Books: A Romance of Youth, v1
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Francois Coppee >> A Romance of Youth, v1
One Sunday morning, Combarieu, having learned of their kindness to his
child, made a visit to thank them.
Very dark, with a livid complexion, all hair and beard, and trying to
look like the head of Jesus Christ, in his long black blouse he embodied
the type of a club conspirator, a representative of the workingmen.
A Freemason, probably; a solemn drunkard, who became intoxicated oftener
on big words than on native wine, and spoke in a loud, pretentious voice,
gazing before him with large, stupid eyes swimming in a sort of ecstasy;
his whole person made one think of a boozy preacher. He immediately
inspired the engraver with respect, and dazzled him by the fascination
which the audacious exert over the timid. M. Gerard thought he discerned
in Combarieu one of those superior men whom a cruel fate had caused to be
born among the lower class and in whom poverty had stifled genius.
Enlightened as to the artist's political preferences by the bowl of his
pipe, Combarieu complacently eulogized himself. Upon his own admission
he had at first been foolish enough to dream of a universal brotherhood,
a holy alliance of the people. He had even written poems which he had
published himself, notably an "Ode to Poland," and an "Epistle to
Beranger," which latter had evoked an autograph letter from the
illustrious song-writer. But he was no longer such a simpleton.
"When one has seen what we have seen during June, and on the second of
December, there is no longer any question of sentiment." Here the
engraver, as a hospitable host, brought a bottle of wine and two glasses.
"No, Monsieur Gerard, I thank you, I take nothing between my meals. The
workingmen have been deceived too often, and at the next election we
shall not let the bourgeoisie strangle the Republic." (M. Gerard had now
uncorked the bottle.) "Only a finger! Enough! Enough! simply so as not
to refuse you. While waiting, let us prepare ourselves. Just now the
Eastern question muddles us, and behold 'Badinguet,'--[A nickname given
to Napoleon III.]--with a big affair upon his hands. You have some wine
here that is worth drinking. If he loses one battle he is done for. One
glass more? Ah! you make me depart from my usual custom--absolutely
done for. But this time we shall keep our eyes open. No half measures!
We will return to the great methods of 'ninety-three--the Committee of
Public Safety, the Law of Suspects, the Revolutionary Tribunal, every
damned one of them! and, if it is necessary, a permanent guillotine! To
your good health!"
So much energy frightened Father Gerard a little; for in spite of his
Barbes pipe-bowl he was not a genuine red-hot Republican. He dared not
protest, however, and blushed a little as he thought that the night
before an editor had proposed to him to engrave a portrait of the new
Empress, very decollete, and showing her famous shoulders, and that he
had not said No; for his daughters needed new shoes, and his wife had
declared the day before that she had not a gown to put on.
So for several months he had four children--Amedee, Louise, Maria, and
little Rose Combarieu--to make a racket in his apartment. Certainly they
were no longer babies; they did not play at making calls nor chase the
old fur hat around the room; they were more sensible, and the old
furniture had a little rest. And it was time, for all the chairs were
lame, two of the larger ones had lost an arm each, and the Empire sofa
had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its dark-green
velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it;
more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one
could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-
"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R. Madame la
Duchesse de Berri." Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards--a large
girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing her hair in bands,
and wearing white waists--not only Louise, who had become a good
musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister
Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa,
les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin,
knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the
airs with one finger upon the old instrument.
Ah! the songs of those days, the last of romanticism, the make-believe
'Orientales'; 'Odes' and 'Ballads', by the dozen; 'Comes d'Espagne et
d'Italie', with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish
ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the
church, "near a stream of running water, by a gay and handsome
chevalier," and many other such silly things--Amedee will remember them
always! They bring back to him, clearly and strongly, certain happy
hours in his childhood! They make him smell again at times even the odor
that pervaded the Gerards' house. A mule-driver's song will bring up
before his vision the engraver working at his plate before the
curtainless window on a winter's day. It snows in the streets, and large
white flakes are slowly falling behind the glass; but the room,
ornamented with pictures and busts, is lighted and heated by a bright
coke fire. Amedee can see himself seated in a corner by the fire,
learning by heart a page of the "Epitome" which he must recite the next
morning at M. Batifol's. Maria and Rosine are crouched at his feet, with
a box of glass beads, which they are stringing into a necklace. It was
comfortable; the whole apartment smelled of the engraver's pipe, and in
the dining-room, whose door is half opened, Louise is at the piano,
singing, in a fresh voice, some lines where "Castilla" rhymes with
"mantilla," and "Andalousie" with "jealousy," while her agile fingers
played on the old instrument an accompaniment supposed to imitate bells
and castanets.
Or perhaps it is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-
room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in
the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and
trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican
child is urged on to vengeance by his father:
Tiens, prends ma carabiue!
Sur toi veillera Dieu--
This is a great day, the day when Mamma Gerard makes her gooseberry
preserves. There is a large basin already full of it on the table. What
a delicious odor! A perfume of roses mingled with that of warm sugar.
Maria and Rosine have just slipped into the kitchen, the gourmands! But
Louise is a serious person, and will not interrupt her singing for such a
trifle. She continues to sing in a low voice: and at the moment when
Amedee stands speechless with admiration before her, as she is scolding
in a terrible tone and playing dreadful chords, to and behold! here come
the children, both with pink moustaches, and licking their lips
voluptuously.
Ah! these were happy hours to Amedee. They consoled him for the
interminable days at M. Batifol's.
Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the
indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese
mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere
Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who
secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies,
and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the
Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper's daughter. In the seventh
grade Amedee groaned under the tyranny of M. Prudhommod, a man from the
country, with a smattering of Latin and a terribly violent temper,
throwing at the pupils the insults of a plowboy. Now he had entered the
sixth grade, under M. Bance, an unfortunate fellow about twenty years
old, ugly, lame, and foolishly timid, whom M. Batifol reproached severely
with not having made himself respected, and whose eyes filled with tears
every morning when, upon entering the schoolroom, he was obliged to
efface with a cloth a caricature of himself made by some of his pupils.
Everything in M. Batifol's school--the grotesque and miserable teachers,
the ferocious and cynical pupils, the dingy, dusty, and ink-stained
rooms--saddened and displeased Amedee. Although very intelligent, he was
disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in
portions, like soldier's rations, and would have lost courage but for his
little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted
herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working
hard at the rudiments of L'homond's Grammar and Alexandre's Dictionary,
to help the child struggle with his 'De Viris'. Unfortunate indeed is he
who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat near him--the sweet
influence of a woman. He will always have something coarse in his mind
and hard in his heart. Without this excellent and kind Louise, Amedee
would have been exposed to this danger. His mother was dead, and M.
Violette, alas! was always overwhelmed with his grief, and, it must be
admitted, somewhat neglected his little son.
The widower could not be consoled. Since his wife's death he had grown
ten years older, and his refractory lock of hair had become perfectly
white. His Lucie had been the sole joy in his commonplace and obscure
life. She was so pretty, so sweet! such a good manager, dressing upon
nothing, and making things seem luxurious with only one flower!
M. Violette existed only on this dear and cruel souvenir, living his
humble idyll over again in his mind.
He had had six years of this happiness. One of his comrades took him to
pass an evening with an old friend who was captain in the Invalides. The
worthy man had lost an arm at Waterloo; he was a relative of Lucie, a
good-natured old fellow, amiable and lively, delighting in arranging his
apartments into a sort of Bonapartist chapel and giving little
entertainments with cake and punch, while Lucie's mother, a cousin of the
captain, did the honors. M. Violette immediately observed the young
girl, seated under a "Bataille des Pyramides" with two swords crossed
above it, a carnation in her hair. It was in midsummer, and through the
open window one could see the magnificent moonlight, which shone upon the
esplanade and made the huge cannon shine. They were playing charades,
and when it came Lucie's turn to be questioned among all the guests, M.
Violette, to relieve her of her embarrassment, replied so awkwardly that
they all exclaimed, "Now, then, that is cheating!" With what naive grace
and bashful coquetry she served the tea, going from one table to another,
cup in hand, followed by the one-armed captain with silver epaulets,
carrying the plum-cake! In order to see her again, M. Violette paid the
captain visit after visit. But the greater part of the time he saw only
the old soldier, who told him of his victories and conquests, of the
attack of the redoubt at Borodino, and the frightful swearing of the
dashing Murat, King of Naples, as he urged the squadrons on to the
rescue. At last, one beautiful Sunday in autumn, he found himself alone
with the young girl in the private garden of the veteran of the Old
Guard. He seated himself beside Lucie on a stone bench: he told her his
love, with the profound gaze of the Little Corporal, in bronzed plaster,
resting upon them; and, full of delicious confusion, she replied, "Speak
to mamma," dropping her bewildered eyes and gazing at the bed of china-
asters, whose boxwood border traced the form of a cross of the Legion of
Honor.
And all this was effaced, lost forever! The captain was dead; Lucie's
mother was dead, and Lucie herself, his beloved Lucie, was dead, after
giving him six years of cloudless happiness.
Certainly, he would never marry again. Oh, never!
No woman had ever existed or ever would exist for him but his poor
darling, sleeping in the Montparnasse Cemetery, whose grave he visited
every Sunday with a little watering-pot concealed under his coat.
He recalled, with a shiver of disgust, how, a few months after Lucie's
death, one stifling evening in July, he was seated upon a bench in the
Luxembourg, listening to the drums beating a retreat under the trees,
when a woman came and took a seat beside him and looked at him steadily.
Surprised by her significant look, he replied, to the question that she
addressed to him, timidly and at the same time boldly: "So this is the
way that you take the air?" And when she ended by asking him, "Come to
my house," he had followed her. But he had hardly entered when the past
all came back to him, and he felt a stifled feeling of distress. Falling
into a chair, he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. His grief was so
violent that, by a feminine instinct of pity, the wretched creature took
his head in her arms, saying, in a consoling tone, "There, cry, cry, it
will do you good!" and rocked him like an infant. At last he disengaged
himself from this caress, which made him ashamed of himself, and throwing
what little money he had about him upon the top of the bureau, he went
away and returned to his home, where he went hastily to bed and wept to
his heart's content, as he gnawed his pillow. Oh, horrible memories!
No! never a wife, no mistress, nothing! Now his grief was his wife, and
lived with him.
The widower's morning awakening was frightful above all things else-his
awakening in the large bed that now had but one pillow. It was there
that he had once had the exquisite pleasure of watching his dear Lucie
every morning when asleep; for she did not like to get up early, and
sometimes he had jokingly scolded her for it. What serenity upon this
delicate, sweet face, with its closed eyes, nestling among her beautiful,
disordered hair! How chaste this lovely young wife was in her
unconstraint! She had thrown one of her arms outside of the covering,
and the neck of her nightrobe, having slipped down, showed such a pure
white shoulder and delicate neck. He leaned over the half-opened mouth,
which exhaled a warm and living odor, something like the perfume of a
flower, to inhale it, and a tender pride swept over him when he thought
that she was his, his wife, this delicious creature who was almost a
child yet, and that her heart was given to him forever. He could not
resist it; he touched his young wife's lips with his own. She trembled
under the kiss and opened her eyes, when the astonishment of the
awakening was at once transformed into a happy smile as she met her
husband's glance. Oh, blissful moment! But in spite of all, one must be
sensible. He recalled that the milk-maid had left at daybreak her pot of
milk at the door of their apartment; that the fire was not lighted, and
that he must be at the office early, as the time for promotions was
drawing near. Giving another kiss to the half-asleep Lucie, he said to
her, in a coaxing tone, "Now then, Lucie, my child, it is half-past
eight. Up, up with you, lazy little one!"
How could he console himself for such lost happiness? He had his son,
yes--and he loved him very much--but the sight of Amedee increased
M. Violette's grief; for the child grew to look more like his mother
every day.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEMON ABSINTHE
Three or four times a year M. Violette, accompanied by his son, paid a
visit to an uncle of his deceased wife, whose heir Amedee might some day
become.
M. Isidore Gaufre had founded and made successful a large house for
Catholic books and pictures, to which he had added an important agency
for the sale of all kinds of religious objects. This vast establishment
was called, by a stroke of genius of its proprietor, "Bon Marche des
Paroisses," and was famous among all the French clergy. At last it
occupied the principal part of the house and all the out-buildings of an
old hotel on the Rue Servandoni, constructed in the pompous and
magnificent style of the latter part of the seventeenth century. He did
a great business there.
All day long, priests and clerical-looking gentlemen mounted the long
flight of steps that led to a spacious first floor, lighted by large,
high windows surmounted by grotesque heads. There the long-bearded
missionaries came to purchase their cargoes of glass beads or imitation
coral rosaries, before embarking for the East, or the Gaboon, to convert
the negroes and the Chinese.
The member of the third estate, draped in a long chocolate-colored,
straight frock-coat, holding a gigantic umbrella under his arm, procured,
dirt cheap and by the thousand, pamphlets of religious tenets. The
country curate, visiting Paris, arranged for the immediate delivery of a
remonstrance, in electrotype, Byzantine style, signing a series of long-
dated bills, contracting, by zeal supplemented by some ready cash, to
fulfil his liabilities, through the generosity of the faithful ones.
There, likewise, a young director of consciences came to look for some
devotional work--for example, the 12mo entitled "Widows' Tears Wiped
Away," by St. Francois de Sales--for some penitent. The representative
from some deputation from a devoutly Catholic district would solicit a
reduction upon a purchase of the "Twelve Stations of the Cross,"
hideously daubed, which he proposed to present to the parishes which his
adversaries had accused of being Voltairians. A brother of the Christian
Doctrine, or a sister of St. Vincent de Paul, would bargain for
catechisms for their schools. From time to time, even a prince of the
church, a bishop with aristocratic mien, enveloped in an ample gown, with
his hat surrounded with a green cord and golden tassels, would
mysteriously shut himself up in M. Isidore Gaufre's office for an hour;
and then would be reconducted to the top of the steps by the cringing
proprietor, profuse with his "Monseigneur," and obsequiously bowing under
the haughty benediction of two fingers in a violet glove.
It was certainly not from sympathy that M. Violette had kept up his
relations with his wife's uncle; for M. Gaufre, who was servilely polite
to all those in whom he had an interest, was usually disdainful,
sometimes even insolent, to those who were of no use to him. During his
niece's life he had troubled himself very little about her, and had given
her for a wedding present only an ivory crucifix with a shell for holy
water, such as he sold by the gross to be used in convents. A self-made
man, having already amassed--so they said--a considerable fortune,
M. Gaufre held in very low estimation this poor devil of a commonplace
employe whose slow advancement was doubtless due to the fact that he was
lazy and incapable. From the greeting that he received, M. Violette
suspected the poor opinion that M. Gaufre had of him. If he went there
in spite of his natural pride it was only on his son's account. For M.
Gaufre was rich, and he was not young. Perhaps--who could tell?--he
might not forget Amedee, his nephew, in his will? It was necessary for
him to see the child occasionally, and M. Violette, in pursuance of his
paternal duty, condemned himself, three or four times a year, to the
infliction of a visit at the "Bon Marche des Paroisses."
The hopes that M. Violette had formed as to his son's inheriting from M.
Gaufre were very problematical; for the father, whom M. Gaufre had not
been able to avoid receiving at his table occasionally, had been struck,
even shocked, by the familiar and despotic tone of the old merchant's
servant, a superb Normandy woman of about twenty-five years, answering to
the royal name of Berenice. The impertinent ways of this robust woman
betrayed her position in her master's house, as much as the diamonds that
glittered in her ears. This creature would surely watch the will of her
patron, a sexagenarian with an apoplectic neck, which became the color of
dregs of wine after a glass of brandy.
M. Gaufre, although very practical and a churchwarden at St. Sulpice, had
always had a taste for liaisons. His wife, during her life--he had been
a widower for a dozen years--had been one of those unfortunate beings of
whom people said, "That poor lady is to be pitied; she never can keep a
servant." She had in vain taken girls from the provinces, without beauty
and certified to be virtuous. One by one--a Flemish girl, an Alsatian,
three Nivernaise, two from Picardy; even a young girl from Beauce, hired
on account of her certificate as "the best-behaved girl in the village"--
they were unsparingly devoured by the minotaur of the Rue Servandoni.
All were turned out of doors, with a conscientious blow in the face, by
the justly irritated spouse. When he became a widower he gave himself up
to his liaisons in perfect security, but without scandal, of course, as
to his passion for servants. New country-girls, wearing strange
headdresses, responded favorably, in various patois, to his propositions.
An Alsatian bow reigned six months; a Breton cap more than a year; but at
last what must inevitably take place happened. The beautiful Berenice
definitely bound with fetters of iron the old libertine. She was now
all-powerful in the house, where she reigned supreme through her beauty
and her talent for cooking; and as she saw her master's face grow more
congested at each repast, she made her preparations for the future. Who
could say but that M. Gaufre, a real devotee after all, would develop
conscientious scruples some day, and end in a marriage, in extremis?
M. Violette knew all this; nevertheless it was important that Amedee
should not be forgotten by his old relative, and sometimes, though
rarely, he would leave his office a little earlier than usual, call for
his son as he left the Batifol boarding-school, and take him to the Rue
Servandoni.
The large drawing-rooms, transformed into a shop, where one could still
see, upon forgotten panels, rococo shepherds offering doves to their
shepherdesses, were always a new subject of surprise to little Amedee.
After passing through the book-shop, where thousands of little volumes
with figured gray and yellow covers crowded the shelves, and boys in ecru
linen blouses were rapidly tying up bundles, one entered the jewellery
department. There, under beautiful glass cases, sparkled all the
glittering display and showy luxury of the Church, golden tabernacles
where the Paschal Lamb reposed in a flaming triangle, censers with
quadruple chains, stoles and chasubles, heavy with embroidery, enormous
candelabra, ostensories and drinking-cups incrusted with enamel and false
precious stones-before all these splendors the child, who had read the
Arabian Nights, believed that he had entered Aladdin's cave, or Aboul-
Cassem's pit. From this glittering array one passed, without transition,
into the sombre depot of ecclesiastical vestments. Here all was black.
One saw only piles of cassocks and pyramids of black hats. Two manikins,
one clothed in a cardinal's purple robe, the other in episcopalian
violet, threw a little color over the gloomy show.
But the large hall with painted statues amazed Amedee. They were all
there, statues of all the saints in little chapels placed promiscuously
upon the shelves in rows.
No more hierarchy. The Evangelist had, for a neighbor a little Jesuit
saint--an upstart of yesterday. The unfortunate Fourier had at his side
the Virgin Mary. The Saviour of men elbowed St. Labre. They were of
plaster run into moulds, or roughly carved in wood, and were colored with
paint as glaring as the red and blue of a barber's pole, and covered with
vulgar gildings. Chins in the air, ecstatic eyes shining with varnish,
horribly ugly and all new, they were drawn up in line like recruits at
the roll-call, the mitred bishop, the martyr carrying his palm, St.
Agnes embracing her lamb, St. Roch with his dog and shells, St. John the
Baptist in his sheepskin, and, most ridiculous of all, poor Vincent de
Paul carrying three naked children in his arms, like a midwife's
advertisement.
This frightful exhibition, which was of the nature of the Tussaud Museum
or a masquerade, positively frightened Amedee. He had recently been to
his first communion, and was still burning with the mystical fever, but
so much ugliness offended his already fastidious taste and threw him into
his first doubt.
One day, about five o'clock, M. Violette and his son arrived at the "Bon
Marche des Paroisses," and found Uncle Isidore in the room where the
painted statues were kept, superintending--the packing of a St. Michel.
The last customer of the day was just leaving, the Bishop 'in partibus'
of Trebizonde, blessing M. Gaufre. The little apoplectic man, the giver
of holy water, left alone with his clerks, felt under restraint no
longer.
"Pay attention, you confounded idiot!" he cried to the young man just
ready to lay the archangel in the shavings. "You almost broke the
dragon's tail."
Then, noticing Amedee and M. Violette who had just entered: