The Wing

by Jean Richepin

  Only, she hastened to add, that furtive glance had been the heavens opening, and that vague smile all infinite felicity conquered.

  More words in which Aunt Line, according to her Thiérachian expression “s’empiergeait,” or even “s’empiergeonnait,”38 especially when Geneviève, in order to interpret them had further recourse to a mathematical comparison, such as, for example:

  “Yes, a very tiny fact, almost nothing—let’s say nothing. Except that nothing is everything, you realize, like zero multiplied by infinity. From that zero, thus multiplied, all the numbers emerged. And for me, similarly, from that glance, from that smile, from those nothings, emerged all the joys, all the Heavens, all the eternity of Heaven...”

  “La la la!” Aunt Line interrupted. “You’re up to your ears in Yvernaux. Better to stick to the simple reading of my common sense, and say that you were made to be married, you and him.”

  “Get away! You’re crazy, Aunt Line! Shut up! That’s ridiculous.”

  Thus Geneviève, annoyed, always concluded discussions on that subject. Or, at least, she tried to conclude them thus; but one, Aunt Line would not let go so easily. In vain, Geneviève adopted a sharp tone with her; the old lady clung obstinately to her idea, delighting in blithe ripostes.

  “For one thing, I was only thirteen then!”

  “Well, he liked the juice of unripe grapes.”

  “But my uncle was preparing me for my first communion...”

  “It’s souls in mint condition for which the Devil is thirstiest.”

  “I forbid you, Aunt, to slander Monsieur le Comte’s intentions...”

  “Go on, go on, tell all those names like a rosary—I can see that you want to relish them.”

  And then, when Geneviève shut up, in order not to risk laughing, yet again, at that Breton litany that had so often amused her aunt, it was the good woman herself who declaimed, with a comical emphasis: “Monsieur le Comte Elme-Cast-Jagut-Marie-Joseph de Plouër, Seigneur des Ebihens, des Pierres-Sonnantes, des Treize-Îles—and other places, also known as Joson, also known as the Little Chouan!” For she had retained miraculously, in her memory so hospitable to formulas, that string of names and important titles, terminated by two pirouettes of soubriquets.

  It was the young Comte in person who had amused the little girl with all that, one day, in the presence of Aunt Line, who had also taken great pleasure in it, like the old child that she was. He had explained, that day, that Elme, Cast and Jagut were Breton saints, and that along with those baptismal names, retained in the family, his ancestors really had left him the lordships of Ebihens, Pierres-Sonnantes, Treizes-Îles and other places that sounded like fantastic domains, and that Joson was the local derivative of Joseph, and that the nickname “the little Chouan” had been given to him on the Borda.39 And Geneviève, then—and Aunt Line too—had found it all delightful, nor had they changed their opinion since.

  With the result that, generally, Aunt Line, who had reeled off her declamation with the intention of “winding up” Geneviève, forgot her intention en route and crowned her tirade of ridicule with this laudatory reflection:

  “Not to mention that, even so, it would make a fine conclusion, like a peacock’s tail, for a fairy tale.”

  And immediately, Geneviève, forgetting her annoyance, started laughing, then smiling. The laughter was of gaiety, on observing what children they both were, her and Aunt Aline, she a near-old maid of 33 and her aunt an octogenarian. The smile, which came after the laughter, was of melancholy, on remembering all the fairy tales of which she, indeed, had once dreamed among the syllables of those named, chanted by the young Comte’s lips.

  Fairy tales in which were reunited, in baskets of flowers, at that moment, all the beautiful and lovely new sensations experienced by the little girl during those two months of paradise. Fairy tales in which, since then, other imagined sensations had mingled, in recalling those. And from all those memories there always emerged—certainly the most durable, the most profoundly rooted, and the one in which the most odorous and intoxicating flower rose up, always and sincerely similar, so firmly believed, and thus so real—the memory of the first sensation transformed into the first sentiment:

  How we loved one another at first sight!

  And whether or not Geneviève attached to it the only meaning that could be attached to it in Aunt Line’s opinion, it scarcely mattered. The quasi-old woman of today was still hypnotized by that memory, as the little girl had once been hypnotized by that glance darted by the young Comte as he turned round. From the present crystallization the same lightning-flash sprang forth, twenty years later.

  And Aunt Line, the merlifiche, who wanted to joke about the long litany of the young Comte’s names—and who could never prevent herself from remarking, in a laudatory fashion that it would, even so, make a fine conclusion, like a peacock’s tail, to a fairy tale—undoubtedly knew that. And it was not only for a fairy tale of old that she, the seeress of old, imagined that possible conclusion, that peacock’s tail; it was for a fairy tale not yet told, a future fairy tale, of which she imagined the denouement without daring to believe that she was a seeress still.

  For now, with respect to the future, she no longer had any enlightenment coming to her from the past. Of all her extraordinary treasures of prescience via presentiments, the atavistic gifts that had enabled her to find the pole determining the magnetization of the blood of the Hescheboix, she had been deprived with regard to the blood of the Ponthual-Plouërs. It was, therefore, uniquely through Geneviève’s obscure desire that she dreamed of the tale’s conclusion, without a shadow of certainty, even subconscious—but in all faith nevertheless, so closely was she in communion with her beloved’s desire: with that unexpressed, almost inexpressible desire, all the more powerful because it was blind and mad.

  It was, indeed, quite blind and beyond all reason, that desire of love that would not admit to being love, born of a furtive glace and a vague smile darted twenty years before—a desire of love nevertheless, bewildered, tenacious and intense, since even now, that girl of soon to be 33 years of age, that old girl, with a brain thoroughly burned by the sciences and a heart doubtless dried up beneath their arid cinders, sometimes said, in thinking about the arrogant young man vanished so long ago and probably separated from her forever:

  How we loved one another at first sight!

  XVII

  In reality, if the image of the young Comte had flourished in Geneviève’s memory solely under in the guise of the glance and the smile darted like alms after the initial disobliging greeting, it was because all the memories of two months of paradise had been condensed in that unique memory, by virtue of a sort of religious transubstantiation—but the paradise had been made of many other things. Although she had not been conscious of it, then or since, those things are noteworthy, since her juvenile soul was to conserve the ineffaceable imprint of them, and since, above all, her present soul must have been fashioned thereby—including, as we shall see, her genius.

  To begin with, what Geneviève had loved immediately, and by which she had immediately sensed herself loved, was not the young Comte, as she believed so firmly afterwards. In truth, doubtless through him, and because he was a perfect incarnation thereof, the object of that lightning mutual love was the entire domain, the land itself: the grounds where the two dark woods met, Kawchmôr and its cove of marshland beneath the collapsed walls of the chapel, Kairnheûz and its sullen tower, the heath and the wall of its horizon, the bar of liquid steel, and the grim old château with all its inhabitants, so strange but, by virtue of that very fact, familiar in advance to that strange and grim child.

  There was nothing troubling for her in the abrupt leap backward that plunged her into the heart of the Breton Middle Ages, and more profoundly still, all the way to the prehistory from which the Gaelic and Cymric roots of the name of Kairnheûz, the “terrible heap of stones” had sprung. Was she not the worthy grand-niece of Aunt Line, whose atavistic memories—in Yvern
aux’s paradoxical terminology—doubtless went all the way back to the plains of Central Asia? Then again, she usually did not pay much attention to the external world, absorbed as she was in the abstract world of numbers, figures, forces and their relationships—and even if had she paid more attention to it, would not the austerity of the present landscape have accorded with that of the arid scientific landscapes to which she was accustomed?

  As for the residents of the château, they had what it took to please her, by virtue of their silence and their effacement.

  In the couple comprising the gardener and his wife, reminiscent of insouciant gravediggers, the old gamekeeper who mostly appeared to be protecting phantoms and to be one himself, another might have seen terrible shadows therein—but not her, for all living beings seemed to her to be shadows, of which she was not afraid. They, moreover, before the little girl, so calm, so gray, so shadow-like herself, and so different from ordinary little girls, were suddenly humanized, to the point of smiling. This was a child the phantoms could understand: serious, devoid of turbulence, making no more noise than they did themselves!

  Similarly, the cook and the chambermaid, both with the mannerisms of nuns, mouths sewn shut, footsteps muffled, had welcomed affectionately, albeit mutely, the silent Aunt Line, who seemed to have sprung from the same stock as themselves, and her little niece, so modest and well-behaved. And Geneviève and Aunt Line on the one hand, and the cook and her daughter on the other, had immediately been glad to find, on the other side, “very discreet individuals.”

  Aunt Line was of her race, and possessed to the highest degree the gift—superficial but perfect—of fitting into her surroundings. Her originality, it will be remembered, was often concealed, even from her most intimate associates—from her nephew Thibaud, her Benjamin, even from the subtle and curious Yvernaux. As one can imagine, she hid it carefully here, in order not to clash with these “discreet individuals” and to appear so convincingly to be one of them. That explains how, subsequently, in remembering Aunt Line during her sojourn at Kairnheûz, Geneviève saw her transfigured: an Aunt Line that she could hardly recognize.

  In fact, that transfiguration of Aunt Line, and the complete change that Geneviève had also observed in herself in the course of that period, and the atmosphere of melancholy peace and pleasant light in which those two months in paradise had bathed, all came, without any possible doubt, from the Comtesse.

  Now, naturally enough, the Comtesse had no more suspicion of that than anyone else. If anyone had thought of pointing it out to her and asking her to explain it, she would certainly have attributed the general influence to her dear Abbé Denis Gasguin and to the particular virtues of the catechism with which he perfumed Geneviève’s soul, with a view to her first communion.

  It is incontestable, moreover, that the habitual unction of the priest, the elegant and eloquent Jesuit, distinguished in mind, refined in culture, penetrating and conciliating in psychology, had slowly impregnated the dwelling and the behavior of everyone at Kairnheûz during the almost thirteen years that he had been Joson’s tutor. Nevertheless, it would probably be more accurate to say that he had first refined himself in order to refine others, and had acquired that elegance and distinction by contact, and ever-increasing intimacy, with the Comtesse.

  That was a curious and fascinating study of two souls, both beautiful, pure and noble, communicating in a very profound affection that extended as far as veritable tenderness, but without any kind of disturbance. Indeed, the unique object of that tenderness was to be found, not in mutual ardors, but rather in convergent ardor, regarding the fate of young Comte, the scion of the Ponthual-Plouërs. Such a study, unfortunately, would have too much of the present in it, more appropriate to a feminine genius; one must, therefore, limit oneself merely to noting, very hastily, that which might serve this one.

  It was by virtue of a miracle of maternal love, and thanks to the patient and intelligent aid with the no-less-miraculous devotion of Abbé Denis Gasguin had sustained it, that the Comtesse had succeeded in bringing up Joson as she wished. That had not been an easy task. Without the Abbé, perhaps she would not have succeeded.

  It had required more than patience, intelligence and devotion—yes, much more: exactly that unknown element of the miraculous which only love can give, and the kind of tenderness in which the Abbé’s soul and the Comtesse’s had “communed.” The expression was his own, in a confession written to his superior, as without the shadow of a sacrilegious illusion, as one may imagine. He acted solely, not to excuse that tenderness, since there was nothing culpable about it, but to explain it, first in his nature and then in the motives that had rendered it necessary—and, in consequence, licit, not to say meritorious.

  Meritorious it was, in fact, the last scion of the Ponthual-Plouërs having a future that the Company could utilize, and that future being in peril if the Comtesse did not watch over it, and thus, if help had not been provided, everything would have gone awry. Which was exactly what Abbé Gasguin provided, without any in the affair—for even his affection for the Comtesse, tender as it might have been, had furnished him, not with a goal he wanted to attain but a means, and the only means employable, to steer Joson into the path that it was “necessary” to make him take.

  Joson was only Joson with his mother, Joson being the childish diminutive, in Breton parlance, of Joseph. With everyone other than his mother he instantly reverted, even in his earliest adolescence, to a hardness that had nothing childish about it, as ill-disposed as possible to being the definitive of what was, ultimately, the haughty—from the height of all his names and titles—Emile-Cast-Jagut-Marie-Joseph de Ponthual-Plouër, Seigneur des Ebihens, des Pierres-Sonantes, des Treize-Îles and other places.

  And yet, as with his mother in person, he had ended up being, with the Abbé also, the little, the gentle, the childish, the tender Joson. That testifies to exactly what point, in their love for him, the two souls of which his own had been made had communed. For his own was changed henceforth—and presumably forever. The heir of Ponthual-Plouër, the wild child in whom all the vices had momentarily threatened to grow vigorously, was today the good and well-behaved pupil emerging from the Borda, ready to make a fine career for himself as a naval officer. Until the day—it had been calculated over Abbé Gasguin’s head—when the young man, brought up in the ideas and tastes of the past, and for that reason nicknamed “the little Chouan” by his comrades, found himself overtly at odds with the ideas and tastes of today! On that day, it was certain, the sickened Comte would renounce an impossible struggle, hand in his resignation from the navy, and come back to seek a refuge in the bosom of the Company.

  The future result was “a long shot,” as the popular saying has it, but there had been no means of doing better. The prudent Abbé had not wasted a moment in steering Joson immediately toward the pure religious life, firstly because the Comtesse herself had not been ready for that, good Catholic as she was, and secondly because it had been necessary to hasten to the most urgent matter, which was to subdue the little savage’s most violent instincts, in which all the worst moral toxins of all the Ponthual-Plouërs in general, and his father in particular, were seething.

  Fortunately, the depurative agent for cleansing that blood was to hand, evident and sure: it was the profound and quasi-religious love with which Joson adored his mother. Whether or not he had defended her against his father, as the legend said, he was indisputably capable of having desired to do it, and having done it if the opportunity arose. And he proved that, moreover, when left alone with her, by defending her against himself—because it was for her, to be agreeable to her, in order that she might smile in satisfaction, that he had allowed himself to be subdued by his tutor, amended and gentled, gradually becoming the good, submissive, childish little Joson, a true model of a noble and nobly-educated child.

  All his secret revolts, all his appetites for battle, independence and adventure, all his crazed instincts under pressure, had been provided with
a safety-valve by the naval career by which he would enter into life. The hope of a future explosion throwing him back, broken, to the Company, did not originate, of course, with his mother, nor even the Abbé, the latter merely being used to put the idea of that career into the Comtesse’s head and to inspire an appetite for it in the adolescent.

  The mother had consented, in spite of the chagrin of the separation to come, out of wise foresight with respect to a nature that would one day need expansion, and for fear of seeing it etiolated here in excessive languor. The young man had accepted joyfully, in spite of his devotion to his mother, thinking that he was, after all, a Ponthual-Plouër, that he ought to do honor to his name, and that his mother would soon be proud of him. Deep down, without being conscious of it, he was thirsty for liberty, even if it were as harsh as the ocean wind, after the excessively gentle softness of his adolescence, as reclusive as a sick-room.

  In the meantime—before abandoning himself entirely to the ocean wind when he quit the Borda—he enjoyed, for the last time, and with delight, the lukewarm and confined air in which he had become the meek little Joson. That was the special air into which Geneviève found herself suddenly transplanted; and she also took delight in it—whence came, later, the memories of luminous paradise, in a suavely softened light, that were to remain in her heart.

  It was, however, a singular paradise, which would have appeared to reflect a very extravagant Catholicism, if any attempt had been made to imagine it and pin down its images. Now, that is what made—already had made, but especially would make thereafter—in spite of her, in involuntary mystical gusts, the exceedingly mystical individual that Geneviève had always been. But what strange forms there were, indeed, in the intimate chapel where her memory celebrated its worship, taking the information she had extracted from the catechism and the beings that had been mingled with that exaltation!