Chapter I: Receive a Handsome Gift (1)

“The end of your journey must not be Verton, my dear Lambert,” said Liénard one morning to my father. “I wish you to inspect the whole line. We will go to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and travel over a certain portion of the route in trucks. Then you will have shown to Juliette, Amiens--the most beautiful town of our Picardy--and Boulogne, one of its finest sea-ports.”

My father made no objection. The thought of seeing big ships delighted me. We were to return to Verton after visiting Boulogne and leave from there for Chauny. The railway train, with its little coaches open overhead, pleased me marvellously, but the large, locked-up coaches from which one could not get out except at the employés’ will, seemed like prisons to me, and I was honestly afraid of the tunnels, in which heads were sometimes cut off.

All the great cities I have seen later in my numerous travels over Europe have interested me in a different manner, and I have admired them for a thousand complex reasons, but none has left in my memory a more deeply engraved impression than Boulogne-sur-Mer.

We were Liénard’s guests, and he treated us like lords, in one of the best hotels of the place. I saw the sea all day long, and I, who was so fond of sleeping, would get up to look at it under the star-light. I saw it one night by full moonlight.

“Drops of gold shrank and expanded, crackled, leapt in playful sparkles on the water’s surface, as if to encircle, in a frame of moving gold, Phœbe’s beautiful face as she looked at herself in the sea.”

I found these metaphors in one of my poems written at that time, and, incredible as it may seem, I still remember these unformed verses, which I did not dare to repeat to my father, and which I kept for the enraptured admiration of my grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend Charles.

The movement of the boats around the pier delighted me so much I wished never to leave the place, and my father was obliged to scold me sometimes and to drag me after him to the house.

I ate my first oyster at Boulogne. All my family were extremely fond of the fat oysters that came from the North. In winter, when my mother and father came to Chauny, they usually selected the day on which the fish-wagon arrived. This wagon, driven at full speed, and which had relays like the post-wagon, brought to Chauny, on Friday mornings, the fish caught on the night of Wednesday to Thursday.

Every Friday during the oyster season, a basket containing twelve dozen oysters was brought to my grandmother’s. My grandfather and father each ate four dozen. My grandmother and mother would eat two dozen, and Blondeau, when he was present, would take his dozen, here and there, from the portions of the others. Was it because I saw them eat such quantities that I could never swallow one? My reluctance absolutely grieved my family.

Liénard and I went shopping while my father talked with some democratic-socialist republicans whom he had discovered. I wanted to take to all my friends many of those little souvenirs one finds at seaside places, things utterly unknown at Chauny, and I had with me, in order to gratify this wish, all the money given to me by grandparents and Blondeau to spend on my journey. My purse, confided to Liénard’s care, who bargained and paid for all my purchases, must, I thought, after calculating the amount expended, be very nearly empty. So, when my father promised me one morning a louis if I would eat an oyster, I did my best to please him, and at the same time to earn four large crowns. I swallowed one oyster, and afterwards others followed in great numbers, for I grew to like them.

I picked up quantities of shells, and I would have liked to carry many more away. I bought an immense covered basket, which I took with me wherever I went, and never left it for a moment during my return voyage, in spite of the supplication of my father, who tried every persuasive means possible to rid himself of the trouble of looking after it.

I went on the beach at Wimereux, where Prince Louis Napoleon landed in such grotesque fashion. I saw the great Emperor’s column, and thought of my grandfather and my godmother.

My father spoke to Liénard and to me of “the man of Strasburg and Boulogne,” and of his ancestor, “the man of the Brumaire.” He was more indulgent towards the nephew than towards the uncle, whom he thus defined:

“The political juggler of the Revolution, whose final number of conquests, after the sacrifice of millions of men, was inferior to the conquests won by the fourteen armies of the Republic.”

Napoleon I. was my father’s special aversion. He spoke of him with hatred, as of a criminal. I knew some scathing and virulent poems written by my father on the “Modern Cæsar,” and when I recited them, I ended by naming their author: Jean Louis Lambert.

My father had bought a tilbury as we passed through Amiens, the carriage-makers of the capital of our province being “renowned,” as they then expressed it.

What was his astonishment, as we left the railway station on our return to Amiens, to see a very handsome horse harnessed to his tilbury, instead of the hired one which was to take it to Chauny. Liénard had accompanied us there.

“My dear friend,” he said to my father, accentuating these words with feeling, “I beg of you to accept the little horse, as a small proof of my eternal gratitude.”

My father, who delighted to give, but hated to accept things, refused bluntly; but Liénard’s disappointment was so great, and I saw his eyes so full of tears, that I sought for a way to make my father yield.

“Will you give _me_ your horse, Liénard?” I said. “I think it very pretty and I will take it.”

Mutually embarrassed and grieved a moment before, my father and Liénard were much amused at my intervention.

“Ah, yes! I will give it to you,” replied Liénard. “It is yours, and I am not afraid now that your father will take it from you.”

I adored the feeling of being important. But to have overcome this difficult situation did not suffice me.

“Now, since I have a horse and papa has a tilbury, I wish to return to Chauny in it and not in the diligence,” I added.

“But it will take us three days instead of one,” said father.

“Oh! papa, shall you really find three days quite alone with your daughter too long? You will tell me a lot of things, and I, also, will tell you as many. It will be so amusing to travel in a carriage, like gipsies.”

“Do as she wishes, dear Lambert,” said Liénard. “Come, get into your carriage and start. I will send you your packages by the diligence.”

“Papa! papa! do, I beg of you, let us be off!”

“Has the horse eaten?” Liénard asked the groom.

“Yes, sir, he can go for five hours without needing anything more.”

“Be off! be off!” our friend cried gaily, as he lifted me into the tilbury after kissing me.

My father and Liénard kissed each other, like the loving friends they were, and father got into the carriage.

“Where is the state high-road?” he asked the groom.

Liénard replied:

“This boy will take one of the carriages at the station and accompany you until nightfall, to see that Juliette’s horse behaves itself. I will go to-morrow morning to his master’s, and will get news of you there. Good-bye, good-bye; a pleasant journey!”

A small valise bought by my father at Boulogne, held our toilet articles. My famous basket was at our feet, our luggage ticket given to Liénard, and off we started.

XXV

OUR HOMEWARD JOURNEY

Every detail of that delightful journey is still present to me. It seemed to me that I was undertaking something tremendous, which was going to last for an indefinite time.

The young, spirited horse delighted my father and me. He took up all our attention at first. We looked at nothing else. Ah! what was his name?

The groom told us it was Coq or Cock. He didn’t know whether it was “Coq” or the English name.

“‘No! no, never in France, never shall England reign!’” I cried, recalling the air I had heard in _Charles VI._ “It shall be Coq.”

Coq almost flew along the road. After a while the groom left us, telling us the names of the villages and the post-relays where we were to stop during the day, or were to sleep at night.

My father and I recalled our longest drives around Blérancourt, but they were not like this one--a real journey. He laughed at all my observations and reflections, and said often to me: “Ah! you are, indeed, my daughter. You resemble me more than any one else.”

We had left Amiens at eleven o’clock in the morning, and had not yet, at five o’clock in the afternoon, thought of making our first halt. We had brought some fruit and cakes, and so long as our handsome Coq was not tired we determined to continue our way.

“Juliette,” said father to me, at a time when Coq was going slower, “have you never asked yourself whether I could indefinitely submit to our separation, if I could always bear the pain of seeing your mind fashioned by others than myself? My greatest ambition is to make your mind the offspring of my own. It will come some day; it must be so.”

I answered nothing. I said over to myself my father’s phrase: “Make your mind the offspring of my own,” and I thought to myself that as I was his daughter, my whole self should be his also; but then, being grandchild of my grandmother, whom I adored, how could I be at once all my grandmother’s and all my father’s? The feeling I had of the difficulty brought about by my double love for my grandmother and my father, the thought of sharing myself between them, filled me with sadness, and my heart ached as I thought I should feel in the future, more and more deeply, the sorrow I might cause each when I left either of them, because each would feel when I returned that I would come back with my heart and mind filled with the one whom I had left. I was still angry at my grandmother for having sold my garden. The large house at Chauny, which formerly pleased me more than the small one at Blérancourt, seemed like a prison now. The yard, full of flowers, had been gay only because it preceded the garden; cut off from it, it would look, under the shadow of the great wall they were building, like a little plot resembling those in the graveyards.

My father thought also of many sad things; our gaiety now ran away from us, and we could not regain it. All my childhood spent in that beloved garden came back to me: the springtime, with the rows of violets along the walls at its end; the summer, with the baskets of strawberries that I would run to pick myself, as we were sitting down at table; fruits of all kinds, whose growth I watched with such interest, and which I kept tasting--apples, pears, plums, cherries, and apricots, enjoying the greatest delight a child can have--that of eating to its fill all kinds of fruit throughout the whole year.

“Papa, do you approve grandmother’s having sold her garden?” I asked him suddenly, determined all at once to confide my sorrow to him, without speaking of the _dot_.

“Why, yes, because she received a good price for it.”

“So, in your opinion she has done well?”

“Without doubt--she would never have found such a good chance again. Perhaps, besides the question of money, she decided to do it a little for your sake.”

“Oh! that is too much!”

“Why? You will have only a few steps to take to go to your school. She will even be able to see you play from a wing she wishes to build.”

“Then grandmother is going to make the little yard still smaller? Well, papa, I cannot tell you the pain all this gives me. They have taken away the paths where I used to walk and play, my trees, all that I loved in immaterial things; they have deprived me of the happiness of looking at growing leaves, of studying how plants bud, how blossoms become fruit; they have prevented me from listening to the stirring and putting forth of all that has life in it, and from hearing the sigh, followed by cold silence, of that which dies. To me, papa, the sun is a divine being to whom I speak and who answers me in written signs, which I see in the rays of its light. I will make you half close your eyes at mid-day, and will show you the shining signs, the golden writing. The moon follows me as I walk, and I feel that it is a friend. I assure you, papa, I have heard the earth burst with a little sound above the asparagus heads, or when the seeds that have been sown sprout forth. I do not know how to express all this to you, or how to explain these things, but if I love to read, if books instruct me so greatly--above all, if travels make the world larger to me--I think, papa, I have learned a great deal in my garden about all small things.”

My father listened to me, his eyes fixed on mine; he held the reins so loosely in his hands that suddenly, feeling gay, or perhaps made nervous by fatigue, Coq began to behave badly for the first time. A stroke of the whip calmed him.

“This Coq,” said my father, “is unworthy of too much confidence.” Then he added:

“Go on talking, Juliette, dear, go on. You do not know the pleasure you give me. You love nature as I love it; you feel it, you poetise it as I do. Ah! old Homer is giving back to me to-day what I gave to him in teaching you to love him. It is he who has given you the love of immaterial things. You will be a heathen some day, I am certain of it.”

“Oh, papa! what an abominable thing to say! Don’t repeat it, especially before grandmother--it would give her too much pain, and, besides, it isn’t true; it was not the dryads, the nymphs, the homodryads, that I saw and listened to in my garden; it was really the trees, the plants, and the fruits.”

“Well, well,” said father, “I have promised your grandmother and your mother to let you make your first communion as they desire. They have taken your childhood from me, let them keep it; but your youth shall belong to me, and we will talk again about all this. I have now, to calm me and to make me wait patiently, the anticipation of the happy days that I foresee, and the result of all that you, my dear Juliette, have just been saying to me.”

“Having my garden no longer, I must forget all that I loved and learned in it, so as not to suffer too much in having lost it,” I replied. “I have so many dead things to weep over,” I continued, “I have heard so many trees sigh and utter their last cry when they were cut down, that in thinking of it, I seem to hear them again and my heart aches, for it is dreadful to have destroyed so many of those old companions that gave us such delicious fruit to make us love them, and it is a crime to have covered with gravel the good earth which would always have brought forth the seeds planted in it and borne harvests.”

On the evening of that day my father stopped at a post-relay at a large, clean, and bright-looking inn, where I went to see a dozen chickens roasted on a spit in the kitchen. The travellers by diligence dined there.

When my father put me to sleep in one of the huge beds in our room, I was feverish, and talked all night of my garden. He prevented me from speaking of it the next day, and told me some lovely stories of Greece which he had not yet related to me.

Our journey ended without further incident, and I found grandmother wildly happy at seeing me again; but as we had arrived late at night, and as I was tired, they put me to bed at once. Grandmother wished that I should sleep near her that night, as my father had spoken of my fever, and the door having been left open, I heard him say to my grandparents:

“I don’t think she can ever be consoled for having lost her garden.”

“As it is clear that she will marry a country gentleman,” said grandfather, laughing, “and, as the education she is receiving from her aunts will probably incline her to marry some perfect Roussot, she will be able after her honeymoon to treat herself to some trees and grounds, so we need not pity her present unhappiness in an exaggerated manner.”

My grandparents had quarrelled, as usual, during my absence. I had the proof of it in grandmother’s answer. The “they” and “one” which I had nearly banished, had returned to their conversation.

“_One_ is always joking,” she said, “even about what touches me the most--Juliette’s sorrow. Since I have seen how much she suffers from being deprived of her garden, I reproach myself bitterly for having taken it from her. _One_ should understand that, and not laugh, when _one_ knows that I would not have run the risk of giving pain to Juliette without having been moved by a feeling which was in her interest, but which I cannot express to everybody.”

“Well, well,” grandfather replied, “_one_ has no need of a lesson; _one_ loves _one’s_ grandchild as much as mother and father and grandmother. _One_ only jokes about Juliette’s sorrow, and _one_ will continue to do so for the simple reason that _one_ thinks it will be the best way to console her.”

My grandmother’s regrets calmed my grief, but my poor grandfather was snubbed many times for his way of “consoling” me.

XXVI

MY FIRST COMMUNION

It is impossible to imagine to-day the importance of a railway journey in the time of my childhood. All Chauny talked of it when I started; all Chauny questioned me concerning it on my return. When I went out with grandfather, people stopped me in the street to ask me if a railway journey was very frightful.

Truth to tell, the horrible whistles, the deafening threatening noise of the locomotives, the tunnels (oh, those tunnels!), the frightful black smoke that made one look like a coal-man in a few hours, had filled me with apprehension, and everything connected with it seemed to me like something coming straight from hell.

“It splits your ears, it blinds you if you put your nose out of the window, it shakes you so that you tremble, it is ugly and makes you ugly,” I replied to everyone who questioned me.

At school I had a great success. All the big girls asked me about it, to satisfy their own curiosity and that of their families. All the little girls wished to know the entire history of the railway journey, and all about the sea and the ships.

My large basket of shells was emptied in a few days. The numberless presents I had brought disappeared quickly. A week after my return I had nothing left. “Those,” I said, speaking of my shells, “were not bought. I picked them up myself by the sea, the real sea!”

These words produced an immense sensation. At recreations I held forth, surrounded by numerous listeners with eager eyes and open mouths. Questions came from all sides. They never tired of hearing my stories told over and over again. The history of the woman beheaded in the tunnel made them all tremble.

“Why did she look out of the window?” asked the big girls. “One should take great care in travelling, for there is always great risk. One has only to read about it to know it.”

The little girls asked especially whether the beheaded woman had children and whether they were with her. When I answered, “yes,” there was a general panic, and the whole brood scattered, with frightened “ohs!”

If a schoolgirl of to-day had passed the winter at the North Pole, and should relate to her schoolmates that she had seen a mother crushed to death by an iceberg before her children’s eyes, she would not produce a greater sensation than I did with my story of the railway and the unfortunate woman in the tunnel. They were beginning to build the railway from Paris to Saint-Quentin, which was to pass through Chauny, and everyone was wildly excited over the matter. I had, with great art, planned a course of entertainment to be given at home. Every evening, after dinner, I related to my grandparents, to Blondeau, and to my friend Charles--who would not have missed it for anything in the world--the history of one of my days of travel--never more and never less than one; and the number of my stories just covered the number of days of the journey.

I had missed a whole month of the catechism class, but the vicar was indulgent. He was, himself, much interested in my excursion, and asked me, like everyone else, to give him my impressions about the railroad and the sea.

My reflections pleased him, and he spoke of them to the dean, who also questioned me. I told him that the railroad was an abominable, whistling invention--it seemed like hell, with its fire and its diabolical blackness.

This journey gave me a decided pre-eminence. On account of it, I was considered at Chauny superior to the other young girls of my age. As the time for first communion approached, the dean interested himself especially in me. He selected me to pronounce the baptismal vows, and to head one of the files of communicants to the Holy Table. The Bishop of Soissons came that year, as he did every two years, to administer confirmation, and I was selected to make him the complimentary speech of welcome at the parsonage.

I was the youngest and the tallest of the communicants. My grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend Charles, when the history of my journey was finished, busied themselves exclusively about my first communion. Grandmother had ordered the finest muslin for my gown and veil. They said white was very becoming to me, and that I should be the prettiest girl of all. My friend Charles taught me how to say my baptismal vows and my complimentary speech to the Bishop, in a manner rather more theatrical than pious.

I had then as an intimate friend a strange girl of my own age, as small as I was tall, witty, sharp-tongued, and mischievous, whose influence over me was anything but good. Whenever she saw me enthusiastic or admiring anything, she did her best to spoil what I admired. Her name was Maribert.[C] We had been friends for four years, but we had had very serious quarrels and reconciliations, which interested the whole school.

Maribert was to make her first communion at the same time as myself. She was a boarder at the school and was very strictly watched because she criticised the catechism in a way which shocked the least devout. She often argued with the vicar, contending with him in discussing the articles of faith he was explaining to us.

“You will be cast out of the church if you do not submit,” the vicar said to her one day. “You have a renegade’s mind.”

And she dared to reply:

“I am a philosopher, I am strong-minded!”

I went to board at school during the month preceding my first communion, the dean, finding I was not preparing myself well for the ceremony at my grandparents’, induced them to let me absent myself from home until the great day. Maribert had succeeded in having me for neighbour in the dormitory, and she kept by me at recreations. During class hours, by the means of little notes, which she would slip into my hands, she tried to influence my mind to unbelief. She endeavoured to prove to me that the dean was in no wise evangelical; that the vicar, who instructed us, preferred a good dinner to a good mass; that the Mlles. André, our mistresses, were much more interested in not losing their pupils than in teaching and improving them.

“Now, as to myself,” she said, “they should send me away; they know very well that I change all the ideas I wish to change; that I am a disturber; that I shall not make my first communion seriously; that I will prevent others--you, first of all--from making it with the necessary unction and devotion; and yet they keep me here--me, the black sheep of the flock!”

I was badly influenced by Maribert, and they would have done better to have me with grandmother, who, although at this time too occupied with the things of this world to give me great spiritual help, would have done all she could to increase my faith.

The morning of the day of my first communion I was sad, discontented, I did not feel as I should have felt, and I envied the happiness of those who, having had the strength to resist Maribert’s diabolical influence, wore on their faces an expression of beatitude. As we were leaving for the church, Maribert slipped a piece of chocolate into my hand, saying, with her shining, demoniacal eyes looking at me: “Eat it!”

And, at the same time, I heard her crunching the half of the piece she had given to me.

I threw the chocolate in her face. Ah, no! that was too much! I, too, wanted to be strong-minded, but I did not wish to commit a sacrilege, to lie, to receive communion after having eaten.

I suddenly realised my friend’s evil-doing, and I struggled instantly to wrench out from my mind the ideas she had implanted in it; they were not numerous, however, for we possessed but few tastes in common. However, a great sadness took possession of me; had I not broken with a confidante, a friend of four years’ standing? (Years are so long in childhood!)

Maribert, alas! had made me lose enthusiasm for prayer, and that enthusiasm alone, on such a day as this, could have consoled me for the heartache I suffered. I was overcome to such a degree that my tears fell without my knowing it.

“You are sillier than the silliest,” Maribert said to me. “I will never speak to you again as long as I live.”

“You are more wicked than the wickedest,” I replied, “and I shall reproach myself as long as I exist for having loved one so accursed as you.”

The hour came for leaving for the church. Our mothers were waiting for us in the drawing-room. My mother and my grandmother were there. I threw myself in their arms and kissed them fervently. They were much edified in seeing my pallor and my red eyes. My grandmother wore a white woollen gown, a black bonnet, and a black silk scarf trimmed with fringe. I thought her very well dressed. My mother looked very handsome, although her toilette was extremely simple. She wore a large Leghorn straw bonnet, tied with black velvet ribbons, a puce-coloured silk gown with a train, and on her shoulders a scarf beautifully embroidered by herself, fastened with turquoise pins. I could not cease from admiring her.

“How beautiful mamma is,” I said in a low tone to grandmother. “Just look at her.”

“Yes,” grandmother replied aloud, “and it would be well if she would take pleasure in her beauty, if she would be grateful to God for it; but, alas! I am sure she imagines people look at her maliciously.”

My mother shrugged her shoulders.

“Juliette,” added grandmother, “this is a happy day for you, my little girl; may it govern your whole life; may you understand its religious significance. I shall pray to God with my whole soul that it may be so.”

We left the school, I at the head of the procession, my schoolmates following me one by one. We formed a file and walked through the streets to the church. The organ ushered us in with a peal of gladness. My heart beat so hard it hurt me. But by degrees a great calmness came over me. I abjured evil; I banished Maribert from my heart. I saw her farther down in the file, her face made ugly by a wicked smile. I looked at her coldly and proudly, and I raised my eyes to Heaven to prove to her that I was no longer under the influence of her wicked teaching. I felt as it was proper I should feel in the holy place and in view of the ceremony in which I was to take part.

I recited my baptismal vows simply, in a loud voice, feeling sincerely what I said. I thought of grandmother, who was listening to me and to whom I would that very night confess all that I had hidden from her about Maribert. I made my communion in peace, I returned to grandmother’s house happy in being at home again, freed from Maribert, whom I felt I would never miss again when absent from her.

The next day I was to recite my complimentary speech to the bishop at the parsonage. Grandfather had said that Monseigneur de Garsignies had been a former cavalry officer, and grandmother had added that he had had a very adventurous, romantic life. My grandparents’ remarks about him at table took away all my fear of him.

I repeated my address, smiling and looking at him unembarrassed. He smiled, too, and kissed me.

At the church, during the ceremony of confirmation, when I kissed the paten and Monseigneur approached his fingers to my face, Maribert’s influence suddenly took possession of me again, and I said, without being conscious of the words I pronounced, words which froze with horror my schoolmates, kneeling near me, and which made Maribert laugh:

“Lightly, Monseigneur, I beg of you!”

He tapped my cheek harder than he tapped those of my schoolmates. Why did I say it? I do not know, but I felt that I had resisted a diabolical desire to say something worse. The sacred gesture suddenly seemed to me like a slap in my face. Maribert was kneeling at a short distance from me. Was it her wicked spirit which had inspired me with this act of revolt?

The dean called me to the sacristy after the confirmation, and scolded me in a severe but fatherly manner, and gave me a penance to perform.

A few years afterwards, at an evening party given at Soissons, where I had arrived as a young bride, Monseigneur de Garsignies, as I entered the room and bowed to him, exclaimed:

“The little girl whom I confirmed!”

XXVII

WE DISCUSS FRENCH LITERATURE

The school-house in our old garden had been built during the summer months. It was now being finished with all possible haste. The school was to be reopened in October in the new building. One could see the odious structure above the high wall, for which I felt a violent hatred. In the evening large fires were lit in it, which I could see from the hall leading to my room on the first story, and they looked to me like the mouth of the infernal regions.

I continually declared that I would never, never, go to that school, and it was in vain that grandmother and my mother, at the family dinner given on the day of my first communion, endeavoured to make me promise I would go to the new school in October. My father was not present at the dinner, for he disapproved of, although he submitted to, what he called the continuation of my baptism. I literally lost my head when I thought that I might be obliged to repeat my lessons over the destroyed ground of my garden, or play over the place where my “temple of verdure” had been. Grandmother was distressed at my obstinacy, and perhaps was even more irritated by it. Our affection suffered from all this, and we hurt each other’s feelings often in spite of the deep love we bore each other. I took no more interest in my dear grandparents’ happiness; I stood between them no longer; I kept silence when a discussion arose; the impersonal pronouns were frequently used again. Blondeau was sad over my grief, and I was all the more unhappy because Maribert excited ill-feeling against me at school, keeping up a relentless fight. There were two hostile camps. The girls were either on her side or on mine. Her party was full of activity, tormenting us, playing us all manner of bad tricks; mine resisted indolently, because I, their head, was discouraged, and worked no longer. I was constantly scolded and punished. I became ill-tempered, I, whom my companions had loved until then especially on account of my good-humour. I could no longer, as formerly, bring them fruit from my garden. The sugar-plums were a thing of the past; in a word, I was undone and did not care for anything.

My visit to my aunts at Chivres, where I recovered a little serenity, was shorter than usual that year. My vacation was to be no longer than that given by the school, and my father claimed his share of it. I had hardly finished the story of my journey, day by day, to my aunts, I had scarcely told all about my first communion, when I should have been obliged to leave, had I not obtained a prolongation of my stay for a month more, by writing to my father imploring him to keep me when the school opened in October, and to spare me the grief of going into the new building at that time.

Aunt Sophie scolded me a great deal for my laziness and negligence regarding the study of Latin. But she accepted my excuses, and I began again to work with good will.

I found my aunts much excited over politics. They read _Le National_, and all three, as well as my great-grandmother, were Liberals. They talked continually of Odilon Barrot, and with the greatest respect for him. They had their individual opinions about each member of the royal family. They mourned the death of the Duke of Orléans; loved the Duke d’Aumale and the Prince de Joinville; esteemed Queen Amélie, but judged King Louis Philippe severely, and raised their arms to heaven when speaking of the corruption of the times. If they had been less afraid of the revolution, they would have dethroned the King, proclaimed the Duchess of Orléans as the Regent, and prepared the reign of the little Count of Paris, with Odilon Barrot as President of the Council.

My aunts considered Odilon Barrot “the model representative.” They were enthusiastic about the reformist banquets, of which he was at once the promoter and the hero.

But they were irritated over the “doings” of Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, and others, who altered the nature and changed the object of the reformist banquets; they were anxious about Pierre Leroux’s revolutionary ideas concerning work, and Proudhon’s insane theories about property. Apropos of these two individuals and their opinions they would exclaim:

“It is the end of the world!”

When my aunts were discussing these matters, they declared themselves faithful to “immortal principles.” They were enemies of Napoleon I., less, however, than of Jacobites and Socialists, but they could not forgive him for the entrance of the allies into France, nor for the terrors of the invasion.

They taught me Auguste Barbier’s famous iambic: “_O Corse à cheveux plats, que la France étoit belle_,” so that I might repeat it to grandfather.

“Bonaparte,” my great-grandmother at Chivres said, as my father had also said, “gave us back France smaller than he took it.”

They were not fond of Béranger, and when I sang his songs which grandfather had taught me they listened, but made protestations against the poet and the song. M. Thiers seemed dangerous to them, with his worship of Napoleon, who Bonapartised the _bourgeoisie_, while Béranger Bonapartised the people.

“And,” said aunt Sophie, “whatever may be the form of government we shall have after this of Louis Philippe, authoritative ideas, I am afraid, will triumph. Liberalism, which can alone save France, which can give her her political existence, and make her benefit by the intelligence of her race, seems to exist only in Odilon Barrot’s mind and in de Lamartine’s writings.”

They read and re-read his _Les Girondins_, and the manner in which they spoke of it remains ineffaceably in my memory.

“The old provincialism of France must be reawakened, the country must be governed by a great number of administrative seats; there must be decentralisation; France must return to the Girondist programme and struggle against the exclusive influence of the capital, against the autocracy of new ideas, more oppressing, more tyrannical than the tyrants themselves”--this was my aunts’ and my great-grandmother’s political programme, which they made me write out in order to communicate it to my parents and grandparents.

“You will keep it, Juliette,” aunt Sophie said to me one day, “for there will come a moment in your life, I am certain, when, after Jacobite and Bonapartist experiences, after probable revolutions, you will remember how wise and truly French and nationalist were your old aunts’ ideas. France should act from her centres of action, and not revolve like a top, in her capital.”

My aunts had never talked politics together before me so much as during my vacation in 1847.

“You are wearying that child,” great-grandmother would say, to which one or the other of her daughters would reply: “She is old enough to listen and to understand.”

“It will not be useless to you should you have to listen--not with your ears, but with your mouth yawning--to know what such persons of high competency as your aunts think of public affairs,” said aunt Constance, with her habitual mockery. “So listen, Juliette, listen!”

I listened without yawning, for my mind was open to all political and literary things. My aunts were the personification of that _bourgeoise_ class, of whom my father spoke, who admitted only the medium way in social experiments, who cared only for average impressions--“natures insupportably equibalanced,” he would say.

My aunts found Victor Hugo too sonorous, too resounding for their calm minds. Aunt Sophie said he was “not sufficiently bucolic.” They detested Quasimodo’s ugliness, criticised the _Ode à la Colonne Napoleon II._, which seemed to make Victor Hugo a Bonapartist; they found his plays too intense, too pompously improbable, too wordily humanitarian. _Lucrèce Borgia_, _Marie Tudor_, _Les Burgraves_, _Ruy Blas_, put them out of patience. Their classicalism was revolted. They blamed his political conduct, too oscillating and too diverse. Aunt Anastasie implored grace for his _Les Rayons et les Ombres_, in which she delighted.

They spoke of Mme. George Sand with reserve. I heard more exclamations than approbation about her novel, _Lélia_, whose pretty name I remembered, as I had seen the book in grandmother’s hands. But they liked many of Mme. George Sand’s writings, especially those on peasant life. _La Petite Fadette_ they considered a chef-d’œuvre.

“We are very _bourgeoise_,” said aunt Sophie, when speaking of Mme. George Sand, “although our minds are emancipated by liberalism more than by education, and from regarding public acts more than private actions. Juliette, remember the name of this writer, George Sand,” she added. “She will have a great influence on your generation, and you will certainly be enthusiastic about her when you are of age. No matter what is said of her, Mme. George Sand has remained very womanly, and she will never really be understood except by women; but the greater part of the things she has written, outside of her stories of peasant life, are suited to younger minds than ours, which she must delight, and which she certainly reflects. It is easier for us to understand Mme. de Staël and her _Corinne_.” And my aunts initiated me in the beauty, so dissimilar, of Mme. de Staël’s _Corinne_ and Mme. George Sand’s _La Petite Fadette_. I found, to their delight, the two books equally admirable, though in a different way. It is true they read them aloud to me, pointing out what I should admire; but my aunts, in spite of my affection for them, and the great confidence I felt in their intelligence, would never have made me enthusiastic about them if I had not myself felt their power.

My grandmother, who adored Balzac, used frequently to read to me long extracts from his works, which I found tedious. She had finally renounced trying to make me like her dear, her great, her unique novel-writer. I sometimes vexed her by saying:

“He is neither Homeric nor Virgilian enough.”

My aunts detested Balzac.

“He is a creator of unwholesome characters,” said aunt Anastasie; “the heroes of Monsieur de Balzac can easily enter into one’s life and lead one to live in the same manner in which they live themselves. They are so real that you think you have known them; they take possession of me when I read one of his novels. I cannot free my mind of people whom I do not like, whose acts I blame, and who impose themselves on my judgment, as an ugly fashion is sometimes imposed on well-dressed women. I am convinced that Balzac will form even more characters than those he has painted. I fear that my sister Pélagie acts under his influence oftener than she is aware. If you let yourself be captured by that man’s power, he possesses you, and he is an ill-doer who leads you to doubt, to be sceptical about people and things.”

“Take care, my niece, of Monsieur de Balzac, later in life,” added aunt Constance, “he is the most dangerous of all writers of the present day. He will create contemporaries for you, whom I do not envy you; egoists, people athirst for position. Remember what your old aunt has said to you--even write it down: Balzac will engender brains, but never consciences nor hearts. To Balzac, virtue is an imbecility. _Eugénie Grandet_ and _Le Père Gariot_ revolt me. I do not even make an exception of the _Lys dans la Vallée_.”

Ah! if grandmother, who was a fanatic about him, had been there, what passion she would have thrown into those discussions about Monsieur de Balzac with her sisters. I told my aunts that when I left Chauny grandmother was reading _Les deux Jeunes Mariées_ for the fifth time.

Aunt Sophie dictated to me a criticism of de Balzac’s works, which I read to grandmother on my return. She became angry and made me reply to her sister in her name. I had thus two contradictory lessons on de Balzac and I remember them both.

De Balzac was a whole world to grandmother. Through him, and with him, one could exclude the banality of social intercourse from one’s existence. One lived with his heroes as if they were friends; they were flesh and blood. One talked with them, saw them; they peopled one’s existence, they came and visited one.

I wrote pages on pages to aunt Sophie about de Balzac. She replied to grandmother, and then began a correspondence between the two sisters on the literature of the day, which was communicated to me whenever it could be, and which instructed me about many works of the time that were vibrating with interest.

My aunt and grandmother agreed in disapproving of the writings of Eugène Suë, who taught the people to hate priests by his portrayal of the character of Rodin.

Grandmother sought distraction in her readings; aunt Sophie sought reflection. The one was interested only in lovers’ adventures, the other in the elegant forms in which thought was clad, in descriptions of nature, in the philosophy of life. They never understood each other nor agreed about any work whatever.

XXVIII

WE TALK ABOUT POLITICS

Having reached my eleventh year, I was quite convinced that I had become a young lady. Many persons thought me older than I really was on account of my height and my serious demeanour. My ideas at this time were very pronounced, but not always matured; my imagination ran wild; I was as simple as a child and I reasoned like a young woman. Nearly all of those who heretofore had treated me like a child, now called me “Mademoiselle,” and grandmother, desirous to justify the name, lengthened my skirts considerably, and I wore them almost quite long.

I stayed with grandmother nearly a week between my return from Chivres and my sojourn with my father, and my head was full of the literature of the day, and I now had my own opinions on Mme. de Staël, Mme. George Sand, Victor Hugo, de Balzac, and Eugène Suë. I had a book full of interrogative notes for my father, who had talked to me only of the ancient or “democratic and social authors,” as he called them. While I was at Chauny I put all these notes in order, and they were interesting from the fact that the greater part of them had been gathered from my aunts’ conversation.

I wondered whether my father would consent to discuss the literature of the day with me. My knowledge would assuredly surprise him, but did he even know the authors about whom I wished to talk with him? But as aunt Sophie, in spite of her love for Virgil and the Latin writers, was still much interested in the celebrities of the day, I thought that my father, too, might perhaps unite a taste for literature with his love of politics.

As soon as I arrived at Blérancourt I bombarded him with questions. What did he think of Mme. de Staël, of Mme. George Sand, of Victor Hugo, of de Lamartine, of de Balzac? My mother thought it scandalous that I should be allowed to read and criticise authors of whom she knew scarcely anything. Really, our family was quite crazy; even my aunts, whom she had always heard spoken of as sensible women, were more old-fashioned than modernised. My mother used to say that if she had brought me up she would have made a simple housewife of me, educated to live in her circle and to think like other people, and not a pedantic, unbearable child, already thrown out of her sphere by the training of her mind, and with her intelligence overheated at an age when it should have been set on calm foundations.

My father quite looked down on the literature of his own day. He answered my questions with commonplaces. Lamartine alone excited him, in the way of blame, not in his character of poet, but as a historian, and he declared that _Les Girondins_ was the work of a “malefactor.” His admiration of Eugène Suë was so exaggerated that it would have made aunt Sophie repeat one of her favourite sayings: “There are some opinions which are crimes.”

“Eugène Suë,” said my father, “is a genius; he will deliver France from all the Rodins; a new epoch will begin from his influence, an epoch when our country will at last be delivered from the church; Eugène Suë has moulded the soft clay of which the people are still made; some other man will obtain hard marble from this same people on which to sculpture his ideas. Events in our day move rapidly forward. The great renovators have prepared all which they intend to renovate, definite freedom.” He added solemnly: “We are at last at liberty to speak of things of which you are as yet ignorant, and which I can now disclose to you. No one now can hinder me from forming your understanding on the same pattern as my own. You have been instructed concerning the religion of your grandmother and your mother; I can now talk to you of mine without hindrance; teach you and show you from whence comes light to the minds and hearts of men. It comes from nature; it is real because we can see it; it is ideal from the vast expanse it illuminates.”

The next day my father began to teach me what he called my new catechism, and gave me in dictation the principal articles. Here are a few of the pages which I have kept:

“The worship of nature, which we have received from the Greeks, the only people who ever penetrated the depths of its mystery--a worship transmitted to us through uninterrupted centuries, which Jean Jacques Rousseau has taught us in his admirable language to understand, and of which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has given us the sentimentality--is the only true worship.

“Nature, Science, Humanity, are the three terms of initiation. First comes nature, which rules everything; then the revelations of nature, revelations which mean science--that is to say, phenomena made clear in themselves and observed by man; and lastly, the appropriation of phenomena for useful social purposes.

“The times are moving fast, the dawn is becoming light. Nature reveals herself more and more to us; the future is bright. A general spirit of fraternity prevails. Nature, which Christianity calls our enemy, gives herself wholly to man to aid him in his efforts to traverse the world by steam, to question the stars, and to discover intact the vestiges of by-gone times, which she has preserved for him.

“If Christianity has endeavoured to break the bonds between man and nature, Jesus, the immortal Christ, has drawn men together. He said to them: ‘You are brethren; there is no caste, no race, no religion, no history, no art, no morals, that are not the universal patrimony of humanity.’

“It seems to me,” said my father, “when I think of the beauty of things, of the harmony one can discover, where blinded persons see only antagonism, that my enjoyment of life is increased five-fold. One single epoch can alone be compared to our time,--that of the birth of Christianity. Christ, who brought with Him the republican formulas of equality and fraternity, preached the ‘good word’ to the people as we preach it. Soon we too shall become apostles. Jesus freed what He called souls; we shall free the social person by adding liberty to equality and fraternity.

“A Ledru-Rollin, a Louis Blanc, are the continuators of Christianity. The poor man who has won his rights by the great revolution, must be the one to impose duty on the higher classes; the worker must have a right to his work, and the rich man must be bound to furnish him with work.

“The right to work is the most absolute of all rights, but by no means the only one. The most miserable creature, because he is a man, has a right to education and to his share of government. There is no error in nature, no perversity in man; evil comes only from society, which piles up errors and wicked sophisms. The renovating forces of the future will therefore attack society and the middle class, which governs society for its own exclusive benefit. Juliette! Juliette! I intend to make you an ardent advocate for the general good and happiness of humanity. I cannot tell why, but I fancy that your heart, like my own, will be able to desire passionately the elevation of the masses; for even now you speak to a workman, to a peasant, or to a poor man, as if he were your equal.

“I, you see, love the humble, those who are on the lower steps of life, more than I do myself; the sight of those who suffer, those who struggle, and are overcome by everything, simply tortures my heart. We must give all of ourselves to those who have nothing. If many people felt in this way, there would be far fewer ills to comfort and less misery to be helped. The poor have only the vice of their poverty, the inferiority of their social standing.

“A rich and superior man who has defects is culpable, and those who are vicious are monsters; whereas the destitute who are faulty and vicious, have every excuse and every right to be absolved.

“Real piety consists in giving one’s indulgences, one’s help, and one’s love to the wretched, not in limited charity, circumscribed to material relief, but with a broad humanity.”

My heart melted at these words, and, as my father’s acts were always in accordance with what he said, he moved every fibre of sensibility I possessed.

“A republic alone can give to men the greatest of all precious things: the liberty of their rights and their duties,” said my father, “allowing them the free expansion of their faculties for human benefaction. It alone can distribute instruction unreservedly and impose education by example.