Chapter VIII: Psychological Studies 390 (11)

“A Passion in the Desert,” Honoré de Balzac, translated in _Little French Masterpieces, Balzac_.

“The Pit and the Pendulum,” Edgar Allan Poe, in _Tales_.

“The Silent Woman,” Leopold Kompert, translated in _Modern Ghosts_.

“Jesus Christ in Flanders,” Honoré de Balzac, translated in _Little French Masterpieces, Balzac_.

“Silence,” Leonid Andreyev, translated in _Short-Story Masterpieces_.

VII
CHARACTER STUDIES

_The Piece of String._--GUY DE MAUPASSANT
_The Substitute._--FRANÇOIS COPPÉE

Most of us, in actual life, are accustomed to distinguish people
who are worth our while from people who are not; and those of us
who live advisedly are accustomed to shield ourselves from people
who cannot, by the mere fact of what they are, repay us for the
expenditure of time and energy we should have to make to know
them. And whenever a friend of ours asks us deliberately to meet
another friend of his, we take it for granted that our friend has
reasons for believing that the acquaintanceship will be of benefit
or of interest to both. Now the novelist stands in the position
of a friend who asks us to meet certain people whom he knows; and
he runs the risk of our losing faith in his judgment unless we
find his people worth our while.... He ... owes us an assurance
that they shall be even more worth while than the average actual
person.--CLAYTON HAMILTON, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.

CHARACTER STUDIES

A character-study, whether in the form of a sketch, a tale, or a short-story, attempts to reveal individual human nature by the unfolding of the story.

In the sketch it will be a photograph of character in a striking mood, under stress of emotion, or just before, or during, or after a crisis that is peculiarly suited to showing either the full character or one of its interesting phases. Some photographs consist of bold masses of light and shade, others are so handled as to bring out a multitude of details. The sketch allows in a literary way the same methods of treatment, but the typical sketch avoids unnecessary minutiæ.

The tale is also a photograph, but instead of being a single stationary picture, it is a moving-picture, delineating character by a chain of incidents which allow us to see what the characters are by what they do. True to the type of the tale, it does not deal with character crisis, but merely reveals character in a series of illuminating deeds.

In the character short-story the author’s method is more complicated, for the whole mechanism of the story--introduction, plot, dialogue, and conclusion--are designed to show us the characters under stress of emotion and the results of that emotional arousement. We learn the characters of the characters--for there is a distinction here--by seeing how they act upon each other, how they solve problems, how they meet the crises of life--what effect trouble or joy has upon them--and the final outcome of it all. It is like studying a human being while he is being subjected to a test, and observing the development of his character, or its failure to stand the test, in that critical moment.

By this it will be seen that a character-study is a story with a purpose--a purpose deeper than that of affording entertainment from the plot. The finest stories are those which so interest us in the action, or plot, of the story proper that the profound character disclosures and changes are borne in upon us while we are watching the progress of the story. It is this subtle balance of narrative and character-study which presents the story-teller’s art at its best.

THE PIECE OF STRING
(LA FICELLE)

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

_Translation by The Editor_

[Sidenote: Introduction.]

[Sidenote: Establishes the general setting, and station in life of the characters.]

[Sidenote: Minute observation.]

On all the roads around Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming towards the town, for it was market-day. The men swung along at an easy gait, their whole bodies swaying forward with every movement of their long, twisted legs--legs misshapen by hard work: by holding down the plough, which throws up the left shoulder while it deforms the figure; by mowing grain, the effort of which spreads the knees too wide apart to permit them to stand quite steady; by all the tedious and laborious tasks of the fields. Their blue blouses, starched and glossy as though varnished, and decorated at collar and cuffs with neat designs in white stitching, puffed out about their bony forms just like balloons all ready to rise, from which protruded a head, two arms, and two legs.

[Sidenote: Characterization.]

[Sidenote: Local-color by character description.]

2. Some of the men were leading a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. Following close behind, the wives switched the animals over the back with branches still covered with leaves, in order to quicken their pace. The women carried on their arms great baskets from which the heads of chickens and ducks protruded, and they walked with a shorter, quicker step than the men--each withered figure erect and wrapped in a scanty little shawl pinned across her flat bosom, each head done up in a white cloth, bound close about the hair and surmounted by a cap.

3. Now a wagonette passed, drawn by a nag at a fitful trot, grotesquely shaking up the two men seated side by side, and the woman in the back of the vehicle, who clutched its sides to lessen the rough jolting.

[Sidenote: Local-color.]

4. In the Goderville market-place there was a great crowd--a medley of man and beast. The horns of the cattle, the high, long-napped hats of the prosperous peasants, and the head-dresses of the women, rose above the level of the throng. And the voices--sharp, shrill, squawking--rose in a wild, incessant clamor, which was dominated now and then by a great guffaw of laughter emitted from the robust chest of some sturdy bumpkin, or by the long-drawn-out lowing of a cow tethered to the wall of a house.

5. Everything there smelled of the stable--the milk, the manure, the hay, the sweat, gave forth that acrid, offensive odor of man and animal so peculiar to dwellers of the fields.

[Sidenote: CHIEF CHARACTER.]

[Sidenote: The Normans are said to be typically “ambitious, positive, bold, tricky, economical.”]

[Sidenote: FOUNDATION PLOT INCIDENT.]

[Sidenote: CHIEF COMPLICATION.]

[Sidenote: RESULTANT COMPLICATION.]

6. Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and was moving toward the square, when he observed a little piece of string on the ground. Economical, like a true Norman, Master Hauchecorne thought that everything which could be used was worth saving; so he stooped down painfully, for he suffered from rheumatism, picked up from the dirt the insignificant scrap of twine, and was just about to roll it up with care when he noticed Master Malandin, the harness-maker, standing on his doorstep looking at him. Once the two men had had a difference over the matter of a halter, and ever since they had remained angry with each other, cherishing their spite. Master Hauchecorne was seized with a sort of shame at having his enemy thus see him searching in the mud for a mere scrap of string. He therefore hastily hid away his find in his blouse, and then in his breeches-pocket. At the same time he pretended to be still searching in the dirt for something which he had not been able to find. Finally he moved on toward the market-place, his head thrust forward, his body bent double by his pains.

[Sidenote: Local-color.]

[Sidenote: See note on ¶6.]

7. In a moment he was lost in the slowly shifting, noisy throng, agitated by its own constant chafferings. The peasants felt of the cows, turned away, came back again, much puzzled--always fearful of being over-reached in the bargain, never reaching a decision, watching the eye of the vendor, seeking ever to unmask the ruse of the man and the defect in his animal.

8. The women, having set their huge baskets at their feet, took out their poultry, which they laid on the ground with legs tied together, terror-stricken eyes, and scarlet combs.

9. They listened to offers, maintaining their price with a keen air but impassive face, or else suddenly deciding to take the counter offer, crying out to the slowly retreating customer:

10. “It’s settled, Master Anthime, I’ll give them to you!”

11. At length, little by little, the square became empty, and when the Angelus sounded noon, those who lived too far away to go home repaired to the inns.

[Sidenote: Setting for main crisis.]

12. At Jourdain’s, the large hall was crowded with diners, while the great courtyard was full of vehicles of every sort--carts, gigs, wagonettes, tilburies, traps, nameless carriages, yellow with mud, shapeless, patched, shafts pointing to heaven like two arms, or with noses in the ground and backs in the air.

13. Right opposite the diners at table, the immense fireplace, all brightly aflame, cast a lively warmth on the backs of those ranged along the right. Three spits were turning, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a delectable odor of roasting meat, and of juices streaming over the browned skin, rose from the hearth, kindled good humor and made everyone’s mouth water.

[Sidenote: Note how the author gathers the people to witness the crisis.]

[Sidenote: _Maît’_--colloquial abbreviation for _Maître_, equal here to “Mine Host.”]

14. All the aristocracy of the plough were eating there, at _Maît’ Jourdain’s_, inn-keeper and horse-trader--a sly fellow who had made money.

15. The dishes went round, and, like the jugs of yellow cider, were emptied. Everyone told of his affairs: his sales and his purchases. They exchanged news of the crops--the weather was good for vegetables, but a trifle wet for wheat.

[Sidenote: Approach of crisis.]

[Sidenote: Typical of their class.]

16. Suddenly the roll of a drum sounded in the courtyard before the house. Instantly everyone was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones, and ran to the door or to the windows, with mouth still full and napkin in hand.

17. After the public crier had ended his tattoo, he shouted out in a jerky voice, making his pauses at the wrong time:

[Sidenote: Preparation for crisis.]

18. “Be it known to the people of Goderville, and in general to all--persons present at the market, that there was lost this morning, upon the Beuzeville road between--nine and ten o’clock, a black leather pocketbook, containing five hundred francs and some business papers. You are requested to return it--to the mayor’s office, without delay, or to Master Fortuné Houlbrèque of Manneville. There will be twenty francs reward.”

19. Then the man went away. Once again was heard afar the muffled roll of the drum and the faint voice of the crier.

20. Then they began to talk over the incident, estimating the chances Master Houlbrèque had of recovering or of not recovering his pocketbook. Meanwhile the meal went on.

21. They were finishing coffee when the corporal of gendarmes appeared in the doorway.

22. He asked:

[Sidenote: Closer approach of crisis.]

23. “Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté--is he here?”

24. Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the other end of the table, replied:

25. “That’s me.”

26. And the corporal replied:

27. “Master Hauchecorne, will you have the goodness to go with me to the mayor’s office. _Monsieur le maire_ would like to speak with you.”

[Sidenote: Note how throughout the author emphasizes physical characteristics as indicating character.]

[Sidenote: Minute observation.]

28. The peasant--surprised, disturbed--drained his glass at a gulp, got up, and, more doubled up than in the morning, because the first steps after a rest were always particularly difficult, he started off, repeating:

29. “That’s me, that’s me,” and he followed the corporal.

30. The mayor was awaiting him, seated in an armchair. He was the notary of the place, a large man, grave, and pompous in speech.

[Sidenote: FULL CRISIS.]

31. “Master Hauchecorne,” said he, “you were seen to pick up this morning, on the Beuzeville road, the pocketbook lost by Master Houlbrèque, of Manneville.”

32. The countryman, speechless, stared at the mayor, already terrified by this suspicion which rested upon him without his understanding why.

33. “Me, me, I picked up that pocketbook?”

34. “Yes, exactly you.”

35. “Word of honor, I ain’t even so much as seen it.”

36. “You were seen.”

37. “They saw me, me? Who’s it 'as seen me?”

[Sidenote: Note how the complication is involved by personal prejudice.]

38. “Monsieur Malandin, the harness-maker.”

39. Then the old man remembered, and understood. Reddening with rage, he cried:

40. “Ah! he saw me, that cad! He saw me pick up this here string--look, _m’sieu le maire_.”

41. And, fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out the little bit of cord.

42. But the mayor, incredulous, shook his head.

43. “You will not make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur Malandin, who is a man worthy of belief, has mistaken that bit of string for a pocketbook.”

44. The peasant, furious, raised his hand and spat to one side, thus to attest his honor, repeating:

45. “All the same it’s the truth of the good God, the holy truth, _m’sieu le maire_. There! Upon my soul and my salvation, I say it again.”

46. The mayor replied:

[Sidenote: Circumstantial evidence. The miser’s character helps condemn him unjustly.]

47. “After having picked the thing up, you even hunted a long time in the mud to see if some piece of money had not fallen out.”

48. The good man choked with indignation and fear.

49. “How can anyone tell--how can anyone tell--lies like that to misrepresent an honest man! How can anyone tell--”

50. However he might protest, no one believed him.

51. He was confronted with Monsieur Malandin, who repeated and sustained his affirmation. They railed at each other for a whole hour. At his own request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing upon him.

[Sidenote: Suspense.]

52. At last, the mayor, greatly perplexed, sent him away, with the warning that he would advise the public prosecutor, and ask for orders.

53. The news had spread. When he came out of the mayor’s office the old man was surrounded and questioned with a curiosity either serious or bantering, but into which not the least indignation entered. And he began to recount the history of the piece of string. No one believed him. They laughed.

[Sidenote: Tone of story.]

54. He went on, halted by everyone, stopping his acquaintances, renewing endlessly his recital and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out to prove that he had nothing.

[Sidenote: Note Maupassant’s use of the short paragraph.]

55. They said to him:

56. “G’long, you old rascal!”

57. And he grew angry, working himself into exasperation, into a fever, desperate at not being believed, not knowing what to do, and always repeating his story.

58. Night came on. He must go home. He started out with three neighbors to whom he showed the place where he had picked up the piece of string; and all along the road he kept talking of his adventure.

59. That evening, he made a round of the village of Bréauté, in order to tell everyone of the matter. He encountered none but unbelievers.

60. He was ill of it all night.

61. The next day, about one o’clock in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm-hand of Master Breton’s, the market-gardener at Ymauville, returned the pocketbook and its contents to Master Houlbrèque, of Manneville.

[Sidenote: Apparent resolution of the complication.]

62. This man asserted, in substance, that he had found the article on the road; but, not being able to read, he had carried it home and given it to his employer.

63. The news spread to the suburbs. Master Hauchecorne was informed of it. He set himself at once to journeying about and commenced to narrate his story as completed by the denouement. He was triumphant.

64. “Wha’ made me feel bad,” he said, “wasn’t the thing itself, you understand, but it was the lies. There’s nothing hurts you like being blamed for a lie.”

[Sidenote: Tone of story.]

[Sidenote: FOUNDATION FOR CLIMAX.]

65. All day long he talked of his adventure, he recounted it on the roadways to the people who passed, at the tavern to the folks who drank, at the dismissal of church on the following Sunday. He even button-holed strangers to tell it to them.

[Sidenote: RESULTANT COMPLICATION.]

Now, he was tranquil, and yet something else bothered him without his being able to tell precisely what. People did not seem to be convinced. He felt as if they gossiped behind his back.

66. On Tuesday of the following week, he went to the Goderville market, solely impelled by the desire to relate his story. Malandin, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him pass. Why?

67. He accosted a farmer of Criquetot who would not let him finish, but giving him a dig in the pit of the stomach, cried out in his face, “G’long, you great rogue!” Then he turned on his heel.

[Sidenote: Peasant simplicity.]

68. Master Hauchecorne stood speechless, growing more and more disturbed. Why had he called him “great rogue”?

69. When seated at table at Jourdain’s tavern, he again began to explain the affair.

70. A Montivilliers horse-dealer called out to him:

71. “Go on, go on, you old trickster, I know you, and your piece of string!”

72. Hauchecorne stammered, “But--they--found it, the pocketbook!”

73. But the other retorted:

[Sidenote: DENOUEMENT AS TO THE RESULTANT COMPLICATION.]

[Sidenote: FINAL COMPLICATION.]

74. “Be quiet, daddy! There’s one who finds it, and one who takes it back. No one sees it, no one recognizes it, no one is the wiser for it.”

75. The peasant sat dumbfounded. He understood at last. They accused him of having returned the pocketbook by a confederate, an accomplice.

76. He tried to protest. Everyone at the table began to laugh.

77. He could not finish his dinner, and left amidst their mockeries.

[Sidenote: Key.]

78. He returned home, ashamed and indignant, strangled by his anger, by his confusion, and all the more thunderstruck because, with his Norman cunning, he was quite capable of having done the thing of which they had accused him, and even of boasting of it as a good trick. It appeared to him confusedly as impossible to prove his innocence, for his trickery was well known. And he felt struck to the heart with the injustice of the suspicion.

[Sidenote: Tone.]

[Sidenote: Key.]

79. Again he began to tell of his adventure, every day lengthening his recital, advancing each time new proofs, more energetic protestations, and more solemn oaths which he conjured up in his hours of solitude--his mind was occupied solely by the story of the piece of string. They believed him all the less as his defense became more complicated and his reasoning more fine-spun.

[Sidenote: Complication summarized.]

80. “Ha, they are liar’s reasons!” they said behind his back.

81. He realized it; he fretted over it; he exhausted himself in futile efforts.

82. He visibly wasted away.

83. The wags now made him recite “The Piece of String” for their amusement, as one persuades a soldier who has been through a campaign, to tell the story of his battles. His mind, attacked at its foundations, began to totter.

84. Towards the end of December he took to his bed.

85. During the first days of January he died, and, in the delirium of his mortal agony he protested his innocence, repeating:

[Sidenote: CLIMAX.]

86. “--a li’l’ piece of string ... a li’l’ piece of string ... see, here it is, _m’sieu le maire_.”

COPPÉE AND HIS WRITINGS

François Edouard Joachim Coppée was born in Paris, January 12, 1842. He was educated at the _Lycée St. Louis_, and early attracted attention by his poetic gifts. He held office as Librarian of the Senate, and also Guardian of the Archives at the _Comédie Française_. The honors of membership in the French Academy and that of being decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor were given him in 1883 and 1888 respectively. He died May 23, 1908.

François Coppée was a poet, dramatist, and short-story writer. The collection _Poèmes Modernes_, published at the age of twenty-seven, contains some remarkable work which well represents his talent. The plays _Madame de Maintenon_ and _Le Luthier de Crémone_ rank with his best dramatic work. Among his short-story gems are “The Sabots of Little Wolff,” “At Table,” “Two Clowns,” “The Captain’s Vices,” “My Friend Meurtrier,” “An Accident,” and “The Substitute.”

* * * * *

As a novelist, Coppée left no permanent mark upon his times, for in this field he was far surpassed by his contemporaries; but as a writer of little prose fictions, he stands well forward among that brilliant group which includes those immortals of the short-story--Maupassant, Daudet, and Mérimée. From the work of these masters, Coppée’s is well distinguished. The Norman Maupassant drew his lines with a sharper pencil, and, by the same token, an infinitely harder one; Daudet, child of Provence though he was, dipped his stylus more often in the acid of satire; and the Parisian Mérimée, though nearer than any other to Coppée in his manner of work, was less in sympathy with his own characters than the warmer-hearted author of “The Sabots of Little Wolff” and “The Substitute”--which follows in a translation by the author of this volume. Coppée was almost an idealist--certainly he was quick to respond to the call of the ideal in his themes. Amidst so much that is sordid and gross in French fiction, how refreshing it is to read a master who could be truthful without wallowing, moral without sermonizing, compassionate without sniveling, humorous without buffooning, and always disclose in his stories the spirit of a sympathetic lover of mankind. Like Dickens, he chose the lowly for his characters, and like Dickens, he found poetry in their simple lives.

In common with other modern French writers, with Daudet,
Maupassant, and others, Coppée excels in the writing of tales.
His prose is remarkable for the same qualities that appear in his
poetical works: sympathy, tenderness, marked predilection for the
weak, the humble, and especially a masterly treatment of subjects
essentially Parisian and modern.--ROBERT SANDERSON, _François
Coppée_, in WARNER’S _Library of the World’s Best Literature_.

Compassion is the chief quality of this little
masterpiece,--compassion and understanding of a primitive type
of character. The author shows us the good in a character not
altogether bad; and he almost makes us feel that the final
sacrifice was justifiable. He succeeds in doing this chiefly
because he shows us the other characters only as they appeared to
Jean François, thus focusing the interest of the reader on this
single character.--BRANDER MATTHEWS, _The Short-story_.

More than Daudet, Coppée deserves the title of the French Dickens.
A fellow member of the French Academy, José de Heredia, calls
him “the poet of the humble, painting with sincere emotion
his profound sympathy for the sorrows, the miseries, and the
sacrifices of the meek.” As an artist in fiction, says Heredia,
“Coppée possesses preëminently the gift of presenting concrete
fact rather than abstraction,” and a “great grasp of character,”
enabling him “to show us the human heart and intellect in full
play and activity”--both of which endowments were the supreme
characteristics of the author of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and _David
Copperfield_.--MERION M. MILLER, Introduction to _The Guilty Man_.

Contrast the touching pathos of the “Substitute,” poignant in his
magnificent self-sacrifice, by which the man who has conquered
his shameful past goes back willingly to the horrible life he has
fled from, that he may save from a like degradation and from an
inevitable moral decay the one friend he has in the world, all
unworthy as this friend is--contrast this with the story of the
gigantic deeds “My Friend Meurtrier” boasts about unceasingly, not
knowing that he has been discovered in his little round of daily
domestic duties--making the coffee of his good old mother, and
taking her poodle out for a walk.... No doubt M. Coppée’s _contes_
[stories] have not the sharpness of Maupassant’s nor the brilliancy
of M. Daudet’s. But what of it? They have qualities of their own.
They have sympathy, poetry, and a power of suggesting pictures not
exceeded, I think, by those of either Maupassant or M. Daudet. M.
Coppée’s street views in Paris, his interiors, his impressionist
sketches of life under the shadow of Notre Dame, are convincingly
successful.--BRANDER MATTHEWS, _Aspects of Fiction_.

FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON COPPÉE

Introduction to _Ten Tales by Coppée_, Brander Matthews (1890); _Books and Play-Books_, Brander Matthews (1895); _Literary Movement in France during the Nineteenth Century_, Georges Pellissier (1897); _Hours with Famous Parisians_, Stuart Henry (1897).

FOR ANALYSIS

THE SUBSTITUTE
(LE REMPLAÇANT)

BY FRANÇOIS COPPÉE

_Translation by The Editor_[27]

He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond.

2. Thus he spoke to the judges:

3. I am called Jean François Leturc, and for six months now I’ve been with the man who sings between two lanterns on the Place de la Bastille, while he scrapes on a string of catgut. I repeat the chorus with him, and then I cry out, ‘Get the collection of new songs, ten centimes, two sous!’ He was always drunk and beat me; that’s why the police found me the other night, in the tumble-down buildings. Before that, I used to be with the man who sells brushes. My mother was a laundress; she called herself Adèle. At one time a gentleman had given her an establishment, on the ground-floor, at Montmartre. She was a good worker and loved me well. She made money because she had the clientele of the café waiters, and those people use lots of linen. Sundays, she would put me to bed early to go to the ball; but week days, she sent me to the Brothers’ school, where I learned to read. Well, at last the _sergent-de-ville_ whose beat was up our street, began always stopping before her window to talk to her--a fine fellow, with the Crimean medal. They got married, and all went wrong. He didn’t take to me, and set mamma against me. Every one boxed my ears; and it was then that, to get away from home, I spent whole days on the Place Clichy, where I got to know the mountebanks. My stepfather lost his place, mamma her customers; she went to the wash-house to support her man. It was there she got consumption--from the steam of the lye. She died at Lariboisière. She was a good woman. Since that time I’ve lived with the brush-seller and the catgut-scraper. Are you going to put me in prison?”

4. He talked this way openly, cynically, like a man. He was a ragged little rascal, as tall as a boot, with his forehead hidden under a strange mop of yellow hair.

5. Nobody claimed him, so they sent him to the Reform School.

6. Not very intelligent, lazy, above all maladroit with his hands, he was able to learn there only a poor trade--the reseating of chairs. Yet he was obedient, of a nature passive and taciturn, and he did not seem to have been too profoundly corrupted in that school of vice. But when, having come to his seventeenth year, he was set free again on the streets of Paris, he found there, for his misfortune, his prison comrades, all dreadful rascals, exercising their low callings. Some were trainers of dogs for catching rats in the sewers; some shined shoes on ball nights in the Passage de l’Opéra; some were amateur wrestlers, who let themselves be thrown by the Hercules of the side-shows; some fished from rafts out in the river, in the full sunlight. He tried all these things a little, and a few months after he had left the house of correction he was arrested anew for a petty theft: a pair of old shoes lifted from out an open shop-window. Result: a year of prison at Sainte-Pélagie, where he served as valet to the political prisoners.

[Sidenote: Revolutionary songs of 1793.]

[Sidenote: _Tu_--thou--used only in familiar address.]

7. He lived, astonished, among this group of prisoners, all very young and negligently clad, who talked in loud voices and carried their heads in such a solemn way. They used to meet in the cell of the eldest of them, a fellow of some thirty years, already locked up for a long time and apparently settled at Sainte-Pélagie: a large cell it was, papered with colored caricatures, and from whose windows one could see all Paris--its roofs, its clock-towers, and its domes, and far off, the distant line of the hills, blue and vague against the sky. There were upon the walls several shelves filled with books, and all the old apparatus of a _salle d’armes_--broken masks, rusty foils, leather jackets, and gloves that were losing their stuffing. It was there that the “politicians” dined together, adding to the inevitable “soup and beef” some fruit, cheese, and half-pints of wine that Jean François went out to buy in a can--tumultuous repasts, interrupted by violent disputes, where they sang in chorus at the dessert the _Carmagnole_ and _Ça ira_. They took on, however, an air of dignity on days when they made place for a newcomer, who was at first gravely treated as “_citizen_,” but who was the next day _tutoyed_, and called by his nickname. They used big words there--Corporation, Solidarity, and phrases all quite unintelligible to Jean François, such as this, for example, which he once heard uttered imperiously by a frightful little hunchback who scribbled on paper all night long:

8. “It is settled. The cabinet is to be thus composed: Raymond in the Department of Education, Martial in the Interior, and I in Foreign Affairs.”

[Sidenote: Police headquarters.]

9. Having served his time, he wandered again about Paris, under the surveillance of the police, in the fashion of beetles that cruel children keep flying at the end of a string. He had become one of those fugitive and timid beings whom the law, with a sort of coquetry, arrests and releases, turn and turn about, a little like those platonic fishermen who, so as not to empty the pond, throw back into the water the fish just out of the net. Without his suspecting that so much honor was done to his wretched personality, he had a special docket in the mysterious archives of _la rue de Jérusalem_, his name and surnames were written in a large back-hand on the gray paper of the cover, and the notes and reports, carefully classified, gave him these graded appellations: “the man named Leturc,” “the prisoner Leturc,” and at last “the convicted Leturc.”

[Sidenote: The California, a cheap eating-house in Paris.]

[Sidenote: In drawing lots for military service the higher numbers give exemption, and this he secured by drawing “a good number.”]

[Sidenote: A receiver of stolen goods.]

10. He stayed two years out of prison, dining _à la Californie_, sleeping in lodging-houses, and sometimes in lime-kilns, and taking part with his fellows in endless games of pitch-penny on the boulevards near the city gates. He wore a greasy cap on the back of his head, carpet slippers, and a short white blouse. When he had five sous, he had his hair curled. He danced at Constant’s at Montparnasse; bought for two sous the jack-of-hearts or the ace-of-spades, which were used as return checks, to resell them for four sous at the door of Bobino; opened carriage-doors as occasion offered; led about sorry nags at the horse-market. Of all the bad luck--in the conscription he drew a good number. Who knows whether the atmosphere of honor which is breathed in a regiment, whether military discipline, might not have saved him? Caught in a haul of the police-net with the younger vagabonds who used to rob the drunkards asleep in the streets, he denied very energetically having taken part in their expeditions. It was perhaps true. But his antecedents were accepted in lieu of proof, and he was sent up for three years to Poissy. There he had to make rough toys, had himself tattooed on the chest, and learned thieves’ slang and the penal code. A new liberation, a new plunge into the Parisian sewer, but very short this time, for at the end of hardly six weeks he was again compromised in a theft by night, aggravated by violent entry, a doubtful case in which he played an obscure rôle, half dupe and half fence. On the whole, his complicity seemed evident, and he was condemned to five years’ hard labor. His sorrow in this adventure was, chiefly, to be separated from an old dog which he had picked up on a heap of rubbish and cured of the mange. This beast loved him.

[Sidenote: Straw was stuffed into the sabots to cushion the feet.]

[Sidenote: The northwest storm-wind from the Mediterranean.]

11. Toulon, the ball on his ankle, the work in the harbor, the blows from the staves, the wooden shoes without straw, the soup of black beans dating from Trafalgar, no money for tobacco, and the horrible sleep on the filthy camp-bed of the galley slave, that is what he knew for five torrid summers and five winters blown upon by the _Mistral_. He came out from there stunned, and was sent under surveillance to Vernon, where he worked for some time on the river; then, an incorrigible vagabond, he broke exile and returned again to Paris.

12. He had his savings, fifty-six francs--that is to say, time enough to reflect. During his long absence, his old and horrible comrades had been dispersed. He was well hidden, and slept in a loft at an old woman’s, to whom he had represented himself as a sailor weary of the sea, having lost his papers in a recent shipwreck, and who wished to essay another trade. His tanned face, his calloused hands, and a few nautical terms he let fall one time or another, made this story sufficiently probable.

13. One day when he had risked a saunter along the streets, and when the chance of his walk had brought him to Montmartre, where he had been born, an unexpected memory arrested him before the door of the Brothers’ school in which he had learned to read. Since it was very warm, the door was open, and with a single glance the passing incorrigible could recognize the peaceful schoolroom. Nothing was changed: neither the bright light shining in through the large windows, nor the crucifix over the desk, nor the rows of seats furnished with leaden ink-stands, nor the table of weights and measures, nor the map on which pins stuck in still pointed out the operations of some ancient war. Heedlessly and without reflecting, Jean François read on the blackboard these words of the Gospel, which a well-trained hand had traced as an example of penmanship:

Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than
over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.

14. It was doubtless the hour for recreation, for the Brother professor had left his chair, and, sitting on the edge of a table, he seemed to be telling a story to all the _gamins_ who surrounded him, attentive and raising their eyes. What an innocent and gay countenance was that of the beardless young man, in long black robe, with white necktie, with coarse, ugly shoes, and with badly cut brown hair pushed up at the back. All those pallid faces of children of the populace which were looking at him seemed less childlike than his, above all when, charmed with a candid, priestly pleasantry he had made, he broke out with a good and frank peal of laughter, which showed his teeth sound and regular--laughter so contagious that all the scholars broke out noisily in their turn. And it was simple and sweet, this group in the joyous sunlight that made their clear eyes and their blonde hair shine.

15. Jean François looked at the scene some time in silence, and, for the first time, in that savage nature all instinct and appetite, there awoke a mysterious and tender emotion. His heart, that rude, hardened heart, which neither the cudgel of the galley-master nor the weight of the watchman’s heavy whip falling on his shoulders was able to stir, beat almost to bursting. Before this spectacle, in which he saw again his childhood, his eyes closed sadly, and, restraining a violent gesture, a prey to the torture of regret, he walked away with great strides.

16. The words written on the blackboard came back to him.

17. “If it were not too late, after all!” he murmured. “If I could once more, like the others, eat my toasted bread honestly, sleep out my sleep without nightmare? The police spy would be very clever to recognize me now. My beard, that I shaved off down there, has grown out now thick and strong. One can borrow somewhere in this big ant-heap, and work is not lacking. Whoever does not go to pieces soon in the hell of the galleys comes out agile and robust; and I have learned how to climb the rope-ladders with loads on my back. Building is going on all around here, and the masons need helpers. Three francs a day,--I have never earned so much. That they should forget me, that is all I ask.”

18. He followed his courageous resolution, he was faithful to it, and three months afterward he was another man. The master for whom he labored cited him as his best workman. After a long day passed on the scaffolding, in the full sun, in the dust, constantly bending and straightening his back to take the stones from the hands of the man below him and to pass them to the man above him, he went to get his soup, at the cheap eating house, tired out, his legs numb, his hands burning, and his eyelashes stuck together by the plaster, but content with himself, and carrying his well-earned money in the knot of his handkerchief. He went out without fear, for his white mask made him unrecognizable, and, then, he had observed that the suspicious glance of the policeman seldom falls on the real worker. He was silent and sober. He slept the sound sleep of honest fatigue. He was free.

* * * * *

19. At last--supreme recompense!--he had a friend.

20. It was a mason’s helper like himself, named Savinien, a little peasant from Limoges, red-cheeked, who had come to Paris with his stick over his shoulder and his bundle on the end of it, who fled from the liquor-dealers and went to mass on Sundays. Jean François loved him for his piety, for his candor, for his honesty, for all that he himself had lost, and so long ago. It was a passion profound, reserved, disclosing itself in the care and forethought of a father. Savinien, himself easily moved and self-loving, let things take their course, satisfied only in that he had found a comrade who shared his horror of the wine-shop. The two friends lived together in a furnished room, fairly clean, but their resources were very limited; they had to take into their room a third companion, an old man from Auvergne, sombre and rapacious, who found a way of economizing out of his meagre wages enough to buy some land in his own province.

21. Jean François and Savinien scarcely left each other. On days of rest they took long walks in the environs of Paris and dined in the open air in one of those little country inns where there are plenty of mushrooms in the sauces and innocent enigmas on the bottoms of the plates. There Jean François made his friend tell him all those things of which those born in the cities are ignorant. He learned the names of the trees, the flowers, the plants; the seasons for the different harvests; he listened avidly to the thousand details of a farmer’s labors: the autumn’s sowing, the winter’s work, the splendid _fêtes_ of harvest-home and vintage, and the flails beating the ground, and the noise of the mills by the borders of the streams, and the tired horses led to the trough, and the morning hunting in the mists, and, above all, the long evenings around the fire of vine-branches, shortened by tales of wonder. He discovered in himself a spring of imagination hitherto unsuspected, finding a singular delight in the mere recital of these things, so gentle, calm, and monotonous.

22. One anxiety troubled him, however, that Savinien should not come to know his past. Sometimes there escaped him a shady word of thieves’ slang, an ignoble gesture, vestiges of his horrible former existence; and then he felt the pain of a man whose old wounds reopen, more especially as he thought he saw then in Savinien the awakening of an unhealthy curiosity. When the young man, already tempted by the pleasures which Paris offers even to the poorest, questioned him about the mysteries of the great city, Jean François feigned ignorance and turned the conversation; but he had now conceived a vague inquietude for the future of his friend.

23. This was not without foundation, and Savinien could not long remain the naïve rustic he had been on his arrival in Paris. If the gross and noisy pleasures of the wine-shop always were repugnant to him, he was profoundly troubled by other desires full of danger for the inexperience of his twenty years. When the spring came, he began to seek solitude, and at first he wandered before the gayly lighted entrances to the dancing-halls, through which he saw the girls going in couples, without bonnets--and with their arms around each other’s waists, whispering low. Then, one evening, when the lilacs shed their perfume, and the appeal of the quadrilles was more entrancing, he crossed the threshold, and after that Jean François saw him change little by little in manners and in visage. Savinien became more frivolous, more extravagant; often he borrowed from his friend his miserable savings, which he forgot to repay. Jean François, feeling himself abandoned, was both indulgent and jealous; he suffered and kept silent. He did not think he had the right to reproach; but his penetrating friendship had cruel and insurmountable presentiments.

24. One evening when he was climbing the stairs of his lodging, absorbed in his preoccupations, he heard in the room he was about to enter a dialogue of irritated voices, and he recognized one as that of the old man from Auvergne, who lodged with him and Savinien. An old habit of suspicion made him pause on the landing, and he listened to learn the cause of the trouble.

25. “Yes,” said the man from Auvergne angrily, “I am sure that some one has broken open my trunk and stolen the three louis which I had hidden in a little box; and the man who has done this thing can only be one of the two companions who sleep here, unless it is Maria, the servant. This concerns you as much as me, since you are the master of the house, and I will drag you before the judge if you do not let me at once open up the valises of the two masons. My poor hoard! It was in its place only yesterday; and I will tell you what it was, so that, if we find it, no one can accuse me of lying. Oh, I know them, my three beautiful gold pieces, and I can see them as plainly as I see you. One was a little more worn than the others, of a slightly greenish gold, and that had the portrait of the great Emperor; another had that of a fat old fellow with a queue and epaulets; and the third had a Philippe with side-whiskers. I had marked it with my teeth. No one can trick me, not me. Do you know that I needed only two others like those to pay for my vineyard? Come on, let us look through the things of these comrades, or I will call the police. Make haste!”

26. “All right,” said the voice of the householder; “we’ll search with Maria. So much the worse if you find nothing, and if the masons get angry. It is you who have forced me to it.”

27. Jean François felt his heart fill with fear. He recalled the poverty and the petty borrowings of Savinien, the sombre manner he had borne the last few days. Yet he could not believe in any theft. He heard the panting of the man from Auvergne in the ardor of his search, and he clenched his fists against his breast as if to repress the beatings of his heart.

28. “There they are!” suddenly screamed the victorious miser. “There they are, my louis, my dear treasure! And in the Sunday waistcoat of the little hypocrite from Limoges. Look, landlord! they are just as I told you. There’s the Napoleon, and the man with the queue, and the Philippe I had dented with my teeth. Look at the mark. Ah, the little rascal with his saintly look! I should more likely have suspected the other. Ah, the villain! He will have to go to the galleys!”

29. At this moment Jean François heard the well-known step of Savinien, who was slowly mounting the stairs.

30. “He is going to his betrayal,” thought he. “Three flights. I have time!”

31. And, pushing open the door, he entered, pale as death, into the room where he saw the landlord and the stupefied servant in a corner, and the man from Auvergne on his knees amid the disordered clothes, lovingly kissing his gold pieces.

32. “Enough of this,” he said in a thick voice. “It is I who have taken the money and who have put it in my comrade’s trunk. But that is too disgusting. I am a thief and not a Judas. Go hunt for the police. I’ll not try to save myself. Only, I must say a word in private to Savinien, who is here.”

33. The little man from Limoges had, in fact, just arrived, and, seeing his crime discovered, and believing himself lost, he stood still, his eyes fixed, his arms drooping.

34. Jean François seized him violently about the neck as though to embrace him; he pressed his mouth to Savinien’s ear and said to him in a voice low and supplicating:

35. “Be quiet!”

36. Then, turning to the others:

37. “Leave me alone with him. I shall not go away, I tell you. Shut us up, if you wish, but leave us alone.”

38. And, with a gesture of command, he showed them the door. They went out.

39. Savinien, broken with anguish, had seated himself on a bed, and dropped his eyes without comprehending.

40. “Listen,” said Jean François, who approached to take his hands. “I understand you have stolen three gold pieces to buy some trifle for a girl. That would have cost six months of prison for you. But one does not get out of that except to go back again, and you would have become a pillar of the police tribunals and the courts of assizes. I know all about them. I have done seven years in the Reform School, one year at Sainte-Pélagie, three years at Poissy, and five years at Toulon. Now, have no fear. All is arranged. I have taken this affair on my shoulders.”

41. “Unhappy fellow!” cried Savinien; but hope was already coming back to his cowardly heart.

42. “When the elder brother is serving under the colors, the younger does not go,” Jean François went on. “I’m your substitute, that’s all. You love me a little, do you not? I am paid. Do not be a baby. Do not refuse. They would have caught me one of these days, for I have broken my exile. And then, you see, that life out there will be less hard for me than for you; I know it, and shall not complain if I do not render you this service in vain and if you swear to me that you will not do it again. Savinien, I have loved you well, and your friendship has made me very happy, for it is thanks to my knowing you that I have kept honest and straight, as I might have been, perhaps, if I had had, like you, a father to put a tool in my hands, a mother to teach me my prayers. My only regret was that I was useless to you and that I was deceiving you about my past. To-day I lay aside the mask in saving you. It is all right. Come, good-bye! Do not weep; and embrace me, for already I hear the big boots on the stairs. They are returning with the police; and we must not seem to know each other so well before these fellows.”

43. He pressed Savinien hurriedly to his breast, and then he pushed him away as the door opened wide.

44. It was the landlord and the man from Auvergne, who were bringing the police. Jean François started forward to the landing and held out his hands for the handcuffs and said, laughing:

45. “Forward, bad lot!”

46. To-day he is at Cayenne, condemned for life, as an incorrigible.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. Write a paragraph showing how character is affected (a) unfavorably and (b) favorably by the two tests, as shown by these two stories.

2. In your opinion, was each character changed or merely revealed by the crisis which occurred in each instance?

3. Which of these stories seems the more real to you?

4. Have you ever heard of a similar instance in real life? If so, cite it.

5. Write a paragraph contrasting the trivial and the important crisis in each story, though both led to important results.

6. Set down all the traits of character exhibited by the two leading actors in each story.

7. Select a character-study from some book or magazine and write a brief discussion of it.

8. Do the same for another character-study by (a) Maupassant, and (b) Coppée.

TEN REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER STUDIES

“The Captain’s Vices,” François Coppée, translated in _Ten Tales by Coppée_.

“The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney,” Rudyard Kipling, in _Soldiers Three_.

“A New England Nun,” Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, in volume of same title.

“The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock,” Thomas Nelson Page, _Harper’s Magazine_, Oct., 1894.

“The Sick-a-Bed Lady,” Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, in volume of same title.

“The Insurgent,” Ludovic Halévy, translated in _Short-Story Masterpieces_.

“Caybigan,” James Hopper, in volume of same title.

“The Liar,” Henry James, in _Short-Story Classics, American_.

“Editha,” W. D. Howells, in _Harper’s Novelettes_.

“Our Sermon Taster,” Ian Maclaren, in _Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush_.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Co., and used by permission.

VIII
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES

_Markheim._--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_On the Stairs._--ARTHUR MORRISON

He [the author] can sometimes rouse our intense curiosity and
eagerness by the mere depiction of a psychological state, as Walter
Pater has done in the case of Sebastian Storck and other personages
of his _Imaginary Portraits_. The fact that “nothing happens”
in stories of this kind may be precisely what most interests
us, because we are made to understand what it is that inhibits
action.--BLISS PERRY, _A Study of Prose Fiction_.

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES

A subtle distinction is to be observed between the character-study and the psychological study, but it will not be supposed that writers of short-stories plainly label the distinction, or that the two types are frequently, if ever, found entirely separate. In the character-study more attention is paid to the true natures of the actors, and the demonstration of their natures is shown in the action of the story; in the psychological study more stress is laid upon the actual operation of thought, feeling and purpose--it is a laboratory study of what goes on in the human heart, to use a somewhat vague but necessary term, under stress of crisis.

The psychological study is the most difficult because the most penetrating of all short-story forms, and in consequence the most rare in its perfect presentation. To show the processes of reasoning, the interplay of motive, the power of feeling acting upon feeling, and the intricate combinations of these, calls for the most clear-sighted understanding of man, and the utmost skill in literary art, lest the story be lost in a fog of tiresome analysis and discussion. In “Markheim” and “On the Stairs,” two master story-tellers are easily at their best, for they never obtrude their own opinions, but swiftly and with a firm onward movement the stories disclose the true inward workings of the unique characters, while from mood, speech, and action we infallibly infer all the soul-processes by which their conclusions are reached.

MARKHEIM
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION. Remarkable because it at once touches upon the external crisis of the story.]

“Yes,” said the dealer, “our wind-falls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

[Sidenote: Note double reason.]