Chapter XII: Book IV: I (1)

THE EPIDEMIC

I WAS being prepared for liberty by years of seclusion, the history of which, after so many petty rebellions, I shall not set down here. I never became wonted to that boarding school to which I had demanded to be sent in a moment of pride which for nothing in the world would I have disavowed. Yet I passed for a good scholar, whose only fault was a little reserve or dissimulation.

I suffered frightfully during the first absence from home. I used to cry in the dormitory, my head smothered in the covers, until I fell asleep, enwrapped in my sorrow. But I never uttered a word of complaint.

My parents no doubt thought that I had accepted my new life without difficulty. My father wrote to me regularly and at length: no doubt this correspondence made an addition to his burdens for which I was not in the least obliged to him. Self love urged me to repel all his advances. Knowing nothing of Martinod’s insinuations, how should he have guessed that I saw on every side injustice to myself, marks of preference for my brothers? I systematically distorted phrases, sentiments, thoughts. If, in his virile love, he avoided expressions of affection, for fear of softening me, I accused him of harshness. If on the other hand he gave way to his fondness for me, it was simply to deceive me, and impose all the more upon me an authority which I exaggerated to the point of imagining that it was everywhere about me, an imagined persecution which became unsupportable. I usually wrote to my mother, and he never remarked upon the fact. Yet he noticed it, and several of his letters showed that he did. “I know,” he once wrote, “that you do not care to confide in your father.” And mother, who had also noticed it, missed no opportunity of writing about him, emphasising his kindness of heart above all his other merits, reminding me of instances of it, which exasperated me. If he had become aware of my purposed and tenacious hostility, he had no suspicion of its cause; and so the chasm which in the beginning a single step might easily have crossed, grew ever wider between us.

This tension of my mind inspired in me a great ardour for work. I achieved brilliant successes with perfect indifference, successes which contributed to deceive my family, who found in them a proof that I had accepted my new discipline. A good pupil, as my bulletins had it, could not but be a fine child and the joy of his family. Aunt Deen sent me extravagant compliments in bad handwriting, setting all down to the account of my filial affection. From grandfather I never heard.

But what were these positive results in comparison with the inward experiences that were going on in me? Little by little I relinquished all religious practices, building up for myself a sort of mysticism in which I formed a habit of taking refuge. Imagination substituted for my walks in the forest and other wild retreats, and even for my meetings with Nazzarena, a sort of abstract notion of nature and of love in which I found intense joy. I invented elusive landscapes and ideal passions. I was at the age in which one most easily lives in metaphysical chimeras, when ideas are mistaken for affections, and the sensibilities have no need of the spring-board of reality to leap into action. In my dreams I was my own master, until such time as life should make me independent. I had discovered the independence of the brain, and that it can supply all that is lacking. And to crown all, I threw myself into music as into an element which takes one’s own shape; plastic and so to say liquid, it lent itself to all my longings with a docility which filled me with wonder. I had come upon the _Freischütz_ and _Euryanthe_, that forest where the alleys reach beyond sight. It was more beautiful and especially more vast than the one which long ago had awakened me to the latent life of things. By it I scaled mountains higher and more inaccessible than that to which the shepherd had been leading his flock. And sometimes the sharp pain of the notes that I drew from my instrument brought back to me the unforgettable lamentation of the nightingale in love with the rose: _All night long I wear out my throat for her, but she sleeps and hears me not_. For her? I did not know her name, I could not perceive her face, but that she existed I had not the slightest doubt. But--strange phenomenon--she was no longer Nazzarena: fidelity itself was but one more chain to break.

With the help of music and of my thoughts I built for myself a palace into which no visitor was admitted: they thought me present, and simply absent-minded, when in fact I had retreated to my solitude, the only place where I was actually myself. This faculty of concentration set me apart from friendship. No schoolfellow was admitted to my friendship; so that my family, against which I was in rebellion, by itself alone represented to me all humanity.

Thus all the seeds dropped during my convalescence were germinating in me after the lapse of a few years. I was free within myself, and no one suspected it. My parents were satisfied with my conduct and my place in school. I had the reputation of being quiet, obedient and easy to manage, and under the shelter of that reputation I let myself glide peacefully into a happy state in which I recognised no other law than my own and which was pretty near to anarchy. I made sacrifices to contingencies, but they courted for little in comparison with my inward joys.

When I went home for vacations my coldness and indifference surprised and saddened my family. Unable to understand them, they attributed them to humility, to the reserve which was characteristic of me, and they multiplied efforts to bring me back to natural ways--only to make me all the more distant. The laugh of Louise, who was now the flower of the house, was as powerless to thaw me out as the martial exhortations of Bernard, at home on leave, which simply exasperated me. As for the two younger children, Nicola and Jamie, I inspired in them a sort of fear, so that they avoided me. After having alienated them, there was nothing for me but to be vexed at their bad dispositions, which I was not slow to do.

Aunt Deen, seeking for a flattering explanation of my changed humour, discovered this:

“He is so superior!”

When my father got hold of me, with a little time to spare, he tried all means to resume the conversation that we had had on the hill of Malpas, that election day. With a secret disquietude which I felt, and which in a spirit of opposition only anchored me the more firmly in my attitude, he saw that I had closed my eyes to all that pertained to the field of observation, whether it were history, the past, tradition, laws, manners and customs, or practical every-day life, and confined myself to abstract reading, philosophy, mathematics, or threw myself still more absorbingly into music--an ambiguous and undefined régime, the mirages of which he dreaded for me. Deeply affected by the departure of Mélanie and Stephen and the approaching absence of Bernard, who was at home merely for a few months before setting out for his destination in Tonkin, where the war seemed likely to be unending, he had hoped to talk intimately with me, to win me back, to guide me. I would listen to him courteously, hardly replying, and he could not misunderstand my silence and my distant manner. He never wearied in pointing out to me the superiority which in every profession, in all the course of human existence, is conferred by a clear vision of realities. How much intelligence, tact, even diplomacy, he must have expended in that effort to win me back which I constantly evaded, I now realise as I recall it all.

Nicola and James, now grown beyond babyhood, used to accompany us in these walks which were such a bore to me, and which recalled others, that I had loved; they were interested in his conversation, which almost became a monologue, and in after years I discovered in them the impress of these teachings by which they had unconsciously profited, while I was determinedly refractory to them. Sometimes I would hear in his voice--suddenly grown imperious--the echo of that which on that memorable day had thrilled me to the marrow, and I almost expected to hear him say, as then, _But understand me, poor child. You must indeed understand me--your future is at stake_--then the excited voice would calm itself, or would be silent. My father had recognised the uselessness of his effort.

I was able also effectively to evade the solicitations of my mother, who sought my confidence and was troubled by my indifference to religion.

“You don’t pray enough,” she would say to me. “You don’t know how necessary it is. It is the most real thing in the world.”

I had, however, been clever enough to resume relations with grandfather without awakening suspicion. We used to practise together, though he trembled a little and his violin seemed tremulous. Or we would discuss a sonata or a symphony for hours together. Thus I had watched him admiringly years ago, in the Café des Navigateurs, getting off into a corner with Gallus. If any member of the family undertook to join in our conversation we would gaze at him in a superior manner, as at a profane person incapable of an intelligent opinion. Music could have meaning only for us; it belonged to us; and through it we resumed our former intimacy.

I had entered upon my eighteenth year when the event occurred which was to decide my future life. The baccalaureates had covered me with honour, and for a year past I had been preparing for the Central School, with no particular drawing toward it, and even with perfect indifference. A certain taste for natural sciences, purposely abandoned, had for a time given my father the false hope that I should return to the plans of my childhood, and could even be his successor some day. But I had chosen the calling of engineer because it would take me away from home, and permit me to be my own master.

When the time came for us to return home the first figure that we never failed to see on the platform at the station was that of our father, who had hastened to meet us. His face would be actually illuminated with paternal love. I used to greet him as if I had left him the day before, but he would not let himself be put off so, and would always open his arms to me as if he were finding me after I had long been lost. These effusions in public appeared to me very vulgar, and I evaded them most artfully.

It was the end of July. Examinations over, I had come home for the vacation. Having thoroughly irritated me by clasping me to his breast, my father had me get into a carriage, my valise at our feet, and we took the road to the house, which was at the other end of the town, and on its outskirts, as I have elsewhere described.

We were crossing the Market Square when a group of the lower sort of people cast hostile glances at us, accompanied by low growls; then some one cried,

“Down with Rambert.”

I turned in amazement to my father, who had made no reply, and was even smiling at those who insulted him;--oh, not that smile that I had already seen upon his lips when preparing for a conflict, but a smile almost of sympathy, of commiseration. Why this sudden unpopularity? They might refuse to elect him, but they had respected, and above all, feared him. The coachman had already whipped up his horse, a few hoots pursued us. I could not but ask what it all meant.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Some poor creatures. I will tell you about it.”

The household rushed to the steps to meet us. It was the usual proceeding, at the return of each absent one. Grandfather alone did not stir, and I heard his violin giving forth its plaintive melody from the tower chamber. Father told of the manifestations of which we had been victims.

“Oh, the wretches!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who by reason of rheumatism in the leg limped a little, but whom years had robbed of none of her war-like virtue. “They came all the way here a while ago; they or some others. Fortunately the gate was closed.”

She had barricaded us against “them,” our enemies.

“Oh, my God!” murmured mother--“if only nothing happens to you, Michel!”

Father explained the recent incident. The municipality which had been elected three years previously had given orders for important aqueducts to be built to bring water to the public fountains. These works had been awarded to a somewhat unscrupulous and even disreputable contractor, who had been put forward by important political influences. It appeared that within a few days father had discovered two or three cases of typhus, both in the hospital and in the working people’s quarter, and he attributed them to the water recently introduced into the city, which must have been either contaminated or ill trapped. If he had been correct in his diagnosis of the origin of the disease he dreaded an epidemic. He had therefore at once laid before the mayor a request for the immediate closing of the suspected fountains, and had asked for a decree enjoining the use of boiled water only, with other precautionary measures. Whereupon the mayor, who was a grocer by the name of Baboulin, being advised by his deputy, Martinod, had refused the request out of deference to public sentiment. Our town, built like an amphitheatre above the lake, was a chosen summer resort of a large colony of strangers. If there should be any talk of contagion the season’s business would be ruined at a stroke. And besides, it would have been an avowal of the inadequacy of those famous improvements of which, according to custom, much had been made to add to the fame of the town. The quarrel had leaked out, and the public had violently taken the side against the prophet of evil.

I listened to the story with the indulgence of a traveller whose duty it is to share politely in the interests of his hosts. This was provincial gossip, quick to be born, soon to die; and I had come from Paris. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant dropped in at nightfall to lend strength to them. Since the decease of the Count de Chambord he had predicted nothing but plagues, wars, cyclones and catastrophes of all sorts. He was in his element now, and scented from afar an odour of cholera which would re-establish his blemished reputation and punish the Republic.

“I hear,” he said to my father, “that they are going to give you a tin pan serenade to-night.”

“A serenade,” repeated Aunt Deen. “I should like to see them! I’ll empty a boiler of boiling water on their heads, since they won’t have boiled water to drink.”

“Very well,” said my father. “I’ll wait.”

After dinner, mother, who was anxious, asked us to recite prayers in common. I hesitated to join in these invocations which I deemed puerile, and I only did repeat them with my lips, without heart, merely, I said to myself, to avoid sowing discord the first day. As for grandfather, he had valiantly mounted to his tower to direct his telescope upon I know not what planet.

About nine o’clock we heard a formidable clamour, but it was far away. For a time it neither drew nearer nor became more distant. The crowd that made it must be marking time. We distinctly distinguished a sort of refrain of two notes, the meaning of which we could not grasp. Suddenly the bell rang at the gate.

“There they are!” exclaimed Aunt Deen.

But no; under the gas jet only one shadow was distinguishable, and that a small one. Aunt Deen and mother were of opinion that the gate should be opened only for a good reason.

“Probably some one is sick,” observed my father; and he himself went to the gate. He recognised in the nocturnal visitor Mimi Pachoux, who had furtively hastened thither to tell us:

“It appears, Doctor, that there are other cases; and they are assaulting the mayor’s office.”

“Oh, truly? What is it that they are shouting?”

“Resign! Resign!”

“Very well, good friend. I am going.”

When this dialogue was reported to Aunt Deen she wanted to reward our labourer’s devotion, but father checked her.

“Oh, don’t be in a hurry, aunt. He ran away from me these last days. He simply anticipates the popular movement, when he is perfectly sure of its direction.”

Then turning to me he asked, “Will you go with me? It will be a change from your studies.”

It was one of those fine moonless nights of July when the stars seem to hang low from the dark dome of heaven, like suspended lamps. We reached the square of the City Hall, which was black with people, all the air resounding with the one cry,

“Resign! Resign!”

We were at the back of the crowd, which was stamping and vociferating before the fast-closed municipal building. There were groups of citizens gathered from the cafés, into which the news had doubtless spread, and there were also many family groups, with children in their arms, the women more excited than the men, some of them demanding that the mayor should be ducked in the fountain. To say truth, such an act would have required considerable good will. To my mind, all those Chinese shadows gesticulating in the uncertain light appeared supremely ridiculous. Absorbed in my own interior life, I took not the slightest interest in their goings on.

Suddenly a light shone forth from a room of the City Hall which opened upon a balcony. Mayor Baboulin had decided to reassure his constituency. But it was in vain that he essayed to make himself heard; epithets of all sorts were flying through the air at him, prisoner, traitor, knave, and others less elegant but even more sonorous.

Another man appeared beside him. My old friend Deputy Martinod, trusting to his popularity and his gifts of speech, came forward. But the hulla-baloos continued, while vituperations even more familiar and offensive were showered upon him. In the gaslight I recognised near me the inseparable Gallus and Merinos conscientiously reviling their old friend.

“You see,” said my father, making no attempt, to moderate his voice, “what to expect of the populace. Yesterday they were hurrahing for them; to-day they insult them.”

I confess that I was surprised to hear him express himself so freely, in that strong, ringing voice which always so disturbed grandfather. Only a few hours ago, as we were driving from the station, hadn’t the populace hooted at him, too? What if they should begin again? We were not behind the shelter of walls nor under the protection of the police. Just at that moment one of the demonstrators turned, crimson-faced and open-mouthed. A light was reflected full upon him; it was Tem Bossette, in person, facing us, full and overflowing like a wine-bottle, gesticulating even more vigorously than the others. The moment he saw us he cried aloud:

“Long live Rambert!”

All around him uprose a great tumult, and to my stupefaction every one was crying, “Long live Rambert!” at the top of his lungs. Father touched me on the shoulder, whispering,

“Let’s get out of this: we’ve had enough!”

A little more and our retreat would have been cut off, and we should have been obliged to submit to the unexpected ovation. Rapidly, before they could get into line to accompany us, we gained a cross street and hastened to the house, where the family were awaiting us. The shadow at the window told us of the disquietude which our absence had caused. Father gaily related what had happened, describing Tem’s intervention.

“Good fellow!” exclaimed Aunt Deen approvingly.

“Oh, he is a worse case than Mimi. The last few days he hasn’t even said good morning to me.”

“What business is it of his?” asked grandfather, who was troubled about the epidemic. “He is in no danger. He has never been a hard drinker.”

“Hark!” exclaimed mother--so quick to be fearful for us.

The expected clamour was certainly approaching; the sounds were growing more distinct; in a moment they would be intelligible.

“Oh, my God!” she added; “what is going to happen next!”

Father laughingly reassured her:

“This time, Valentine, they are cheering. It’s more than I asked for. This afternoon I was only fit for a ducking; this evening I am a saviour.”

How little he cared for public favour! He wore his battle smile, and I thought it very contemptuous. In the mysticism in which I had taken refuge I held myself aloof from all mankind; but so long as I was not obliged to associate with them I was quite willing to grant them all the virtues, even that of consistency. The crowd was already defiling before the gate, singing,

_It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert_,
_It’s Rambert that we need_!

Was there then only one Rambert? Grandfather, for whom no one was calling, slipped away, I alone observing his movement of retreat; he was probably going back to his tower, returning quietly to his telescope; the planet that he had been observing had not yet sunk below the horizon.

I would fain have followed him, but father asked me to look out. I looked, without interest, at the confused mass whose surges were beating against the gate and the wall of enclosure. It might have been a long, enormous serpent, a long, enormous mole-cricket whose body filled the breadth of the street, and whose tail must have stretched far away, beyond the turn of the road.

Suddenly the gate gave way, and the great beast, like the gipsies long ago, invaded the short avenue and the flower borders. In a moment it was assaulting the house. Aunt Deen, at my side, was torn between the joys of popularity and the instinctive defence of our garden.

By way of checking the onrush of the multitude father opened the window. He was saluted with a tempest of applause, but easily commanded silence, his voice ringing out like a deep-toned church bell:

“My friends,” he said, “we shall do all we can to check the progress of this scourge. Count upon me, go back home, and above all, invoke the help of God.”

Invoke the help of God! But it was he whom they looked upon as Providence! In all that manifestation my mother had been the only one who had thought of praying. Aunt Deen was drinking in her nephew’s words, but their eloquence touched me not at all. I could have wished him to utter a few noble sentiments in praise of science, which alone was capable of dealing with epidemics and preventing contagions; but of science my father had said never a word. At that moment I noticed how large a number of good women were in the crowd, some of them brandishing their babies at arms’ length, as if offering them to my father. No doubt he had been talking for the good women.

Nevertheless he had gained his point. Little by little the crowd was calming down and gradually dribbling away. They passed out of the gate, and the lovely summer night, but now torn with shoutings, slowly gained its empire over the last lingerers in the garden, over the roads and the fields, and gave them back to silence.

Events began to hurry one upon another, the very next morning. The municipal council, responsible for the defective work upon the aqueducts, resigned under general obloquy and contempt.

“There are your electors!” said our father at table. “First rejoicing in the triumph of the mayor and council over conservatism, and now demanding the disgrace of those very men and dragging them in the mud with shame.”

In a flash I saw myself again in the Café des Navigateurs a few years before, drinking champagne with Martinod and his heelers, in honour of grandfather’s candidacy, and far from revolting me, the memory touched my heart. Then, a child, I had quaffed a sort of delicious recklessness, something like that love-languor that Nazzarena, passing out of my life, had left with me, listening to those fine theories which were not very clear to me but were preparing me for liberty nevertheless.

The excitement increased in the town with the increase in the number of deaths, which, however, were still few. The exact figures which my father gave by no means corresponded with those that were printed in the newspapers, or flew from lip to lip. He had forbidden us to go into the town, grandfather approving:

“One never knows how those things get caught--a mere nothing is enough. It’s quite enough to have so many sick persons coming here.”

I had found grandfather aging, when I came home. He was nearly eighty, of course, but he had so long kept his air of youth, the alert step due to his long walks, and even his bright eyes, their sarcastic glint only emphasised by the gathering wrinkles. Now he was growing bent, and his gaze seemed dimmed. Still he clung to life, and perhaps all the more as he felt his strength failing.

The most absurd and contradictory rumours were flying about everywhere, and political passions had free course. An individual had been caught putting poison into the river;--a priest, said the anti-clericals; a free mason, said the others. A frightful mania of suspicion began to run wild. An unlucky fellow with a pimpled face just missed of being strung up, on the pretext of spreading contagion, and was only saved by my father’s intervention:

“Pimples on the face are the only ones that mean nothing!” he had shouted, just in time.

He brought home to us all these incidents and rumours, for we went nowhere; he even carefully disinfected himself on returning from his rounds.

Next, the villages below the water-works thought the contagion had reached them, and were struck with panic, their inhabitants crowding to the town. We could see them passing with their carts, their cattle, their furniture, like fugitives before the face of war. Brawls arose from attempts to keep them out.

Then suddenly the epidemic, which until then had been under control, its ravages greatly exaggerated, took on a disturbing character, whether in consequence of the crowded state of the town and the lack of hygiene, or because the air had really become tainted. The general terror became itself a danger. Pestilence and famine were said to be upon us. Abbé Heurtevant, who, all devotion to the sufferers, yet seemed to breathe in a sort of consolation from the atmosphere of catastrophe, seeing in all this the fulfilment of his prophecies, and who could not but discern signs of divine intervention, was formally accused of sorcery, and was obliged to run to earth in his own room for several days, lest evil should befall him. Mlle Tapinois had given the signal for departure, abandoning her work-rooms, which mother took up without comment. The hotels were emptied, and all the people who could fly from town fled.

The lack of organisation increased the evil. The municipality had resigned and the prefect was taking the waters in Germany. The electors were convoked on a call of urgency. Then came a rush for father. Every day there was a crowd before the gate crying, _Long live Rambert_! or _It’s Rambert we must have_. Aunt Deen was never surfeited with this refrain, which was music to her ears. Only he--there was no one but Michel.

I did not see and I cannot describe the despairing town, the shops closed for fear of pillage, the inhabitants torn by party enmity, haunted by all sorts of suspicion, clinging to every superstition, ravaged by bitterness and poverty, and given over to terror. But I did see with my own eyes, at our very feet, there under our very windows, the town entreating one man, submitting to him, grovelling before him, whom formerly they would have none of. The multitude dragged itself in the dust, moaned, uttered howls of desire like an infuriated dog. And not comprehending its distress I despised it.

My father had lost his authority over me, not from having abused it, notwithstanding that I had imagined tyranny in some of his acts, but perhaps--who can say?--for not having exerted it, that evening when he brought me back from the Café des Navigateurs, that day when in the tower chamber I had braved him in defence of grandfather. He had no suspicion either of my first experience of love, which had played havoc in my heart, nor of the intensity of those aspirations after liberty which had been slowly infiltrated into it by all those walks and conversations.

Yet he had felt my detachment from the house, and had trusted to clemency to bring me back. And that clemency had belittled him in my eyes. His prestige had been made up of his never-failing victories, and had I not heard him in mother’s room, uttering the laments of one conquered? By his pain I had measured my own importance. The greater price he set upon the reconquest of myself, the stronger I felt to resist him. Perhaps he would have kept his empire over me had he not showed such an excess of paternal solicitude. Would it be dangerous for a sovereign to take too much pains in training his heir and fitting him to succeed to the throne? Must one put more confidence in words and acts than in the influence which one tries to exert over minds? Each generation differs from the former in the expression of its ideas if not in the ideas themselves. It thinks to create all things anew: life will teach it that nothing is created, and that everything goes on by the same processes.

Now, in the time of danger, that authority from which I had withdrawn myself imposed itself upon every one else. My father had been in charge of the medical service. Now, elected almost unanimously, he was entrusted with the town.

II

THE ALPETTE

OUR father and mother held a council of war, in which the resolution was taken that we should be sent away. The family owned, on the uplands of one of the high valleys, a chalet which we called the Alpette, standing by itself in a clearing in the pines. In favourable seasons we used to spend a month of the long vacation there. A dilapidated stagecoach used to climb to the nearest village in four or five hours. It was not easy to get supplies up there, and we should have to be content with frugal and modest fare; but the air was redolent of balsam, and we should be beyond all danger of contagion.

“The epidemic is spreading,” father told us. “You will all go to-morrow morning except your mother, who will not leave me.”

Perhaps he had resolved to remain alone, but had encountered her refusal.

“That’s an excellent idea,” said grandfather approvingly. “We are good for nothing here, but rather, in the way.”

“Well! I for one shall not go,” declared Aunt Deen, shaking her head. “I am a part of the building.”

Father urged that she had her brother to take care of, but this argument was by no means favourably received.

“He can take care of himself well enough. He is perfectly well. And besides, Louise will look after him.”

Louise urged her desire to stay. We thought she was joking, for she said it laughingly, but she firmly insisted. Couldn’t she be of service, visiting the sick, nursing them even? Wasn’t every willing person needed? Between her and Aunt Deen a debate arose, the unselfishness of which was at the time unperceived by me; but Aunt Deen insisted so hard that she carried her point.

Encouraged by this example, I signified to my parents my fixed intention not to leave town, but to play my part in it also. This was by way of affirming my personality--my personality of barely eighteen years!--much more than as a boast of courage. The idea of death, either my own or that of the others, had not occurred to me. I did not apprehend the slightest danger. No doubt father was the most exposed, both by his profession and his functions, but to me he seemed immortal. I was simply thinking of gaining a little importance.

Father listened to me patiently, and then replied that if I had begun to study medicine, as he had hoped, he should not have hesitated to make use of me, notwithstanding his affection and his fears; it would have been a right which I might have claimed; but that having taken another course, I had no good reason for remaining in a vitiated atmosphere, where I could be of no use, at the risk of succumbing to the disease any day. He thanked me for my offer, but could not accept it. The mountain air would be good for my health, which would improve up there: I was somewhat delicate, I should return stronger.

The calm refusal simply exasperated me. I discerned in it a contempt that was not to be endured, and I persisted in claiming the post as if my honour was involved.

“I regret infinitely, father, my inability to yield in this matter, but I judge that I ought to stay, and I shall stay.”

The words came grandly. He fixed me with his piercing eyes, and did not even raise his voice:

“I rule in my house, before ruling in the town, my boy. I give you this order: You will go to-morrow with your grandfather, Louise and the two younger children. I am in charge of the whole city: we shall see whether my son will be the first to disobey.”

He turned away. So peremptorily had he spoken that a sense of the impossibility of resistance took possession of me. He had been humouring me this long time; he had thought from my reserve that I was indifferent if not hostile, and he cherished the hope of regaining my confidence. Now he suddenly abandoned all methods of conciliation and put me back in the ranks like a mere soldier, not like a future chief. Without caring the least in the world about taking active service among the hospital staff, I champed my bit with rage, as if I had been subjected to the most cruel abuse. Grandfather, delighted with this outcome, consoled me good-naturedly.

“Oho! what do you care? He has a craze for giving orders. We shall be very well off up there.”

Our preparations filled the afternoon. Grandfather himself brought down from the tower his barometer, violin, pipes and almanacs. The repeated journeys put him out of breath, but he would stop for no one. The rest of the packing was of no interest to him, but concerned Aunt Deen, to whom he had long ago given over the care of his clothes and linen. At nightfall Abbé Heurtevant came for a visit. Father was at the hospital, or the mayor’s office, and mother at the work-rooms where bed clothing for the sick poor was being made. Grandfather, with new found resolution, refused to have the door opened, and inquired from the window whether our friend had been disinfected.

Nothing would do but for the abbé to pass through the disinfecting room that had been set up in the house, after which he was welcomed with gladness, and grandfather even offered him his copy of the prophecies of Michel Nostradamus. M. Heurtevant accepted the gift with small enthusiasm; he was acquainted with the Centuries and found them obscure and contradictory.

“Yes, you prefer Sister Rose-Colombe and the Abbey of Orval. And what catastrophes have you to report, Abbé?”

“In the first place, your labourer Tem Bossette died this morning of the pestilence.”

“Ah!” said grandfather, quickly adding, as if finding an excuse for not grieving, “he was a drunkard.”

“Poor Tem!” sighed Aunt Deen. “Had he confessed?”

“He had no time--the complaint seized him like a thunderclap.”

“An alcoholic,” observed grandfather.

My aunt went on questioning our guest about persons of our acquaintance:

“How about Beatrix? And Mimi Pachoux?”

“Don’t be uneasy about your Mimi, mademoiselle; he is helping to bury the dead, and is even superintending the entire force of gravediggers. His zeal is magnificent; he multiplies himself, he is at every funeral. As for The Hanged, I think he is down with the fever.”

“I will go and see him,” said Aunt Deen simply, whereupon her brother looked at her with surprise, and some disapprobation.

But the abbé, with incomparable ease, had already passed from special misfortunes to general calamities. The contagion would be sure to spread, it would not be checked until it had reached Paris. It would decimate the capital, that sink of all iniquities, and would constrain politicians to reflect. It would be as good as a war, in the matter of moral renovation. And the lilies would bloom again.

“They will bloom again,” Aunt Deen did not fail to repeat gravely.

The description of these approaching misfortunes affected grandfather, who changed the subject of conversation.

“I say, Abbé, if you will come to the Alpette to see us, we will give you some Satan bolets, and even if you don’t bring too much bad news, some negro head bolets, which are at least eatable and of a savoury flavour. Or rather, no! don’t put yourself out to come. There is no disinfecting apparatus up there, and you would be capable of contaminating us all.”

The next morning a two-horse brake, ordered especially for us, came to take us and our parcels. Father superintended the embarkation, and hastened it, for he was being called upon from all quarters at once. At the house, whenever any difficulty arose he had always been immediately sought for, all calling in one voice, _Monsieur Michel_! _Where is Monsieur Michel_! In these days, all through the city, the rallying cry was, _Monsieur Rambert_! or more briefly, _the doctor_, or _the mayor_.

“Oho!” said grandfather lightly, “he has enough to give orders to now.”

Grandfather climbed into the vehicle first, with his instruments, which he would not let go, though the violin case was much in the way. Like little Jamie, he had all the gaiety of a school boy on vacation. Never had he seemed so to feel the attractions of the Alpette. Louise, on the contrary, and Nicola, imitating her sister, whom she admired, manifested an emotion which for my part I deemed excessive. They clung to our parents with tears, as if it were a case of prolonged absence.

“Come, children,” said father, “make haste and have no fears.”

My own adieus to him were of marked coldness, because of the scene of the previous day. He had constrained me to obedience, and had wounded my pride; I could not forget it so soon; dignity obliged me to assume an offended air.

The smallest details of that departure, upon which my memory has dwelt so much, vainly seeking something to mitigate its bitterness, stand out before me with a distinctness which time has never blurred. Every one was more or less impatient, the horses because of the flies that tormented them, the coachman out of compassion for his cattle, grandfather and Jamie in their haste to enjoy the pleasures of the journey, Louise and Nicola in their sadness over going away, Aunt Deen because she dreaded the tumult of her feelings, and I, to get rid of the uneasiness that was overcoming me. Mother was trying to keep calm. Father alone did so, naturally. When my turn came to get in, last of all, he seemed to hesitate for a brief moment as if he would have detained me, spoken to me. I do not precisely know what it was that showed me this, but I am sure of it. And once in my seat I felt an unreasoning desire to get out again. Was it an instinctive longing for reconciliation? How I long to feel sure that it was! But the feeling was too vague for me to be sure of it now. Taking my place on the same seat with grandfather, I gave expression to my inward feeling by an act of ill humour, seizing hold of the violin case, which chafed my knees, and laying it roughly in the bottom of the carriage.

“Be careful! It’s delicate,” observed grandfather protestingly.

I can still see the vibrating light in the air, and the shining of the road in the sunlight.

“All right?” asked the coachman, clambering to his seat.

“Forward!” ordered father.

And mother added the prayer that she always uttered at each parting.

“God be with you!”

Our heavy vehicle was already in motion, and these were the last words that we heard. _Forward_, and _God be with you_; they mingle, become one, always accompany one another in my memory, and whenever to this day I set out upon a journey, it seems to me that I hear them.

At the turn of the road, down below the entrance gate, I saw the three figures standing out in the glaring day, Aunt Deen somewhat massive; my mother’s, more delicate, and the tall, proud figure of my father, lifting up his head. Why did I not call out? The one word, “Father!” would have pleased him, and he would have understood. His figure revealed such force, so rich a vitality, so dominant an authority, that it was of course of no use to humiliate oneself to give him satisfaction. I should always have time enough if I wanted to do so,--later, later.

Grandfather was fumbling about my legs to rescue his violin case and I had to help him. We passed under the chestnut tree that had overshadowed--just one moment--the departing Nazzarena, Nazzarena laughing and showing her teeth. And the house was lost behind us.

I was not slow to forget this uncomfortable parting in the enchantment of my new life in the chalet of the Alpette. For the first time I was absolute master of my days. Grandfather exercised not the slightest oversight. He liked to sit for hours together on a bench on the pleasantest side of the house, warming himself in the sun and smoking his pipe. He took no walks except in the immediate neighbourhood, going with difficulty even to the pine woods, for his legs had become weak and could not carry him far. Once in the woods, he would devote himself to his favourite pursuit, which had not changed, the hunt after mushrooms. He especially pursued and not without success the negro head bolet, which grows well in the shadow of the pines. Jamie and his inseparable Nicola used to go with him, and stoop for him to retrieve the game which he pointed out to them. He preferred their childhood to my youth, and I was not jealous of them. He never tried to establish with them the intimacy that had formerly existed between him and me. He shrank from all fatigue, from any conversation which would have led to discussions, explanations, was contented with trifling facts not open to debate. For my part, I preferred my solitude.

Whether from sisterly affection or because she had received instructions to this effect, Louise busied herself with us even to obsession; she would have cut herself in two to be at the same time with me and with the two little ones. When she had become convinced of the peaceful, commonplace character of grandfather’s conversation, she turned all the more to me, hoping to be my confidant, and to gain a little influence over me. She was only two years my senior, and her conduct filled me with wonder, for nothing down in the town had given any indication that altitude would so totally change her. Pretty, lively, care-free, I had deemed her rather volatile and even a bit capricious--and had been not the less pleased with her for that. At times she would rush at her piano with intense zeal, and again she would not touch it for weeks. She filled the house with her laughter, her charming spirits, her quick movements. “She won’t be one to interfere with me,” I had thought in the carriage. And now, behold her suddenly changed into something like the head of a community or a family boarding house, thoughtful and kindly, but exacting, even arbitrary. One must be punctual at meals, explain his absences, guard his words before the children, not turn either principles or people into ridicule. Had her responsibilities changed her and turned her head? She assumed the place of our parents in matters of conscience, but I gave her to understand that boys didn’t obey girls, and that any directions she might have received did not concern me. She insisted, and almost from the outset we were in a state of tension which was almost conflict.

It was the Sunday after our arrival. The village was two kilometres distant, and only one mass--high mass--was celebrated. Louise informed us of the fact, and at what she judged the proper moment she called to us to set out. Grandfather, who never went to church, raised a disinterested objection.

“Public places are the most unhealthy. Beware of the epidemic.”

“There has not been a single case of typhus in the whole valley,” said Louise triumphantly.

“Very well,” said grandfather, filling his morning pipe.

I then informed my sister that I had planned to take a walk and regretted that I could not escort her. She looked at me in astonishment, such astonishment that I can still see the surprise in her limpid eyes.

“What, you are not going to mass, Francis? There is only one.”

“No,” I replied with my most assured manner.

“It isn’t possible!”

Her eyes, those limpid eyes, at once filled with tears, and I remembered the first mass that I had missed. Pride forbade me to yield, pride and also that new, vague belief which my imagination had built up. Louise pushed Nicola and Jamie before her, and turned to me, her book of hours in her hand, still hoping to move me.

“I beg you, come with us.”

If she had added, “to please me,” perhaps I would have yielded, so alarmed did she appear. She no doubt would have deemed that plea unworthy of its purpose. This time I refused still more emphatically.

“I shall be obliged to write to mamma,” she urged as a last argument.

“As you please.”

She did not, however, carry out her threat. Her sense of delicacy warned her not to add to our parents’ anxieties in the midst of their battle with the pestilence. On the contrary, she doubled her attention to me, trying to win me to her, to gain my friendship, my confidence. With innate art she became an improvised mother of the family, ever trying to bring us together, to group us, warring against the isolation in which I delighted.

When a letter came she would call us together and read it aloud to us. We received letters from home very regularly, and they forwarded Mélanie’s to us from the hospital in London, where she was caring for the sick; Bernard’s from his expedition in Tonkin; Stephen’s, who was completing his theological studies in Rome. Through her the absent ones visited us, and if it had depended only upon her we should have carried on at the Alpette the same life as at home. It was precisely that which revolted me, and I rose in rebellion against the twenty-year-old will which, with unlooked for tenacity, went counter to mine.

To place myself beyond her influence I formed the habit of leaving our chalet with a book the first thing in the morning, returning only for meals. Uneasy about me, she would remain upon the doorstep until I had disappeared, and very often, at my return, I would find her in the same place, as if she had never lost sight of me. Her interest extended even to my reading. The library at the Alpette contained only a few books, some odd volumes of Buffon and Lacépède, a “Dictionary of Conversation” in fifty volumes, a copy of “Jocelyn,” and a few less important works. Even the Dictionary did not terrify me and I would resolutely carry with me the volumes containing biographical notices, or systems of philosophy. I found myself at ease in the boldest or the most obscure of their conceptions. I understood them before I had completed their demonstration, whether they put the universe in subjection to the ego, or whether they put man in subjection to the universe left to itself. Still, I was inclined to believe that everything depended upon our intelligence, and that it alone, by its sole power breathed existence into things, the laws of which were fixed by it. I have never since been able to regain such facility in moving in the abstract, nor such pleasure and pride.

When wearied by these adventures in metaphysics, I would refresh myself with the poetry of “Jocelyn.” It harmonised so perfectly with the nature that surrounded me that it seemed to become its natural expression and I ceased to think of distinguishing between them. How many times, under the pines, have I repeated lines which from that time have been fixed in my memory:

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;
I took from them a sense of tears and wept;
Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.
That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

So greatly did I long to feel pervading everything around me, in the soul of the trees or the spirit of the earth, the love which I refused to receive from the family. When I reached the top of some hill, it was in the apostrophe

Oh, mountain tops, pure air and floods of light!

that my rapture found expression. The serenity of the night spoke to me of _peace, love, eternity_. I dreamed of Laurence, and had no difficulty in picturing him to myself, such a model of precision did his portrait seem to me:

Never the hand of God on fifteen years
Had marked a soul more lovely or more human.

What more was wanting to feed a love which, having no object, created its image for itself?

Another book, however, was destined to enter still more deeply into my sensibility, corresponding as it did with that condition of independence and enfranchisement to which I deemed myself to have attained. Into the pile of almanacs brought thither by grandfather had slipped that copy of the “Confessions” which had puzzled me as a child, and which I had taken for a manual of piety. The innocent _Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey_ came leading by the hand that Jean-Jacques whom, long before I knew him, I had heard spoken of as if he were still living and we might meet him anywhere in our walks. I had read in school only short fragments of his writings in which I had found nothing personal. I fell upon the narrative of that troubled life, which at first disgusted me. The theft of the ribbon in the house of Mme de Vercellis and the cowardly accusation that followed, certain physiological details which I could ill understand, the title of _maman_ bestowed upon Mme de Warens, produced upon me the effect of immodest confidences, and all alone as I was in the forest, or lying in the grass on the top of the mountain, I felt myself blushing to the ears. My deepest nature resisted, but by an insensible decline I came even to admire the man who could humiliate himself by such avowals; not perceiving their pride I felt giddied by their truth.

After that the volume never left me. Louise, disturbed by this preoccupation, tried to wield some censorship. One evening as I came in from gazing at the stars--those in the South, which I most easily recognised--I found her under the lamp looking into the “Confessions.” She did not see me and I watched her; she suddenly closed the book, and perceiving me, her indignation burst forth:

“You have no right to read this book.”

“I read what I please.”

She appealed to grandfather, who declined all responsibility.

“Oh, every one is free. And at least Jean-Jacques is sincere.”