Merry Men
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Part 4 out of 5
The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation.
'And how is our patient?' asked Desprez.
It appeared the patient was about the same.
'And why do you rise early in the morning?' he pursued.
Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he hardly knew.
'You hardly know?' repeated Desprez. 'We hardly know anything, my
man, until we try to learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come,
push me this inquiry home. Do you like it?'
'Yes,' said the boy slowly; 'yes, I like it.'
'And why do you like it?' continued the Doctor. '(We are now
pursuing the Socratic method.) Why do you like it?'
'It is quiet,' answered Jean-Marie; 'and I have nothing to do; and
then I feel as if I were good.'
Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side. He
was beginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly
thought before he spoke, and tried to answer truly. 'It appears
you have a taste for feeling good,' said the Doctor. 'Now, there
you puzzle me extremely; for I thought you said you were a thief;
and the two are incompatible.'
'Is it very bad to steal?' asked Jean-Marie.
'Such is the general opinion, little boy,' replied the Doctor.
'No; but I mean as I stole,' explained the other. 'For I had no
choice. I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right
to have bread, there comes so plain a want of it. And then they
beat me cruelly if I returned with nothing,' he added. 'I was not
ignorant of right and wrong; for before that I had been well taught
by a priest, who was very kind to me.' (The Doctor made a horrible
grimace at the word 'priest.') 'But it seemed to me, when one had
nothing to eat and was beaten, it was a different affair. I would
not have stolen for tartlets, I believe; but any one would steal
for baker's bread.'
'And so I suppose,' said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, 'you
prayed God to forgive you, and explained the case to Him at
length.'
'Why, sir?' asked Jean-Marie. 'I do not see.'
'Your priest would see, however,' retorted Desprez.
'Would he?' asked the boy, troubled for the first time. 'I should
have thought God would have known.'
'Eh?' snarled the Doctor.
'I should have thought God would have understood me,' replied the
other. 'You do not, I see; but then it was God that made me think
so, was it not?'
'Little boy, little boy,' said Dr. Desprez, 'I told you already you
had the vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I
must go. I am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer
of plain and temperate nature in her common walks; and I cannot
preserve my equanimity in presence of a monster. Do you
understand?'
'No, sir,' said the boy.
'I will make my meaning clear to you,' replied the doctor. 'Look
there at the sky - behind the belfry first, where it is so light,
and then up and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the
dome, where it is already as blue as at noon. Is not that a
beautiful colour? Does it not please the heart? We have seen it
all our lives, until it has grown in with our familiar thoughts.
Now,' changing his tone, 'suppose that sky to become suddenly of a
live and fiery amber, like the colour of clear coals, and growing
scarlet towards the top - I do not say it would be any the less
beautiful; but would you like it as well?'
'I suppose not,' answered Jean-Marie.
'Neither do I like you,' returned the Doctor, roughly. 'I hate all
odd people, and you are the most curious little boy in all the
world.'
Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and then he raised his
head again and looked over at the Doctor with an air of candid
inquiry. 'But are not you a very curious gentleman?' he asked.
The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to
his bosom, and kissed him on both cheeks. 'Admirable, admirable
imp!' he cried. 'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of
forty-two! No,' he continued, apostrophising heaven, 'I did not
know such boys existed; I was ignorant they made them so; I had
doubted of my race; and now! It is like,' he added, picking up his
stick, 'like a lovers' meeting. I have bruised my favourite staff
in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury, however, is not grave.'
He caught the boy looking at him in obvious wonder, embarrassment,
and alarm. 'Hullo!' said he, 'why do you look at me like that?
Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you despise me, boy?'
'O, no,' replied Jean-Marie, seriously; 'only I do not understand.'
'You must excuse me, sir,' returned the Doctor, with gravity; 'I am
still so young. O, hang him!' he added to himself. And he took
his seat again and observed the boy sardonically. 'He has spoiled
the quiet of my morning,' thought he. 'I shall be nervous all day,
and have a febricule when I digest. Let me compose myself.' And
so he dismissed his pre-occupations by an effort of the will which
he had long practised, and let his soul roam abroad in the
contemplation of the morning. He inhaled the air, tasting it
critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage, and prolonging the
expiration with hygienic gusto. He counted the little flecks of
cloud along the sky. He followed the movements of the birds round
the church tower - making long sweeps, hanging poised, or turning
airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the wind with imaginary
pinions. And in this way he regained peace of mind and animal
composure, conscious of his limbs, conscious of the sight of his
eyes, conscious that the air had a cool taste, like a fruit, at the
top of his throat; and at last, in complete abstraction, he began
to sing. The Doctor had but one air - , 'Malbrouck s'en va-t-en
guerre;' even with that he was on terms of mere politeness; and his
musical exploits were always reserved for moments when he was alone
and entirely happy.
He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's
face. 'What do you think of my singing?' he inquired, stopping in
the middle of a note; and then, after he had waited some little
while and received no answer, 'What do you think of my singing?' he
repeated, imperiously.
'I do not like it,' faltered Jean-Marie.
'Oh, come!' cried the Doctor. 'Possibly you are a performer
yourself?'
'I sing better than that,' replied the boy.
The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction. He was aware
that he was angry, and blushed for himself in consequence, which
made him angrier. 'If this is how you address your master!' he
said at last, with a shrug and a flourish of his arms.
'I do not speak to him at all,' returned the boy. 'I do not like
him.'
'Then you like me?' snapped Doctor Desprez, with unusual eagerness.
'I do not know,' answered Jean-Marie.
The Doctor rose. 'I shall wish you a good morning,' he said. 'You
are too much for me. Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps
celestial ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than
respirable air; but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:- that
you are no human being. No, boy' - shaking his stick at him - 'you
are not a human being. Write, write it in your memory - "I am not
a human being - I have no pretension to be a human being - I am a
dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, an illusion - what you
please, but not a human being." And so accept my humble
salutations and farewell!'
And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion,
and the boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him.
CHAPTER III. THE ADOPTION.
MADAME DESPREZ, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to
look upon, a stout BRUNE, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark
eyes, and hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was
the sort of person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud;
she might, in the worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one
vertical furrow for a moment, but the next it would be gone. She
had much of the placidity of a contented nun; with little of her
piety, however; for Anastasie was of a very mundane nature, fond of
oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold pleasantries, and devoted
to her husband for her own sake rather than for his. She was
imperturbably good-natured, but had no idea of self-sacrifice. To
live in that pleasant old house, with a green garden behind and
bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best, to
gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour, never to wear
stays or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to
be kept in a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to
Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of
her nature to the brim. Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor
days, when he had aired quite as many theories, but of a different
order, attributed his present philosophy to the study of Anastasie.
It was her brute enjoyment that he rationalised and perhaps vainly
imitated.
Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a
nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected
the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of
polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her
empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the
world but to scour and burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his
house like a fatted calf, warmed and cosseted to his heart's
content.
The midday meal was excellent. There was a ripe melon, a fish from
the river in a memorable Bearnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a
fricassee, and a dish of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The
Doctor drank half a bottle PLUS one glass, the wife half a bottle
MINUS the same quantity, which was a marital privilege, of an
excellent Cote-Rotie, seven years old. Then the coffee was
brought, and a flask of Chartreuse for madame, for the Doctor
despised and distrusted such decoctions; and then Aline left the
wedded pair to the pleasures of memory and digestion.
'It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished one,' observed
the Doctor - 'this coffee is adorable - a very fortunate
circumstance upon the whole - Anastasie, I beseech you, go without
that poison for to-day; only one day, and you will feel the
benefit, I pledge my reputation.'
'What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?' inquired
Anastasie, not heeding his protest, which was of daily recurrence.
'That we have no children, my beautiful,' replied the Doctor. 'I
think of it more and more as the years go on, and with more and
more gratitude towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions.
Your health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen
delicacies, how they would all have suffered, how they would all
have been sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of
human imperfection. Health flees before their face. They cry, my
dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be
washed, to be educated, to have their noses blown; and then, when
the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break this piece of
sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid
offspring, like an infidelity.'
'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed. 'Now, that is like you - to
take credit for the thing you could not help.'
'My dear,' returned the Doctor, solemnly, 'we might have adopted.'
'Never!' cried madame. 'Never, Doctor, with my consent. If the
child were my own flesh and blood, I would not say no. But to take
another person's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I
have too much sense.'
'Precisely,' replied the Doctor. 'We both had. And I am all the
better pleased with our wisdom, because - because - ' He looked at
her sharply.
'Because what?' she asked, with a faint premonition of danger.
'Because I have found the right person,' said the Doctor firmly,
'and shall adopt him this afternoon.'
Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. 'You have lost your
reason,' she said; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed
to threaten trouble.
'Not so, my dear,' he replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To
the proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have,
by way of preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will
there, I think, recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to
call you wife. The fact is, I have been reckoning all this while
without an accident. I never thought to find a son of my own.
Now, last night, I found one. Do not unnecessarily alarm yourself,
my dear; he is not a drop of blood to me that I know. It is his
mind, darling, his mind that calls me father.'
'His mind!' she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics.
'His mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are
you mad? His mind! And what of my mind?'
'Truly,' replied the Doctor with a shrug, 'you have your finger on
the hitch. He will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever beautiful
Anastasie. She will never understand him; he will never understand
her. You married the animal side of my nature, dear and it is on
the spiritual side that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie. So much
so, that, to be perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself.
You will easily perceive that I am announcing a calamity for you.
Do not,' he broke out in tones of real solicitude - 'do not give
way to tears after a meal, Anastasie. You will certainly give
yourself a false digestion.'
Anastasie controlled herself. 'You know how willing I am to humour
you,' she said, 'in all reasonable matters. But on this point - '
'My dear love,' interrupted the Doctor, eager to prevent a refusal,
'who wished to leave Paris? Who made me give up cards, and the
opera, and the boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was
my life before I knew you? Have I been faithful? Have I been
obedient? Have I not borne my doom with cheerfulness? In all
honesty, Anastasie, have I not a right to a stipulation on my side?
I have, and you know it. I stipulate my son.'
Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colours instantly.
'You will break my heart,' she sighed.
'Not in the least,' said he. 'You will feel a trifling
inconvenience for a month, just as I did when I was first brought
to this vile hamlet; then your admirable sense and temper will
prevail, and I see you already as content as ever, and making your
husband the happiest of men.'
'You know I can refuse you nothing,' she said, with a last flicker
of resistance; 'nothing that will make you truly happier. But will
this? Are you sure, my husband? Last night, you say, you found
him! He may be the worst of humbugs.'
'I think not,' replied the Doctor. 'But do not suppose me so
unwary as to adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter myself, a
finished man of the world; I have had all possibilities in view; my
plan is contrived to meet them all. I take the lad as stable boy.
If he pilfer, if he grumble, if he desire to change, I shall see I
was mistaken; I shall recognise him for no son of mine, and send
him tramping.'
'You will never do so when the time comes,' said his wife; 'I know
your good heart.'
She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh; the Doctor smiled as
he took it and carried it to his lips; he had gained his point with
greater ease than he had dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth
time he had proved the efficacy of his trusty argument, his
Excalibur, the hint of a return to Paris. Six months in the
capital, for a man of the Doctor's antecedents and relations,
implied no less a calamity than total ruin. Anastasie had saved
the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictly in the
country. The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear; and she
would have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the back
garden, let alone adopting a stable-boy, rather than permit the
question of return to be discussed.
About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost;
he had never been conscious since his seizure. Doctor Desprez was
present at his last passage, and declared the farce over. Then he
took Jean-Marie by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden
where there was a convenient bench beside the river. Here he sat
him down and made the boy place himself on his left.
'Jean-Marie,' he said very gravely, 'this world is exceedingly
vast; and even France, which is only a small corner of it, is a
great place for a little lad like you. Unfortunately it is full of
eager, shouldering people moving on; and there are very few bakers'
shops for so many eaters. Your master is dead; you are not fit to
gain a living by yourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your
situation then is undesirable; it is, for the moment, critical. On
the other hand, you behold in me a man not old, though elderly,
still enjoying the youth of the heart and the intelligence; a man
of instruction; easily situated in this world's affairs; keeping a
good table:- a man, neither as friend nor host, to be despised. I
offer you your food and clothes, and to teach you lessons in the
evening, which will be infinitely more to the purpose for a lad of
your stamp than those of all the priests in Europe. I propose no
wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me, the door shall
be open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start the world
upon. In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which you would
very speedily learn to clean and keep in order. Do not hurry
yourself to answer, and take it or leave it as you judge aright.
Only remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charitable
person, but a man who lives rigorously to himself; and that if I
make the proposal, it is for my own ends - it is because I perceive
clearly an advantage to myself. And now, reflect.'
'I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I can do. I thank
you, sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful,' said the boy.
'Thank you,' said the Doctor warmly, rising at the same time and
wiping his brow, for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung
in the wind. A refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed
him in a ridiculous light before Anastasie. 'How hot and heavy is
the evening, to be sure! I have always had a fancy to be a fish in
summer, Jean-Marie, here in the Loing beside Gretz. I should lie
under a water-lily and listen to the bells, which must sound most
delicately down below. That would be a life - do you not think so
too?'
'Yes,' said Jean-Marie.
'Thank God you have imagination!' cried the Doctor, embracing the
boy with his usual effusive warmth, though it was a proceeding that
seemed to disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been
an English schoolboy of the same age. 'And now,' he added, 'I will
take you to my wife.'
Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool wrapper. All the
blinds were down, and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled
with water; her eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading
a novel as the they entered. Though she was a bustling woman, she
enjoyed repose between whiles and had a remarkable appetite for
sleep.
The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for
the benefit of both parties, 'You must try to like each other for
my sake.'
'He is very pretty,' said Anastasie. 'Will you kiss me, my pretty
little fellow?'
The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the passage. 'Are you
a fool, Anastasie?' he said. 'What is all this I hear about the
tact of women? Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my
experience. You address my little philosopher as if he were an
infant. He must be spoken to with more respect, I tell you; he
must not be kissed and Georgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child.'
'I only did it to please you, I am sure,' replied Anastasie; 'but I
will try to do better.'
The Doctor apologised for his warmth. 'But I do wish him,' he
continued, 'to feel at home among us. And really your conduct was
so idiotic, my cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of
place, that a saint might have been pardoned a little vehemence in
disapproval. Do, do try - if it is possible for a woman to
understand young people - but of course it is not, and I waste my
breath. Hold your tongue as much as possible at least, and observe
my conduct narrowly; it will serve you for a model.'
Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor's
behaviour. She observed that he embraced the boy three times in
the course of the evening, and managed generally to confound and
abash the little fellow out of speech and appetite. But she had
the true womanly heroism in little affairs. Not only did she
refrain from the cheap revenge of exposing the Doctor's errors to
himself, but she did her best to remove their ill-effect on Jean-
Marie. When Desprez went out for his last breath of air before
retiring for the night, she came over to the boy's side and took
his hand.
'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners,'
she said. 'He is the kindest of men, but so clever that he is
sometimes difficult to understand. You will soon grow used to him,
and then you will love him, for that nobody can help. As for me,
you may be sure, I shall try to make you happy, and will not bother
you at all. I think we should be excellent friends, you and I. I
am not clever, but I am very good-natured. Will you give me a
kiss?'
He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to
cry. The woman had spoken in complaisance; but she had warmed to
her own words, and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering,
found them enlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he
was just beginning, in an awful voice, 'Anastasie - ,' when she
looked up at him, smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his
peace, wondering, while she led the boy to his attic.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.
THE installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily
effected, and the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the
Doctor's house. Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the
morning; sometimes helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad
with the Doctor, to drink wisdom from the fountain-head; and was
introduced at night to the sciences and the dead tongues. He
retained his singular placidity of mind and manner; he was rarely
in fault; but he made only a very partial progress in his studies,
and remained much of a stranger in the family.
The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All forenoon he worked on
his great book, the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical
Dictionary of all Medicines,' which as yet consisted principally of
slips of paper and pins. When finished, it was to fill many
personable volumes, and to combine antiquarian interest with
professional utility. But the Doctor was studious of literary
graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a touch of manners, a
moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to be preferred
before a piece of science; a little more, and he would have written
the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia' in verse! The article 'Mummia,'
for instance, was already complete, though the remainder of the
work had not progressed beyond the letter A. It was exceedingly
copious and entertaining, written with quaintness and colour,
exact, erudite, a literary article; but it would hardly have
afforded guidance to a practising physician of to-day. The
feminine good sense of his wife had led her to point this out with
uncompromising sincerity; for the Dictionary was duly read aloud to
her, betwixt sleep and waning, as it proceeded towards an
infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor was a little sore on
the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusion with
asperity.
After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked,
sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie; for madame
would have preferred any hardship rather than walk.
She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied
about material comforts, and ready to drop asleep over a novel the
instant she was disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as
she never snored or grew distempered in complexion when she slept.
On the contrary, she looked the very picture of luxurious and
appetising ease, and woke without a start to the perfect possession
of her faculties. I am afraid she was greatly an animal, but she
was a very nice animal to have about. In this way, she had little
to do with Jean-Marie; but the sympathy which had been established
between them on the first night remained unbroken; they held
occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to the
extreme disappointment of the Doctor, they occasionally sallied off
together to that temple of debasing superstition, the village
church; madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a
month to Fontainebleau and returned laden with purchases; and in
short, although the Doctor still continued to regard them as
irreconcilably anti-pathetic, their relation was as intimate,
friendly, and confidential as their natures suffered.
I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly
despised and pitied the boy. She had no admiration for his class
of virtues; she liked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of
boy, cap in hand, light of foot, meeting the eye; she liked
volubility, charm, a little vice - the promise of a second Doctor
Desprez. And it was her indefeasible belief that Jean-Marie was
dull. 'Poor dear boy,' she had said once, 'how sad it is that he
should be so stupid!' She had never repeated that remark, for the
Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal bluntness
of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated with
an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table
china by the fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered silently
to her opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but
not unhappy, over his unfinished tasks, she would snatch her
opportunity in the Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms
about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy
with his distress. 'Do not mind,' she would say; 'I, too, am not
at all clever, and I can assure you that it makes no difference in
life.'
The Doctor's view was naturally different. That gentleman never
wearied of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth,
agreeable enough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so
cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on
his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not
educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the
most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor
mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State?
Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness.
Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his
endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so
agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, when
challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort
of flower upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a
fish, and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.
Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with
the ill-success of his more formal education. A boy, chosen by so
acute an observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of
learning by so philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature
of the universe, to make a more obvious and lasting advance. Now
Jean-Marie was slow in all things, impenetrable in others; and his
power of forgetting was fully on a level with his power to learn.
Therefore the Doctor cherished his peripatetic lectures, to which
the boy attended, which he generally appeared to enjoy, and by
which he often profited.
Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and
moderation proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations. To
these he lovingly returned.
'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase - to avoid excess.
Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance
her provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the
law. Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and
for our neighbours - lex armata - armed, emphatic, tyrannous law.
If you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box!
The judge, though in a way an admission of disease, is less
offensive to me than either the doctor or the priest. Above all
the doctor - the doctor and the purulent trash and garbage of his
pharmacopoeia! Pure air - from the neighbourhood of a pinetum for
the sake of the turpentine - unadulterated wine, and the
reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the
works of nature - these, my boy, are the best medical appliances
and the best religious comforts. Devote yourself to these. Hark!
there are the bells of Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will
be fair). How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are
harmonised and quieted; the mind attuned to silence; and observe
how easily and regularly beats the heart! Your unenlightened
doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yet you yourself
perceive they are a part of health. - Did you remember your
cinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona also is a work of nature;
it is, after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for
ourselves if we lived in the locality. - What a world is this!
Though a professed atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the
world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround
our path! The river runs by the garden end, our bath, our
fishpond, our natural system of drainage. There is a well in the
court which sends up sparkling water from the earth's very heart,
clean, cool, and, with a little wine, most wholesome. The district
is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is the only prevalent
complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I tell you -
and my opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processes of
reason - if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, it
would be the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend to
prevent us with a pistol bullet.'
One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village.
The river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the
foliage. The indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz
church tower. A healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the
sound of innumerable thousands of tree-tops and innumerable
millions on millions of green leaves was abroad in the air, and
filled the ear with something between whispered speech and singing.
It seemed as if every blade of grass must hide a cigale; and the
fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far and near as with
the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their station on the
slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the one
hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretz
itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding
arch of the blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It
seemed incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or
air to breathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came
home to the boy, perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words.
'How small it looks!' he sighed.
'Ay,' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now. Yet it was once a
walled city; thriving, full of furred burgesses and men in armour,
humming with affairs; - with tall spires, for aught that I know,
and portly towers along the battlements. A thousand chimneys
ceased smoking at the curfew bell. There were gibbets at the gate
as thick as scarecrows. In time of war, the assault swarmed
against it with ladders, the arrows fell like leaves, the defenders
sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each side uttered its cry as
they plied their weapons. Do you know that the walls extended as
far as the Commanderie? Tradition so reports. Alas, what a long
way off is all this confusion - nothing left of it but my quiet
words spoken in your ear - and the town itself shrunk to the hamlet
underneath us! By-and-by came the English wars - you shall hear
more of the English, a stupid people, who sometimes blundered into
good - and Gretz was taken, sacked, and burned. It is the history
of many towns; but Gretz never rose again; it was never rebuilt;
its ruins were a quarry to serve the growth of rivals; and the
stones of Gretz are now erect along the streets of Nemours. It
gratifies me that our old house was the first to rise after the
calamity; when the town had come to an end, it inaugurated the
hamlet.'
'I, too, am glad of that,' said Jean-Marie.
'It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,' responded the
Doctor with a savoury gusto. 'Perhaps one of the reasons why I
love my little hamlet as I do, is that we have a similar history,
she and I. Have I told you that I was once rich?'
'I do not think so,' answered Jean-Marie. 'I do not think I should
have forgotten. I am sorry you should have lost your fortune.'
'Sorry?' cried the Doctor. 'Why, I find I have scarce begun your
education after all. Listen to me! Would you rather live in the
old Gretz or in the new, free from the alarms of war, with the
green country at the door, without noise, passports, the exactions
of the soldiery, or the jangle of the curfew-bell to send us off to
bed by sundown?'
'I suppose I should prefer the new,' replied the boy.
'Precisely,' returned the Doctor; 'so do I. And, in the same way,
I prefer my present moderate fortune to my former wealth. Golden
mediocrity! cried the adorable ancients; and I subscribe to their
enthusiasm. Have I not good wine, good food, good air, the fields
and the forest for my walk, a house, an admirable wife, a boy whom
I protest I cherish like a son? Now, if I were still rich, I
should indubitably make my residence in Paris - you know Paris -
Paris and Paradise are not convertible terms. This pleasant noise
of the wind streaming among leaves changed into the grinding Babel
of the street, the stupid glare of plaster substituted for this
quiet pattern of greens and greys, the nerves shattered, the
digestion falsified - picture the fall! Already you perceive the
consequences; the mind is stimulated, the heart steps to a
different measure, and the man is himself no longer. I have
passionately studied myself - the true business of philosophy. I
know my character as the musician knows the ventages of his flute.
Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself gambling; nay, I go
further - I should break the heart of my Anastasie with
infidelities.'
This was too much for Jean-Marie. That a place should so transform
the most excellent of men transcended his belief. Paris, he
protested, was even an agreeable place of residence. 'Nor when I
lived in that city did I feel much difference,' he pleaded.
'What!' cried the Doctor. 'Did you not steal when you were there?'
But the boy could never be brought to see that he had done anything
wrong when he stole. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but
that gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort.
'And now,' he concluded, 'do you begin to understand? My only
friends were those who ruined me. Gretz has been my academy, my
sanatorium, my heaven of innocent pleasures. If millions are
offered me, I wave them back: RETRO, SATHANAS! - Evil one, begone!
Fix your mind on my example; despise riches, avoid the debasing
influence of cities. Hygiene - hygiene and mediocrity of fortune -
these be your watchwords during life!'
The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coincided with his
tastes; and his picture of the perfect life was a faithful
description of the one he was leading at the time. But it is easy
to convince a boy, whom you supply with all the facts for the
discussion. And besides, there was one thing admirable in the
philosophy, and that was the enthusiasm of the philosopher. There
was never any one more vigorously determined to be pleased; and if
he was not a great logician, and so had no right to convince the
intellect, he was certainly something of a poet, and had a
fascination to seduce the heart. What he could not achieve in his
customary humour of a radiant admiration of himself and his
circumstances, he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.
'Boy,' he would say, 'avoid me to-day. If I were superstitious, I
should even beg for an interest in your prayers. I am in the black
fit; the evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah,
the personal devil of the mediaeval monk, is with me - is in me,'
tapping on his breast. 'The vices of my nature are now uppermost;
innocent pleasures woo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my
wallowing in the mire. See,' he would continue, producing a
handful of silver, 'I denude myself, I am not to be trusted with
the price of a fare. Take it, keep it for me, squander it on
deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river - I will
homologate your action. Save me from that part of myself which I
disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if necessary, wreck
the train! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any extremity were
better than for me to reach Paris alive.'
Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes, as a variation in
his part; they represented the Byronic element in the somewhat
artificial poetry of his existence; but to the boy, though he was
dimly aware of their theatricality, they represented more. The
Doctor made perhaps too little, the boy possibly too much, of the
reality and gravity of these temptations.
One day a great light shone for Jean-Marie. 'Could not riches be
used well?' he asked.
'In theory, yes,' replied the Doctor. 'But it is found in
experience that no one does so. All the world imagine they will be
exceptional when they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new
desires spring up; and the silly taste for ostentation eats out the
heart of pleasure.'
'Then you might be better if you had less,' said the boy.
'Certainly not,' replied the Doctor; but his voice quavered as he
spoke.
'Why?' demanded pitiless innocence.
Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment; the
stable universe appeared to be about capsizing with him.
'Because,' said he - affecting deliberation after an obvious pause
- 'because I have formed my life for my present income. It is not
good for men of my years to be violently dissevered from their
habits.'
That was a sharp brush. The Doctor breathed hard, and fell into
taciturnity for the afternoon. As for the boy, he was delighted
with the resolution of his doubts; even wondered that he had not
foreseen the obvious and conclusive answer. His faith in the
Doctor was a stout piece of goods. Desprez was inclined to be a
sheet in the wind's eye after dinner, especially after Rhone wine,
his favourite weakness. He would then remark on the warmth of his
feeling for Anastasie, and with inflamed cheeks and a loose,
flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of topics, and be feebly and
indiscreetly witty. But the adopted stable-boy would not permit
himself to entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude. It is
quite true that a man may be a second father to you, and yet take
too much to drink; but the best natures are ever slow to accept
such truths.
The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but perhaps he
exaggerated his influence over his mind. Certainly Jean-Marie
adopted some of his master's opinions, but I have yet to learn that
he ever surrendered one of his own. Convictions existed in him by
divine right; they were virgin, unwrought, the brute metal of
decision. He could add others indeed, but he could not put away;
neither did he care if they were perfectly agreed among themselves;
and his spiritual pleasures had nothing to do with turning them
over or justifying them in words. Words were with him a mere
accomplishment, like dancing. When he was by himself, his
pleasures were almost vegetable. He would slip into the woods
towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches.
His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think;
sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs against
the sky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a
spirit wholly abstracted. A single mood filled him, to which all
the objects of sense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum
merge and disappear in white light.
So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted
stable-boy bemused himself with silence.
CHAPTER V. TREASURE TROVE.
THE Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig with a hood; a kind of
vehicle in much favour among country doctors. On how many roads
has one not seen it, a great way off between the poplars! - in how
many village streets, tied to a gate-post! This sort of chariot is
affected - particularly at the trot - by a kind of pitching
movement to and fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the
style of a Noddy. The hood describes a considerable arc against
the landscape, with a solemnly absurd effect on the contemplative
pedestrian. To ride in such a carriage cannot be numbered among
the things that appertain to glory; but I have no doubt it may be
useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, its wide popularity
among physicians.
One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened
the gate, and mounted to the driving-seat. The Doctor followed,
arrayed from top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense
flesh-coloured umbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a
baldric; and the equipage drove off smartly in a breeze of its own
provocation. They were bound for Franchard, to collect plants,
with an eye to the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia.'
A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders
of the forest and struck into an unfrequented track; the noddy
yawed softly over the sand, with an accompaniment of snapping
twigs. There was a great, green, softly murmuring cloud of
congregated foliage overhead. In the arcades of the forest the air
retained the freshness of the night. The athletic bearing of the
trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleased the mind like so
many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eye admiringly
upward to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch of azure.
Squirrels leaped in mid air. It was a proper spot for a devotee of
the goddess Hygieia.
'Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie?' inquired the Doctor. 'I
fancy not.'
'Never,' replied the boy.
'It is ruin in a gorge,' continued Desprez, adopting his expository
voice; 'the ruin of a hermitage and chapel. History tells us much
of Franchard; how the recluse was often slain by robbers; how he
lived on a most insufficient diet; how he was expected to pass his
days in prayer. A letter is preserved, addressed to one of these
solitaries by the superior of his order, full of admirable hygienic
advice; bidding him go from his book to praying, and so back again,
for variety's sake, and when he was weary of both to stroll about
his garden and observe the honey bees. It is to this day my own
system. You must often have remarked me leaving the
"Pharmacopoeia" - often even in the middle of a phrase - to come
forth into the sun and air. I admire the writer of that letter
from my heart; he was a man of thought on the most important
subjects. But, indeed, had I lived in the Middle Ages (I am
heartily glad that I did not) I should have been an eremite myself
- if I had not been a professed buffoon, that is. These were the
only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or prayer; sneers, we
might say, and tears. Until the sun of the Positive arose, the
wise man had to make his choice between these two.'
'I have been a buffoon, of course,' observed Jean-Marie.
'I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your profession,' said
the Doctor, admiring the boy's gravity. 'Do you ever laugh?'
'Oh, yes,' replied the other. 'I laugh often. I am very fond of
jokes.'
'Singular being!' said Desprez. 'But I divagate (I perceive in a
thousand ways that I grow old). Franchard was at length destroyed
in the English wars, the same that levelled Gretz. But - here is
the point - the hermits (for there were already more than one) had
foreseen the danger and carefully concealed the sacrificial
vessels. These vessels were of monstrous value, Jean-Marie -
monstrous value - priceless, we may say; exquisitely worked, of
exquisite material. And now, mark me, they have never been found.
In the reign of Louis Quatorze some fellows were digging hard by
the ruins. Suddenly - tock! - the spade hit upon an obstacle.
Imagine the men fooling one to another; imagine how their hearts
bounded, how their colour came and went. It was a coffer, and in
Franchard the place of buried treasure! They tore it open like
famished beasts. Alas! it was not the treasure; only some priestly
robes, which, at the touch of the eating air, fell upon themselves
and instantly wasted into dust. The perspiration of these good
fellows turned cold upon them, Jean-Marie. I will pledge my
reputation, if there was anything like a cutting wind, one or other
had a pneumonia for his trouble.'
'I should like to have seen them turning into dust,' said Jean-
Marie. 'Otherwise, I should not have cared so greatly.'
'You have no imagination,' cried the Doctor. 'Picture to yourself
the scene. Dwell on the idea - a great treasure lying in the earth
for centuries: the material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence
not employed; dresses and exquisite pictures unseen; the swiftest
galloping horses not stirring a hoof, arrested by a spell; women
with the beautiful faculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice,
opera singing, orchestras, castles, beautiful parks and gardens,
big ships with a tower of sailcloth, all lying unborn in a coffin -
and the stupid trees growing overhead in the sunlight, year after
year. The thought drives one frantic.'
'It is only money,' replied Jean-Marie. 'It would do harm.'
'O, come!' cried Desprez, 'that is philosophy; it is all very fine,
but not to the point just now. And besides, it is not "only
money," as you call it; there are works of art in the question; the
vessels were carved. You speak like a child. You weary me
exceedingly, quoting my words out of all logical connection, like a
parroquet.'
'And at any rate, we have nothing to do with it,' returned the boy
submissively.
They struck the Route Ronde at that moment; and the sudden change
to the rattling causeway combined, with the Doctor's irritation, to
keep him silent. The noddy jigged along; the trees went by,
looking on silently, as if they had something on their minds. The
Quadrilateral was passed; then came Franchard. They put up the
horse at the little solitary inn, and went forth strolling. The
gorge was dyed deeply with heather; the rocks and birches standing
luminous in the sun. A great humming of bees about the flowers
disposed Jean-Marie to sleep, and he sat down against a clump of
heather, while the Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quick
turns, culling his simples.
The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his eyes were closed,
his fingers had fallen lax about his knees, when a sudden cry
called him to his feet. It was a strange sound, thin and brief; it
fell dead, and silence returned as though it had never been
interrupted. He had not recognised the Doctor's voice; but, as
there was no one else in all the valley, it was plainly the Doctor
who had given utterance to the sound. He looked right and left,
and there was Desprez, standing in a niche between two boulders,
and looking round on his adopted son with a countenance as white as
paper.
'A viper!' cried Jean-Marie, running towards him. 'A viper! You
are bitten!'
The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, and, advanced in
silence to meet the boy, whom he took roughly by the shoulder.
'I have found it,' he said, with a gasp.
'A plant?' asked Jean-Marie.
Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up and
mimicked. 'A plant!' he repeated scornfully. 'Well - yes - a
plant. And here,' he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which
he had hitherto concealed behind his back - 'here is one of the
bulbs.'
Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth.
'That?' said he. 'It is a plate!'
'It is a coach and horses,' cried the Doctor. 'Boy,' he continued,
growing warmer, 'I plucked away a great pad of moss from between
these boulders, and disclosed a crevice; and when I looked in, what
do you suppose I saw? I saw a house in Paris with a court and
garden, I saw my wife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a deputy,
I saw you - well, I - I saw your future,' he concluded, rather
feebly. 'I have just discovered America,' he added.
'But what is it?' asked the boy.
'The Treasure of Franchard,' cried the Doctor; and, throwing his
brown straw hat upon the ground, he whooped like an Indian and
sprang upon Jean-Marie, whom he suffocated with embraces and
bedewed with tears. Then he flung himself down among the heather
and once more laughed until the valley rang.
But the boy had now an interest of his own, a boy's interest. No
sooner was he released from the Doctor's accolade than he ran to
the boulders, sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into
the crevice, drew forth one after another, encrusted with the earth
of ages, the flagons, candlesticks, and patens of the hermitage of
Franchard. A casket came last, tightly shut and very heavy.
'O what fun!' he cried.
But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had followed close
behind and was silently observing, the words died from his lips.
Desprez was once more the colour of ashes; his lip worked and
trembled; a sort of bestial greed possessed him.
'This is childish,' he said. 'We lose precious time. Back to the
inn, harness the trap, and bring it to yon bank. Run for your
life, and remember - not one whisper. I stay here to watch.'
Jean-Marie did as he was bid, though not without surprise. The
noddy was brought round to the spot indicated; and the two
gradually transported the treasure from its place of concealment to
the boot below the driving seat. Once it was all stored the Doctor
recovered his gaiety.
'I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this dell,' he said.
'O, for a live coal, a heifer, and a jar of country wine! I am in
the vein for sacrifice, for a superb libation. Well, and why not?
We are at Franchard. English pale ale is to be had - not
classical, indeed, but excellent. Boy, we shall drink ale.'
'But I thought it was so unwholesome,' said Jean-Marie, 'and very
dear besides.'
'Fiddle-de-dee!' exclaimed the Doctor gaily. 'To the inn!'
And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head, with an elastic,
youthful air. The horse was turned, and in a few seconds they drew
up beside the palings of the inn garden.
'Here,' said Desprez - 'here, near the table, so that we may keep
an eye upon things.'
They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing,
now in fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from
his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed
the waiter with witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at
length produced, far more charged with gas than the most delirious
champagne, he filled out a long glassful of froth and pushed it
over to Jean-Marie. 'Drink,' he said; 'drink deep.'
'I would rather not,' faltered the boy, true to his training.
'What?' thundered Desprez.
'I am afraid of it,' said Jean-Marie: 'my stomach - '
'Take it or leave it,' interrupted Desprez fiercely; 'but
understand it once for all - there is nothing so contemptible as a
precisian.'
Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass
but not tasting it, while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own,
at first with clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the
heady, prickling beverage, and his own predisposition to be happy.
'Once in a way,' he said at last, by way of a concession to the
boy's more rigorous attitude, 'once in a way, and at so critical a
moment, this ale is a nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is
debasing; wine, the juice of the grape, is the true drink of the
Frenchman, as I have often had occasion to point out; and I do not
know that I can blame you for refusing this outlandish stimulant.
You can have some wine and cakes. Is the bottle empty? Well, we
will not be proud; we will have pity on your glass.'
The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie
finished his cakes. 'I burn to be gone,' he said, looking at his
watch. 'Good God, how slow you eat!' And yet to eat slowly was
his own particular prescription, the main secret of longevity!
His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed
their places in the buggy, and Desprez, leaning luxuriously back,
announced his intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.
'To Fontainebleau?' repeated Jean-Marie.
'My words are always measured,' said the Doctor. 'On!'
The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the
light, the shining leaves, the very movements of the vehicle,
seemed to fall in tune with his golden meditations; with his head
thrown back, he dreamed a series of sunny visions, ale and pleasure
dancing in his veins. At last he spoke.
'I shall telegraph for Casimir,' he said. 'Good Casimir! a fellow
of the lower order of intelligence, Jean-Marie, distinctly not
creative, not poetic; and yet he will repay your study; his fortune
is vast, and is entirely due to his own exertions. He is the very
fellow to help us to dispose of our trinkets, find us a suitable
house in Paris, and manage the details of our installation.
Admirable Casimir, one of my oldest comrades! It was on his
advice, I may add, that I invested my little fortune in Turkish
bonds; when we have added these spoils of the mediaeval church to
our stake in the Mahometan empire, little boy, we shall positively
roll among doubloons, positively roll! Beautiful forest,' he
cried, 'farewell! Though called to other scenes, I will not forget
thee. Thy name is graven in my heart. Under the influence of
prosperity I become dithyrambic, Jean-Marie. Such is the impulse
of the natural soul; such was the constitution of primaeval man.
And I - well, I will not refuse the credit - I have preserved my
youth like a virginity; another, who should have led the same
snoozing, countryfied existence for these years, another had become
rusted, become stereotype; but I, I praise my happy constitution,
retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a new sphere of
duties find me unabated in ardour and only more mature by
knowledge. For this prospective change, Jean-Marie - it may
probably have shocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike you as
an inconsistency? Confess - it is useless to dissemble - it pained
you?'
'Yes,' said the boy.
'You see,' returned the Doctor, with sublime fatuity, 'I read your
thoughts! Nor am I surprised - your education is not yet complete;
the higher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully.
A hint - till we have leisure - must suffice. Now that I am once
more in possession of a modest competence; now that I have so long
prepared myself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty
to proceed to Paris. My scientific training, my undoubted command
of language, mark me out for the service of my country. Modesty in
such a case would be a snare. If sin were a philosophical
expression, I should call it sinful. A man must not deny his
manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations. I must
be up and doing; I must be no skulker in life's battle.'
So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency
with words; while the boy listened silently, his eyes fixed on the
horse, his mind seething. It was all lost eloquence; no array of
words could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's; and he drove into
Fontainebleau filled with pity, horror, indignation, and despair.
In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to
guard the treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly
tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he
shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the
nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he
returned laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece
of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi
of the newest fashion for the boy; in and out of the telegraph
office, whence he despatched his telegram, and where three hours
later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow; and
generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the first fine aroma of his
divine good humour.
The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the
forest trees extended across the broad white road that led them
home; the penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen,
like a cloud of incense, from that broad field of tree-tops; and
even in the streets of the town, where the air had been baked all
day between white walls, it came in whiffs and pulses, like a
distant music. Half-way home, the last gold flicker vanished from
a great oak upon the left; and when they came forth beyond the
borders of the wood, the plain was already sunken in pearly
greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through the
filmy poplars.
The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked. He spoke
of the woods, and the wars, and the deposition of dew; he
brightened and babbled of Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on
the glories of the political arena. All was to be changed; as the
day departed, it took with it the vestiges of an outworn existence,
and to-morrow's sun was to inaugurate the new. 'Enough,' he cried,
'of this life of maceration!' His wife (still beautiful, or he was
sadly partial) was to be no longer buried; she should now shine
before society. Jean-Marie would find the world at his feet; the
roads open to success, wealth, honour, and post-humous renown.
'And O, by the way,' said he, 'for God's sake keep your tongue
quiet! You are, of course, a very silent fellow; it is a quality I
gladly recognise in you - silence, golden silence! But this is a
matter of gravity. No word must get abroad; none but the good
Casimir is to be trusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels
in England.'
'But are they not even ours?' the boy said, almost with a sob - it
was the only time he had spoken.
'Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's,' replied the
Doctor. 'But the State would have some claim. If they were
stolen, for instance, we should be unable to demand their
restitution; we should have no title; we should be unable even to
communicate with the police. Such is the monstrous condition of
the law. (6) It is a mere instance of what remains to be done, of
the injustices that may yet be righted by an ardent, active, and
philosophical deputy.'
Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez; and as they drove
forward down the road from Bourron, between the rustling poplars,
he prayed in his teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual
speed. Surely, as soon as they arrived, madame would assert her
character, and bring this waking nightmare to an end.
Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most
furious barking; all the dogs in the village seemed to smell the
treasure in the noddy. But there was no one in the street, save
three lounging landscape painters at Tentaillon's door. Jean-Marie
opened the green gate and led in the horse and carriage; and almost
at the same moment Madame Desprez came to the kitchen threshold
with a lighted lantern; for the moon was not yet high enough to
clear the garden walls.
'Close the gates, Jean-Marie!' cried the Doctor, somewhat
unsteadily alighting. 'Anastasie, where is Aline?'
'She has gone to Montereau to see her parents,' said madame.
'All is for the best!' exclaimed the Doctor fervently. 'Here,
quick, come near to me; I do not wish to speak too loud,' he
continued. 'Darling, we are wealthy!'
'Wealthy!' repeated the wife.
'I have found the treasure of Franchard,' replied her husband.
'See, here are the first fruits; a pineapple, a dress for my ever-
beautiful - it will suit her - trust a husband's, trust a lover's,
taste! Embrace me, darling! This grimy episode is over; the
butterfly unfolds its painted wings. To-morrow Casimir will come;
in a week we may be in Paris - happy at last! You shall have
diamonds. Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious
care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. We shall
have plate at table! Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; it
will be a whet - it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I
myself will proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that
little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there
are still three bottles left. Worthy wine for a worthy occasion.'
'But, my husband; you put me in a whirl,' she cried. 'I do not
comprehend.'
'The turtle, my adored, the turtle!' cried the doctor; and he
pushed her towards the kitchen, lantern and all.
Jean-Marie stood dumfounded. He had pictured to himself a
different scene - a more immediate protest, and his hope began to
dwindle on the spot.
The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on his legs, perhaps,
and now and then taking the wall with his shoulder; for it was long
since he had tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that
the absinthe had been a misconception. Not that he regretted
excess on such a glorious day, but he made a mental memorandum to
beware; he must not, a second time, become the victim of a
deleterious habit. He had his wine out of the cellar in a
twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels, some on the white
table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still crusted with historic
earth. He was in and out of the kitchen, plying Anastasie with
vermouth, heating her with glimpses of the future, estimating their
new wealth at ever larger figures; and before they sat down to
supper, the lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm,
her timidity had disappeared; she, too, had begun to speak
disparagingly of the life at Gretz; and as she took her place and
helped the soup, her eyes shone with the glitter of prospective
diamonds.
All through the meal, she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy
plans. They bobbed and bowed and pledged each other. Their faces
ran over with smiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they
projected the Doctor's political honours and the lady's drawing-
room ovations.
'But you will not be a Red!' cried Anastasie.
'I am Left Centre to the core,' replied the Doctor.
'Madame Gastein will present us - we shall find ourselves
forgotten,' said the lady.
'Never,' protested the Doctor. 'Beauty and talent leave a mark.'
'I have positively forgotten how to dress,' she sighed.
'Darling, you make me blush,' cried he. 'Yours has been a tragic
marriage!'
'But your success - to see you appreciated, honoured, your name in
all the papers, that will be more than pleasure - it will be
heaven!' she cried.
'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scanning the syllables,
'once a week - one good little game of baccarat?'
'Only once a week?' she questioned, threatening him with a finger.
'I swear it by my political honour,' cried he.
'I spoil you,' she said, and gave him her hand.
He covered it with kisses.
Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon swung high over Gretz.
He went down to the garden end and sat on the jetty. The river ran
by with eddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song. Faint
veils of mist moved among the poplars on the farther side. The
reeds were quietly nodding. A hundred times already had the boy
sat, on such a night, and watched the streaming river with
untroubled fancy. And this perhaps was to be the last. He was to
leave this familiar hamlet, this green, rustling country, this
bright and quiet stream; he was to pass into the great city; his
dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; his good,
garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling deputy; and
both be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and their better selves. He
knew his own defects; he knew he must sink into less and less
consideration in the turmoil of a city life, sink more and more
from the child into the servant. And he began dimly to believe the
Doctor's prophecies of evil. He could see a change in both. His
generous incredulity failed him for this once; a child must have
perceived that the Hermitage had completed what the absinthe had
begun. If this were the first day, what would be the last? 'If
necessary, wreck the train,' thought he, remembering the Doctor's
parable. He looked round on the delightful scene; he drank deep of
the charmed night air, laden with the scent of hay. 'If necessary,
wreck the train,' he repeated. And he rose and returned to the
house.
CHAPTER VI. A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS.
THE next morning there was a most unusual outcry, in the Doctor's
house. The last thing before going to bed, the Doctor had locked
up some valuables in the dining-room cupboard; and behold, when he
rose again, as he did about four o'clock, the cupboard had been
broken open, and the valuables in question had disappeared. Madame
and Jean-Marie were summoned from their rooms, and appeared in
hasty toilets; they found the Doctor raving, calling the heavens to
witness and avenge his injury, pacing the room bare-footed, with
the tails of his night-shirt flirting as he turned.
'Gone!' he said; 'the things are gone, the fortune gone! We are
paupers once more. Boy! what do you know of this? Speak up, sir,
speak up. Do you know of it? Where are they?' He had him by the
arm, shaking him like a bag, and the boy's words, if he had any,
were jolted forth in inarticulate murmurs. The Doctor, with a
revulsion from his own violence, set him down again. He observed
Anastasie in tears. 'Anastasie,' he said, in quite an altered
voice, 'compose yourself, command your feelings. I would not have
you give way to passion like the vulgar. This - this trifling
accident must be lived down. Jean-Marie, bring me my smaller
medicine chest. A gentle laxative is indicated.'
And he dosed the family all round, leading the way himself with a
double quantity. The wretched Anastasie, who had never been ill in
the whole course of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from
remedies, wept floods of tears as she sipped, and shuddered, and
protested, and then was bullied and shouted at until she sipped
again. As for Jean-Marie, he took his portion down with stoicism.
'I have given him a less amount,' observed the Doctor, 'his youth
protecting him against emotion. And now that we have thus parried
any morbid consequences, let us reason.'
'I am so cold,' wailed Anastasie.
'Cold!' cried the Doctor. 'I give thanks to God that I am made of
fierier material. Why, madam, a blow like this would set a frog
into a transpiration. If you are cold, you can retire; and, by the
way, you might throw me down my trousers. It is chilly for the
legs.'
'Oh, no!' protested Anastasie; 'I will stay with you.'
'Nay, madam, you shall not suffer for your devotion,' said the
Doctor. 'I will myself fetch you a shawl.' And he went upstairs
and returned more fully clad and with an armful of wraps for the
shivering Anastasie. 'And now,' he resumed, 'to investigate this
crime. Let us proceed by induction. Anastasie, do you know
anything that can help us?' Anastasie knew nothing. 'Or you,
Jean-Marie?'
'Not I,' replied the boy steadily.
'Good,' returned the Doctor. 'We shall now turn our attention to
the material evidences. (I was born to be a detective; I have the
eye and the systematic spirit.) First, violence has been employed.
The door was broken open; and it may be observed, in passing, that
the lock was dear indeed at what I paid for it: a crow to pluck
with Master Goguelat. Second, here is the instrument employed, one
of our own table-knives, one of our best, my dear; which seems to
indicate no preparation on the part of the gang - if gang it was.
Thirdly, I observe that nothing has been removed except the
Franchard dishes and the casket; our own silver has been minutely
respected. This is wily; it shows intelligence, a knowledge of the
code, a desire to avoid legal consequences. I argue from this fact
that the gang numbers persons of respectability - outward, of
course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves. But I argue,
second, that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by some
occult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and
patience that I venture to qualify as consummate. No ordinary man,
no occasional criminal, would have shown himself capable of this
combination. We have in our neighbourhood, it is far from
improbable, a retired bandit of the highest order of intelligence.'
'Good heaven!' cried the horrified Anastasie. 'Henri, how can
you?'
'My cherished one, this is a process of induction,' said the
Doctor. 'If any of my steps are unsound, correct me. You are
silent? Then do not, I beseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to
revolt from my conclusion. We have now arrived,' he resumed, 'at
some idea of the composition of the gang - for I incline to the
hypothesis of more than one - and we now leave this room, which can
disclose no more, and turn our attention to the court and garden.
(Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following my various
steps; this is an excellent piece of education for you.) Come with
me to the door. No steps on the court; it is unfortunate our court
should be paved. On what small matters hang the destiny of these
delicate investigations! Hey! What have we here? I have led on
to the very spot,' he said, standing grandly backward and
indicating the green gate. 'An escalade, as you can now see for
yourselves, has taken place.'
Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and
broken; and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe.
The foot had slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the
size of the shoe, and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the
nails.
'The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has been
reconstituted. Inductive science can no further go.'
'It is wonderful,' said his wife. 'You should indeed have been a
detective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents.'
'My dear,' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientific
imagination combines the lesser faculties; he is a detective just
as he is a publicist or a general; these are but local applications
of his special talent. But now,' he continued, 'would you have me
go further? Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits - or
rather, for I cannot promise quite so much, point out to you the
very house where they consort? It may be a satisfaction, at least
it is all we are likely to get, since we are denied the remedy of
law. I reach the further stage in this way. In order to fill my
outline of the robbery, I require a man likely to be in the forest
idling, I require a man of education, I require a man superior to
considerations of morality. The three requisites all centre in
Tentaillon's boarders. They are painters, therefore they are
continually lounging in the forest. They are painters, therefore
they are not unlikely to have some smattering of education.
Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral. And
this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merely
addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral
sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts,
implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination
is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life
under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious
distinctions of the law!'
'But you always say - at least, so I understood you' - said madame,
'that these lads display no imagination whatever.'
'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic
order, too,' returned the Doctor, 'when they embraced their
beggarly profession. Besides - and this is an argument exactly
suited to your intellectual level - many of them are English and
American. Where else should we expect to find a thief? - And now
you had better get your coffee. Because we have lost a treasure,
there is no reason for starving. For my part, I shall break my
fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and thirsty to-
day. I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery. And
yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly.'
The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour;
and as he sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of
white wine and picked a little bread and cheese with no very
impetuous appetite, if a third of his meditations ran upon the
missing treasure, the other two-thirds were more pleasingly busied
in the retrospect of his detective skill.
About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train to
Fontainebleau, and driven over to save time; and now his cab was
stabled at Tentaillon's, and he remarked, studying his watch, that
he could spare an hour and a half. He was much the man of
business, decisively spoken, given to frowning in an intellectual
manner. Anastasie's born brother, he did not waste much sentiment
on the lady, gave her an English family kiss, and demanded a meal
without delay.
'You can tell me your story while we eat,' he observed. 'Anything
good to-day, Stasie?'
He was promised something good. The trio sat down to table in the
arbour, Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating, and the Doctor
recounted what had happened in his richest narrative manner.
Casimir heard it with explosions of laughter.
'What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,' he observed, when
the tale was over. 'If you had gone to Paris, you would have
played dick-duck-drake with the whole consignment in three months.
Your own would have followed; and you would have come to me in a
procession like the last time. But I give you warning - Stasie may
weep and Henri ratiocinate - it will not serve you twice. Your
next collapse will be fatal. I thought I had told you so, Stasie?
Hey? No sense?'
The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-Marie; but the boy
seemed apathetic.
'And then again,' broke out Casimir, 'what children you are -
vicious children, my faith! How could you tell the value of this
trash? It might have been worth nothing, or next door.'
'Pardon me,' said the Doctor. 'You have your usual flow of
spirits, I perceive, but even less than your usual deliberation. I
am not entirely ignorant of these matters.'
'Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of,' interrupted
Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert
politeness.
'At least,' resumed the Doctor, 'I gave my mind to the subject -
that you may be willing to believe - and I estimated that our
capital would be doubled.' And he described the nature of the
find.
'My word of honour!' said Casimir, 'I half believe you! But much
would depend on the quality of the gold.'
'The quality, my dear Casimir, was - ' And the Doctor, in default
of language, kissed his finger-tips.
'I would not take your word for it, my good friend,' retorted the
man of business. 'You are a man of very rosy views. But this
robbery,' he continued - 'this robbery is an odd thing. Of course
I pass over your nonsense about gangs and landscape-painters. For
me, that is a dream. Who was in the house last night?'
'None but ourselves,' replied the Doctor.
'And this young gentleman?' asked Casimir, jerking a nod in the
direction of Jean-Marie.
'He too' - the Doctor bowed.
'Well; and if it is a fair question, who is he?' pursued the
brother-in-law.
'Jean-Marie,' answered the Doctor, 'combines the functions of a son
and stable-boy. He began as the latter, but he rose rapidly to the
more honourable rank in our affections. He is, I may say, the
greatest comfort in our lives.'
'Ha!' said Casimir. 'And previous to becoming one of you?'
'Jean-Marie has lived a remarkable existence; his experience his
been eminently formative,' replied Desprez. 'If I had had to
choose an education for my son, I should have chosen such another.
Beginning life with mountebanks and thieves, passing onward to the
society and friendship of philosophers, he may be said to have
skimmed the volume of human life.'
'Thieves?' repeated the brother-in-law, with a meditative air.
The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out. He foresaw what was
coming, and prepared his mind for a vigorous defence.
'Did you ever steal yourself?' asked Casimir, turning suddenly on
Jean-Marie, and for the first time employing a single eyeglass
which hung round his neck.
'Yes, sir,' replied the boy, with a deep blush.
Casimir turned to the others with pursed lips, and nodded to them
meaningly. 'Hey?' said he; 'how is that?'
'Jean-Marie is a teller of the truth,' returned the Doctor,
throwing out his bust.
'He has never told a lie,' added madame. 'He is the best of boys.'
'Never told a lie, has he not?' reflected Casimir. 'Strange, very
strange. Give me your attention, my young friend,' he continued.
'You knew about this treasure?'
'He helped to bring it home,' interposed the Doctor.
'Desprez, I ask you nothing but to hold your tongue,' returned
Casimir. 'I mean to question this stable-boy of yours; and if you
are so certain of his innocence, you can afford to let him answer
for himself. Now, sir,' he resumed, pointing his eyeglass straight
at Jean-Marie. 'You knew it could be stolen with impunity? You
knew you could not be prosecuted? Come! Did you, or did you not?'
'I did,' answered Jean-Marie, in a miserable whisper. He sat there
changing colour like a revolving pharos, twisting his fingers
hysterically, swallowing air, the picture of guilt.
'You knew where it was put?' resumed the inquisitor.
'Yes,' from Jean-Marie.
'You say you have been a thief before,' continued Casimir. 'Now
how am I to know that you are not one still? I suppose you could
climb the green gate?'
'Yes,' still lower, from the culprit.
'Well, then, it was you who stole these things. You know it, and
you dare not deny it. Look me in the face! Raise your sneak's
eyes, and answer!'
But in place of anything of that sort Jean-Marie broke into a
dismal howl and fled from the arbour. Anastasie, as she pursued to
capture and reassure the victim, found time to send one Parthian
arrow - 'Casimir, you are a brute!'
'My brother,' said Desprez, with the greatest dignity, 'you take
upon yourself a licence - '
'Desprez,' interrupted Casimir, 'for Heaven's sake be a man of the
world. You telegraph me to leave my business and come down here on
yours. I come, I ask the business, you say "Find me this thief!"
Well, I find him; I say "There he is! You need not like it, but
you have no manner of right to take offence.'
'Well,' returned the Doctor, 'I grant that; I will even thank you
for your mistaken zeal. But your hypothesis was so extravagantly
monstrous - '
'Look here,' interrupted Casimir; 'was it you or Stasie?'
'Certainly not,' answered the Doctor.
'Very well; then it was the boy. Say no more about it,' said the
brother-in-law, and he produced his cigar-case.
'I will say this much more,' returned Desprez: 'if that boy came
and told me so himself, I should not believe him; and if I did
believe him, so implicit is my trust, I should conclude that he had
acted for the best.'
'Well, well,' said Casimir, indulgently. 'Have you a light? I
must be going. And by the way, I wish you would let me sell your
Turks for you. I always told you, it meant smash. I tell you so
again. Indeed, it was partly that that brought me down. You never
acknowledge my letters - a most unpardonable habit.'
'My good brother,' replied the Doctor blandly, 'I have never denied
your ability in business; but I can perceive your limitations.'
'Egad, my friend, I can return the compliment,' observed the man of
business. 'Your limitation is to be downright irrational.'
'Observe the relative position,' returned the Doctor with a smile.
'It is your attitude to believe through thick and thin in one man's
judgment - your own. I follow the same opinion, but critically and
with open eyes. Which is the more irrational? - I leave it to
yourself.'
'O, my dear fellow!' cried Casimir, 'stick to your Turks, stick to
your stable-boy, go to the devil in general in your own way and be
done with it. But don't ratiocinate with me - I cannot bear it.
And so, ta-ta. I might as well have stayed away for any good I've
done. Say good-bye from me to Stasie, and to the sullen hang-dog
of a stable-boy, if you insist on it; I'm off.'
And Casimir departed. The Doctor, that night, dissected his
character before Anastasie. 'One thing, my beautiful,' he said,
'he has learned one thing from his lifelong acquaintance with your
husband: the word RATIOCINATE. It shines in his vocabulary, like a
jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he continually misapplies it.
For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the
sense of to ERGOTISE, implying, as it were - the poor, dear fellow!
- a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to Jean-Marie, it must
be forgiven him - it is not his nature, it is the nature of his
life. A man who deals with money, my dear, is a man lost.'
With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat
slow. At first he was inconsolable, insisted on leaving the
family, went from paroxysm to paroxysm of tears; and it was only
after Anastasie had been closeted for an hour with him, alone, that
she came forth, sought out the Doctor, and, with tears in her eyes,
acquainted that gentleman with what had passed.
'At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing,' she said.
'Imagine! if he had left us! what would the treasure be to that?
Horrible treasure, it has brought all this about! At last, after
he has sobbed his very heart out, he agrees to stay on a condition
- we are not to mention this matter, this infamous suspicion, not
even to mention the robbery. On that agreement only, the poor,
cruel boy will consent to remain among his friends.'
'But this inhibition,' said the Doctor, 'this embargo - it cannot
possibly apply to me?'
'To all of us,' Anastasie assured him.
'My cherished one,' Desprez protested, 'you must have
misunderstood. It cannot apply to me. He would naturally come to
me.'
'Henri,' she said, 'it does; I swear to you it does.'
'This is a painful, a very painful circumstance,' the Doctor said,
looking a little black. 'I cannot affect, Anastasie, to be
anything but justly wounded. I feel this, I feel it, my wife,
acutely.'
'I knew you would,' she said. 'But if you had seen his distress!
We must make allowances, we must sacrifice our feelings.'
'I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices,'
returned the Doctor very stiffly.
'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed? It will
be like your noble nature,' she cried.
So it would, he perceived - it would be like his noble nature! Up
jumped his spirits, triumphant at the thought. 'Go, darling,' he
said nobly, 'reassure him. The subject is buried; more - I make an
effort, I have accustomed my will to these exertions - and it is
forgotten.'
A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortally
sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his
business. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat
down that night to supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He
thus sang the requiem of the treasure:-
'This has been, on the whole, a most amusing episode,' he said.
'We are not a penny the worse - nay, we are immensely gainers. Our
philosophy has been exercised; some of the turtle is still left -
the most wholesome of delicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has
her new dress, Jean-Marie is the proud possessor of a fashionable
kepi. Besides, we had a glass of Hermitage last night; the glow
still suffuses my memory. I was growing positively niggardly with
that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had
one bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune;
let us have a second to console us for its occultation. The third
I hereby dedicate to Jean-Marie's wedding breakfast.'
CHAPTER VII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ.
THE Doctor's house has not yet received the compliment of a
description, and it is now high time that the omission were
supplied, for the house is itself an actor in the story, and one
whose part is nearly at an end. Two stories in height, walls of a
warm yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified with moss
and lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of
the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient.
The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and
patterns; the handrail of the stair was carved in countrified
arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the
dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side,
runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over
the legendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell
upon the Scandinavian scholar who had left them. Floors, doors,
and rafters made a great variety of angles; every room had a
particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden,
after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former
proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great
strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had
many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and
nothing but its excellent brightness - the window-glass polished
and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very
prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers - nothing but its air
of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the
sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable
people to inhabit. In poor or idle management it would soon have
hurried into the blackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole
family loved it, and the Doctor was never better inspired than when
he narrated its imaginary story and drew the character of its
successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its
walls after the sack of the town, and past the mysterious engraver
of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty-handed boor from whom
he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any alarm
about its security, the idea had never presented itself. What had
stood four centuries might well endure a little longer.
Indeed, in this particular winter, after the finding and losing of
the treasure, the Desprez' had an anxiety of a very different
order, and one which lay nearer their hearts. Jean-Marie was
plainly not himself. He had fits of hectic activity, when he made
unusual exertions to please, spoke more and faster, and redoubled
in attention to his lessons. But these were interrupted by spells
of melancholia and brooding silence, when the boy was little better
than unbearable.
'Silence,' the Doctor moralised - 'you see, Anastasie, what comes
of silence. Had the boy properly unbosomed himself, the little
disappointment about the treasure, the little annoyance about
Casimir's incivility, would long ago have been forgotten. As it
is, they prey upon him like a disease. He loses flesh, his
appetite is variable and, on the whole, impaired. I keep him on
the strictest regimen, I exhibit the most powerful tonics; both in
vain.'
'Don't you think you drug him too much?' asked madame, with an
irrepressible shudder.
'Drug?' cried the Doctor; 'I drug? Anastasie, you are mad!'
Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly declined. The
Doctor blamed the weather, which was cold and boisterous. He
called in his CONFRERE from Bourron, took a fancy for him,
magnified his capacity, and was pretty soon under treatment himself
- it scarcely appeared for what complaint. He and Jean-Marie had
each medicine to take at different periods of the day. The Doctor
used to lie in wait for the exact moment, watch in hand. 'There is
nothing like regularity,' he would say, fill out the doses, and
dilate on the virtues of the draught; and if the boy seemed none
the better, the Doctor was not at all the worse.
Gunpowder Day, the boy was particularly low. It was scowling,
squally weather. Huge broken companies of cloud sailed swiftly
overhead; raking gleams of sunlight swept the village, and were
followed by intervals of darkness and white, flying rain. At times
the wind lifted up its voice and bellowed. The trees were all
scourging themselves along the meadows, the last leaves flying like
dust.
The Doctor, between the boy and the weather, was in his element; he
had a theory to prove. He sat with his watch out and a barometer
in front of him, waiting for the squalls and noting their effect
upon the human pulse. 'For the true philosopher,' he remarked
delightedly, 'every fact in nature is a toy.' A letter came to
him; but, as its arrival coincided with the approach of another
gust, he merely crammed it into his pocket, gave the time to Jean-
Marie, and the next moment they were both counting their pulses as
if for a wager.
At nightfall the wind rose into a tempest. It besieged the hamlet,
apparently from every side, as if with batteries of cannon; the
houses shook and groaned; live coals were blown upon the floor.
The uproar and terror of the night kept people long awake, sitting
with pallid faces giving ear.
It was twelve before the Desprez family retired. By half-past one,
when the storm was already somewhat past its height, the Doctor was
awakened from a troubled slumber, and sat up. A noise still rang
in his ears, but whether of this world or the world of dreams he
was not certain. Another clap of wind followed. It was
accompanied by a sickening movement of the whole house, and in the
subsequent lull Desprez could hear the tiles pouring like a
cataract into the loft above his head. He plucked Anastasie bodily
out of bed.
'Run!' he cried, thrusting some wearing apparel into her hands;
'the house is falling! To the garden!'
She did not pause to be twice bidden; she was down the stair in an
instant. She had never before suspected herself of such activity.
The Doctor meanwhile, with the speed of a piece of pantomime
business, and undeterred by broken shins, proceeded to rout out
Jean-Marie, tore Aline from her virgin slumbers, seized her by the
hand, and tumbled downstairs and into the garden, with the girl
tumbling behind him, still not half awake.
The fugitives rendezvous'd in the arbour by some common instinct.
Then came a bull's-eye flash of struggling moonshine, which
disclosed their four figures standing huddled from the wind in a
raffle of flying drapery, and not without a considerable need for
more. At the humiliating spectacle Anastasie clutched her
nightdress desperately about her and burst loudly into tears. The
Doctor flew to console her; but she elbowed him away. She
suspected everybody of being the general public, and thought the
darkness was alive with eyes.
Another gleam and another violent gust arrived together; the house
was seen to rock on its foundation, and, just as the light was once
more eclipsed, a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the
wind announced its fall, and for a moment the whole garden was
alive with skipping tiles and brickbats. One such missile grazed
the Doctor's ear; another descended on the bare foot of Aline, who
instantly made night hideous with her shrieks.
By this time the hamlet was alarmed, lights flashed from the
windows, hails reached the party, and the Doctor answered, nobly
contending against Aline and the tempest. But this prospect of
help only awakened Anastasie to a more active stage of terror.
'Henri, people will be coming,' she screamed in her husband's ear.
'I trust so,' he replied.
'They cannot. I would rather die,' she wailed.
'My dear,' said the Doctor reprovingly, 'you are excited. I gave
you some clothes. What have you done with them?'
'Oh, I don't know - I must have thrown them away! Where are they?'
she sobbed.
Desprez groped about in the darkness. 'Admirable!' he remarked;
'my grey velveteen trousers! This will exactly meet your
necessities.'
'Give them to me!' she cried fiercely; but as soon as she had them
in her hands her mood appeared to alter - she stood silent for a
moment, and then pressed the garment back upon the Doctor. 'Give
it to Aline,' she said - 'poor girl.'
'Nonsense!' said the Doctor. 'Aline does not know what she is
about. Aline is beside herself with terror; and at any rate, she
is a peasant. Now I am really concerned at this exposure for a
person of your housekeeping habits; my solicitude and your
fantastic modesty both point to the same remedy - the pantaloons.'
He held them ready.
'It is impossible. You do not understand,' she said with dignity.
By this time rescue was at hand. It had been found impracticable
to enter by the street, for the gate was blocked with masonry, and
the nodding ruin still threatened further avalanches. But between
the Doctor's garden and the one on the right hand there was that
very picturesque contrivance - a common well; the door on the
Desprez' side had chanced to be unbolted, and now, through the
arched aperture a man's bearded face and an arm supporting a
lantern were introduced into the world of windy darkness, where
Anastasie concealed her woes. The light struck here and there
among the tossing apple boughs, it glinted on the grass; but the
lantern and the glowing face became the centre of the world.
Anastasie crouched back from the intrusion.
'This way!' shouted the man. 'Are you all safe?' Aline, still
screaming, ran to the new comer, and was presently hauled head-
foremost through the wall.
'Now, Anastasie, come on; it is your turn,' said the husband.
'I cannot,' she replied.
'Are we all to die of exposure, madame?' thundered Doctor Desprez.
'You can go!' she cried. 'Oh, go, go away! I can stay here; I am
quite warm.'
The Doctor took her by the shoulders with an oath.
'Stop!' she screamed. 'I will put them on.'
She took the detested lendings in her hand once more; but her
repulsion was stronger than shame. 'Never!' she cried, shuddering,
and flung them far away into the night.
Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the well. The man was
there and the lantern; Anastasie closed her eyes and appeared to
herself to be about to die. How she was transported through the
arch she knew not; but once on the other side she was received by
the neighbour's wife, and enveloped in a friendly blanket.
Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes of very various
sizes for the Doctor and Jean-Marie; and for the remainder of the
night, while madame dozed in and out on the borderland of
hysterics, her husband sat beside the fire and held forth to the
admiring neighbours. He showed them, at length, the causes of the
accident; for years, he explained, the fall had been impending; one
sign had followed another, the joints had opened, the plaster had
cracked, the old walls bowed inward; last, not three weeks ago, the
cellar door had begun to work with difficulty in its grooves. 'The
cellar!' he said, gravely shaking his head over a glass of mulled
wine. 'That reminds me of my poor vintages. By a manifest
providence the Hermitage was nearly at an end. One bottle - I lose
but one bottle of that incomparable wine. It had been set apart
against Jean-Marie's wedding. Well, I must lay down some more; it
will be an interest in life. I am, however, a man somewhat
advanced in years. My great work is now buried in the fall of my
humble roof; it will never be completed - my name will have been
writ in water. And yet you find me calm - I would say cheerful.
Can your priest do more?'
By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the
fireside into the street. The wind had fallen, but still charioted
a world of troubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party,
as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning,
beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The
house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a
mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken
rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to protect the
property, and the party adjourned to Tentaillon's to break their
fast at the Doctor's expense. The bottle circulated somewhat
freely; and before they left the table it had begun to snow.
For three days the snow continued to fall, and the ruins, covered
with tarpaulin and watched by sentries, were left undisturbed. The
Desprez' meanwhile had taken up their abode at Tentaillon's.
Madame spent her time in the kitchen, concocting little delicacies,
with the admiring aid of Madame Tentaillon, or sitting by the fire
in thoughtful abstraction. The fall of the house affected her
wonderfully little; that blow had been parried by another; and in
her mind she was continually fighting over again the battle of the
trousers. Had she done right? Had she done wrong? And now she
would applaud her determination; and anon, with a horrid flush of
unavailing penitence, she would regret the trousers. No juncture
in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantime
the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of
the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for
lack of a remittance; they were both English, but one of them spoke
French pretty fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded
fellow, with whom the Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of
comprehension. Many were the glasses they emptied, many the topics
they discussed.
'Anastasie,' the Doctor said on the third morning, 'take an example
from your husband, from Jean-Marie! The excitement has done more
for the boy than all my tonics, he takes his turn as sentry with
positive gusto. As for me, you behold me. I have made friends
with the Egyptians; and my Pharaoh is, I swear it, a most agreeable
companion. You alone are hipped. About a house - a few dresses?
What are they in comparison to the "Pharmacopoeia" - the labour of
years lying buried below stones and sticks in this depressing
hamlet? The snow falls; I shake it from my cloak! Imitate me.
Our income will be impaired, I grant it, since we must rebuild; but
moderation, patience, and philosophy will gather about the hearth.
In the meanwhile, the Tentaillons are obliging; the table, with
your additions, will pass; only the wine is execrable - well, I
shall send for some to-day. My Pharaoh will be gratified to drink
a decent glass; aha! and I shall see if he possesses that acme of
organisation - a palate. If he has a palate, he is perfect.'
'Henri,' she said, shaking her head, 'you are a man; you cannot
understand my feelings; no woman could shake off the memory of so
public a humiliation.' The Doctor could not restrain a titter.
'Pardon me, darling,' he said; 'but really, to the philosophical
intelligence, the incident appears so small a trifle. You looked
extremely well - '
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