved away with her head down, while from the depths of her soul arose a sullen hate against this world which so repulsed her.

She had no other recourse than to travel to Langres on foot.

In late November night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped in darkness, on the gray road which stretched between the edges of the woods, and where the north wind whistled rudely as it drove the heaps of dead leaves hither and yon.

After six years of sedentary life as a recluse, she no longer knew how to walk; and the joints of her knees were rickety; her feet, accustomed to sabots, were tortured in her new shoes. After about a league they were blistered, and she herself was exhausted. She sat down on a milestone, shivering and asking herself if she must die of cold and hunger in this black night, under that icy wind which so chilled her.

Suddenly, in the solitude of the road, over the squalls of wind she seemed to hear the trailing sounds of a voice in song. She strained her ears and distinguished the cadence of one of those caressing and monotonous chants with which one lulls children to sleep. Thereupon, rising again to her feet, she pressed on in the direction of the voice, and at the turn of a cross-road she saw a light which reddened through the branches.

Five minutes later she reached a mud hovel, whose roof, covered with clods of earth, leaned against the rock, and whose single window had sent forth that luminous ray. With anxious heart she decided to knock. The song ceased and a peasant opened the door--a woman of the same age as _la Bretonne_, but already faded and aged by work. Her bodice, torn in places, showed a rough and swarthy skin; her red hair escaped dishevelled from under a little cloth cap; her gray eyes regarded with amazement this stranger whose figure revealed something of loneliness.

“Well, good evening,” said she, raising higher the lamp which she held in her hand. “What do you want?”

“I can go no further,” murmured _la Bretonne_ in a voice broken by a sob. “The town is far, and if you will lodge me for this night, you’ll render me a service. I have some money, and will pay you for your trouble.”

“Come in!” replied the other, after a moment of hesitation; then she continued in a tone more of curiosity than of suspicion, “Why didn’t you sleep at Auberive?”

“They were not willing to lodge me”--and, lowering her blue eyes, _la Bretonne_, seized with a scruple, added--“because, you see, I come from the Central Prison, and that does not give folks confidence.”

“Ah! Come in all the same. I, who never knew anything but poverty--I fear nothing! I have a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I’ll go make you a bed by strewing some heather.”

She proceeded to take from under a shed several bundles of dry sweet-heather and spread them in a corner before the chimney.

“You live here alone?” timidly asked _la Bretonne_.

“Yes, with my youngster, who is nearly seven years old. I earn our living by working in the woods.”