The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories

by Guy de Maupassant

  And, as he was gifted with an emotional nature, one such as had all those poetic dreamers, the Fathers of the Church, he felt suddenly distracted and moved by all the grand and serene beauty of this pale night.

  In his little garden, all bathed in soft light, his fruit trees in a row cast on the ground the shadow of their slender branches, scarcely in full leaf, while the giant honeysuckle, clinging to the wall of his house, exhaled a delicious sweetness, filling the warm moonlit atmosphere with a kind of perfumed soul.

  He began to take long breaths, drinking in the air as drunkards drink wine, and he walked along slowly, delighted, marveling, almost forgetting his niece.

  As soon as he was outside of the garden, he stopped to gaze upon the plain all flooded with the caressing light, bathed in that tender, languishing charm of serene nights. At each moment was heard the short, metallic note of the cricket, and distant nightingales shook out their scattered notes—their light, vibrant music that sets one dreaming, without thinking, a music made for kisses, for the seduction of moonlight.

  The abbe walked on again, his heart failing, though he knew not why. He seemed weakened, suddenly exhausted; he wanted to sit down, to rest there, to think, to admire God in His works.

  Down yonder, following the undulations of the little river, a great line of poplars wound in and out. A fine mist, a white haze through which the moonbeams passed, silvering it and making it gleam, hung around and above the mountains, covering all the tortuous course of the water with a kind of light and transparent cotton.

  The priest stopped once again, his soul filled with a growing and irresistible tenderness.

  And a doubt, a vague feeling of disquiet came over him; he was asking one of those questions that he sometimes put to himself.

  “Why did God make this? Since the night is destined for sleep, unconsciousness, repose, forgetfulness of everything, why make it more charming than day, softer than dawn or evening? And does why this seductive planet, more poetic than the sun, that seems destined, so discreet is it, to illuminate things too delicate and mysterious for the light of day, make the darkness so transparent?

  “Why does not the greatest of feathered songsters sleep like the others? Why does it pour forth its voice in the mysterious night?

  “Why this half-veil cast over the world? Why these tremblings of the heart, this emotion of the spirit, this enervation of the body? Why this display of enchantments that human beings do not see, since they are lying in their beds? For whom is destined this sublime spectacle, this abundance of poetry cast from heaven to earth?”

  And the abbe could not understand.

  But see, out there, on the edge of the meadow, under the arch of trees bathed in a shining mist, two figures are walking side by side.

  The man was the taller, and held his arm about his sweetheart’s neck and kissed her brow every little while. They imparted life, all at once, to the placid landscape in which they were framed as by a heavenly hand. The two seemed but a single being, the being for whom was destined this calm and silent night, and they came toward the priest as a living answer, the response his Master sent to his questionings.

  He stood still, his heart beating, all upset; and it seemed to him that he saw before him some biblical scene, like the loves of Ruth and Boaz, the accomplishment of the will of the Lord, in some of those glorious stories of which the sacred books tell. The verses of the Song of Songs began to ring in his ears, the appeal of passion, all the poetry of this poem replete with tenderness.

  And he said unto himself: “Perhaps God has made such nights as these to idealize the love of men.”

  He shrank back from this couple that still advanced with arms intertwined. Yet it was his niece. But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying God. And does not God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible splendor?

  And he went back musing, almost ashamed, as if he had intruded into a temple where he had, no right to enter.

  WAITER, A “BOCK”

  Why did I go into that beer hall on that particular evening? I do not know. It was cold; a fine rain, a flying mist, veiled the gas lamps with a transparent fog, made the side walks reflect the light that streamed from the shop windows—lighting up the soft slush and the muddy feet of the passers-by.

  I was going nowhere in particular; was simply having a short walk after dinner. I had passed the Credit Lyonnais, the Rue Vivienne, and several other streets. I suddenly descried a large beer hall which was more than half full. I walked inside, with no object in view. I was not the least thirsty.

  I glanced round to find a place that was not too crowded, and went and sat down by the side of a man who seemed to me to be old, and who was smoking a two-sous clay pipe, which was as black as coal. From six to eight glasses piled up on the table in front of him indicated the number of “bocks” he had already absorbed. At a glance I recognized a “regular,” one of those frequenters of beer houses who come in the morning when the place opens, and do not leave till evening when it is about to close. He was dirty, bald on top of his head, with a fringe of iron-gray hair falling on the collar of his frock coat. His clothes, much too large for him, appeared to have been made for him at a time when he was corpulent. One could guess that he did not wear suspenders, for he could not take ten steps without having to stop to pull up his trousers. Did he wear a vest? The mere thought of his boots and of that which they covered filled me with horror. The frayed cuffs were perfectly black at the edges, as were his nails.

  As soon as I had seated myself beside him, this individual said to me in a quiet tone of voice:

  “How goes it?”

  I turned sharply round and closely scanned his features, whereupon he continued:

  “I see you do not recognize me.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Des Barrets.”

  I was stupefied. It was Count Jean des Barrets, my old college chum.

  I seized him by the hand, and was so dumbfounded that I could find nothing to say. At length I managed to stammer out:

  “And you, how goes it with you?”

  He responded placidly:

  “I get along as I can.”

  “What are you doing now?” I asked.

  “You see what I am doing,” he answered quit resignedly.

  I felt my face getting red. I insisted:

  “But every day?”

  “Every day it is the same thing,” was his reply, accompanied with a thick puff of tobacco smoke.

  He then tapped with a sou on the top of the marble table, to attract the attention of the waiter, and called out:

  “Waiter, two ‘bocks.’”

  A voice in the distance repeated:

  “Two bocks for the fourth table.”

  Another voice, more distant still, shouted out:

  “Here they are!”

  Immediately a man with a white apron appeared, carrying two “bocks,” which he set down, foaming, on the table, spilling some of the yellow liquid on the sandy floor in his haste.

  Des Barrets emptied his glass at a single draught and replaced it on the table, while he sucked in the foam that had been left on his mustache. He next asked:

  “What is there new?”

  I really had nothing new to tell him. I stammered:

  “Nothing, old man. I am a business man.”

  In his monotonous tone of voice he said:

  “Indeed, does it amuse you?”

  “No, but what can I do? One must do something!”

  “Why should one?”

  “So as to have occupation.”

  “What’s the use of an occupation? For my part, I do nothing at all, as you see, never anything. When one has not a sou I can understand why one should work. But when one has enough to live on, what’s the use? What is the good of working? Do you work for yourself, or for others? If you work for yourself, you do it for your own amusement, which is all right; if you work for others, you are a fool.”

  Then, laying his pipe on
the marble table, he called out anew:

  “Waiter, a ‘bock.’” And continued: “It makes me thirsty to keep calling so. I am not accustomed to that sort of thing. Yes, yes, I do nothing. I let things slide, and I am growing old. In dying I shall have nothing to regret. My only remembrance will be this beer hall. No wife, no children, no cares, no sorrows, nothing. That is best.”

  He then emptied the glass which had been brought him, passed his tongue over his lips, and resumed his pipe.

  I looked at him in astonishment, and said:

  “But you have not always been like that?”

  “Pardon me; ever since I left college.”

  “That is not a proper life to lead, my dear fellow; it is simply horrible. Come, you must have something to do, you must love something, you must have friends.”

  “No, I get up at noon, I come here, I have my breakfast, I drink my beer, I remain until the evening, I have my dinner, I drink beer. Then about half-past one in the morning, I go home to bed, because the place closes up; that annoys me more than anything. In the last ten years I have passed fully six years on this bench, in my corner; and the other four in my bed, nowhere else. I sometimes chat with the regular customers.”

  “But when you came to Paris what did you do at first?”

  “I paid my devoirs to the Cafe de Medicis.”

  “What next?”

  “Next I crossed the water and came here.”

  “Why did you take that trouble?”

  “What do you mean? One cannot remain all one’s life in the Latin Quarter. The students make too much noise. Now I shall not move again. Waiter, a ‘bock.’”

  I began to think that he was making fun of me, and I continued:

  “Come now, be frank. You have been the victim of some great sorrow; some disappointment in love, no doubt! It is easy to see that you are a man who has had some trouble. What age are you?”

  “I am thirty, but I look forty-five, at least.”

  I looked him straight in the face. His wrinkled, ill-shaven face gave one the impression that he was an old man. On the top of his head a few long hairs waved over a skin of doubtful cleanliness. He had enormous eyelashes, a heavy mustache, and a thick beard. Suddenly I had a kind of vision, I know not why, of a basin filled with dirty water in which all that hair had been washed. I said to him:

  “You certainly look older than your age. You surely must have experienced some great sorrow.”

  He replied:

  “I tell you that I have not. I am old because I never go out into the air. Nothing makes a man deteriorate more than the life of a cafe.”

  I still could not believe him.

  “You must surely also have been married? One could not get as bald-headed as you are without having been in love.”

  He shook his head, shaking dandruff down on his coat as he did so.

  “No, I have always been virtuous.”

  And, raising his eyes toward the chandelier which heated our heads, he said:

  “If I am bald, it is the fault of the gas. It destroys the hair. Waiter, a ‘bock.’ Are you not thirsty?”

  “No, thank you. But you really interest me. Since when have you been so morbid? Your life is not normal, it is not natural. There is something beneath it all.”

  “Yes, and it dates from my infancy. I received a great shock when I was very young, and that turned my life into darkness which will last to the end.”

  “What was it?”

  “You wish to know about it? Well, then, listen. You recall, of course, the castle in which I was brought up, for you used to spend five or six months there during vacation. You remember that large gray building, in the middle of a great park, and the long avenues of oaks which opened to the four points of the compass. You remember my father and mother, both of whom were ceremonious, solemn, and severe.

  “I worshipped my mother; I was afraid of my father; but I respected both, accustomed always as I was to see every one bow before them. They were Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse to all the country round, and our neighbors, the Tannemares, the Ravelets, the Brennevilles, showed them the utmost consideration.

  “I was then thirteen years old. I was happy, pleased with everything, as one is at that age, full of the joy of life.

  “Well, toward the end of September, a few days before returning to college, as I was playing about in the shrubbery of the park, among the branches and leaves, as I was crossing a path, I saw my father and mother, who were walking along.

  “I recall it as though it were yesterday. It was a very windy day. The whole line of trees swayed beneath the gusts of wind, groaning, and seeming to utter cries—those dull, deep cries that forests give out during a tempest.

  “The falling leaves, turning yellow, flew away like birds, circling and falling, and then running along the path like swift animals.

  “Evening came on. It was dark in the thickets. The motion of the wind and of the branches excited me, made me tear about as if I were crazy, and howl in imitation of the wolves.

  “As soon as I perceived my parents, I crept furtively toward them, under the branches, in order to surprise them, as though I had been a veritable prowler. But I stopped in fear a few paces from them. My father, who was in a terrible passion, cried:

  “‘Your mother is a fool; moreover, it is not a question of your mother. It is you. I tell you that I need this money, and I want you to sign this.’

  “My mother replied in a firm voice:

  “‘I will not sign it. It is Jean’s fortune. I shall guard it for him and I will not allow you to squander it with strange women, as you have your own heritage.’

  “Then my father, trembling with rage, wheeled round and, seizing his wife by the throat, began to slap her with all his might full in the face with his disengaged hand.

  “My mother’s hat fell off, her hair became loosened and fell over her shoulders; she tried to parry the blows, but she could not do so. And my father, like a madman, kept on striking her. My mother rolled over on the ground, covering her face with her hands. Then he turned her over on her back in order to slap her still more, pulling away her hands, which were covering her face.

  “As for me, my friend, it seemed as though the world was coming to an end, that the eternal laws had changed. I experienced the overwhelming dread that one has in presence of things supernatural, in presence of irreparable disasters. My childish mind was bewildered, distracted. I began to cry with all my might, without knowing why; a prey to a fearful dread, sorrow, and astonishment. My father heard me, turned round, and, on seeing me, started toward me. I believe that he wanted to kill me, and I fled like a hunted animal, running straight ahead into the thicket.

  “I ran perhaps for an hour, perhaps for two. I know not. Darkness set in. I sank on the grass, exhausted, and lay there dismayed, frantic with fear, and devoured by a sorrow capable of breaking forever the heart of a poor child. I was cold, hungry, perhaps. At length day broke. I was afraid to get up, to walk, to return home, to run farther, fearing to encounter my father, whom I did not wish to see again.

  “I should probably have died of misery and of hunger at the foot of a tree if the park guard had not discovered me and led me home by force.

  “I found my parents looking as usual. My mother alone spoke to me “‘How you frightened me, you naughty boy. I lay awake the whole night.’

  “I did not answer, but began to weep. My father did not utter a single word.

  “Eight days later I returned to school.

  “Well, my friend, it was all over with me. I had witnessed the other side of things, the bad side. I have not been able to perceive the good side since that day. What has taken place in my mind, what strange phenomenon has warped my ideas, I do not know. But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope. And I always see my poor mother on the ground, in the park, my father beating her. My mother died some years later; my, father stil
l lives. I have not seen him since. Waiter, a ‘bock.’”

  A waiter brought him his “bock,” which he swallowed at a gulp. But, in taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was, he broke it. “Confound it!” he said, with a gesture of annoyance. “That is a real sorrow. It will take me a month to color another!”

  And he called out across the vast hall, now reeking with smoke and full of men drinking, his everlasting: “Garcon, un ‘bock’—and a new pipe.”

  AFTER

  “My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you might go to bed.”

  The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their grandmother. Then they said good-night to M. le Cure, who had dined at the chateau, as was his custom every Thursday.

  The Abbe Mauduit lifted two of the children on his knees, passing his long arms clad in black round their necks, and kissing them tenderly on the forehead as he drew their heads toward him as a father might.

  Then he set them down on the ground, and the little beings went off, the boy ahead, and the girls following.

  “You are fond of children, M. le Cure,” said the comtesse.

  “Very fond, madame.”

  The old woman raised her bright eyes toward the priest.

  “And—has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  He became silent, hesitated, and then added: “But I was never made for ordinary life.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest; I followed my vocation.”

  The comtesse kept staring at him:

  “Come now, M. le Cure, tell me this—tell me how it was you resolved to renounce forever all that makes the rest of us love life—all that consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the family? You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy person nor a sad person. Was it some incident, some sorrow, that led you to take life vows?”

  The Abbe Mauduit rose and approached the fire, then, holding toward the flame his big shoes, such as country priests generally wear, he seemed still hesitating as to what reply he should make.