The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Page 15
Chapter I--The Fairy
When I left the train at the Melun station, night had already spread itspeace over the silent country. The soil, heated through all the longday by a strong sun--by a "gros soleil," as the harvesters of the Val deVire say--still exhaled a warm heavy smell. Lush dense odours of grasspassed over the level of the fields. I brushed away the dust ofthe railway carriage, and joyfully inhaled the pure air. Mytravelling-bag--filled by my housekeeper wit linen and various smalltoilet articles, munditiis, seemed so light in my hand that I swung itabout just as a schoolboy swings his strapped package of rudimentarybooks when the class is let out.
Would to Heaven that I were again a little urchin at school! But it isfully fifty years since my good dead mother made me some tartines ofbread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she slippedthe handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to the schoolkept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Passage du Commerce wellknown to the sparrows, between a court and a garden. The enormousMonsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted my cheek to show,no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first appearance hadinspired. But when my mother had passed out of the court, startling thesparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased to smile--he showed nomore affectionate interest; he appeared, on the contrary, to considerme as a very troublesome little fellow. I discovered, later on, thathe entertained the same feelings towards all his pupils. He distributedwhacks of his ferule with an agility no one could have expected on thepart of so corpulent a person. But his first aspect of tender interestinvariably reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in ourpresence; and always at such times, while warmly praising our remarkableaptitudes, he would cast down upon us a look of intense affection.Still, those were happy days which I passed on the benches of theMonsieur Couloir with my little playfellows, who, like myself, cried andlaughed by turns with all their might, from morning till evening.
After a whole half-century these souvenirs float up again, fresh andbright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky, whoseface has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and immutablelights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as I was slowlyturn into grey-headed servants, afflicted with catarrh.
Stars, who have shown down upon each wise or foolish head among all myforgotten ancestors, it is under your soft light that I now feel stirwithin me a certain poignant regret! I would that I could have a son whomight be able to see you when I shall see you no more. How I should lovehim! Ah! such a son would--what am I saying?--why, he would be no justtwenty years old if you had only been willing, Clementine--you whosecheeks used to look so ruddy under your pink hood! But you are marriedto that young bank clerk, Noel Alexandre, who made so many millionsafterwards! I never met you again after your marriage, Clementine, but Ican see you now, with your bright curls and your pink hood.
A looking-glass! a looking-glass! a looking-glass! Really, it wouldbe curious to see what I look like now, with my white hair, sighingClementine's name to the stars! Still, it is not right to end withsterile irony the thought begun in the spirit of faith and love. No,Clementine, if your name came to my lips by chance this beautiful night,be it for ever blessed, your dear name! and may you ever, as a happymother, a happy grandmother, enjoy to the very end of life with yourrich husband the utmost degree of that happiness which you had the rightto believe you could not win with the poor young scholar who loved you!If--though I cannot even now imagine it--if your beautiful hair hasbecome white, Clementine, bear worthily the bundle of keys confided toyou by Noel Alexandre, and impart to your grandchildren the knowledge ofall domestic virtues!
Ah! beautiful Night! She rules, with such noble repose, over men andanimals alike, kindly loosed by her from the yoke of daily toil; andeven I feel her beneficent influence, although my habits of sixty yearshave so changed me that I can feel most things only through the signswhich represent them. My world is wholly formed of words--so much of aphilologist I have become! Each one dreams the dream of life in his ownway. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come inwhich I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from myladder--from before my shelves of books!...
"Well, well! it is really himself, pardieu! How are you, MonsieurSylvestre Bonnard? And where have you been travelling to all this time,over the country, while I was waiting for you at the station with mycabriolet? You missed me when the train came in, and I was driving back,quite disappointed, to Lusance. Give me your valise, and get up herebeside me in the carriage. Why, do you know it is fully seven kilometresfrom here to the chateau?"
Who addresses me thus, at the very top of his voice from the heightof his cabriolet? Monsieur Paul de Gabry, nephew and heir of MonsieurHonore de Gabry, peer of France in 1842, who recently died at Monaco.And it was precisely to Monsieur Paul de Gabry's house that I was goingwith that valise of mine, so carefully strapped by my housekeeper.This excellent young man has just inherited, conjointly with his twobrothers-in-law, the property of his uncle, who, belonging to a veryancient family of distinguished lawyers, had accumulated in his chateauat Lusance a library rich in MSS., some dating back to the fourteenthcentury. It was for the purpose of making an inventory and catalogue ofthese MSS. that I had come to Lusance at the urgent request of MonsieurPaul de Gabry, whose father, a perfect gentleman and distinguishedbibliophile, had maintained the most pleasant relations with me duringhis lifetime. To tell the truth, Monsieur Paul has not inherited thefine tastes of his father. Monsieur Paul likes sporting; he is a greatauthority on horses and dogs; and I much fear that of all the sciencescapable of satisfying or of duping the inexhaustible curiosity ofmankind, those of the stable and the dog-kennel are the only onesthoroughly mastered by him.
I cannot say I was surprised to meet him, since we had made arendezvous; but I acknowledge that I had become so preoccupied with myown thoughts that I had forgotten all about the Chateau de Lusance andits inhabitants, and that the voice of the gentleman calling out to meas I started to follow the country road winding away before me--"un bonruban de queue," as they say--had given me quite a start.
I fear my face must have betrayed my incongruous distraction by acertain stupid expression which it is apt to assume in most of my socialtransactions. My valise was pulled up into the carriage, and I followedmy valise. My host pleased me by his straightforward simplicity.
"I don't know anything myself about your old parchments," he said; "butI think you will find some folks to talk to at the house. Besides thecure, who writes books himself, and the doctor, who is a very goodfellow--although a radical--you will meet somebody able to keep yourcompany. I mean my wife. She is not a very learned woman, but there arefew things which she can't divine pretty well. Then I count uponbeing able to keep you with us long enough to make you acquainted withMademoiselle Jeanne, who has the fingers of a magician and the soul ofan angel."
"And is this delightfully gifted young lady one of your family?" Iasked.
"Not at all," replied Monsieur Paul.
"Then she is just a friend of yours?" I persisted, rather stupidly.
"She has lost both her father and mother," answered Monsieur de Gabry,keeping his eyes fixed upon the ears of his horse, whose hoofs rangloudly over the road blue-tinted by the moonshine. "Her father managedto get us into some very serious trouble; and we did not get off with afright either!"
Then he shook his head, and changed the subject. He gave me due warningof the ruinous condition in which I should find the chateau and thepark; they had been absolutely deserted for thirty-two years.
I learned from him that Monsieur Honore de Gabry, his uncle, had beenon very bad terms with some poachers, whom he used to shoot at likerabbits. One of them, a vindictive peasant, who had received a wholecharge of shot in his face, lay in wait for the Seigneur one eveningbehind the trees of the mall, and very nearly succeeded in killing him,for the ball took off the tip of his ear.
"My uncle," Monsieur Paul continued, "tried to discover who had firedthe
shot; but he could not see any one, and he walked back slowly to thehouse. The day after he called his steward and ordered him to close upthe manor and the park, and allow no living soul to enter. He expresslyforbade that anything should be touched, or looked after, or any repairsmade on the estate during his absence. He added, between his teeth, thathe would return at Easter, or Trinity Sunday, as they say in the song;and, just as the song has it, Trinity Sunday passed without a sign ofhim. He died last year at Monaco; my brother-in-law and myself were thefirst to enter the chateau after it had been abandoned for thirty-twoyears. We found a chestnut-tree growing in the middle of the parlour. Asfor the park, it was useless trying to visit it, because there were nolonger any paths or alleys."
My companion ceased to speak; and only the regular hoof-beat of thetrotting horse, and the chirping of insects in the grass, broke thesilence. On either hand, the sheaves standing in the fields took, in thevague moonlight, the appearance of tall white women kneeling down; andI abandoned myself awhile to those wonderful childish fancies which thecharm of night always suggests. After driving under the heavy shadowsof the mall, we turned to the right and rolled up a lordly avenue atthe end of which the chateau suddenly rose into view--a black mass, withturrets en poivriere. We followed a sort of causeway, which gave accessto the court-of-honor, and which, passing over a moat full of runningwater, doubtless replaced a long-vanished drawbridge. The loss of thatdraw-bridge must have been, I think, the first of various humiliationsto which the warlike manor had been subjected ere being reduced to thatpacific aspect with which it received me. The stars reflected themselveswith marvelous clearness in the dark water. Monsieur Paul, like acourteous host, escorted me to my chamber at the very top of thebuilding, at the end of a long corridor; and then, excusing himself fornot presenting me at once to his wife by reason of the lateness of thehour, bade me good-night.
My apartment, painted in white and hung with chintz, seemed to keep sometraces of the elegant gallantry of the eighteenth century. A heapof still-glowing ashes--which testified to the pains taken to dispelhumidity--filled the fireplace, whose marble mantlepiece supporteda bust of Marie Antoinette in bisuit. Attached to the frame of thetarnished and discoloured mirror, two brass hooks, that had oncedoubtless served the ladies of old-fashioned days to hang theirchatelaines on, seemed to offer a very opportune means of suspendingmy watch, which I took care to wind up beforehand; for, contrary to theopinion of the Thelemites, I hold that man is only master of time,which is Life itself, when he has divided it into hours, minutes andseconds--that is to say, into parts proportioned to the brevity of humanexistence.
And I thought to myself that life really seems short to us only becausewe measure it irrationally by our own mad hopes. We have all of us, likethe old man in the fable, a new wing to add to our building. I want,for example, before I die, to finish my "History of the Abbots ofSaint-Germain-de-Pres." The time God allots to each one of us is like aprecious tissue which we embroider as we best know how. I had begun mywoof with all sorts of philological illustrations.... So my thoughtswandered on; and at last, as I bound my foulard about my head, thenotion of Time led me back to the past; and for the second time withinthe same round of the dial I thought of you, Clementine--to bless youagain in your prosperity, if you have any, before blowing out my candleand falling asleep amid the chanting of the frogs.