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    Le Turco 📖🔥 : Un Voyage dans l’Orient Mystérieux ✨



    Plongez dans l’univers fascinant de ‘Le Turco’ d’Edmond About, un récit captivant qui vous transporte au cœur du mystère et de l’aventure en Orient. 🌍

    – Découvrez l’histoire d’un jeune Turc, mystérieux et audacieux, à la recherche de son destin.
    – Un mélange palpitant de suspense, de culture orientale et de traditions exotiques. 🕌
    – Un récit qui explore l’amour, l’honneur et la quête de vérité, dans un cadre magnifiquement décrit. 📜

    👉 Abonnez-vous pour plus d’histoires fascinantes et rejoignez notre communauté d’auditeurs passionnés : [https://bit.ly/LivresAudioLaMagieDesMots]

    #LeTurco #EdmondAbout #AventureOrientale #Mystère #CultureTurque #Voyage #Suspense #LivresAudio #Classiques #Aventure #LivreAudio #Histoire #Orient #Exotisme #SuspenseHistorique #Aventuriers #NarrationAudio #VoyageLittéraire #AuteursClassiques #ÉcouterUnLivre #HistoiresDuMonde #AventureEtVoyage

    **Navigate by Chapters or Titles:**
    00:00:29 Chapter 1.
    00:06:23 Chapter 2.
    00:53:09 Chapter 3.
    01:58:19 Chapter 4.
    02:08:29 Chapter 5.
    02:13:45 Chapter 6.
    02:19:45 Chapter 7.
    02:31:54 Chapter 8.
    02:45:14 Chapter 9.
    02:56:57 Chapter 10.
    03:16:27 Chapter 11.
    03:30:53 Chapter 12.
    03:43:45 Chapter 13.
    03:52:41 Chapter 14.
    04:01:17 Chapter 15.
    04:10:37 Chapter 16.
    04:18:26 Chapter 17.

    In this captivating tale, Edmond About immerses us in the life of a fascinating character, Le Turco. Through his eyes, we discover a story full of suspense and mystery, where the stakes are as complex as human emotions. The author invites us to explore themes of loyalty, courage, and deception in an exotic and historical context. Prepare yourself for an adventure where each page brings you a little closer to the secrets of this strange man and his turbulent times. Chapter 1. Le Turco. What you are about to read is a story of the Café d’Orsay. Last night at five o’clock, the gabion was stuffed. The gabion, so that no one is unaware, is a room on the ground floor where we drink absinthe among ourselves. There were about twenty of us officers; the artillery dominated, the general staff was represented by the great Captain Brunner; there was a fair amount of cavalry and a bit of what we always call among ourselves the beneficent genius. Gougeon, one of the guides, was recounting the last concert at the Tuileries and was gradually getting worked up over Miss Nillson, when Brunner cut him off at the very edge of his moustache with a tremendous burst of laughter. Everyone opened their eyes, and Gougeon, who is not easy to deal with, went as pale as a handkerchief. ‘Pardon, Brunner!’ he said, half rising; ‘I didn’t know how to be so funny! ‘ Brunner, when called upon, made the naive gesture of a sleeper being awakened. The guide resumed his sentence, raising his voice, but he did not finish it. He had met Brunner’s gaze and seized, so to speak, one of those deep and heartbreaking emotions that bring our anger to its knees. ‘Dear friend,’ said the captain, ‘it is I who must ask your pardon.’ While listening to you, I was running my eyes over the newspaper, and I came across a piece of news… one of those pieces of news that you have to quickly laugh at to avoid… you know what. He hadn’t avoided anything at all, the poor fellow. His voice weakened, his eyes became troubled: he passed me the newspaper, pointing with his finger at the section he couldn’t read to us; but none of us found the word to laugh, or to cry, in this announcement written in a pomaded style, like all high-life advertisements. An illustrious and double marriage will bring together tomorrow before the aristocratic altar of the most brilliant and distinguished competition, the choice of choices. Madame la Comtesse de Gardelux is marrying for the second time Monsieur le Vicomte de Chavigny Senlis, and on the same day, at the same hour, Mademoiselle Auguste Hélène de Gardelux is to give her hand to the young and rich Marquis de Forcepont. It is not surprising that birth is allied to birth, fortune to fortune, beauty and virtue to bravery and elegance; the marvelous, or, to speak correctly, the miraculous, aspect of this ceremony is the almost twin beauty of the two noblewomen married: a layman introduced into the nave will believe he is seeing the marriage of two sisters. I had put down the newspaper, and I drank a glass of water to wash down the taste of this prose. Brunner bit his mustache and followed the veins of the marble, trying to suppress his tears. The assistants looked at each other without saying anything, too discreet to ask for a comment, but incapable of grasping any connection between Brunner’s emotion and a wedding in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Certainly he would not be out of place in society, but one does not remember ever having met him there. He bears no resemblance whatsoever to that amiable and brilliant George de Saint who was still leading a cotillion on the morning of his departure for Mexico. He is a boy too serious for his age, a bit of a wolf, especially in the last two years. He was born in Alsace, in Obernai, I believe, to a family of winegrowers. His parents are more than well-off, he would cut a fine figure in Paris, if he wanted to; but he cares little for appearances, the esteem of his comrades is enough for him. In person, he is fine; perhaps a little too tall and his shoulders too square. This robust body is surmounted by a regular face, white and pink: the blond mustache and blue eyes of pure Alsatians. His His voice is excellent for command; in a drawing room, it would seem strong. What the devil could there be between this good Brunner and the Countess of Gardelux? This secret might have died with him, if Fitz Moore, of the Voltigeurs, had not entered in the middle of my reading. He let me finish and said to me: My good fellow, French names are not all pronounced as they are written… We write Gardelux, but we say Gardlu. “Well!” cried Blavet, of the 25th, “I should have remembered. In my year, there was a Gardelux. For example, to tell you what became of him , I am not well enough versed in the Directory. ” “I know,” said Brunner. “It is two years since he died in Africa, in my arms. The two women who are getting married tomorrow are his mother and his sister. And I would bet my head that, on a day like this, the two coquettes would not have a poor little souvenir for him!” A most emphatic oath completed his thought and ended the sentence. “Come, come, my dear fellow!” Fitz Moore continued. “These ladies are of my world, and let me tell you that you condemn them a little too lightly. Who proves to you that they have not kept a tender memory of your poor comrade? ” “Proofs? I have only too much. Well! Let them marry if it amuses them; but I ask your permission to find the wedding a little too much, when poor Leopold expires in the province of Biskra!” Gougeon made a sign to Fitz Moore and answered for him, in a friendlier tone : ” I understand you, Brunner. Friendship, devotion, regrets are the most honorable things in the world; but can you demand that life eternally bear the mourning of death? The friend you miss, whom we would doubtless miss too, if we had known him… ” “Oh! yes!” –This friend, I say, whom you always see dying, has stopped suffering for two good years. Do you think it fair that his whole family?… Even if the thing could benefit him! But no. I go further: I say that such a sacrifice, he would not accept it! –It is quite possible. –Let oblivion do its little work. –He will have no work to do… The ungrateful ones! My poor friend, their son, their brother, has been forgotten while still alive. It is an atrocity that I have never told anyone; but since the first word has been spoken, since Fitz Moore is defending the family, since the memories that I had repressed are suffocating me, the truth will have to come out. Listen. Chapter 2. We knew each other in Biskra for a year, but intimacy did not come until the sixth or seventh month. We had been told of a second lieutenant who came from Saint Cyr, and who was a count. A new face is always curious. If we weren’t a small town in an oasis, where would we be? Some said: He’s some protégé they’re giving to the native riflemen so that he can advance faster ; others were preparing to lead him swiftly if he acted too much like a gentleman. Four or five sons of families, more or less destitute in the gambling dens of Paris, were impatiently awaiting this reinforcement to found a branch in the Faubourg Saint Germain. You’re very good fellows, I told them; would a count who had four sous from his place come and get bogged down in Biskra? The discussions were exhausted, and people were beginning to talk about something else, when he arrived one fine morning. I can still see him on horseback, preceded by a spahi and followed by the mule carrying his luggage. He was neither tall nor handsome, and he looked like a puny child. Not a hair of down on his small face, people of all body types, and a nose that the absence of whiskers made appear even longer. He was a little lacking in strength when he dismounted; it would not have taken a very strong shake to make him faint. His friends, in anticipation, led him or carried him to the lodgings they had reserved for him; he took a bath, went to bed and did not appear again all day. This doll-like display amused the garrison. The contrast was truly too funny between this second lieutenant of young ladies and the rogues he came to command. All that day, in the café, at the club, in the streets, people approached each other and said: Have you seen the Turco? What do you think of the Turco? For a Turco, that’s a funny Turco. The name stayed with him for life, that is to say for the year. Finally, his brusher himself found this name easier to pronounce than that of Gardelux and called him respectfully: Sidi Turco. The second impression was to his advantage. In the visits he made, in the welcome he offered us, in the always long hours of an idle garrison, he made himself better known and better appreciated. His politeness was cordial and without haughtiness; he immediately associated himself with our lifestyle and refused to separate himself from the gilded, or de-gilded, youth. It was soon known that he brought to our midst a great fund of goodwill and a fine military education. He entered the
    school fiftieth, and left among the first twelve; it was he who had chosen the native riflemen when the general staff was open to him. It was seen that he rode not like a riding school student, but like a man who had his first pony at four years old. The soldiers of his company, after having felt him a little, felt that he had a firm hand and obeyed him no more and no less than if he had been five feet six inches tall. In short, at the end of six weeks, he was established like no other in the garrison of Biskra. Only the thin skins of his caste were astonished that such a well-born boy, emancipated by authentic act and free to eat twenty-five thousand pounds a year, had nothing to tell them about these young ladies Amanda, Nina and Lobélia, from Paris. On this subject, he was almost new, or at least very discreet. I surprised by chance a kind of liaison between him and a dancer of the Ouled Nayl tribe; but I doubt that he kept her for long, and especially that his heart was in it. His heart was there, and oddly placed, as the sequel will prove to you. Our friendship began with chess, where he was quite strong: he gave me back the rook, to me who am not a genius. To vary our pleasures, we rode horses, we hunted wild boar, we carried out reconnaissances towards the tomb of Sidi Oq’ba or the ruins of Zaatcha. We strolled on foot through the city in that fancy uniform that we know: the long silk shirt falling to the feet, the babouches and the large straw hat peculiar to the chiefs of the south; nothing less, nothing more. When the heat was too intense, we would go and bathe in one of those canals that water the roots of the trees. I shared with nine or ten of my comrades a cage built at the top of three palm trees, twenty meters above the ground. We climbed up after leaving the bath by a rope ladder and lay down like wheel rims, feet in the center, heads at the circumference. This station, placed between heaven and earth, gave us ineffable siestas. Although the thermometer marked 45 degrees, our alcarazas gave us a few drops of fresh water, and if any semblance of a breeze stirred the air, it was for us. In the evening, we sat in the niche of a Moorish café, or the officers met in that marvelous circle of Aumale, where gazelles, ostriches, and the most singular products of the desert acclimatize a little better than in Paris. It may be said, Biskra is a pretty garrison; if only the water weren’t so bad! What I liked most about the Turko’s conversation was that I learned something new every day. You think you know a lot when you ‘ve spent ten years at school; this kid there who hadn’t had his classes astonished me and humiliated me a little. Not that he was a man to boast about anything; he would have rather hidden his knowledge: the opportunity was needed to loosen his tongue. A double Latin and Greek inscription on a shamefully gnawed column shaft amused him for a quarter of an hour. This, watch in hand, is the time he took to copy it, restore and translate it on a sheet of his notebook. I have arms , I had dug up the column; but what the hell if I could have deciphered the first word? His brain was stuffed with curious things; while walking with him, I gradually learned about history, botany, what do I know? He knew Africa by principles better than I, an African for five years and a captain for three!… One day, he explained to me that the great desert was a dried-up sea, that the water could return home sooner or later, that it could even be brought back there by work similar to the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, because after all the Sahara is twenty-seven meters below the level of the Mediterranean! Did you know that? I was transported: my imagination took off; I spent the whole night dreaming about the construction of a large inland sea that would isolate our Algerian colony, shelter us from the nomads, allow the French navy to land at Biskra, as at Oran or Philippeville, and on the other side open tropical Africa to the explorers of my country! I had a fever. The next day, when I offered to undertake the business between the two of us, he said to me with a smile: So you want to harm the Scots and the Swiss? And he gave me the most curious theory about the glaciers of Europe that melt every year in the wind from the Sahara: if that wind ran over the water instead of passing over the sand, it would arrive completely refreshed by evaporation; the glaciers, no longer melting, would gain ground little by little, Switzerland and Scotland would be frozen, and the climate of France would be spoiled forever. You see, he knew everything; I found this later, in a book, exactly as he had told me. Since his arrival, he hardly read. The newspapers hardly tempted him, and his library, which he bequeathed to me, consisted of nine volumes. On the other hand, he wrote a lot, because his supply of paper was exhausted in four months, and he often stopped at the shop of the Maltese Giovanni to buy more. Since he stayed locked in his room at least one day a week, suppositions were rife; some accused him of amorous correspondence, others presented him as a misunderstood poet or an anonymous journalist, still others as a sick man, subject to periodic bouts of melancholy. I, his friend, had made it a rule to respect the mystery, whatever it was; in short, I would never have guessed it, if he had not revealed himself to me by a deplorable accident. Here is the fact. In Biskra, the mail from France arrives every eight days; a bugle call announces the good news, all the officers run to the military circle, and there, the postmaster opens this bag of blessings. This is not to boast, because after all, happiness does not always fall to the most worthy, but I have many solid friends and a family like no other. I write little, it is undoubtedly a lack of ideas, but since I have been in the world, I have received an enormous amount of replies. Every week, I had five or six letters to read, sometimes nine or ten, when family and friends had agreed. When the harvest was good, I would go away quite proud, spreading the thing out like a deck of cards and reading Mama Brunner’s letter in a low voice: I have never started with another; may the foundlings throw the first stone! One morning in September, the 4th, I will remember it all my life, I was rich with seven or eight letters. The good old woman from over there sent me a note for five hundred francs; man is not perfect, and the Ouled Nayl tribe does not yet know the theory of art for art’s sake. Item, I was told from home that a shipment of hams, sausages, Barr wine and kirschenwasser was coming, which was to keep the stew going for a month. I was happy, I walked on my toes, I recognized out of the corner of my eye, while reading, the handwriting of my cousin Gretchen and my old friends on the other envelopes: I took refuge, to taste all these vintages of good French ink, in the small living room to the east, at end of the circle; Gougeon passed by, he can see it from here. I enter, and I see the Turk tearing the strip of a newspaper, for a big extra, with a face from the other world. Well! I said to him giddily, what are you doing here? You weren’t at the mail, so you don’t have any letters today? He jumped at my throat like a little jaguar, and shouted while choking me: You insult me! What have I done to you? You know very well that no one writes to me! O Charles! Charles! At that, without giving me time to be surprised, he jumped through the window and ran away crying. The military circle only has one ground floor, thank God. I remained completely stunned. I was his superior, he had laid hands on me: if anyone had seen us, he would have gone to a council of battle; But I didn’t think about that until the next day. My first impulse was to put the letters in my pocket and run to his house to find out how and why I had hurt him. A slut with smeared eyes threw the door in my face. That’s how, incidentally, I learned of his affair. The next day, at dawn, I was sleeping rather badly under my mosquito net, the door and window open, when he woke me up by my name. I put on a gandoura, and I went to meet him. He kissed me, he cried, he stammered a lot of things in which the word forgiveness kept coming up . You don’t know, he said, you can’t know;… but I’ll tell you everything. Charles! I am the most unhappy of men. I love with all the strength of my heart, and no one even remembers me. It’s Dante’s frozen hell! I’ve known since that Dante had imagined a hell without fire. He took me to the countryside, to the green devil. I will always see the landscape. Have you noticed that? When a joyful or sad event drives a nail into the scenery, it is fixed for life; we never forget it . Like the bean field where my cousin Gretchen… but let’s not confuse the stories. He began to tell me his life story with an abundance of heart! Ah! When a man saves everything in himself, there are times when he finds himself beautifully rich, come on! It was a debacle, an explosion, what do I know? Imagine all the most powerful things there are. A coin that had been loaded every day, at all hours, since 1850, and that would be lit now ! Do you hear the bang? It’s enough to make you shudder. A boy more delicate, more tender and more sentimental on his own than Alsace and Germany combined, and who never had either father or mother! His father, M. de Gardelux, was not a father. He was a gentleman who ran races. He had a stable at Chantilly, a dancer at the Opera; he was something at the club, treasurer or vice-president, I don’t remember ; but the life of Paris absorbed him so completely that he forgot the way to his hotel for twenty-four hours at a time. His wife, married at fifteen, a mother at sixteen, or so they called herself, had neither fed, nor raised, nor known her son. I suckled Mama Brunner until he was four, and if you saw her, you would agree with me that it didn’t tire her out. It must be said that in our country, girls get married at twenty-five, in their prime. The rickety children are those we have too early. Thus, Léopold’s sister, born four years after him, is a superb person: those who doubt it need only go and see her tomorrow at church. It’s just a stone’s throw from here, isn’t it, Fitz Moore? Not all men are cut from the same cloth, for I’ve heard that many people are born and live like this unfortunate boy without experiencing the slightest discomfort. He was paid for a Burgundian wet nurse of the finest blood, visited by the family doctor ; his layette was ordered from the great maker; he was weaned according to the rules of the art; he was given a whole set of foreign maids so that he would know German, English, and Italian without learning them. At the age of seven, like a prince, he left the hands of women and fell back under the thumb of a sweet little abbot, who called him Monsieur le Vicomte. A poor fellow, this abbot, despite the beautiful letters and the beautiful virtues with which the seminary had stuffed him! Imbued with the feeling of his humility, he repeated to himself and to others that God had taken him from the plow to sit him under the paneling of the great: with this in mind, he only half sat down, and when he had to walk on a carpet, his large feet remained in the air as if to ask forgiveness from the beautiful flowers of dyed wool. Do you see a poor boy without parents, without comrades, without any other company on earth than a flat, reverent and candied abbot! How amusing Paris must be in those conditions! It is true that the child spent six months at the castle: it was the most bearable time of his life. He was allowed to run, garden, climb trees, gallop for hours on end under the care of a reliable valet, the abbot not being a cavalier for a farthing. It was at the château that Leopold became a little acquainted with his family: he sometimes dined at the table; he was even called into the drawing room to entertain the company when the rain beat against the windows and there were only a small group. His awkwardness, his wild airs, and his frightened replies amused Madame la Comtesse and her close friends. When the little clown took a joke badly, he was quickly sent back to the abbé. Leopold told me that from the age of five he had thought about emotional struggle. You see, when you read in the newspapers that a toddler has hanged himself or cut his throat, it is perhaps wrong to pity the parents; I would start by throwing them in prison, and then we would see. What saved Leopold was his friendship for little Hélène and above all the arrival of a new tutor. A real man, that one; our poor Turco spoke of him as if he were a father. His name was Pelgas; he had been expelled from the university for a very new and very bold book on the reform of studies. Ten years later, this work might have led him to the ministry: that is what it is to arrive on time. I do not know what became of the book and the method; but the results I saw were superb. It seems that the tutor had taken over the place from several sides at once, awakening all the faculties of his pupil like a hotel waiter roams the corridors knocking on every door. One study rests on another; the child worked from morning to night and did not tire for a moment. In Paris, one followed public courses, one visited the collections and the museums, and one philosophized about all this in a friendly atmosphere, like two friends talking together about their business. In the countryside, one studied the sky, the earth, plants, animals, culture and rural economy; We often shut ourselves away to read good authors. It was a magnificent life; the child felt himself becoming a man. As he acquired real superiority, he forgot the vanities of birth and fortune ; he gradually rose towards the idea of ​​rejuvenating the name of Gardelux with newer merits. He tried to write, he turned the verse beautifully. From his suffering childhood, he had a small fund of poetry left, which science had increased rather than dried up. At sixteen , he dreamed of being an erudite poet like Lucretius, and of introducing truth into the most closed minds, thanks to the charm of beautiful verses. It is a fact that verses take a different path than prose. It is like the forced bullet which goes further and enters better. You will see, gentlemen, if the human heart is not a strange shop. The glory he dreamed of, guess what he wanted to do with it? It wasn’t for himself, it was to place it as an offering at the feet of that doll who is getting married tomorrow, Madame de Gardelux. One would never believe these things, if one hadn’t heard them from the people themselves: the unfortunate child had a cult, a devotion, the celestial love of a martyr for that cloud of tulle and gauze from Chambéry which flew away every evening on two horses through the main door of the hotel. He wanted to conquer that unfindable heart that his caresses, his tears and his childish smiles had never been able to unearth. It was his true ambition, the ultimate goal of her labors and her hopes; but this idea, deeply hidden in the most secret recesses of her soul, was known only to her little sister Helen. Mr. Pelgas, to whom everything was told, did not receive this confidence. A small feeling of modesty opposed a stranger learning such a family secret. The sister was twelve years old, the age when little girls resemble angels in a Gothic cathedral. That’s it, she said to her brother, be a great man, conquer Mama;… but you will share her with me! One thing that I alone guessed, but that I never told the Turk, is that young and ambitious women like his mother do not like to see their children grow up. The world may know that you got married at fifteen; when it sees you appear on the arm of a tall boy, it says to itself: There is a young woman who could well wake up, grandmother. Leopold’s education was advanced enough to walk on its own when his master, Mr. Pelgas, was called to Mauritius. Some wealthy Creoles who had been his students offered him the direction of an important college on this stubbornly French island. It was a secure future, almost a fortune for this poor, good man. He hesitated for a long time to leave his dear disciple, the adopted son of his mind; but was not this son bound to leave him one day or another? The door to the baccalaureate was crossed; the count, generous in his indifference, had furnished Leopold with a beautiful bachelor’s apartment; madame had ordered a phaeton from her own coachbuilder for the viscount: we were visibly approaching the time when a young gentleman is taken from his masters to fall back into the hands of women. Mr. Pelgas had to take these warning signs into account; he accepted the direction of the college, reserving his freedom until the start of the school year. The letter written and sent, he came to find Leopold and said to him: I’m leaving you in six months. You will be seventeen; that’s an absurd age in Paris. One is unfit for any useful work, and when one has your fortune and your freedom, one is almost obliged to do stupid things. I don’t want you to lose yourself by losing me. Poetry is not a mistress tenacious enough to hold you seriously. What can one say in verse, or even in prose, if one has neither lived, nor loved, nor suffered? Live first, occupy yourself actively, do something. I thought of the military state: discipline and danger are needed to develop the virile element in you. You will be ready for the Saint Cyr exams; it’s a matter of going over our history and taking a little extra mathematics. You know drawing, and modern languages ​​three times more than are needed. That said, my dear child, let’s embrace each other. We have all day to soften up, and tomorrow to work! The young man did not decide so quickly; the ifs and buts trotted around for more than a day: he finally, however, came to his senses and drew up a logical life plan for himself. Two years of school and ten years of service would bring him to the age of twenty-nine, captain and decorated, according to all appearances. Around the age of thirty, he resigned , chose a wife and perpetuated his race after having strengthened his health, tanned his nerves, completed his education in the great school of life, and perhaps honored his name. It would then be time to rhyme in the style of the century, if the little blue flower, as Mr. Pelgas called it, had not dried up in the open air. A few months later, as Mr. de Gardelux was packing his trunks for England, he received a visit from Leopold. Look! Is that you? he said to him, seeing him quite pale and moved. We have something to ask? My purse is open to you, my dear fellow, and I intend that you address yourself to me alone whenever you have debts. –Oh! sir, can you suppose?… –But the hypothesis is not offensive; youth must pass. Come, put your business in two words; I am having supper in London. He was going to see his favorite Caldron run, that colt who promised so much and delivered so little. Was he entered for the Derby or the Royal Oaks, I’m not sure. Leopold, more and more troubled, said that he had come to request the necessary authorization to present himself at Saint Cyr. What the devil’s the idea? said the count; but one doesn’t enter there like at the mill. Aren’t there exams, tests? “Mr. Pelgas hopes I can pass them. ” “Ah!… never mind, my dear fellow, you surprise me. I thought you would start by having a little fun, by studying Paris. A big seventeen-year-old idiot who is going to start school! Amuse yourself first: have you ever been refused anything at my house?” When you have a name like yours, you enlist in the cavalry at twenty-five, you go on a tour of Africa, and soon the bureaucrats are only too happy to appoint you an officer. What do you say? No… Well! So be it: at your ease! Have the papers prepared; I’ll sign whatever you please. Madame de Gardelux saw in this project only a child’s fantasy. It’s the uniform that seduces you, isn’t it? I hope it suits you well and gives you a different appearance; but you know that epaulettes are not allowed in our salons. As for little Hélène, she spoke quite differently. I’ll be even prouder of you, she said, when you’re a fine officer. And besides, it’s a way of staying united for life! “What? ” “Oh! I’ve thought of everything. You will look in the battle regiments for the bravest officer, the most loyal and the best.” You will make him your friend first, then you will bring him so that I may make him your brother, and then we will run together to the ends of the earth; I will have a white horse, we will win victories, and the enemy, seeing that you are with a lady, will never shoot at you. Wasn’t that nice? She was barely thirteen when she spoke so well. Women are born good, you see, it is education that spoils them. The first time that Leopold entered his house in his school uniform —it was at the end of New Year’s Day—Madame de Gardelux uttered a strange cry for a woman who had not seen her son for two months: God, how ugly he is! Helen, come and see this puppet who has come to you from Versailles. I admit that the Saint Cyr uniform is not flattering and that it has spoiled better-built boys; But should a Frenchwoman speak like that about a uniform that… suffices! That day, Miss Hélène was even sweeter and more caressing than usual. My good Léo, she said to her brother, I know that you will not always have those epaulettes. Go, poor chrysalis, I love you as much as if you were already the most brilliant of butterflies! When fate has a grudge against someone, it squeezes many misfortunes into a space of two years. Léopold lost M. Pelgas and M. de Gardelux, his other father, one after the other. The poor professor had caught a fever when he arrived; he struggled for a few months, then he felt that he was not the strongest and folded his arms like a philosopher to watch himself die. His last letter, I have it, is a long and touching farewell to the one he left terribly alone here below. He gives him, in four pages, a course of consolation that Cicero and Seneca would have signed; but I am not sure that they would have written it so calmly on the eve of their death. There are proud, brave people among those who devote themselves to sorting out young heads, and I do not really know if the bourgeois is quits with them when he has given them his ten louis a month. The duel between M. de Gardelux and the Marquis de Kerploët made less noise than so many others. The newspapers did not breathe a word about it, except for one or two which put the initials. Could one say that two men of race, fathers of grown children, and married, strangely enough, to two of the prettiest women in Paris, had fought for the beautiful eyes of a forty-year-old monkey? The witnesses attested that the fight had been fair; M. de Kerploët retired for eighteen months to Brittany, the Gardelux buried their dead, and that was that. This loss was all the more painful for Leopold because he was just beginning to bond with his father. A touch of vanity had eroded the armor of the selfish reveler. After hearing it repeated that his son was an officer with a bright future, he took some interest in this young man, invited him several times to dinner, and even came to see him at Saint Cyr one day at the races: you will tell me that the school is not far from Satory. A month before the unfortunate affair that was to separate them forever, the father introduced Leopold to some friends from the club; they lunched, they drank to his future successes; he was already seen as a lieutenant of hussars, leading a train, playing a game with people of all types of body, chasing women, whipping the ill-bred and making a figure that befits a French cavalier. M. de Gardelux had always been fond of the blade: a dilettante of the point of honor. He had a bad day and lost everything at swordplay. His bad luck had begun at the turf game with the lamentable fall of Caldron. Then came the queen of spades who changed his mind, then a big stock market affair which, so to speak, burst into his hands. In short, the fortune he left was no longer a fortune: his children barely had a million to share. As for the widow, she was rich in her own right. No sooner had she ordered her woolen mourning suit than she set about emancipating Leopold: it was the best way to emancipate herself. It does not appear that she seriously regretted her husband. You will tell me that he did not get himself killed for her: it is all the same, a real woman would have done things better, if only for the edification of the two children. The great blows of death leave an open breach in our hearts: anyone can enter on these occasions. Well! no; Leopold could not overcome his mother’s indifference. When he returned from the cemetery, he ran to the Countess’s apartment to cry with her: Madame had forbidden her door, and in giving this instruction she had not thought of making an exception for her son. But Miss Helene recognized the voice of good Leo; she went out to meet him and led him into her little room: Come, she said; Mother does not want to cry any more because her head hurts ; but between the two of us we will sob as much as you like. Poor father! ah! Poor father! If anything could have consoled my friend, it was the tenderness of this little girl. One fine day he learned that Miss Helene had left with her mother for Lake Neufchâtel. At least do not think that the Countess did it out of intolerance! It was much simpler: she had recognized that, for a woman of her age and habits, the role of desolate widow is horribly difficult in Paris. She invited her son to join her as soon as he had passed the last exam. I even believe that he stayed two whole months with her, and that he brought the family back to Paris. The month of December was already well underway, and Leopold left on January 1 for Africa. During these brief days, the last he would live in France, he made several desperate efforts. This poor devil, too loving to be happy here below, did not want to leave without wresting from his mother a tear, a caress, a blessing, I don’t know… finally, something maternal! He needed this nothing as a viaticum for the road, perhaps he even guessed by a secret presentiment that his first journey was going to be the great one. He wasted his time and his efforts. Madame de Gardelux, without returning to society, let the world quietly return to her . She hadn’t taken a day off, but it soon became known that she was to be found all week; the pleasant buzz of fashionable nonsense made her deaf to the melancholy remarks of the torn Léopold. She had been almost amiable in Neufchâtel, she was almost cold in Paris: the Faubourg was winning her back. On the morning of the farewells, my unfortunate friend thought he had seized a favorable moment. He had tiptoed into his mother’s little boudoir. Madame de Gardelux had her back to the door. and seemed to be looking attentively at a portrait that the second lieutenant had had done and brought the day before. Finally! he said, she thinks of me! So she misses me a little! With this in mind, he ran to her, threw himself at her knees and cried to her through tears: Ah! dear little mother! Kiss me! Bless me! Let me take away this memory of you! “You are a mentally ill person!” she cried; “is it permissible to frighten people? Get up, my dear, and put on another face. You will make yourself ill, and you will give me a nervous attack. What do you want from me? ” “That you love me, mother! ” “I love you just as much as we love each other in families in the world we live in; we are not bourgeois, thank God! I don’t know if it was this Mr. Poulgas or Pelgas who gave you these manners, but they are not appropriate anywhere, and you would do wisely to lose them.” I saw the moment when my daughter became as ridiculous as you through contagion. You are not a fool, you know how to behave, you have certain manners, it is generally found that your ways of acting are those of a gentleman; but all these qualities, to which I do justice, are corrupted by a morbid sentimentality. Take care of yourself! This was the beautiful farewell he obtained; but it was the little sister who was ingenious in consoling him! She led him to the railway with his governess; she pampered him, rocked him, bathed him with her tears and ended up numbing a little this acute pain which had penetrated his heart. Assuredly Madame de Gardelux had slandered her daughter by believing her cured of this precious sensitivity. The two children swore to write to each other once a week; Miss Hélène slipped into her brother’s hand a gold medallion in which she had had painted by Madame Herbelin. A marvel, this little portrait; I admired it for six months with him and eighteen months without him: you will know how it was. When it was finally time to part at the ring of the bell, she took his head in her arms and whispered in his ear: You know, my commission? Don’t forget! He felt himself rejuvenated by two years at the memory of this amiable childishness and replied with a smile: So the project still stands? –Always. –Then, an important question: blond or brown? –Your choice; but I would prefer it if he were blond. Go away, you ‘re making me talk nonsense! –Goodbye! –Goodbye! I’ll tell you all this in one go; but you can imagine that he didn’t tell me everything at the first sitting. It only took a moment to break the ice, but the flood of stories, memories, and confidences took several months to pour out. We were very happy, he to open his heart to someone, I to find a friend who would admit me into his family. There are, even in friendship, barriers that do not fall easily. For example, it is claimed that we are all equal at school. Well! When I was studying at the school of Schlestadt, I was bound like a brother to the eldest son of the sub-prefect. We shared our jams and our marbles; what I possessed was his, and vice versa. But when we went out on Sundays, when he went to the sub-prefecture, and I to my uncle the baker Felrath, he hardly recognized me in the street. He greeted me from afar, as if he were ashamed to admit he was my friend. If his father had asked him: Who is that boy? he might have replied, blushing: Nothing; a student at the school! So we shared everything , except our parents. Why? Because he thought he was more outside the class than I was. A sub-prefect, in our country, is almost a nobleman, and Papa Brunner was only a simple winegrower. It is true that we had an income of thirty thousand francs, and that the other, with a family to support, only owned his place. No matter, they would have been afraid of being out of line by offering me a plate of soup in the sub-prefect’s ordinary house . It’s a bit the same song in the army, although equality is the basis of all our laws. We slept in the same tent, we drank from the same glass, we risked our skin for each other, we esteem each other, we love each other, we are on first-name terms, we are brothers, brothers in arms; but I will never know my brother’s mother, sister, or wife, if an unfortunate particle of chance comes between us. Revolutions have disturbed many things; they have not touched this stupidity. I have known more than twenty sons of families very intimately; I even saved one who had exposed himself to serious risks. I am sure that this boy would be massacred rather than let a single word be said against me. When we meet in Paris, he throws himself on my neck, he drags me to the cafe, he wants me to dine with him in the most gilded restaurants; but he has never introduced me to his wife, and I do not even know the address of his household. Is what I say true? Then you will understand why poor Gardelux became dearer to me in three months than a friend from tenth grade. What he did was only right, for after all I forgot with him the inequality of our ranks, and rank is a matter more deserved than name; but I was grateful to him for having common sense, given the rarity of the thing. So here we are, intimate, or, to put it better, as one. It would have been necessary to get up early to meet one without the other. I knew all his ideas, he knew all my history, which has never been very complicated, thank God! We looked together at the little portrait of his sister, and we said Hélène simply when speaking of her. He had begun to make me a sketch from memory, after Madame de Gardelux, so that the whole family could be presented to me in the proper manner. We spent days reasoning about the coldness of the countess, about the kindness of the little sister. These memories, mixed with good and bad, made this poor soul blossom; they pleased me too: when you find yourself in the middle of the desert, before these sand dunes that undulate as far as the eye can see, you will not be demanding in matters of conversation. Anything that speaks of France will be novel to you. Just the name of the country makes you lick your lips; it’s so good! I never tired of hearing my friend harp on about his miseries, nor he of telling me about them. He had in a casket some gloves, some dried flowers, some small rags, a true lover’s baggage, and the four or five letters that his sister had written to him since their separation. It’s very hollow, the correspondence of a little girl of fifteen, but it doesn’t lack a certain taste of green fruit that penetrates you. These spiders trotted before my eyes for a long time; I ruminated as I fell asleep on these half-formed and never- punctuated sentences; the vague scent of paper returned to me after a day or two. When Leopold lamented this correspondence so gently begun and so quickly interrupted, I found him unfair, I defended Hélène, I listed the thousand occupations that devour life in Paris. Write, you, I told him, since you have twenty-four hours of leisure in your day. Tell her about your life, your walks, your pleasures, your friendships, your troubles. Then, who knows? Perhaps she will be interested in the hundred and fifty thousand palm trees of Biskra, and we will have an answer. He came to have me read the letters he sent there. Every eight days, without fail, he wrote two. What heart! and what style! Especially with his sister; he was more at ease, he went into more detail. When I happened to be there, I suggested arguments to him, I pushed ideas on him, I collaborated. One day he put in an envelope a watercolor in which I had painted the interior of his room, and the two of us smoking, our chibouques nose to nose. It was I who sealed the letter, and even, when lighting the wax, I noticed that my hand was trembling. Do you see the vanity of artists! Painters must feel that emotion when one of their paintings leaves for the Salon. For almost five months, we had been living the same life, and I knew him so well that it seemed impossible to discover in him nothing new. He was keeping a surprise for me, though. I was flabbergasted when he said to me, as he left the circle: Don’t you know that I rhyme a lot every night? I’m always afraid of dislocating your jaw, otherwise I’d regale you with my complete works. There’s enough of them to make at least two volumes at my house. One could easily guess, beneath this apparent contempt for his works, a deep attachment and even a sort of anxiety. I followed him to his house, and insisted that he lend me the first volume. What volume? he continued with a forced smile. I told you two boxes stuffed with paperwork. Here’s one, take it if you like, and light your pipe as soon as boredom overtakes you. Or rather… lie down there, on the lion’s skin, and I’ll read you a page or two… No! You ‘d fall asleep. Here, old man, and run away quickly, I’d be a man to run after you… I fled like a thief, and I read, without stopping, three hundred tangled, crossed-out, and sometimes illegible pages. I had never consumed such poetry, even in the fine editions of Hugo, Lamartine, or Musset; but friendship is capable of all miracles. Besides, they were good, his verses. The family was wrong not to print them, there were some sublime ones; perhaps a little obscurity in the philosophical pieces like Doubt, Where am I going? To the first who carried the cross. The descriptions of the desert were sparkling; the scenes of Arab life lived and stirred. In the Fantasia, one could definitely hear the gunpowder speak; the Diffa of the great chief was treated as lavishly as a page of Rabelais. And what abundance of heart in the pieces: To my mother, When I was very small, You will love me! But the flower in the basket was still half a dozen little idylls, reveries, rhymed caresses intended for the young woman who is going to be married tomorrow. Hélène, Beaux jours, Notre petit jardin, Fratri futuro, are all little masterpieces that I read and reread through my tears. When I had emptied the box, I returned to Léopold’s, even if it meant waking him; I wanted the second volume. I didn’t wake him, because he wasn’t asleep. An unpublished poet is on the grill when he knows he is being read and judged. My word? I had judged, and I told him bluntly: You are a man of genius! I think that pleased him; he began to declaim the second volume to me himself. This one seemed even more beautiful to me, because Léopold read with rapture. And imagine how pleased I was to see that the last piece, a true masterpiece, was addressed in full to his friend Karl Brunner! If I ever get my hands on it again, I’ll have it engraved in gold, on marble; but the family kept everything, and probably burned it all. It was their right: they inherited. The whole night was taken up with reading, and when dawn appeared, we wanted to breathe the fresh air more than go to bed. All this poetry fermented in my head; I would have rhymed myself for nothing; I shouldn’t have been distrusted. Listen, I said to Leopold, you’ve had me since yesterday evening, you belong to me for the day: each in turn. They’ll saddle two horses for us, and we’ll reconnoiter the plain. I want to see if the first rays of the sun are as sweet as the first rays of glory. We will return together to take a bath and have lunch at my guesthouse, then you will go and take a nap at the three palm trees while I organize my little party for this evening. I want the Champagne to solemnly baptize the great poet of Biskra! The poor child laughed at my enthusiasm, but deep down he was as mad as me. My program was followed point by point. During the day, I recruited ten comrades to make a full table. An old Spanish woman, famous for her cooking and her kindness, lent us her house and peppered the stew. I had my soldier rob all the wine and draught merchants who poison the oasis, and I invited the least tanned dancers of the famous tribe. A month of my pay was left there, but Too bad! The friendship festival had to be an epoch-making event. We were in the early days of Ramadan, that Lent halfway between fasting and feasting; but I can tell you that that evening the most magnificent sheiks did not indulge as much as we did. From five o’clock until nine o’clock, we drank and ate as if absinthe had dug a chasm in each stomach. Finally, the punch made its entrance, the bowl was lit, the lamps and candles were extinguished, Mother Méného filled the twelve glasses and said to me in her dialect: Señor, las niñas estan aqui. “Wait!” I said to him, “I have a toast to propose first. Gentlemen, the Turco has just completed a great work. What is it? You will know later ; but you can take my word for it when I swear that glory is at the end.” To the health of the Turco, our excellent comrade! To his glory! To the immortality that awaits him! My guests were so heated that this speech seemed emphatic to no one. A generous hurrah answered me, the glasses were brought together , and so vigorously that one of the twelve broke; it was the Turco’s glass. I can still see the stem of the cup between his long fingers, people of all types of bodies, and his poor face lit by the livid flame of the punch. At the same moment, the door opened, and Roland, from the zephyrs, showed his head. Come, gentlemen, he said, the assembly is about to sound; we mount our horses. A tumult of questions answered him. What? How? Where are we going? What for? It’s a farce. He told us that the Beni Yala had revolted in the Aurès, that taxes had been refused, that three spahis had been killed by treason, and a convoy pillaged. Perhaps it was an accident without consequences, a simple boiling of fanaticism at the beginning of the Ramadaan; but they wanted to cut off the evil at its source and punish the rebels without giving them time to organize. The general’s order was formal; we were leaving in an hour. So it was true! We were going to do a bit of campaigning! Surprise and joy half sobered us all. We congratulated each other, we shook hands; the candles were relit, everyone adjusted their drinks, Roland emptied a glass at random, and everyone took a shot. Come on, I shouted to the Turco, who remained glued to his chair and still pale. From that moment on, I rushed about my business and didn’t have a minute to worry about him. The whole town was in motion, and without noise, which doubled the originality of the scene. Soldiers were running, Arabs were dragging their camels or donkeys, orderlies were passing by with the requisition mules. I only made a leap to my lodging, where my soldier, the faithful Baudin, was already pulling the trunks into the middle of the room. The packages packed, the canteens stuffed, the luggage tied on the mule’s back, the edge of my saber checked, my revolver primed, my belt tightened and my gaiters buckled, I had aged an hour without noticing the passage of time. Have you noticed that the clock doubles its pace when we come out of a good dinner? Yet it is not the clock that has been drinking. There were eight hundred of us on foot in the courtyard of the fort. Ten licks discreetly indicated ten o’clock; The silence was only broken from time to time by the stamping of a mule or the neighing of a horse. The roll call was made in a low voice, by the light of a lantern. What precautions to surprise the Arabs, whom we never surprise, because they always have spies among us! I went to my post, to the general. He was on horseback in the middle of the courtyard, riding crop in hand, cigar in mouth, as calm as if he were going to the Bois de Boulogne to tour the lake. He received the note stating the strength of his troop; he dictated an order that the adjutants wrote from his dictation and that the captains went to read to their companies, grouped in a circle. You know this patriotic refrain: Soldiers, rebels on foot, your comrades slaughtered and betrayed, French domination threatened, the honor of the flag to defend! Your general is proud to command you, and the fatherland counts on you! It is always the same tune and the same words; but as the tune is just and the speech well-founded, the effect has not failed once since France has been France. The soldiers pocketed the speech right in the heart: if they do not respond with shouts, it is because discipline opposes it; but the murmur which circulates in the ranks proves sufficiently that one has not spoken to the deaf. The straps are finally adjusted, the girths are tightened, the infantryman throws his rifle on his shoulder, and one is made to the right. I told you that our column was composed of about eight hundred men; we left at most four hundred at Biskra. We had two companies of the center, one of riflemen and one of zephyrs; one hundred men of cavalry, both chasseurs and spahis, forty of artillery and train, and one hundred and fifty of goums. The general marched with the advance guard; He had thrown away his cigar as a good example, for on night marches noise and fire are equally forbidden. I was at the chief’s disposal, and the Turko was not far away; it was precisely his company that had provided the advance guard. On the way, I approached him. Well! I said to him, here we are. You are happy, I hope? “Yes, it is an outcome like any other. I prefer to get it over with at once . ” “Get it over with! Are you mentally ill? This is your career as a soldier that is beginning, while you wait for other successes. ” “I am willing; you know me: I am not a man of premonitions; but this order to leave came in stupid circumstances. You were talking about immortality, and I was thinking of death. ” “That is very witty! And I predict that you will be superb in combat and that you will return covered in glory. Who knows, moreover, if we will have to deal with the enemy?” These revolts in the Rhamadan are flashes in the pan; we go out of our way to put them out, and we find nothing but ashes.
    –As you wish. –But shake it off, damn it! Who built me ​​a soldier of your kind? –It’s better, thank you. I was still a little under the influence of the letters I wrote. –I only write one on these occasions. I say: Mama Brunner, we’re leaving on campaign. We don’t know how long it will last, you might be without news for three months; but don’t worry, I give you my word of honor that nothing will happen to me. –I, he said, left a four-line will and two letters that you will carry yourself, mind you, one to my mother, the other to our little Hélène. Chapter 3. You all know, or almost all of you, what a night march in an unknown country is like. It is neither cheerful nor picturesque. The column unfolds like a blackish ribbon against a black background. The beautiful colors of the uniforms are extinguished; all the joyful sounds of battle have given way to a kind of murmuring silence through which one can distinguish the footsteps of the men and the discreet vibration of the iron. A tumbling pebble, a stumbling foot, a stifled curse, these are the incidents of the road. We resemble monks in procession rather than heroes on campaign. And if the thought of death crosses your mind, you are quite inclined to envisage it as a monk. I read, I don’t know where, that if battles were fought at midnight, the brave would be rarer. This is somewhat true, not that courage has its source in vanity, but man is only all he is if he is in possession of all his senses. The best-tempered morale is not enough. To go gallantly into danger, you need quite a few things. It is in the fullness of life that man is most willing to sacrifice his life; it is in broad daylight that we charge cheerfully upon the cannons, the bayonets, and all the pleasant devices which serve to take away the day. Now it was eleven o’clock in the evening, the moon had set with the hens, and the stars only served to emphasize the dreadful thickness of the night. I therefore allowed myself to be invaded by the ideas of the good Turk, and I began to break a crust of melancholy on the go, while walking near him. In those invisible mountains, whose every step brought us closer, there were rifles loaded with bullets; we could bet for sure that our column would not return in full. For whom were the bad numbers in this lottery? For Leopold? For me? For both of us ? The lads who have faith are happier than the others: they imagine that a prayer deflects the projectile! But college takes away a little of this element of consolation from us. I won’t tell you that fear seized me; it was my ninth campaign. However, I began to think of a thousand old and dear things that I was not sure I would see again here below. I saw Mama Brunner with her silver glasses, knitting in her hands, her elbow on the window; and the old house painted red, and the number 1640 written on the keystone , and the Auberge des Trois Rois opposite, and the church, and the beautiful hall of the town hall, and the 16th-century well, and the pharmacist on the square, the one with such a pretty daughter and such marvelous chests . I saw again the gazebo of our vineyard, and the grape harvest of 58, the last I did with Gretchen, that is to say Marguerite Moser, my cousin from Barr, who was still a real child. In short, my naughty memory reminded me of so much and so much that I felt myself becoming quite stupid; my heart seemed to have gone dull. I would have given a hundred sous to hear the first shot of the Arab sentries, because then you know what you have left to do, and you no longer have time to worry about nothing. At midnight, the general ordered a half-hour halt to wait for the stragglers and to readjust to the men and animals what the march had disturbed. I dispatched my service in two stages, and I set out to find Leopold. He was a little to one side, alone with his soldier who was emptying a can over his head. Ah! little master! I said to him, you are dressing up for the enemy! He replied, snorting like a duck: You are not! Coquetry has nothing to do with the event; it is my health that I am taking care of. All your damned wines have given me a headache that is splitting my skull, and since I will soon have to keep my eyes open… Besides, it seems to me that I am better. I had not only slept off this unfortunate feast, but forgotten it: I thought it was six months away from us, and we were only three hours away. I felt remorse for having almost intoxicated an innocent man who was not of our strength. If only his head or legs would fail him because of me! But this ablution did him good, and me too. Around two o’clock, we arrived at the slopes of the Aurès. A gorge opened up before us; it was the first enemy gate: it was guarded only by five or six Roman building blocks. The general prides himself on a bit of archaeology, like so many others: he had visited these great ruins; but he no longer knew if, from the foot of the mountain, one could see the villages of the Beni Yala. Do you understand? The question was to know as soon as possible if the enemy was waiting for us, if he had taken care to guard himself, if there were fires lit among the tribe. An Arab guide pointed to a perfectly invisible peak and said: The villages are there, they are asleep. A spahi of the Beni Yacoub swore his great oath that the villages were hidden behind two hills, and that one would not see for an hour whether their fires were lit or extinguished. For greater security, the general ordered a second rest. Ah! we are no longer in this beautiful Europe, where armies travel by train and come to pick up at the station! Delays are inevitable: excuse those in my story. The men load their rifles, we tighten our leggings, and at two thirty, we are off! We plunge into the unknown. A torrent flows at the bottom of the ravine: we take the torrent, that is to say , we go up it at a slow pace, on a path traced by Arab mules . At every moment, we must pass from one bank to the other: the path is traced in windings. We get our feet wet, we slip, we fall, but no one stops: the whip drives the animals, duty whips the men, and we go ahead for a good hour, mouths sewn shut, eyes on the lookout, noses in the wind. Bang! a flash of lightning flashes on our right, the detonation follows, and a tremendous cry responds. It’s a Turk from the vanguard, the tall black person who was just now bathing Leopold’s head. His shoulder is shattered, and he’s howling like a million jackals. The general pushes to the wounded man, I follow him, while twenty men, bayonets forward, beat all the bushes in the vicinity. No more Arabs than on the hand, that’s the usual; but on the other hand, the first one who sets foot on the plateau shows us on the horizon three villages lit up as if for a ball. The enemy was keeping a marvelous guard, and it was we who were surprised. Halt! said the general. My children, we no longer need to wear mittens. Since we are expected there, there is only one precaution to take: that is to arrive there all, and as fresh as possible. He has the mass of rocks where we were surrounded, forms a company of skirmishers, three by three, to avoid surprises, and says to the rest of the troop: Rest, dry yourselves, warm yourselves, make coffee, smoke your pipes or cigars, unsaddle your mules, give them something to eat, sleep if you like, but everyone must be ready at seven o’clock in the morning! A truly brave man, this general, and magnificent under fire! But his ear was split in ’65. The old ones must let the young ones through, who are not always worth their salt. When I had supervised the execution of orders, given my accounts to the old chief and dipped half a biscuit in the coffee, it was after six o’clock, and it was broad daylight. I returned to the wounded man, who continued to groan, although Marcou, our assistant major, had dressed him perfectly. I had him put on a cart, and sent him back to Biskra, in the company of three feverish people and a mule who had left half a quarter of his skin in the ravine. Have a good trip! I was at this point when I saw Léopold running up as fast as he could. He wanted to say goodbye to his poor Bel Hadj and slip him a few louis in a handshake. He seemed proudly revived to me, the young man. Was it sleep, was it the coffee that had restored him to himself? You have never seen a soldier more proud and more ready for danger. He walked with a brisk step, his eyes shone, his nostrils fluttered. Well! I said to him, migraine? “To hell with it! In my life I have never felt as well as today.” –You remind me of an old soldier who treated all illnesses with… guess what! –With gunpowder? –Bravo! –Yes, it’s a fine remedy, and I want to prescribe it to all sick hearts . Poetry doesn’t cure you, it gently coaxes you to your ills; it’s a pact with pain, a bed of roses where the wounded man lies down, saying to the public: Come pity me! Prayer, they say, has infallible effects; but to pray one must believe, and not believe half-heartedly, like our hesitant and troubled generation. No, I don’t have faith strong enough to console myself with God. I would have to silence the objections of my mind, suppress the best of my being, sacrifice the half that thinks to the half that weeps. Friend, long live the battle and its valiant consolations! Danger blows through life like the north wind in the sky: harsh and pure, and sweeping away all the clouds! There was a little emphasis in all that; I believe, however, that you would have found pleasure in hearing it. He jumped abruptly from one idea to another, like a colt that has broken its lead rope. Do you know, he said to me, that without battle our profession would be stupid? “By Jove!” I said in my turn; “but you forget that without battle we would never have had the idea of ​​inventing soldiers. ” He understood that he had said something stupid, but he was not a man to be put off. “What!” he said, “don’t you feel that we would be the most unhappy and the most ridiculous of men without this divine quarter of an hour?” walking around doing nothing among working people, carrying weapons, that is to say instruments of destruction, in a society where everyone strives to produce! Hearing it said every year, in all the discussions in the chamber, that we are a luxury item and that we could scrape a few million from our bread! Passively obeying our leaders, when the bayonets of the National Guard have the conceit to think they are intelligent! The last time I dined with my poor father, he mocked us a little more by saying that military life can be summed up in two words, brushing oneself and waiting: waiting for the stripes, waiting for the epaulette, waiting for the ribbon, waiting for seniority, waiting for the choice of superiors and the kindness of Monsieur and Madame la Maréchale, waiting for the bullets and the cylindrical-conical bullets, and when one can no longer take it, after thirty years of this job, waiting for retirement to go and plant one’s cabbages and finish where one should have started! “Yes,” I replied; “but there is a day that redeems the troubles, the miseries, and the pettiness of this life; it is when, instead of brushing oneself, one brushes the enemy; when, instead of waiting for glory, one runs toward it through a thousand deaths. On that day, my dear father, the soldier you mock becomes the equal of the gods! I was right, Brunner, I guessed the hour that was about to strike! Poor little Turco! He was so sincere in his enthusiasm, these bursts came from such a warm heart, that I did not know how to contradict him. He disarmed criticism; I found him terribly young, and yet I was moved. There are times when a bad pun, worn to the bone, becomes something respectable. However, I could not help telling him that a soldier running at full speed is not yet quite the equal of the gods.” You wouldn’t find an Olympus big enough to accommodate so many people. We are the equals of nine or ten million brave people who have gone into battle for their country since France became France, nothing more. Do you think Leopold accepted the correction? Him? Never. He maintained as firmly as iron that we were gods of the first volley. For after all, he said, to be a god is to serve men without their knowing it, without showing yourself to them, without expecting any reward, and that is precisely what we are going to do this morning. Does France see us? Does it even know that Charles Brunner and Leopold de Gardelux are walking in its honor in the gorges of the Aurès? Supposing it learns one day, can it give us the equivalent of what we risk for it? I defy it! Well then! We are going to fight for its beautiful eyes as paladins have not often done for their mistresses. It’s ten minutes to seven; the homeland is waking up, stretching its arms. The peasants are going to their plows and the masons are heading to the building site, but my mother, my sister, and all the pretty women of Paris still have their noses in their pens; all the gentlemen of the club and quite a few shopkeepers are resting between their sheets. Out of thirty-six or thirty-seven million individuals who populate this good France, there are perhaps not two who will think of us during the day, and we, my old Brunner, are going to have our bones broken to prove that this people is great, powerful, and invincible, so that the territory and the name of the French are an object of universal fear and respect, so that no man of any country passes by this tricolored rag without taking off his hat! Now tell me that we are not gods, you big beast! I felt that nerves had something to do with this overflow of gaiety, but I took care not to tell him. Gaiety, even exaggerated, is a good introduction to these kinds of affairs. In an old soldier, courage has the right to be calm and even sad; I prefer it to be a bit like a mentally ill person in twenty-year-old children. Come on! I said to him, I have business with the general, are you still vanguard; go find your men; I’ll meet you up there, at the first Arab village. See you this evening, child! “Up there,” he replied, pointing to the villages, “the child will cut himself a manly robe with saber blows from the enemy’s burnouses.” Always a little rhetoric: what do you want? The heroes of Aboukir and Marengo were almost as ridiculous as he was. The column set off at seven o’clock with all the usual precautions. The general ordered us to avoid the torrent and follow the lower sides of the valley, which widened before us. Every hour , we halted to relieve the riflemen and flankers. This monotonous and tiring exercise continued until noon. Shall I admit to you that my eyes closed at times? It had been forty-eight hours since I had slept, and this night of marching had fallen untimely on a night of poetry. The sun beat down heavily on my head: he’s an Arab at heart, that old scoundrel of a sun. Our men mopped their faces with their sleeves without slowing their pace: they went to the fire with a good appetite, as always, but they would have preferred to be carried away by it. Not the slightest bit of song in the ranks; a silence that could cut with a knife. The Arabs, for their part, were meditating. Their three villages, which disappeared and reappeared one after the other, according to the movements of the terrain, gave no sign of life. The general wore out his spyglass without discovering a burnous. Suddenly he stopped and said to me: Brunner, I think we’re there. Nobody move: I’ll go and see. With that, he cut us short and threw himself, with no escort other than his bugle, into a small wood of cork oaks. This copse crowned the slope we were climbing. We remained halfway up, seeing nothing at all, but perfectly hidden ourselves. Ten minutes later, a few detached rifle shots, then a rather nice pop, proved to us that the man had predicted correctly. Our goums and our spahis were grappling with the enemy. The general was not long in coming back down. His eyes were shining and his cheeks red; I said to myself: everything is fine. He ordered the groups to form and the soup to be made. We rested, cooked and ate to the sound of a well-delivered fusillade. Our grand guards did not have time to be bored while we lunched to their health. I emptied a mess tin borrowed from the infantrymen’s ordinary, and the soup woke me up a little. You know that sleep replaces food; I have often found that the reverse is true. While the general had the baggage, sacks and animals that would remain under the guard of a company gathered, I climbed to the heights and got a glimpse of our battlefield. The three villages are opposite, staggered one behind the other. Only the first is defended by a kind of temporary fortification: a simple slash of olive trees. When we have taken that one, the other two will be ours. We have to descend a kilometer-long slope, cleared by an old fire, but which is beginning to be covered with myrtles, carob trees, and mastic trees. No serious obstacle until the bottom of the valley; our men have swept the road: I see a hundred French and allied cavalrymen struggling in the background against the enemy riflemen. The terrain represents a long strip of meadow strewn with clumps of trees, the smallest of which hides one or two men. Our spahis, our hunters, and our goums are tracking this cursed game and stabbing everything they encounter. Our turcos are already on the opposite slope and climbing the hill. Imagine a staircase where each step is a dry stone wall: as many floors, as many orchards, and Arabs behind all the trees. Discipline is not their strong point: they are grouped here, scattered there. We see white masses swarming everywhere where our soldiers seem to be gaining ground; the effort of the besieged shifts every minute. They retreat, they advance, each floor is taken and retaken in turn. I do not distinguish Not the women, but they are part of the party. You! You! I hear the cries of encouragement they are throwing at their men. What are you doing here? the general said to me in his harsh voice. At the first shot, these bad guys from Alsace are no longer good for anything…
    “Except fighting, my general. ” “That’s exactly how I understand it. Patience, Brunner! There will be enough for everyone! ” That said, he divides the troop into two columns, he puts his howitzers into battery, and there we are, tumbling down the path of glory. You can imagine, my dear friends, that I am not the man to tell you the story in detail. For those of you who have seen the Crimea, Magenta and Solferino, the capture of Djebel Yala would resemble a prize-giving ceremony in a boarding school for young ladies. However, the sabers cut as elsewhere, the bullets made their holes, and no plugs had been put on the points of the bayonets. An Arab, less stupid than the others, guessed that my horse would hinder me for the climb; he did me the favor of killing it under me. So there I was, climbing like a monkey with the common martyrs. If sleep had seized me during this climb, I believe it would have done me irreparable harm; but how could I sleep in the midst of music that surpassed by a hundred cubits all the cacophonies of Wagner! The shells flew rumbling over our heads to burst in the midst of the groups of burnouses; the rifles crackled, the bullets whistled as they passed and crackled as they ricocheted off the stones; the rockets crossed the space with a solemn rustle; The bugles, with their biting voices, sounded the rally or the charge, and the Arabs of both sexes gave out cries to frighten, if anything frightened the French soldier. I remember passing through a first village, then another, and seeing them blazing behind me like two people of dry wood. At the third, the soldiers were about to set fire when the general arrived, cigar in mouth, on his little black horse. Where had the beast found paths? That is what we never knew. Bunch of imbeciles, said the great chief, if you burn these huts, we will sleep under the stars! The fact is that our tents had remained a good two leagues from there, at the very least. So here we are camped, at five o’clock in the evening, on the summit of the Djebel. The position was good, we fortify it in two stages; I organize the posts, I place the guards, and my work is no sooner done than I drop onto the first mat I come across, in a corner. I had my eyes closed for four minutes, when an idea woke me with a start: And Leopold? What do you think of an egoist who goes to bed without knowing whether his friend is dead or alive? I get up, furious with myself, and I leave the hut, saying to myself, “Nobody of any kind of body.” The village was full of soldiers who were eating, smoking, sleeping, or pillaging, according to the particular tastes of each. I meet a Turco who is carrying a skin of oil, a bunch of onions, and a newborn kid. Hey! rascal! Do you know your lieutenant, M. de Gardelux? “Sidi Turco? besef! ” “Is he wounded?” “Makasch. ” “Is he dead?” “Makasch morto. ” “Where is he? ” “At home.” “What is he doing? ” “Sleeping. ” “Since he is neither dead nor injured,” I said to myself, “and since he is sleeping peacefully under a roof, friendship allows me to do as he does.” With that, I returned to my lodgings and began another nap. I took more than one that night, for the landlords we had evicted expressed five or six times their intention of terminating our lease. Around four o’clock in the morning, I resigned as a snorer: I was only half rested, but the house was no longer tenable. My poor body seemed literally covered in fleas. Have you noticed that these animals have a preference for blond ones? So I go to shake my cattle in the open air, and I am shown the hut of Leopold. He was writing on his knees, in front of the door. Well! I said to him, you see that one doesn’t die from it. He held out his hand to me, closed his writing desk, and threw his blotting paper into the house, onto the beaten earth floor. Let’s go for a walk, he said; the landscape is superb, seen from here. “It’s really about the landscape, my good man! Let’s talk about yesterday, about you, about us, about the battle, about the victory! You’ve received your baptism of fire, my good man, and you can look in your mirror, if you brought one, at the glorious face of a victor! ” “Bah! For a military promenade! ” “Too modest, my good man! It’s a fine feat of arms; the Moniteur de l’Armée will tell it. Are you pleased with yourself? Were you one of the lucky ones? For there’s a lottery even in battles. What did you do? What did you see? What did you feel?” –First, a horrible fear of being afraid. –Known, young man, and then? –And then very little. –You felt that by doubting yourself, you had shamefully slandered your father’s son. Anger rose to your head, and as one must strike on such occasions, you took revenge on the enemy. Is that it? –Just about. –And even then? –Nothing salient. –That’s already very nice for a boy who was in the vanguard, and who, as far as prunes were concerned, had the best of the best. Come to the company muster. –What for? –By Jove! To hear the order of the day. He blushed like a child caught with his hand in the jam, and used as an excuse this letter to his mother which he wanted, he said, to be sent off by the first departure. I went away all thoughtful, and I wondered, seeing his resistance, if he did not have some weakness or some hesitation to reproach himself for. Ah! Yes indeed! The first name that came to my ears was precisely his. The general thanked the troops for their fine conduct; he pointed out some acts of courage and particularly the heroism of Second Lieutenant de Gardelux, who, alone, had gone to recapture from among the Arabs twelve men of his company who had been imprudently engaged. Another feat of battle had been accomplished by the same officer on the same day: he had entered the fortified village of the Beni Yala first. You can see me from here; I did not listen to another word, I ran to his hut. He was still writing! I blew his papers into the air and overwhelmed him with nonsense. Ah! That is how you treat your friends! You mocked me like a beggar, like a hypocrite! So that’s why you refuse to come to the rally! You knew there would be no praise but for you, you bad rascal! Ah! You fought like a lion, and you’re afraid to hear it said! And you almost made me doubt your courage, you rascal of a hero ! I spoke, I shouted, I cried, I kissed him and I punched him , in the good old Alsatian way. As for him, he was completely pale, and he watched me with wild eyes. Forgive me, he said to me; I wasn’t quite sure… I didn’t know if the things that happened to me corresponded to what is meant by an act of courage. That’s why I didn’t dare follow you there, because after all, if the general hadn’t said anything about me, I wouldn’t have dared to cry out about the injustice; but I would have felt something like disappointment. “There was no danger: the general is just, and he knows his way around men. ” “Come on!” he said, “I must go and thank him. ” “You have time; he must be in bed: yesterday we had a hard job for a man of his age. ” “Then let’s take a walk; I have ants in my pants. ” “You’re proudly happy, if you only have ants in your pants.” I collect his papers, it was the least I could do, and we go wandering together. All the comrades we meet come to him, shake his hands, and congratulate him on his debut; he blushes, and I myself lose my composure, as if all his glory splashed me from head to toe. The soldiers salute him with that air which means: It’s not to your epaulette, it is to your heart that I pay homage. Marcou, the assistant major, who was returning from the ambulance, gave us the tally of our losses: eleven dead, thirty-five wounded, ten of them seriously, and not a single one missing, an admirable thing! Without you, he said to the Turk, the Arabs would have nabbed a dozen of our prisoners. The further we went, the more these point-blank compliments suffocated him. He led me to meet the company that was bringing back the bags and luggage. The captain, a poor old man who only had a year left to serve, and not the cross, recognized us from afar and shouted to us: Hey! young people! Didn’t we need to pick the laurels? M. de Gardelux took everything. He blushed even more and went to apologize as best he could. We returned to his house, and he spoke of finishing his letter: a convoy of wounded was due to leave at two o’clock for Biskra. I hope, I said, that you’ll take a copy of your citation to address to your mother? “No.
    ” “Why? ” “Because I’d seem to be writing my own story, and I find myself rather ridiculous without it. ” “It’s right to say that the ridiculous is close to the sublime, since a fellow of your number mistakes one for the other. Well! I’ll have the paragraph copied by your sergeant major, and I’ll send it to Madame de Gardelux… Ah! “If that amuses you! But I write such long letters and my mother has so little time that she perhaps throws away anything that bears the Biskra stamp. ” “But Miss Hélène is probably not so busy! If I sent her the piece in question, would you be angry with me? ” “Do what you please. ” “Take me at my word. Wait for me.” An hour later, I put in an envelope an extract from the order of the day, copied in that beautiful handwriting which is the glory of sergeant majors and sometimes prevents them from being promoted to officers. I added these simple lines in my own hand: Staff Captain Charles Brunner presents his humble duties to Mademoiselle Hélène de Gardelux and is delighted to transmit to her the following text which the modesty of a young hero might have kept hidden . I brought him the open letter and said: Do you want to read it ? “No; if I read it, I might as well write it myself. ” “What! I am entering into correspondence with your sister, and you are not curious to know what I say to her? ” “Fool! I don’t know you then?” The words sank deep into my soul, and the fool threw his arms around his friend’s neck. The general kept us shut up and quiet all day; But, the alerts having succeeded one another from hour to hour during the night, a strong reconnaissance was carried out the next day. The enemy moved away or became quiet; for a week, the expeditionary column held its positions without being disturbed. Our soldiers spent their time cleaning the three villages, that is to say, razing the houses and cutting down the trees by the base. We call this making an example. The village above was quickly transformed into a pretty little fortified camp, and everyone admitted that the tent was decidedly more comfortable than the hovel. But while we lived quietly and without thinking of harm, the movement was gaining ground around us. The scoundrels we had driven from their homes had spread to the neighboring tribes. An old one-eyed marabout, whose mistress was a woman from the Beni Yala, began to preach the crusade and found echoes everywhere. It is astonishing how the echo spreads in the mountains! Tribes as big as a fist gave themselves importance by refusing to pay us aman. The most idiotic rumors came to the aid of the rebellion. The newsmen of the Aurès are as inventive and as brazen as ours. It was even said that the great sheiks of Africa had come to besiege the Sultan of the French in one of his castles, and that he had gotten out of the situation by giving them back Algeria. In short, two weeks after our victory, we were well and truly surrounded, and our communications, even with Biskra, cut. Reinforcements could not be long delayed, but they had not arrived, and, for triumphants, we were not exactly at ease. The general had all sorts of qualities, but patience was not his dominant virtue. He decided to strike a blow. The tribe of the disagreeable old marabout, the Beni Schafar, very warlike and quite rich, were five leagues away. One fine night, we were all gently awakened; the column slipped between the mountains, and at eight o’clock in the morning we were engaged. The day was not bad: fifty men were killed, a superb village was burned, and half a dozen offensive returns were repelled ; but it was impossible to camp on the battlefield. We had wounded to bring back and baggage to collect on the way: the general decided that we would go and sleep at home. Everyone thought the matter was settled, and everyone was in a good mood, except for the Turk, who, relegated to the rearguard, had not had the opportunity to show himself. I mocked his ambition a little, and I rattled off all the proverbs appropriate to the occasion: appetite comes with eating, but it is not every day a celebration; do not be upset : good things come to those who wait, and so on. To return to Djebel Yala, we had a real Aurès road: a long way up, a long way down, not a single kilometer on level ground, besides a beautiful country. I rode with the vanguard, to the left of the general, in a torrent flowing over white marble pebbles. We had before us a whole ladder of peaks crowned by Djebel Derradj, this burgrave powdered with snow. There was no hurry, and the ground was explored with all the more meticulous care as the day began to fade. Come on! the general said to me, I think we’ve got it. Good work, Brunner! In an hour, we’ll be in our tents; before three days, the Beni Schafar… A heavy line of fire stopped him dead in his tracks in mid-sentence. The Arabs were falling on our rearguard; we could hear not only their shooting, but their shouts. The old man swore, and turned back, shouting at us: “Go on!” When a great leader tells you to go, there’s only one thing to do; but the French soldier doesn’t cover a quarter of a league in ten minutes when he hears his comrades being shot behind him. We advanced slowly, each officer pushing his men, and furious at not being able to leave them there. Sometimes the firing stopped, and the matter seemed over; but the detonations resumed in fits and starts. In the meantime, night fell, the difficulty of the road complicated the doubt that paralyzed us. The column had not stopped since its departure, and it had been marching for nearly five hours. The infantrymen did not complain, but we could hear them puffing. We did not know what to do; none of us dared to take it upon themselves to call halt! Finally the general joined us, and his first words were to invite us to rest. While the soldiers broke ranks and sat down by the roadside, the officers ran to seek news . All is well, said the general: since I left the rearguard, I have heard nothing but a little gunfire, and that was a good half hour ago; but we were close. Decidedly, Brunner, your friend the Turco is a tough man; I compliment you on that. Little appearance, but a hell of a lot. He will go far, this boy: he is educated, he is brave and he is happy. Bullets respect him; he frightens death. I saw him work with a saber and bayonet: oh! it was work properly done; he killed two Arabs with his own hand. My goodness! my dear, people will say that I flatter the nobility, like so many other old fools; but too bad! If there is a scrap of red ribbon left in Paris, I will ask the Emperor himself for this little Comrade there. On our way, my children! We won’t be at camp before ten o’clock. The rest of the journey seemed long to me: you can guess why. As soon as I arrived, I had to attend to duty, and I gave it to the devil a hundred times, because he kept me until midnight. Finally, I controlled myself and ran to Leopold’s tent to tell him the great news. Four steps from his house, I heard myself called by a man who was also running, but in the opposite direction. I stopped and asked what they wanted of me. I’m looking for you everywhere, Captain, on behalf of M. de Gardelux. –And I too am looking for him on land and sea: where is he? –In the ambulance, and very sick. –What? Him? It’s impossible! –A bullet in the stomach, Captain. I was the one who picked him up; but let’s hurry, please: I don’t think there’s any time to lose. So we run to the ambulance, and my heart sinks at the sight of these tents topped with a red flag that in the night looked black. He’s here, said my guide, pointing to the first one. I go in and see by the light of a lantern my poor Leopold stretched out on a mattress, and so pale that at first I thought he was dead. He had just fainted after a catheterization. The doctor was on his knees and wiping his hands on his bloody apron. Ah! Is that you? said Marcou. My poor Brunner, you’ve lost a famous friend, and the army a proud soldier. –So it’s over? –Not quite, but there’s no recourse. The bullet came from below upwards; the diaphragm is pierced. Hemorrhage and suffocation will take him away. He’ll be here for two or three hours: wait; he may come to. Besides, a rather gentle death. he will die without suffering. I’m going to see the others: those beggarly Arabs have given me a lot of work today. I tried to hold him back, I begged him to look for something, to invent something, to perform a miracle for the salvation of my friend. He looked at me sadly, shook both my hands and went out, shrugging his shoulders. Then I fell back on the brave boy who had brought me there, and I only noticed that he was wearing his right arm in a sling. He was a corporal of the line; the general had brought him back in passing, with twenty men from his company, to reinforce the rearguard, and he had taken part in the last half of the fighting. He told me how we had had to make more than twenty offensive returns to recapture the comrades who had fallen; three or four more had still been left in the hands of the enemy. He himself had been saved by my poor little Turco; It was with his rifle that Leopold had charged the Arabs. My captain, he said, I swear to you that M. de Gardelux has done impossible things. His tunic is torn and the bayonet of my rifle is twisted. Unfortunately, his foot missed him in a ravine, he rolled backward, and an Arab, hidden behind a mastic tree, shot him almost point- blank. Everyone thought he was finished; we both returned on the same cacolet, and he only gave a sign of life to the ambulance. He asked for you; my arm was bandaged, I set off after you . Admit that I owed him that much! I sent this poor devil back to his bed, and I sat on the floor at Leopold’s bedside. You don’t want me to reel off the series of my meditations, do you? It would be a bit long, my friends, and not funny at all.
    Around three o’clock, I was in a kind of stupor made of pain and fatigue, when I heard someone call: Charles! The voice seemed to come from the earth: it was very close; one is mistaken at least. I took his wet and limp hand, and I said to him: I am here. He opened his eyes wide and looked at me for a moment without seeing me. It’s me, I told him, your friend, Brunner! He made another effort and asked for water. I painfully parted his clenched teeth, and I made him pour a few drops into his mouth. His eyes cleared, his face animated; he recognized me. Thank you! he said. He stopped for several minutes as if this simple word had tired him out. I waited, holding back my tears, and tried to look cheerful. His strength returned; his hand, which I was still holding, pressed mine a little; he took a deep breath and said to me in a low voice: It’s over… I expected it… you know!… A little sooner, a little later!… Never mind! The battle is beautiful… I’ve only lived here, with you… They could have left me here for a while, but… it seems I wasn’t worthy of it… Ah! I haven’t been spoiled on earth. There are only you others… you especially. I took my courage in both hands to tell him that he was wrong to think he was lost, that we were coming back from further away, that Marcou had reassured me about his condition, that before two months he would still be good. Yes, I told him everything that came into my head; but, if I must tell you the truth, I wasn’t great in that role. He stopped me with a small, pale smile that froze the marrow deep in my bones. Poor Charles! Let me say, it’s a bit urgent, you see… You know my life… I forgive everything that has been done to me, I ask forgiveness for all my clumsiness. My watch is here, under my head. You will stop it after closing my eyes, and you will take it to my mother. She will see that my last thought, at my last minute,… do you understand? The locket, you must return it to my sister… yourself! My will is in my room, in Biskra. Send it right away when we are extricated from here. Not the letters! I told you… yourself!… Kiss them. My ring is for Hélène. She will not wear it, but she can keep it in her little jewels. I bequeathed you my weapons and my books, my good old friend. I should have… no, I hope they won’t burn my poor verses. You’ll see them one day or another printed on the shelf of the Librairie Nouvelle… You’ll go to Helder, the two volumes under your arm, and you’ll perhaps spend a good quarter of an hour there talking about me again with one of those who knew me. Is it stupid to die when you might have immortal thoughts under your cap! I’m suffocating! A little more water! I tried to make him drink, but he was seized by such violent hiccups that he threw back the whole mouthful and splashed me from head to toe. Don’t try, he said, nothing’s going in anymore… Oh! I forgot… there are a few thousand francs in my pocket… it’s for the men of my company. Farewell to the general, to the comrades, to my turcos, to the flag, to France, to life, to you, brother!… I’m suffocating… Ah! It’s better! In fact, it was actually quite all right, because the poor boy was no longer suffering. I had become a mentally ill person, and I behaved like a brute. I ran out of the tent, without closing his eyes, without carrying out a single one of his last wishes. I crossed the camp in all directions, I went back home, I left, I went to wake up five or six comrades to tell them that the turco was dead, I made a round of the outposts, and I wandered around like a drunken man until six o’clock in the morning. The idea then came to me to return to the ambulance. I needed to see him again. When I arrived at the tent, the orderlies had already put him out. I found him on the ground, lying on his back: all you could see was his face; The body was hidden, with five or six others, under a mule tarpaulin. I counted eight of these tarpaulins, lined up in a row. In a neighboring tent, we could hear the death rattle of a wounded man. What exasperated me was seeing the pretty new grass that insolently grew green around these unfortunate bodies. The sky was a fierce blue; the implacable sun was laughing. A superb morning for landscapers, but my eyes were burning too much; you can believe that I was not admiring. I don’t know how long I remained there, sitting in the damp marijuana, gnawing the tips of my fingers, and strangely lulled by the last song of the spahi who was dying four steps away. A tap on the shoulder woke me from my stupor. It was the general who had come to do his visit to the sick and his farewells to the dead. He did not address a single word of consolation to me: he knew well that I was not consolable. Captain Brunner, he said to me in a tone of authority, no one will leave the camp until this evening. At seven o’clock, we will go to pay our last respects to the comrades and friends we have lost. There are a few words to be said at their graves, I have chosen you. Return to your tent and get to work: you have little time. Having said this, he turned his back on me and went straight away like a bar to the ambulances; but his voice had weakened towards the end, and from the way he blew his nose as soon as he was out of sight, I understood that he had had difficulty containing himself in front of me. A man of war needs to know quite a few things, and among them the human heart. If that good old man had not had the idea of ​​imposing a laborious distraction on me, I don’t know what nonsense I would have been capable of that day. I wrote and began again my little funeral oration; this took me until midday, and when I had finished it as best I could, I began to learn it by heart and to recite it in my tent. But in the evening, at seven o’clock, when I saw myself standing before this grave, where the body of the unfortunate Turco was vaguely outlined under a piece of coarse canvas, I lost my memory, my speech, and my strength. I repeated the word comrades five or six times in succession, a whole host of ideas began to dance pell-mell in my brain, and not one of them decided to pass through my mouth. I suppose that the most vivid and striking of all was the contrast of this obscure tomb with this military life so well begun; I probably remembered that the day before, on returning to the village, the general had promised me the cross for my friend, because I mechanically tore off the cross that hung on my tunic, threw it into the open grave, and let myself fall backward into the arms of the general, who could not hold back from crying. I do not remember if I returned to the camp on my feet or if the men carried me there like a package. The major made me take a sedative that threw me onto the bed for twenty-four hours. When I awoke, I found more work than ten men could have done: all my friends had agreed to distract me by crushing me. The Arabs, who were not my friends, however, came to an agreement with the others. We were attacked by considerable forces; the alerts, our sorties, the danger, a blow from a rifle butt that split my head, all this did me good. Six weeks after the event, reinforcements arrived from Constantine. To effect the junction, we had to fight a real battle; but our communications with Biskra were reestablished for the rest of the campaign. My letters from France arrived in bundles: you can imagine the joy after such a long deprivation. Fate has strange whims: in this letter, I find a few lines from Madame de Gardelux! This mother, who did not reply to her son, had therefore found the time to write to me! Here is the text of her chicken; I have the original available for fans: Madame de Gardelux thanks Captain Brunner for the good marks he gave to Count Leopold. She asks him to continue his care for this young man whom an impulse has led down a deplorable path, but whose life is of great value, for he is the sole representative of his name. Captain Brunner can count on all the gratitude of his debtors. The countesses have the right to ignore that a staff captain is not a study master and that my extract from the order of the day was not a satisfaction given by me. I will never admit that a military career is a deplorable path; would to God that our young gentlemen did not know worse! Finally, the last sentence seemed to promise an honest reward; it was a little too reminiscent of lost dog posters. I said to myself after reading: Here is a woman who is neither intelligent nor good. It’s starting off rather badly with the Faubourg Saint Germain; but did I have illusions to lose about Madame la Comtesse? This letter is a stroke that completes her painting. I will light my pipe with its satin paper, and justice will be done. I still have a sacred duty to fulfill. Our communications are reopened; the death certificate will be sent; the family will have it three or four days after the minister. Brunner, you must write to these two women to inform them gently of Leopold’s death. It is a hard job to console others when oneself is not consoled at all. Yet I am writing my letter, and I can assure you that it was good, literature apart. The general brings me an admirable page: one would accept being dead to be praised in such terms by a man of that heart and that merit. Our comrades, knowing what was happening, began to write a condolence that was a proud tribute to the memory of the poor Turk. I put everything together, adding the last thoughts I could gather from the dead man’s papers and a draft of his will, the final copy being in Biskra. I mentioned it in a word, promising to send it as soon as possible and speaking of the errands I would carry out myself, God knows when. In short, I did everything for the best, and I am not afraid that anyone will accuse me of having fallen below my duties. The general had placed all the luggage of this unfortunate child at my disposal. I divided the money, four thousand francs, among his men, without forgetting Bel Hadj, his soldier, who was being treated at the hospital in Biskra. His watch had stopped when an orderly returned it to me: I set the hands to the exact time of his death, but I refrained from breaking the movement, although he had ordered me to. It’s stronger than me; I hate destroying something that has cost someone work. It seems to me that things destroy themselves enough, without our putting our hands to it. I tied the watch in a box, and wrote on it the name and address of Madame de Gardelux. I made another package of the little ring with his coat of arms that he intended for Mlle Hélène, another of the papers he had brought on campaign, another of the tunic in which he had been killed. Since the same thing could happen to me from one day to the next, strings and labels were not luxurious. As for the miniature portrait, I thought I was being prudent in keeping it with me. Ivory is so fragile, and the mount was so thin! Mules have a cruelly hard trot; they pulverize three-quarters of what is put on their backs: too happy when they don’t take the rest to the bottom of a precipice! Because we overestimate their merit a little, and their feet are not so infallible. Our Aurès expedition was not over, far from it. The Arabs held firm; we had ups and downs, even after the arrival of reinforcements. That’s what battle is like in Africa: you go out for a military promenade, and you come back after six months. If only you came back with all your men! Marcou has compiled the statistics of our losses: it is not as grandiose as Mr. Chenu’s work on the Battle of Crimea, and it is perhaps more frightening. Of the
    eight hundred men who left under his orders, the general brought back four hundred and fifty-two, a little more than half! What makes me furious is that this unfortunate campaign brought neither advancement nor decorations to anyone. They did not want to tell the public that French domination had been threatened in the circle of Biskra. It turned out that we had toiled for six months for the King of Prussia. Too bad for us! Politics demanded it. My first concern upon returning was to look for the will and send it to Paris. The family notary had gently asked me for it three times, always saying that the Countess and Mademoiselle de Gardelux were too distressed to thank me for my courtesies. I had no need of their thanks, but the style of this notary and His impatience irritated me. The bottom line of the will was known: Leopold gave his sister his twenty-five thousand pounds of income; but what the devil! The family didn’t wait for that money to eat! We took two months of rest; I got back into my habits, I got acquainted again with the segnia who distributes to the palm trees their daily ration of thirty-six liters per head. There’s nothing like swimming to recover from a campaign. Why haven’t they invented baths for the heart? Grief had left me with a sort of dryness and inner irritation; I was hard and brittle in conversation, I bit like an acid, I no longer believed in anything. A good and charming girl who loved me with all her little heart, whom I had loved tenderly, suddenly became indifferent to me, then odious, without it being possible for me to say why. We were almost engaged, her mother is my mother’s sister, our fortunes were perfectly suited, and our personalities even better. Never, since our farewell kiss, had she let a letter go without writing to me. I didn’t answer her so regularly, but she knew I was happy with her letters, she felt loved, and that was enough for her. One fine day, I took a dislike to her; her naive kindnesses, which brought tears to my eyes, began to get on my nerves. I found her mania for sending me the violets of our woods and the vergiss mein nicht from the stream ridiculous and almost improper. If only I had confined myself to mocking her to myself! But I want her to know it, and I find a cruel pleasure in making her suffer. Here I am, her furious correspondent, and I regret that the boat from Philippeville doesn’t leave twice a week, to hurt her twice as much. Man is an untamed wolf: when his ferocity takes over, he needs to constantly outdo himself. This is why murderers give up to sixty or one hundred knife wounds to their victim, who had died from the first. Marguerite first answers me with jokes whose sweetness annoys me, then she lets her pain and tears burst forth; finally the family gets involved: Mama Brunner and Uncle Moser write to me at the same time to ask if I am mentally ill. I was! I respond with a prodigious dissertation on the danger of consanguineous marriages from the point of view of the improvement of races, and I declare clearly that it is repugnant to me to engender little deaf mutes. Thereupon, my poor Gretchen and her parents make a dignified move : they marry her off to a manufacturer from Mulhouse whom she couldn’t stand , whom she had refused three times, and whom she loves passionately today. Lady! I would be lying if I told you I was pleased with myself. They would
    have done me a favor by getting me into some good fight; but in Biskra! The garrison was devilishly melancholic; the comrades yawned at each other’s faces: as for the dancers, those women of boiled leather, they horrified me. My only pleasure, and you will see if it was funny, consisted of burying myself alive in the memory of the poor Turco. I reread his verses, I leafed through the journal of his life: Mr. Pelgas, his tutor, had given him the habit of taking a few notes every night before going to bed. I looked through the too rare and too short letters he had received from his family. That’s how I recognized that my famous note from Madame de Gardelux was not from the Countess, but from Mademoiselle Hélène. The poor child had doubtless written it under her mother’s dictation: otherwise she would have put a little of her heart into it. I could only imagine her as good, witty, and gracious in everything, such as her brother had so often described her to me. I esteemed her greatly, I pitied her a little; I… it was ridiculous, but I was worried about her future. Just think! Such a child delivered into the hands of such a mother! She must have needed an advisor, a support, another Leopold, in a word, a second brother! And I felt strong enough to fulfill this difficult task, with all due respect and honor. We Alsatians have only one undeniable specialty: devotion. We are told to walk, we run; we need our lives, we get killed without saying a word! That is Alsace. I constantly remembered my friend’s plans for the one he called our little Helen, and I looked around me conscientiously for a man worthy of her. If I had found him, on my word of honor, I would take him by the hand and take him to Paris. I said to myself: the family is capable of laughing in your face: but you will have done your duty towards the one who is no more. While I filled my mind with these reveries, oblivion did its little work on me, as Gougeon says. The image of the Turco was fading from my memory, like a photograph left lying in the sun. I felt the moment approaching when this honest and cordial figure would disappear completely from my eyes, and when my old friend would be nothing more than a formless abstraction, a being of reason. Why on earth had I not thought of making a sketch after him in our idle days, I who draw? I trembled at the idea of ​​losing him a second time through oblivion. In this anxiety, the miniature of his sister rendered me a real service. By dint of studying it, I ended up recognizing and extracting from it that certain something in which a brother who is not handsome resembles his sister who is pretty. It is a work that requires time and application, but I had nothing else to do. I began by copying the miniature in watercolor as it was. The more I went on, the more my admiration for the inimitable artist grew. It was impossible for me to reproduce this flower of youth, this down of beautiful fruits faded with dew, this microscopic plumage that touch removes from the wings of butterflies. This portrait made me despair for a fortnight. Every brushstroke reproached me for my ineptitude and my coarseness; I told myself that one must be a woman and a mother to interpret so delicately the beauty of a young girl. Well! Let’s not talk about it anymore. I thus managed by ricochet to find in my memory the figure of Léopold, and I made a mediocre pencil sketch of it, no doubt, but a likeness. All that killed time, but I did not forget that I still had a visit to the Faubourg Saint Germain to make. Only, every time I pictured Charles Brunner entering the salons of the Gardelux, I felt cold down my back, and the roots of my hair prickled on my head. I am shy with women of the world, and one does not change oneself in a day. It wasn’t so much the Countess’s pride that frightened me; no, it was seeing poor little Helene cry. Sometimes I reproached myself for still being in Biskra, when it would have been easy for me to obtain a semester leave; sometimes I proved to myself that it was better to delay this trip. My arrival would reawaken the family’s sorrows : wouldn’t it be better to wait until they were a little consoled? But if I waited too long, wouldn’t these poignant memories that I brought with me reopen half-closed wounds? I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t ask anyone for advice, because I no longer had a friend close enough to share such secrets. I was still feeling my way when General Gerhardt, who is my compatriot and my godfather, suggested that I join him at Sidi bel Abbès. Dulong, his orderly officer, had died of fever; we hoped to have a campaign to do on the Moroccan border. The general’s offer pulled me out of uncertainty: service above all. I therefore left for Sidi bel Abbès, and I stayed there four months waiting for this blessed expedition, which did not take place. My godfather probably guessed that I was working underneath by some idea foreign to the service. One fine morning, after the report, he said to me: I have commissions for Alsace, and you have a semester leave; pack your bag and go. My Best wishes to you and to me. I’m leaving and arriving at the Hôtel du Louvre. Mama Brunner was waiting for me in Obernai. As soon as she knew the date of my departure, she also knew what day and what time we would embrace. It was impossible to stay more than a day in Paris without causing her pain: I was therefore strangled by time; I had to make my visit during the day, or never. I took my courage in both hands, and decided that I would go to Madame de Gardelux’s in the afternoon. Three-quarters of my luggage was traveling at low speed, so I had no civilian clothes; but, although not new, my uniform was still quite presentable. While brushing the tunic, because hotel waiters don’t understand anything about it, I remembered my poor friend’s words: brush and wait! It was a year and eight days since I had seen him die; but, as the news had not arrived until about two months later, I told myself that Madame and Mademoiselle de Gardelux must be in full semi-mourning. I prepared my sentences while counting my packages. There were three small ones: the watch, the ring on the little finger and the miniature; a medium one, the papers; and a person of all body types, the tunic. I took all this down myself, because no one but myself had touched it for a year, and I took a coach in the courtyard of the hotel itself. I gave the address to the coachman and told him to ask for the door; but when we arrived, the door was open, and there were carriages stopped in the courtyard. A valet, braided from top to bottom, opened the door for me and asked me with a slapped air if it was indeed Madame de Gardelux that my visit was intended for. Yes, I told him, and I went through, all encumbered with my poor relics. In the antechamber, I make three or four tall fellows stand up, admiring themselves in the buckles of their shoes. One of them takes off my pea coat, another pretends to want to take my packages, but with a single glance I send him back to his seat. Then I see a sort of little ferret in a black tailcoat appear, who leads me into a first room, then another, then another, and then another, and then plants himself in front of me to say in the most confidential tone: Does Monsieur know that it is Madame la Comtesse’s day? –I didn’t know, but I’m delighted, since it ensures I’ll find her at home. At that I see him looking at my uniform, and my mustache rises . I had my mouth open to say to him: Would you prefer that I come in completely naked? But he immediately resumes his humble air and asks me who he will have the honor of announcing. Captain Charles Brunner… no… Take this card to Madame la Comtesse. I had provided myself with a card, and I had taken care to write after my name: bearer of Leopold’s last farewells. What had stopped me on the threshold was the sound of a great burst of laughter. I did not want to, I could not, enter this salon like the statue of the commander. The black tailcoat carried my message and came back to tell me politely: Madame la Comtesse is very grateful for Monsieur le Capitaine’s visit; but she has some people at home, and she would ask Monsieur to come back tomorrow at the same time. “Reply that I arrived this morning to deliver a message that I swore to deliver personally, and that I am leaving at eight-thirty by the post train from Strasbourg. ” My old scoundrel of an ambassador made another trip and returned. If Monsieur le Capitaine will be good enough to follow me to Madame la Comtesse’s boudoir , Madame can give Monsieur five minutes… I was green with fury. This woman deigned to grant me five minutes, I who would have given my whole life for her son! I enter an old coquette’s boudoir, admirably contrived to distort the light and hide the ravages of time. A minute later, I hear a rustle of fabrics, but a noise comparable to the murmur of the sea: you would have said an ocean of silks stirred up by a crinoline storm. The dress appears: it is mauve. Madame had backdated her mourning to do so shorter! I look at her face, it was smiling and feline: that famous sideways glance of Dubarry at forty! Ah! if only I had been able to say to myself: She is not the real mother of my poor Turco! But she resembled him since she had begun to grow old. I was forced to find him in her, less flattered, but as alive as in the portrait of the little sister. She remained standing, while, standing before her, I explained the reasons for my importunity. So, sir, she said to me, mincing, you knew this poor Leopold? “Yes, madam,” I replied, “and there are not many who have known and appreciated him on earth. ” A cloud passed over her brow. Perhaps I had gone too far with the first word; but she no doubt remembered at that moment that it is not proper to reply to the nonsense of inferiors. She then assumed an air of polite condescension, and said to me in her drawling voice, in which no emotion pierced: Without doubt, he had excellent qualities: his death leaves a great void among us; but also what an absurd fantasy to go and get oneself killed among the savages when one has everything to live happily in Paris? If he had listened to our advice, he would still be in this world. –I know, madame, that you were not in favor of his vocation, for he had no secrets from me, and I am initiated into all the family affairs. I have read all his letters, that is to say, those he wrote to you… She positively blushed under the blow of this reproach. Good! I said to myself, I have made a breach; let us strike again in the same place, and see once and for all if there is not something human at the bottom of this too closed heart! She did not give me time to redouble the blow: her riposte was ready. Indeed, she replied, discretion was not his strong point; he had the fault of opening himself up a little to adventure. And you say, sir, that he had instructed you… –To kiss his mother and sister, then… –Allow me to take the commission as done. Do you not have something else addressed to us? –Yes, madam; here is his watch which he told me to stop at the precise hour of his death, so that his last thought… –Well, well, sir, I understand; the intention is delicate, and this idea could only come to a soul of race. I am deeply touched by it, for it proves that the vulgarity of the surrounding things had not yet rubbed off on this unfortunate child… But the watch is a chronometer of a certain price, if I remember correctly: perhaps it would be agreeable to you to preserve this souvenir of him? –He himself left me the souvenirs he intended for me; It is to you that he sends this one, madame, and I would believe myself impious in accepting it. –Very well. Is that all? –No, madame, you will find here all your son’s papers, the journal of his life, the two letters he wrote to his sister and to you on leaving Biskra, finally his verses, for you are not unaware that he was a poet. –Alas! we have done all we could to correct this little fault. –But he had genius, madame, and it is his glory that I place in your hands. –Sir, perhaps you rhyme too? –No, madame, I am perfect… Here finally is the tunic he wore on the day of his death: it is stained with his blood, and the blows with which it is riddled will teach you with what courage… I said no more, and I paused for a moment on this suspended meaning to study the effect of my sentence. No doubt about it, I had touched a sensitive point in the region of the heart. The chest swelled, the lips grimaced, the eyes began to flicker: there were tears under the rock. Cry then! I cried to myself; prove to me that you are a woman of flesh and blood, made of the same mud as us and our equal in the capacity to suffer! Then I open my arms to you and I reintegrate you, morbleu! into the bosom of humanity! But misfortune willed that at that moment the wheels of a carriage began to creak on the sand of the courtyard. Madame de Gardelux remembered that she was performing and that tears are not appropriate in society. She raised her eyes, and I don’t know what outfit she recognized through the colored blinds of her boudoir. Perhaps also her suddenly cooled reason told itself that a bloody tunic would be an intolerable embarrassment and sadness, and that there was no room for such an object in her rosewood chest of drawers. In short, she suppressed her tears and changed her expression. I saw the stroke of time, and I was about to press the rope, forcing her to see and touch the last remains of her son; but the Countess had regained control of herself: she interrupted me as I was about to tear open the paper envelope, turned her head away with a thousand grimaces while inhaling a small bottle. Oh! she cried, sir, I beg your pardon for my nerves! Take this away, I beg you; do with it what you will: give it from me to some unfortunate officer! “Eh! Madam,” I replied, “an officer is never unhappy, for he always knows what pay he is entitled to, and he regulates his needs accordingly… Your very humble servant! I was leaving, forgetting my other commissions in the bottom of my pocket, and I was already reaching for the doorknob, when the knob turned of its own accord, and the door opened. I recoiled, dazzled, frightened, overwhelmed by a luminous apparition; surprise and admiration made me lose my head, and I cried out giddily: Ah! our little Hélène! Our little Hélène, who was a tall and majestic person, struck me with a haughty look and put between herself and me the space of a curtsy. I corrected myself, I wanted to make it understood that I had said something extremely natural in Biskra, but impertinent in Paris; I stammered out a few words of explanation, of memory, of feeling, and I ended up presenting her with her brother’s ring and medallion, which she took without losing her stiff attitude and her cold expression. My mother looked at me in a way that meant: Will you be long yet? I bowed, I ran away, my pea coat replaced itself on my shoulders, and when I saw myself on the steps of their hotel, I sucked in a deep breath of air and stamped my foot on the ground, shouting: The scoundrels! Was I right or wrong? I’ll leave it to you. No one wanted to argue with such a good fellow, who seemed so deeply moved; but as I left the café I heard Gougeon say to Fitz Moore: Do you want to see a very surprised captain? Pull Brunner into a corner and tell him that for eighteen months he was in love, a mentally ill person, with Mlle de Gardelux. THE ARTISTS’ BALL. Chapter 4. In eighteen hundred… no, no dates! I finished my studies at the Collège Louis le Grand, and I began to note, in classical books , the passages, unfortunately too rare, where the ancients speak of love. A few novels from the Bibliothèque jaune, smuggled in, completed my entirely theoretical education: I was an erudite lily, nothing more. My mustache, after two years of useless solicitations, began to respond to the promptings of the razor. They promised to be black; I speak of them without conceit, for they are white today, after having been red. I expected everything from their growth; I would have been inspired with the deepest disgust for life if I had been told that between the ages of twenty and thirty love letters and bouquets would not rain down on my head from all the balconies of Paris. However, I was not a handsome boy, but I hoped to become so; and I would have arrived there, in all appearances, if beauty were acquired by will, like science, millions and epaulettes. Finally, I have two children out of five who will perhaps be less ugly. One Saturday, the day of Saint Charlemagne, my friends dragged me to the Palais Royal theater. The show had been composed for us: fourteen acts and an interlude! a menu which recalled, by the number and variety of dishes, our person of all body types morning banquet. We
    filled the hall alone: ​​the richest had taken the boxes and the orchestra; the poor little devils like me were suffocating in the stalls. During the intermissions we climbed onto the benches, we stole Laïus, that is to say we made speeches in praise of Sainville, or of Poland, or of M. Odilon Barrot. At that time, M. Dormeuil’s theater was populated by the most admirable artists and the prettiest women in Paris. I add, in parentheses, that the flowers of the time were much more beautiful, the fruits tastier, the wines stronger and the sun brighter than today. The show was gay like all the shows you saw at twenty. How we laughed heartily while plunging both elbows into the sides of our neighbors! How generous tears we wept at the patriotic verses of M. Clairville sung by Mlle Angélina! What ardor was kindled in souls each time M. Leménil twitched his gray mustache! Obviously this man had fought in the Russian campaign and spoken to the Emperor as I speak to you. Anyone who would have maintained the contrary would have been beaten. The fifth play was beginning, and I had just fallen in love for the third time, when Zémire appeared on stage. Everything I had seen, heard, and felt since the beginning of the evening, I would almost say since the first day of my life, was forgotten in an instant. I loved for good and all, and my first idea was to interrupt the show with a marriage proposal. If you were twenty, even if only for a quarter of an hour, you will not laugh at me. It represented a little Caux princess from the country of Matapa. The play, signed by MM. Pétard and Croquin, seemed to me a masterpiece. The rondeau she sang is still etched deep in my memory like the Henriade in the pedestal of the statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. Oh! the lovely music and the joyful poetry! Will the civilized world ever forget this refrain that still makes my heart beat: Gaudriol, it suits me; it’s in my character, But as for marriage, ask my father! M’sieu, ask papa! encore. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he’ll care. By what miracle can it be that I have aged so much, and that these verses have always remained young? I bought the piece to take to school, but it was a useless expense: I knew it by heart! All night my brain read like a cauldron boiling with the poetry of Messrs. Pétard and Croquin. For two months, I lived on memory, neglecting all my studies, and compromising, as if on task, my end-of-year exams. My parents, who had intended me for the École Polytechnique, learned that I was no longer working. They added their reprimands to the reproaches of the principal; I was put in detention until further notice and treated like the lowest of dunces, I who had won the physics prize in the grand competition and the joy of kissing Mr. Villemain! But I consoled myself for all my setbacks by admiring, at the back of my desk, a small lithograph by Zémire, published on rue Coq Héron. During the Easter holidays, chance or Providence finally took pity on me! One of my fellow prisoners, confined like me for the crime of laziness, told me that his father, Mr. de Rongefeuille, head of division at the Interior, wrote vaudevilles under the pseudonym of Croquin. I fell into his arms, and I promised him to work double, to do his homework and mine, if he made Zémire love me. This young man was only seventeen, but his father treated him as a comrade; so he reasoned very learnedly about the private lives of actresses. He sometimes saw dress rehearsals and penetrated even backstage. Perhaps he exaggerated his advantages a little, but he swore to me that one night at a premiere, Mme Grassot had grabbed his chin. What he told me about Zémire, without softening the violence of my feelings freed them from their timidity and made them take a more cavalier turn. The young woman had not been marriageable for five or six years; she lived in the intimacy of an extraordinarily rich Russian, and she had whims. I decided that she would have a whim for me. Rongefeuille gave me her address: Boulevard des Italiens, 87, on the first floor. You see that Russia did things well. I wrote my declaration in good, simple, straightforward prose, with a request to reply to me at the college. PS If by chance the violence and sincerity of my feelings did not persuade you to love me without having seen me, I will pass next Thursday under your windows, at the head of my division. She did not reply, the cruel one! The following Thursday, the college promenade passed under her windows; Zémire did not appear on the balcony. I was beginning to despise her. She must, I thought, have a very vulgar soul to prefer this Russian, who must be old and ugly since he is rich, to a young man of twenty. My head was so stirred that I resolved to present myself at her house and give her a four-point homily against venality of the heart. The youth of the time were made like that, that is to say, so stupid. We found it natural and decent that a girl from the theater should receive money from noble old men as charity and give herself gratis to the beardless. This prejudice has been reversed with time: the beardless ruin themselves, and we love old men who have nothing to give, not even a lock of hair. But let’s move on. I had gone back to work, and I had regained the custom of my Sundays. I presented myself seven or eight times at her house, without being admitted. My comrades, suffused with confidences and saturated with the tale of my troubles, were beginning to surround me with a certain consideration. If it is fine to be received into the intimacy of an actress, it is already quite flattering at school to be consigned to her door. What would be less than nothing for a man of the world is a little more than nothing for a brat. I have seen more than once seventeen-year-old boys boasting of such a small inconvenience that a man of thirty-five would have found simply unpleasant. I also met an old State Councilor who told to everyone and carried as if on a wrought iron misfortunes that a listener would have carefully hidden. Every age has its coquettishness. By dint of climbing Zémire’s staircase and facing the disdain of her chambermaid, I ended up seeing her herself, in person, as she was going out to dinner, I don’t know where. I fell at his feet in the antechamber, crying: Love me! I am Léon! If you cannot have a passion for me, let it be a simple whim! Is it possible that you would refuse me something that would make me so happy? I understand today the full ridiculousness of this argument. However, in the 6th Artillery, there was an ugly and witless officer who succeeded for twenty years with women, for no other reason, no other merit than the immense desire he had to obtain their good graces. Meditate on this point, if you have the time. Zémire had the right to laugh in my face; she took pity on a love that was obviously sincere. My dear child, she said to me, she was seven or eight years older than me, you would do much better to finish your studies. There is nothing in you that should displease, but you are at an awkward age. You must throw away your gourds and let your mustaches grow. Your parents would hate me if I diverted you from your studies. You cannot be in love with me, since you have not been my lover; one desires a woman first, but one only loves her afterward. Besides, I want to be frank, for your sincerity touches me: I love someone. “That boyar, O Zémire! ” “No! Not him.” She waved kindly and went down the stairs with the most coquettish waves. I set off after her, shouting: “Would you love me if I were accepted into the École Polytechnique? ” “We’ll see about that,” she said. “Come back next year.” The next day, I sent him the following verses, my first and last attempt at literature: I am twenty years old! It is the age when one loves, It is not the age to be loved. Ungrateful age! You said it yourself, Ungrateful one with a heart too consumed! My brain boils, my forehead swells, My heart leaps like an elf, In this dormitory where the pawn snores While digesting his old Latin. While I dream of Sunday, Of Sunday when I will wear The uniform too short of sleeves And the oversized pump, To sit at the back of the pit And applaud you, with a tear in my eye, Flower of the sky, perfume of the earth, Star of Monsieur Dormeuil; When my soul takes wings, Flees its cage and flies to you Like the young swallows Whose cradle blesses your roof, What are you doing, my beautiful princess, In this large bed which by turns Is profaned by wealth And sanctified by love? I know well that my poetry was not worth that of Messrs. Pétard and Croquin, but I had done my best, and I believed I deserved a reply. Zémire did not write to me even to mock me. Her autographs were worth three francs at the Hôtel Bullion, and she was stingy with them. I threw myself into work, as another would have thrown himself into the river. The time of the exams approached; I performed feats of strength, and I entered the School one hundred and twenty-fourth on a list of one hundred and twenty-five. Chapter 5. The first time I went out in uniform, I ran to her house. The greatcoat fitted me very well; I no longer had any spots on my face. Add that I was the only one in my class who didn’t wear glasses . The chambermaid took my card without recognizing me and brought it to Madame. Five minutes later, I was shown into a sort of salon which was her dressing room. I was already putting away my new sword, to fall more comfortably at her knees, when I saw a handsome young man, dark, pale and languid, stretched out on a chaise longue. It was the detestable boyar. He was at most twenty-eight years old, and one could name him as one of the prettiest boys in Europe. Just by seeing his face and his hands, it seemed to me that nature had given me a muzzle and paws. Zémire, scantily clad in an embroidered white dressing gown, rose up in her armchair and introduced us to each other: Monsieur Prince D…; Monsieur Léon Brosse. Dear Prince, sir, this is the lover whose pretty verses I showed you. M. Brosse is a young man of great wit, who has just entered the École Polytechnique. I was searching for the hilt of my sword like a man who has fallen into an ambush. The Prince held out his hand and offered me a Turkish tobacco cigarette. M. Brosse, he said to me, you are not only a man of wit, but a man of taste. Zémire is the prettiest woman in Paris. Only, already, she is too coquettish. I advise you to take her seriously as a comrade, and nothing else. “Vânia,” she shouted at him, “you are unbearable. If you discourage all those who love me in this way, I will have the unpleasantness of dying without anyone having killed themselves for me.” I stammered a few words, and began to smoke my cigarette by the lit end, which made them laugh until they cried. It seems to me, however, that I have regained a little composure; but this fifteen-minute visit left in my mind the impression of an atrocious nightmare. The prince asked me who my poetry professors were at the École Polytechnique, and Zémire asked me if we were not planning to make a new revolution soon. I left like an idiot. Both of them politely urged me to repeat my visit. But shame kept me back for more than three months. I felt too ridiculous, and then must I admit it? I was afraid of having done something base by touching my rival’s hand. Every Sunday, every Wednesday, every day I went out, I went to the Boulevard des Italians and I passed under Zémire’s balcony. Once, I saw her at her window, and I hid my face in my coat; another time, I met her almost face to face , and I fled like a thief. At the beginning of February, a hundred posters scattered throughout Paris announced a grand ball for the benefit of the Association of Artists. Zémire’s name appeared last, in alphabetical order, on the list of patronesses. I lost several days reading and rereading it . This innocent pleasure spoke more to my heart and cost my purse less than the grogs at the Café Hollandais. In the end, I persuaded myself that if I did not return to Zémire’s, she would explain my abstention by motives of ignoble economy. I made a bold decision: I had twenty francs; I resolved to go, with an air of indifference, to get a ticket from her. The rest of the sum seemed to me more than enough to send her a bouquet on the day of the ball. A sacrifice all the more generous, in my opinion, since the ball was on a Saturday, and not a day for going out. I steeled myself, and after walking a league or two along the Boulevard des Italiens, I went up to her room. On the stairs, I felt my pocket again to make sure the money was there. She received me amicably in her bedroom; no trace of a prince. I had prepared a short, unaffected speech for the occasion, but she cut me off at the first word, took a large envelope , and pulled out an enormous wad of pink bills. There were so many that I never dared ask for more than one. I put my four hundred-sou pieces on the mantelpiece; gold hadn’t yet been invented. ” Will you only take two?” she asked me with a small pout. I would have given my epaulettes to come to have the means to pay the whole bundle. I stammered an excuse, and I ran away like a thief. I was ashamed to be poor; I believed myself dishonored in her eyes. At all costs, I had to get out of such a false situation. I borrowed twenty francs the morning of the ball, and I sent to the Boulevard des Italiens a magnificent bouquet, with my card. The same day, around five o’clock, the porter of the School sent word that he had something to give me. It was a sleeved box. I opened it; I found my card and my poor bouquet, which I crushed with my foot. I did not sleep all night. The next day, I had the day off; I ran to Zémire’s. She laughed out loud when she saw me come in. Well! she said, did your comrades have a little fun at your expense?
    “Why, my comrades?” –But when they brought your camellias back to the study hall! Admit that the joke was good and that I caught you well! I told her that her cruel joke had struck me in a corner, away from my comrades. It’s a shame, she said. I thought the others would make fun of you a little. I got very angry, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that I was right. Perhaps, however, I went a little too far, for after having sworn never to see her again, I gave her my young man’s curse. Excuse me, I am of southern blood. Chapter 6. Ten years later, I was a squadron leader in the 37th Artillery, there was not a senior officer in the army younger than me. Circumstances had served me; I had taken single-handedly, without the help of engineers, the city of . My name, drummed up in the newspapers, had achieved European celebrity for six months; no one doubted that I was of the stuff from which marshals of France are made. A love affair, divulged in veiled terms by my friend P. de M. in the Revue des Deux Mondes, had added a romantic element to my fame. In short, I was in fashion, and success, as often happens, made me almost a pretty boy. I, not stupid and in good health, held the opportunity by the hair, and I was careful not to let go. I went everywhere where people were having fun; I showed my face to Parisian women of all ranks and I pocketed handsomely love counting the currency of my victories. I was pointed at: here is the famous Brosse, the officer of the future, the gallant knight, the taker of women and cities, Brosse Poliorcète, who has just brought the keys to Paris on a golden platter! One evening, at the Opera ball, while the commoners were not shy about calling me out loud as they passed, a black satin domino, masked with quadruple lace, turned quickly, looked me in the face and took my arm. Good evening, victor! At these two words, I recognized the voice of Zémire. She maintained with great aplomb that I took her for someone else; but I did not give up my idea for a good quarter of an hour while she paraded me through the corridors. Impossible to drag her into my dressing room! After having made a sort of ambiguous declaration, she slipped from my hands like an eel, a rather strong eel, and disappeared. I inquired about her at the Helder; I was told she had an annuity; something like the pay of ten brigadier generals to eat a year. That gal had done as much harm to Russia as Pélissier’s cannons. Well! Each to his own! I turned the weather vane elsewhere and didn’t think about it again for three months. But the day before the artists’ ball, I received a coupon for a seat in box 19, with these words written on the corner: Take and understand. I didn’t understand a thing, but I took it well. I put on black suit number one, enriched with the rainbow of my orders, and, at the stroke of half-past midnight, I made a quick leap from the Helder to the Opéra Comique. It was freezing cold, but I had a fox fur coat. With my coat in the cloakroom, I open the trench in front of box 19 and enter without a fight. Garrison, nothing: I was early. Had someone played a trick on me? There’s no sign of it. A two hundred and fifty franc farce, they hardly ever do those in Paris at those prices. While I waited, I looked around the room, which was superb. The most beautiful actresses in Paris, Rachel herself, in short, everything! While I was strolling around and the other boxes’ lorgnettes were beginning to stare at your servant, my door opened and there was Zémire herself. She was still fine; a little too strong, I told you; love fattens women; it’s like a horse for officers. She had smeared a little on her face, but she was blushing under the plaster; her voice was trembling. She was moved, on my word of honor! She told me a great deal: that she had been ungrateful, that she had misunderstood my love, that I had a fine opportunity to take revenge by scorning hers; that I was a young man and she would soon be an old woman; but that she had sentiment at my service such as has never been encountered in warm countries. During this time, if I must admit, I was not acting too cruel, and I let myself be taken by the hands in the small drawing-room. She stayed more than three hours courting me; it was new, it was flattering, and even, let’s be blunt, it was good. Finally, she told me that she wanted to leave everything for me and ride behind my chariot like a slave. If there had been a notary in the room, I believe, devil take me, that she would marry me in a hurry. I said neither yes nor no, but I took my little ones into account. Now the ball is drawing to a close, when I still thought I was at the beginning; the boxes were emptying, the diamonds were shooting like stars on an August night. I dream of a denouement and I offer a soup. No, she said; you don’t love me enough yet. I want to court you and destroy one by one all the bad feelings you still have against me. In short, it is agreed that I will go, for eight days, to be courted by two or four. The game seemed more amusing than whist; I accept. In the meantime, she wants to drive me home, in a large Brion carriage that she had all year round. I point out to her that I am staying at Vincennes. No matter! I was flattered, truly flattered, that she would come so far for me. She wrapped herself in her furs, and we went down, arm in arm ; she was proud to show me to the people on the stairs, but I didn’t see much harm in it. As I passed the cloakroom, I thought of my fur coat, but the crowd was pushing us, we would have had to wait and especially make her wait; besides, you can guess that I wasn’t cold; anyway, the lady had sable for two; I climbed the step, and off we went! I won’t tell you about our journey to the Barrière du Trône, but you can believe that I didn’t waste my time. Zémire was as catty as a woman can be without saying her last word. Those three- quarters of an hour are among the best of my life. But when she arrived at the barrier, she became dreamy; She told me that she was carrying a hundred and fifty thousand francs worth of diamonds, that her coachman was new, that she didn’t know him well enough to be sure, that she was afraid of coming back alone, at the mercy of this man, from Vincennes to Paris. Finally, she delicately offered to drop me off on the road! I was so stunned that I let myself be dropped off in the snow. Zémire hugged me , made me promise that she would see me the next day, and there I was, trotting to Vincennes in my beautiful black coat, in twelve-degree cold . I arrived frozen at my room, and I was ill for six months. But I consider this accident one of the luckiest of my life, because without my pleurisy of God I would have started to love that rogue again. Chapter 7. Pepper. That was twenty-five years ago; my hair was black and hers… Ah! Monsieur! The pretty little blond head! Our son, the lieutenant, was barely a vague hope; we called her Rosine between us, because we only wanted a daughter. We had been married for three months, soon four; needless to say , we adored each other as one no longer knows how to love today. I must confess to you that my father-in-law, the Marquis, had not exactly thrown his daughter at my head. He could not find me a good enough home, although damn it!… but no matter. He was indeed the best and gentlest man on earth. He grumbled from morning to night against his wife and against Irene, but Irene and the Marquise led him by the reins, that is to say, by the tip of his nose. A Bourbon nose, perfectly made for this kind of exercise. In short, after having spoken twenty times of passing his blade through my body, and he was the man to do it, this scoundrel of an émigré had given me his daughter and his heart with it; he adored me. I can still see the two big tears that rolled down his long cheeks when he said goodbye to us after the wedding, giving us his paternal blessing: an old-fashioned thing that is out of fashion today! I found his expression so funny, so funny that my face contracted as if I were going to burst out laughing and I began to cry like a fool. In those days, there were still stagecoaches, and whatever you say, you never got bored on the highway when you had taken care to reserve the whole coupé. Irene wanted to see Switzerland and Italy: I took her on a little artistic and sentimental trip that a princess would have licked her fingers. The whole summer passed there; the good old father and the marquise wrote to us everywhere the post office had opened shop; and tenderness, attention, advice! Dear children, be good; avoid the brigands; beware of the drafts in the mountains; Henri, take care of her. Good people! Brave people! We don’t make people like them anymore, and they are too far from here for me to go and tell them what friendship, what worship, we keep for them deep in our hearts. I had solemnly promised to bring Irene back to them in September. The Marquis was still shooting without glasses and he paced the plain like no other, on his sixty-year-old haunches. The hunting season opened on the 4th in Lorraine, our lodgings were prepared there, the Marquise wrote to us: I am emptying the castle to furnish your pavilion. But as Irene was a Not very tired from the journey and as we still had a good hundred leagues to go, I decided that we would rest one day in Paris. The stagecoach dropped us off on September 1st, at five o’clock in the morning, in the courier yard. We had to wake the child who was sleeping in my arms, in my coat. The coat! Another thing you have removed without replacing it. The child was Irene; she looked like a little girl of fifteen, although she was twenty, and the innkeepers had called her mademoiselle all along the way. I called her the child; today, when everything is done in the English way, we would say baby. She called me little husband; yet I was already five feet six inches, for I have not grown since the age of thirty. She said it so kindly, dropping the r, and in such a sweet little voice that I felt almost as much a father as a husband. So here we are on the pavement, towards the middle of Rue Montmartre, she barely awake, I rather dazed by the noise of the wheels, which was still rumbling in my head, and without knowing where to find shelter, for we had not yet settled in Paris. The trunks were already on the cab and I did not know what hotel address I was going to give to the coachman. But, she said, opening her large eyes, what if we went to Rue de la Victoire! “Rue de la Victoire? To your father’s? ” “Certainly, since he is not there. The concierge has the keys, we will be better off than at the hotel. For one thing, I have a thousand things to take, and then, I will be so happy to see the house again! ” “By the way! And me too. Coachman, Rue de la Victoire! The Marquis spent five or six winter months there. He occupied a fairly modest first floor with a coach house and stable; It was then worth two thousand francs rent, which is six thousand francs today. As I approached the house, my heart pounded with habit. I had so often stood waiting on these sidewalks! I had stopped so many times to give myself a countenance, in front of the chemist, the furniture dealer and the mirror maker! At five o’clock in the morning, the shutters change the appearance of the shops: I no longer recognized myself. The carriage entrance was open; at the end of the courtyard, I could see a servant in his morning clothes: an unknown figure. The concierge was asleep on the faith of the treaties; his two sons, children of eight to ten years old, were playing at sweeping the stairs: professional education. They seemed very pretty to me, these little marijuana concierges; the faces of children were beginning to interest me. One of them ran to get the keys to the first floor, while a poor starving devil, such as emerges in the morning between the cobblestones of Paris, loaded our trunks onto his shoulders. This one, thanks to God and my dear little Irene, was able to have a good lunch. Do you see me climbing with her that terrible staircase, each step of which reminded me of a hope, a fear, an anguish? This very recent past seemed ten years old to me. I hadn’t been bored during the last four months, oh no! but time seemed long because it had been full. Today, explain this if you can, it seems to me that the twenty-five years of my happiness have gone by as quickly as a dream. I haven’t enjoyed it, damn it! I ask to start again. She herself opened the door to the antechamber with the little key. A frightening clutter: ten people of all body types, bundles of gray cloth, sewn with string and tied at the corners… What the devil is that? But, she said laughing, it’s our household linen. Don’t you recognize my trousseau, people of all body types, stupid? Person of all body types beast was a word of endearment that she often repeated, and which always made me want to kiss her. It’s that the tone makes the song, you see. As for this famous trousseau, it still filled five or six hinged white wooden boxes ; it had been shown to me one fine evening and I had noticed nothing but a profusion of blue, red and purple favors, tied rather nicely and fastened with a million little pins. Lingerie is not my forte. We enter the dining room: it is there that I once won the admiration of the family by a sobriety that was too natural, alas! So you have the appetite of a bird? said the good marquise. The fact is that my stomach was squeezed in a vice; nothing passed. The curtains are taken down; the table, without leaves and reduced to its simplest expression, is fairly dusty; we find there a pile of visiting cards, the reply to our invitations, and a death certificate dated the day after our wedding. It is a distant relative whom Irene knew little. I scan the names mechanically, to get a glimpse of my new family, and I notice that my wife is still registered under the name of Miss Irene de V! Two days after the wedding!… But something must be given to such distant relatives. The chandelier is in a bag; the beautiful walnut and ebony sideboard, surmounted by the Marquis’s coat of arms, is swimming in dust. The silverware that made it creak under their weight has gone to the country; all that remains is a liquor cabinet, inadvertently forgotten and opened by a happy accident. The children are bringing up water, we can make a grog, and I’m thirsty. Here is the grand salon where we signed the contract in the midst of a brilliant assembly. What a party! The chandelier, the candelabras, the sconces, everything was on fire. And the women’s diamonds! My eyes hurt , on my honor. The furniture was of gilded wood and buttercup brocatelle. Today, everything is veiled in gray covers; the consoles are tied up in newspaper; Even the tongs are wrapped in paper like a leg of lamb’s mutton handle. The red carpet and the buttercup curtains, bundled in percale; the frame of the mirrors is extinguished here under a shred of gauze, there under a scrap of paper. The shutters are closed, the day is dull, one feels the cold. We enter the small , intimate salon where I paid court to Irene. It is there that she perpetuated my daily bouquets by miracles of industry. She makes one last a whole week; what do you say? She opens a small piece of furniture and shows me thirty flowers labeled and dated on thirty sheets of white paper. I thus learn that the dear little one has kept a sample of all the bouquets that have come to her from me. But the poor flowers are not only faded; they have gone moldy. Come on! memories are preserved better in the heart than in paper, definitely. Irene closes the small rosewood cabinet and laughingly shows me a desk whose velvet is covered in peppercorns. This desk has quite a story to tell. One day when the Marquise was watching us while finishing some tapestry or other, Irene took a pencil and wanted to draw me the plan of V’s castle. She got so confused in her drawings and explanations that the vigilant mother fell asleep for a minute. Ah! the pretty, the amiable, and the precious minute! It was worth its weight in gold! But why this pepper sprinkled on the crimson velvet? She tells me that pepper has the virtue of driving away animals. I notice in fact that the furniture, the packages, the covers, everything is sprinkled with black grains. And while looking at a pile of paintings and family portraits , I sneeze from the top of my head. It’s the pepper! she says, and we laugh. She then had thirty-two little teeth so pretty, a timbre of voice so fresh and so sweet that laughter seemed invented for her. So I tell you that she gave herself over to the fullest. And she was never alone laughing when I was there. The porter’s children have long since come down, the door is closed, we are at home, and the proof is that we are embracing each other as we run. It had been so long since we had been to ourselves! Almost half an hour! She shows me her pretty room, the same one I entered for the first time after the wedding mass, while my dear little one was finishing her preparations for departure. I remember that that day, seized with a strange emotion in front of all these innocent and white things, I furtively put one knee on the ground and kissed the curtains of the little virginal bed. Today, the curtains of the bed and the windows are in a pile in a corner, with pepper on them. The mattresses and pillows are strewn with pepper; two or three picture frames and a chair have been thrown on top of that. Alas! Alas! She takes the chair and sits down; the poor darling collapses with fatigue. I want her to go to bed; she doesn’t say no, but she claims that I am even more tired than she is, because she slept in the carriage, and I spent the night rocking her. I admit that two hours of sleep would do me quite well, but where to sleep? In her room? Impossible. A bed is always wide enough, but hers would never be long enough for my seven-league legs. We then enter the good marquis’s room: no more curtains, a completely bare bed; all we can see along the walls are bell ropes; the pepper crunches under our feet. We ‘d be happy there, I’m sure, but where can we find sheets? All the cupboards are locked, the keys are in Lorraine, it’s too far away. And my trousseau! she says. And laughs. We return to the antechamber: I rip open all the bundles one after the other . I find napkins, tea towels, the aprons of the cook, the chambermaid, the servant, everything except sheets. Finally I cry victory, she runs up and laughs at me: I had come across the damask tablecloths! But why not? We take two tablecloths and run to make the bed. They are too short, these tablecloths; we would need four. She returns to the source and comes back laughing louder : she found all by herself a sheet of unbleached linen, a little thick, a little rough; a servant’s sheet, but big enough to cover the masters. With that, we shake the pepper from the blanket and there’s the bed made. We trot through the pepper to the Marquise’s dressing room, and after twenty trips back and forth, around seven o’clock in the morning we finally get into bed. The poor child must have been half dead; as for me, I was on edge. Little husband, she said to me, laying her pretty head on the pillow, I ‘m not tired at all. Chapter 8. The opening at the castle. Retreats, September 3, 10 o’clock in the evening. I don’t know if it’s the coffee, or the charterhouse, or simply fatigue, but there’s no way to sleep. All those fellows have been in bed for an hour; The snoring of the great friend shakes the partition of my room; the pretty friend who sleeps above my head blows peas by the bushel; the lord of the Retreats, our host, must not have talked long with Madame, because the poor little woman had walked four hours in the plowed fields, and could not stand it any longer: her long brown eyelids fell every moment over her beautiful eyes, like blinds whose cord has broken. We did not, however, make stages of ten leagues, but when one has pampered oneself for nine or ten months in the armchairs, the sofas and all the upholstery of this sagging century, one becomes more sensitive to physical pain. Modern civilization has taken such precautions to eliminate fatigue; cars and steam replace our legs so advantageously, machines do the work of our arms so well, that a nice walk on the plain and a few shove of the rifle against the shoulder leave a stiffness in the best-built fellow. This is what will always maintain a respectful distance between the army and the National Guard. My old friend Eude de Granfort came to pick us up yesterday at the station in… Last year he gave himself a magnificent green omnibus, harnessed to the post; the green and red postilion’s outfit enhances the coachman’s good looks and gives the crew a little festive air. Everyone was punctual. This is not the first time that we are opening here, not the second, not even the twentieth. Let’s see: in what year did we eat our last beans, at the Durand pension? It was, by Jove, in 1838. Granfort had just inherited from his father, the lieutenant general. We were his inseparable friends, Balézieux, d’Anglure and I, and we all sensed, with a certain melancholy, that life would separate us for a long time. My friends, said good Eude, let us swear that every year, whatever happens, we will open the hunt for the Retirements! We swore. The best part of it was that at that time none of us had ever hunted! Ah! the pretty new rifles! And the good fancy dogs, bought, without any government guarantee, on the Quai de la Ferraille! The hunting album , gilt-edged and illustrated with grotesque drawings, has preserved the memory of our first exploits: we killed a crow on September 1st, and on the 2nd a hare lying in wait. On the 3rd, I was king of the hunt! I had slaughtered a defenseless rabbit and a hen coming out of the nest. Despite the modesty of these beginnings, we all became better than passable hunters; Eude especially, who lives six months on his land. Circumstances have dispersed us, as was only too expected. Balézieux, the great friend, is a tax collector in the South; d’Anglure, the handsome friend, is a judge at the tribunal of the Seine; still handsome, moreover, and more of a man of the world than ever. His robe removed, he rides his horse in the courtyard of the Palace, and takes a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne. I am a master blacksmith, and the least fortunate of the four; you know that things are not going well. Finally! But I like to note that since 1838 none of us has missed the call; none has arrived later than the opening; none has taken leave before September 30. Is that nice? We sometimes spend half the year without seeing each other or writing to each other; no matter. We know that all hearts are strong at the post, and that we will find again, at a given moment, the warm handshake and the old camaraderie of the college. Eude writes to us regularly on August 20 to refresh our memories; we do not respond; we rush. This year, the invitation was not a luxury. Our friend got married, and, just yesterday, we did not know his wife. He spent his honeymoon in Italy; he was still in Naples in the middle of August; we could have believed for a moment that he had forgotten us; but no. I The Château des Retraites is famous in the department; They didn’t do much better under Louis XIII. Brick and stone, the style of the Place Royale. A large building of moderate height, all long; twenty-five windows on the facade. In the middle, two stories topped with a pediment, then to the right and left, a simple ground floor surmounted by a terrace; at the two ends, to finish, two pretty octagonal pavilions. All the outbuildings, stables, sheds, etc., are invisible, carefully hidden in thick clumps. The park has been redone in the English fashion: lawns, blocks of greenery, flower baskets, all on a grand scale and in masses. These scoundrels of old nobles, who have always lived in the same place, naturally possess ancient trees that an upstart would not have at any price. The room I like best in the house is the vestibule. Nothing could be simpler and more grandiose at the same time. Weapons, hunting trophies, a stately staircase leading up to the apartments on the first floor, oak stools in abundance, a table laden with bottles, newspapers and cigars: this is all the furniture and decoration. Old friends have taken a liking to this marble-paved paradise; they gather there before meals; they drink absinthe after returning from hunting, and coffee after dinner. Two large glass openings reveal, to the right and left, two landscapes of the park. The interior doors lead on one side to the dining room, the library, the study of dear Eude, the offices and the kitchen; on the other, to the billiard room, the two lounges and the pavilion of old friends. The dining room is all carved wood; the ceiling itself is cut into coffers in old oak beams. I always recognize on the dressers, amidst a jumble of artistic treasures, an old Japanese dish that seems to be looking at me. It is the sole survivor of a splendid, almost royal service, which we massacred in 1838. What kids! We were taking our last vacation. I have allowed myself a few holidays since then, but I have never been able to rediscover that perfect security, that freedom of mind, that carelessness about the future, which makes school holidays so precious. The small living room is white from head to toe, except for the curtains and the upholstery of the furniture: white woodwork up to and including the cornice; the wood of the armchairs and sofas is a matte white. The draperies, on a white background, display garlands of large exotic flowers: it is an ancient Persian pattern, printed on canvas. There is not an atom of gold on the walls of the great hall: a phenomenon to be noted; this simplicity of good taste is becoming rarer by the day. The woodwork is inlaid with oak, sometimes light, sometimes black, carved here, polished there. The family portraits embedded in the woodwork are safe from removal; the house would have to be demolished to move them. The beveled mirrors are one with the wall; one can guess from every detail that the founder of the castle felt at home , and that he did not foresee the invasion of another family. The Granfort coat of arms is sculpted in the marble of the fireplace, as it is engraved on the silverware, cast in lead on the roof and cut into the sheet metal of the weather vanes. I am willing to recognize a little vanity in this repetition of the same motif; but above all I find faith in the future, the energetic confidence of the owner who says: Neither I, nor my children, nor my children’s children will move from here. We will forever have male heirs to guard this castle, this name and these coats of arms; none of us will be so foolish and impious as to sell such a firmly established heritage to buy pearls for Nana. Yet this is what one commits to when one has a coat of arms painted or sculpted in one’s living room! The vault, without a coat of arms, is a beautiful azure blue, cut into diamonds by oak moldings. From the six windows hang red velvet curtains under substantial lambrequins, of grand style and sumptuous richness. The furniture is imperceptibly bric-a-brac, following a fashion that is beginning to take hold. The chandelier and the fireplace surround are of the purest Louis XVI style; there are two modern bronze sprays, each with twenty candles, in two old China vases on an admirable Louis XIV console table. The sofas and armchairs sculpted under Louis XVIII, alas! and solidly gilded, are covered with the finest tapestries from Beauvais. The backs represent powder and basket sheepfolds; the seats are filled with very pleasant animals and even, if I am not mistaken, lightly powdered. This is not a collection assorted from the curio dealers, but a homogeneous whole, ordered for the castle and preserved without repair until our time. Why on earth was the wood of this beautiful piece of furniture redone in the heavy and clumsy style of 1818? I am not well-versed enough in the science of auctioneers to catalog the French and foreign trinkets that brighten up this large room, but, in principle, I like furniture made of pieces and bits. Why? Because you don’t buy them ready- made; because the owner has spent time, taste, research, effort, patience on it, currencies rarer and more precious than this person of all types of body, imbecile of money. Add that the variety of objects awakens in us a certain variety of ideas. When I enter a room furnished in a block by the upholsterer, the idea of ​​order and uniformity seizes me and saddens me. As long as the carpets are soft, the draperies rich and the furniture new, my mind remember that all this must have cost a lot, that I could not spend so much money without bothering myself for eighteen months; that business is going badly, and a hundred other melancholic things. Will it be said that it is jealousy or small-mindedness? No, because intelligent and diverse furniture, like that of the Retraites, will never sadden me, even if it were worth a million and I were a hundred times poorer than I am. A work box, a tapestry on the loom, a half -empty bag of sweets and a few other pretty details add a new expression to the physiognomy of the drawing room. One breathes there that perfume that neither Rimmel nor Atkinson have yet thought of bottling: odor di femmina! We let the dogs in there in 1838, and these beautiful apartments retained all autumn a vague smell of kennel. The young Countess of Granfort, I can confess today, made me spend a few sleepless nights in May. Old friendships are jealous; one does not learn without a certain emotion that a comrade of thirty has put himself in the power of a woman. It is rare that marriage does not isolate a man, at least for a few years. It is a new intimacy, more absorbing, and which makes one forget the old ones. Our mistresses are only one more bond between us, all the more so because we share them. The old friends had therefore gone into mourning a little for good Eude, when they learned he was married. A young woman whom one does not know appears from a distance as a pretty monster. I speak like an old bachelor, but so much the worse! we speak as we are. The new countess could be devout, stingy, cantankerous, proud, or simply too worldly for us. Well, no! She is a good and brave little person. Not so small: she is almost the height of her husband, who is an average man. Slender and well-built; long extremities, black eye, clean eyebrows, straight nose, mouth a little large, but sparkling with freshness; high forehead, blue hair. Nothing more cordial and hospitable than her smile: she held out both hands to us with the frankness of a good fellow. Gentlemen, old friends, she said to us in the vestibule, I hope that you will allow me to be one of you, and that you will not hold it against me for having settled in with you. She is neither devout, nor prudish, nor stingy, nor too hung on her husband’s neck. Last night at dinner, she did the honors like an emeritus hostess. The food was good, the wines chosen, the service more than adequate. She took care of everyone instead of staying in her shrine, like so many others who seem to say: admire me! Why on earth have we never thought of taking a wife? Eude looks better than we do; Marriage has rejuvenated him. Madame de Granfort drank coffee with us, under this famous vestibule. Her example has drawn the other ladies; there is a large company at the château: twenty-five people at least. All chosen people; I noticed in particular a ship captain of incredible roundness and verve , and a councilor at the court of…, a man truly distinguished by the breadth and variety of his mind. He served for a long time as an examining magistrate: that is what I call a hunter’s profession! He knows all the tricks of the game and recounts his campaigns with a finesse, a simplicity, a precision of tone that left me spellbound. His wife, who was my neighbor, has the stature, the majesty, the natural grace of a forty-five-year-old queen. She is truly beautiful and not provincial for a penny; you find women like that in the provinces. I admired the courage of seven or eight beautiful people who smoked themselves all evening for the pleasure of chatting with us. As far as I remember, the smell of tobacco must be unbearable to those who do not smoke themselves. You will tell me that one acclimatizes after an hour or two, but the annoyance of bringing home, in one’s hair, in one’s dress and lace, the scent of a cold cigar! We are pigs and women are angels; that is the reflection on which I went to bed. Chapter 9. We were woken this morning by hunter’s soup, accompanied by bad news. It was raining, but so hard that we had to stay in bed or hunt in open water. The bad weather wouldn’t have stopped us in 1838, but we’re not twenty anymore, we’re starting to take care of ourselves; the pretty friend sometimes complains of a coldness in his left arm; I, for all types of body, have a toe that swells, for no apparent reason, two or three times a year. Besides, Madame de Granfort said last night that she intended to open the hunt with us. She had a rifle mating made for her, light as a feather, and a hunting outfit that would make Diane burst with anger. I ponder these reasons as I open my bedroom window, then I see a glimpse of blue in the sky and I buckle my left gaiter; then the blue disappears, I take off the gaiter, and I go in my shirt to the house of the great friend who has closed his shutters and put his head under the pillow. Everything carefully examined, I go back to bed and sleep badly, in ten to fifteen minute bursts, until the first bell of lunch. The sky has cleared. We will get wet, that’s for sure, but we will be able to hunt in two hours. I dress like an old hunter: the canvas breeches , the blue blouse, people of all body types, shoes, gaiters and all. This outfit is allowed at lunch: only, we will put a square rug under our chairs to protect the floor from our nails. While I am putting the finishing touches to my outfit, I hear two or three gunshots in the distance. Come on! the hunt has begun despite the bad weather; we will not have the first one. We sat down to eat at eleven o’clock. Here is the attire adopted or invented by Madame de Granfort: musketeer’s coat in blue cloth with gold buttons, seams stitched with yellow silk; Scottish skirt of very strong plaid, pleated in fustanella; red cashmere petticoat; ecru leather shoes, English rope gaiters; long red foulard tie; Scottish cap adorned with a red parrot’s wing. This profusion of red would frighten me a little if I were game, but it will look good in the landscape. We always eat too much lunch in the country; we set out hunting around one o’clock. The weather was fine, decidedly; we barely received two or three grains in the afternoon. Each of us took his weapon under the vestibule and slipped into his pocket about twenty cartridges. It is not much for an opening, but the game porters who will follow us at a distance are responsible for a small supplement. We pass by the kennel, where the most beautiful concert greets our arrival. The hounds, housed separately, give voice like handsome devils stretching their beautiful heads between the iron gates. Poor beasts! Their turn will come in a few weeks, when the woods and the park are a little cleared. We have four pointers, including a bitch: Mars, Tom, Phanor, and Mouche. Mars and Tom are two superb animals, large, strong, and admirably uncoupled. The first belongs to our friend from Anglure, who brought him from afar and paid dearly for him. Despite all the guarantees that seasoned his passport, this Mars is a mentally ill person who will never be worth much. He dashes into the plain like a schoolboy on vacation; he hears neither voice nor whistle; I even believe, between us, that he does not smell game. However, he made a magnificent stop, three hundred paces from his master, and he held his position with the almost military solidity of an English pointer. Alas! it was a lark! Tom, the great friend’s dog, is almost as childish, but he is a child who promises more. His master took him at the last moment, to replace an admirable beast that had been cut in two by an express. But an expert and resolute hunter like the great friend would train a lamb, a cat, even a hare. He set about training Tom vigorously; he tied him with a leather band bristling with nails inside; from this device of repression hangs a ten-meter string that Tom carries everywhere with him. Let him forget himself for a moment: the great friend puts his foot on the string and the spikes of the collar make themselves felt. Tom is at a good school, he will get used to it. My old Phanor has the vulgar profile and the thick nonchalance of a little black pig. He is neither tall nor handsome; his big head, sunk into his shoulders, gives him a vague resemblance to Mr. V., of the French Academy. But he has the best nature in the world, twelve years of experience and, if I dare say so, an excellent education. Infallible flair, slow and measured search, point firm as a rock; he has everything that makes a good hunting dog, except the legs. He tires quickly, and after five or six days, he requires twenty-four hours of rest. As for the little Fly, I am forced to do her justice, although she does not belong to me: she is a jewel. She is white, spotted with fire, but white with an ermine white, and neat as an old priest’s servant. Her form is slender, delicate, cute, almost feminine; her manner would make a cat jealous; she enters into oats or clover like Madame de M. in a drawing room. She stops wittily: Look, look! she seems to say, raising her paw, there are partridges here? Partridges, my good friends, please wait a moment, Mr. and Mrs. de Granfort, my masters and yours: their Lordships have a score to settle with you. When the company has taken flight, she raises her head and says: Let’s see! How many will fall? I bet on at least one. If nothing comes up, she doesn’t spend five minutes searching with the obstinacy of those ill-trained dogs who , so to speak, underline the master’s clumsiness. She goes back to the hunt and pretends not to have heard anything. When the piece is dead or injured, Mouche picks it up with the tips of her teeth, brings it as it is to madame, discreetly wiggles her tail, and waits for a caress that she is not long in waiting for. The only fault of this charming little creature is an almost morbid susceptibility. The slightest reproach offends her, she takes the slightest observation amiss. She is more sensitive to criticism than the famous writer M. Feydeau, or the illustrious painter M. Couture. She would readily say with M. Ingres: a spoonful of gall is more bitter than a hundred barrels of honey are sweet. I have seen her leave the hunt over a rather sharp remark and sulk until evening at the gate of the castle; for she is not lodged in the kennel. She deigned to hunt the next day, but first she had to apologize. The Retraites hunting grounds, I mean the plains hunting grounds, are divided into two parts. They include the castle lands, which are at most two hundred hectares, and the lands of the neighboring communes, which are about a thousand hectares. The communes are rented by Granfort and a wealthy industrialist from the neighborhood. You understand why the hunt begins with the communes: as many partridges killed, as many taken from the neighbor. The frightened companies go to look for a shed on the castle lands, where we will have them all to ourselves. This morning, unfortunately, the plain was already quite stripped: only a few clover, some vetches, and a fair amount of oats remained standing . Clover and vetch can be trampled with impunity, but oats are another matter. It is strictly forbidden to enter; it is even imprudent to bring dogs in. At the end of each furrow stands a peasant shod on his right which he calls his drouet. These fellows have a tincture of the code and several other books. They know ready-made phrases, and harangue, if necessary, the hunter who tramples them. Do you know well, sir, that the comings and goings of your dog will make the harvest impracticable? It is an exorbitant abuse, a covetous and feudal maneuver! We are citizens, sons of 89 and the children of our works; we have worked to wrest this modest harvest from the ungrateful soil; do you find it fair that the sweat of the poor plebeian be trampled by a luxurious quadruped? Alas! alas! great simpletons of city dwellers that we are! It was we who invented these phrases; we spat them into the air without thinking that one day or another they would fall back on our noses! Between us, I am certain that the passage of a dog in the oats does not cause a cent of damage, especially after the rain. But I find it excellent that the inhabitant of the cities reaps in the fields the rhetoric that he has sown there. Besides, these peasant lawyers and smooth talkers are not at all intractable. They open a wide beak as if to swallow the hunter and his dog, but what does it take to close this dreadful chasm? A ten-cent piece. The lands of the communes are a long, rather narrow plain; a pretty country road borders them from one end to the other; also the hosts of the castle and the ladies themselves follow the hunt without getting their feet wet. With each successful shot, with each partridge that falls, applause and shouts reward the hunter. For me, an old beater of the plains, the finest reward for a well-aimed shot is the pleasure of seeing a ball surrounded by feathers, small or large, quail or partridge, fall like lead in the stubble. The quail have not yet emigrated, the partridges are large and strong, except for a covey of unfortunate roosters that were massacred in detail, under the pretext that they resembled quail. The resemblance has claimed many victims, from Lesurques to these roosters. Hares are rare this year; it is believed that the forensic scientists in clogs will have set a few snares. The fact is that our rifles harvested little hair and a lot of feathers: three hares in total out of forty pieces of game. This is an unusual proportion, at least in the country. All the details of the hunt were curious, new, and extremely interesting, for both actors and spectators: that is why I refrain from writing them down. All dramas in which gunpowder is used are made to be seen; they lose ninety percent when read. If I were to tell you that I missed a hare at point-blank range, or killed a partridge at 150 paces with number 9 shot, or that a corncrake endured a frightful fusillade without flinching, or that a dismounted partridge sank into a patch of clover no bigger than a hand, and that neither the hunters nor the dogs together could find it or bring it out, these incidents of enormous importance, which moved us all, would perhaps leave you cold. The young lady worked marvelously with her single-shot Lefaucheux rifle. Not to mention five or six pieces that she killed half-heartedly and that French gallantry awarded her in her own right, she brought down a rail and a partridge all by herself; that’s nice, when you don’t have the resources to double up. I know good hunters who only kill with the second shot. We had, on the flank of the army, a remarkable fellow. He’s an old gentleman who doesn’t hunt, being too lazy to carry a gun, but who follows the hunt with ardor, carefully notes the sheds, points them out with loud cries, leads us there himself, and covers more ground in his afternoon than our four dogs put together. A man of wit, moreover, he compares himself to those amateurs of thirty and forty who aim the shots without playing. Despite a few boils, we didn’t get back until nightfall. Absinthe was waiting for us in the dear vestibule, with all the known aperitifs, bitters, curaçao, vermouth and the rest. Then everyone went to their bathroom and found in the large earthenware pots an ample supply of hot water. We washed, we dressed; forward with the black coat and the white tie! The dinner bell rang, the ladies came down in a file in light-colored, low-cut dresses, and we gave a forkful more formidable than our one hundred and fifty or two hundred gunshots . The roast quail and rails, an exquisite first course, was not Devoured, it is drunk, swept away like nutmeg. We always dine well at the Retreats; the tradition is maintained. But how early they fell asleep! Myself… ah! Sacrebleu! We were resting from the hunt by dancing all night with the peasant women, in the year of grace and youth 1838! Chapter 10. All Paris. Our whist had just ended and I was counting the cards when a poorly stifled sigh diverted my attention. It was pretty Mrs. Feuerstein, the wife of that enormous deputy controller of mortgages, who was raising her eyes towards the chandelier while folding a newspaper. Was it the serial, I said to her, or some news item, which had the good fortune to move this little blond soul for a moment? She blushed like a child caught in the act, and replied, with that slight accent from across the Rhine, which deliciously colors her every word: Nothing of what you think. I only thought that if a fairy’s wand transported me this evening to the Theatre of the Fantastic Cockchafers, I would see at a glance all that is great and illustrious in Paris! And, as I looked at her with visible amazement, she reopened the newspaper, blushing even more, and put her finger on an advertisement wording thus worded: Today all Paris has gathered in the adorable candy box of the Fantastic Cockchafers, to applaud the new masterpiece of our sparkling Ducosquet, the Enchanted Barley Sugar, a revue of the first three weeks of 1864, performed by M.
    Léopold and the elite of the troupe. M. Feuerstein, oh! that man! ran up with an elephant’s step to see what we were reading together. He deciphered the advertisement with the slowness and gravity of Angelo Maï reading a palimpsest; then he began to laugh heartily, and shouted in his horrible German voice that mixes potato and shoemaker’s pitch with every word: Le Zugre t’orche enjandé! Za zera gogasse! Marguerite looked at him gently, without reproach or contempt: she is so good! My friend, she said to him, it is not the comedy that I regret, but this assembly of great men and illustrious women who will be there to applaud. What a feast for an enthusiastic soul! The orators! The philosophers! The statesmen! The great artists! The poets above all! All of Paris! Oh! Paris! She sat back down, blushing. No, never on the left bank of the Rhine will a woman of twenty-two blush as beautifully as she! I don’t know what secret sympathy made the blood rise to my ears at the same time . If ever, I replied, our excellent friend Feuerstein decides to take you to Paris, I will show you a first performance like this evening’s, or even a finer one. I will show you what is called, in advertising style, Tout Paris; but know, from now on , that your curiosity will be a little disappointed. –However, if we were this evening at the Théâtre des Hannetons Fantastiques, we would see… –Who? –First, the Emperor and the Empress. –No. I can assure you that you will never meet them there. –But the ministers, at least? –No more. The ministers are too busy to run around to little parties of this kind. You will not meet there any Excellencies, nor senators, nor councilors of state, nor anything that touches the official world. –There is the Opposition. –The Opposition goes to bed early. I would bet a hundred to one that neither M. Jules Favre, nor M. Ollivier, nor M. Picard have ever set foot in the Hannetons Fantastiques. As for M. Berryer, M. Marie, and M. Thiers, I am sure they do not know, not even by name, this pleasant little theater. –So the political world is not part of Tout Paris? –He is careful! –To tell you the truth, I am not too sorry. I would give six ministers, twelve senators, and twenty-four deputies for a philosopher like M. Littré or a novelist like M. Renan. –I also warn you that M. Littré is not a pillar before the scenes. You will not meet him any more often at the Hannetons Fantastisques than M. Guizot at the Café Mazarin. Write in your papers that the philosophers and scholars of our time, no more than the politicians, do not meet at the gatherings of Tout Paris. –And the artists? –Are you talking about the artists? They are found everywhere. But neither M. Ingres, nor Delacroix, nor Horace Vernet, nor Delaroche ever frequented these small family gatherings. Meissonier, the youngest of the greats, lives in Poissy. Rossini only sees the world at home; he goes to bed at nine o’clock. M. Auber spends his evenings at the Opera or in society. Félicien David hides in a hole to escape the ovations, and Gounod runs around Europe to meet them. –But then Tout Paris is the world of men of letters, exclusively? I would not regret the trip, oh my friend! If I were given the opportunity to attend the gathering of so many noble minds! George Sand, Lamartine, the Dumas, Alphonse Karr, Augier, Sandeau, Ponsard, Théophile Gautier, oh heavens! –Just a moment! How you go! Madame Sand lives in Berri twelve months of the year. Lamartine, when he is not in his vineyards in Saône et Loire, shuts himself up in his apartment, rue de la Ville Lévêque, where he works like a convict. Victor Hugo is you know where; Alphonse Karr makes bouquets in Nice; Dumas père edits a newspaper in Naples; Dumas fils is cloistered in Neuilly with Théophile Gautier: to attract them to Paris, you need an affair of state, or a service to be rendered. Ponsard has made his nest in the Dauphiné; Jules Sandeau, the best and most modest of men, lives in retirement in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Flaubert and his friend Bouilhet hardly move from their Normandy; M. Labiche devotes himself to high culture in Sologne; M. Prosper Mérimée spends all his winters in Cannes; Octave Feuillet lives in Saint Lô, Émile Augier prefers the gatherings of real society, where he is much appreciated, to the crowd of Tout Paris. “But,” she interrupted with a smile, “what crowd are you talking about? There’s no one left.” The husband added shrewdly: “There’s no point in hiding, there’s no one to be seen! No one to be seen! That Alsatian is inept, definitely. Don’t you understand , oh barrel of sauerkraut, that the absence of all our great men increases the interest of these gatherings a hundredfold?” If the real politicians, the real philosophers, the real scholars, the real artists, the real writers or even the real rich – which is a very small thing – were gathered under a dome, we would not be at home there, but at theirs. The Hall of the Fantastic Cockchafers would no longer be a candy box, but an academy, a prytaneum, a pantheon, an Olympus! With what front would you approach your orchestra seat, if you risked crushing Mr. Viennet’s hat or Mr. Cousin’s august horns in passing? Would you dare to burst out laughing at Mr. Léopold’s stunts, if you felt on your right the illustrious elbow of a Pereire, and on your left the interesting knee of a Rothschild? You would make yourself very small and withdraw into yourself, for fear of offending men whose person is worth a gold louis a strand, like the feathers in Mascarille’s hat. Madame, I replied to Marguerite, the little world which in French is called Tout Paris and in slang the Paris of the firsts is something light, sparkling, smoky and elusive like the foam that crowns a glass of Champagne. Our most illustrious chemists, from Lavoisier to Berthelot, have seen this strange compound from afar, no one yet has subjected it to analysis. It is an association of four or five thousand people, gathered by chance, brought together by a gust of wind, but more difficult to disperse, more solid at their posts than the 40,000 men of the Imperial Guard. The Company owns some famous buildings in common: the asphalt of the Boulevard des Italiens, the alley which runs around the lakes in the Bois de Boulogne, the strip of grass where the cars are parked, around all the racecourses; a sidewalk on the Champs Élysées; the steps of the Conversation in Baden-Baden. Its income is poorly defined: there is talk of considerable liabilities among coachbuilders, seamstresses, and tailors; however, gold rings in every pocket, and, wherever one goes, tips fall thick as hail. The front seats, occupied by this special public, always cost ten louis or zero centimes: no middle ground. But whether the box is given away or sold, a small bench is always rented for double what it cost when new. This crowd is made up of very diverse elements, but one can, by country, divide it into four categories: the aspirants, the déclassés, the viveurs, and the observers. The aspirants are those who would like to be famous, or millionaires, or simply first-class prefects, without it costing them any work. Some hope to pick up an idea from the crowd like one picks up a pin in the cloakroom of a grand ball. The fact is that Parisians, a prodigal and distracted people, sow more ideas in the corridors during a single intermission than would be needed to fill five and a half acts. The aspiring playwright wanders around the hall like a gold dust gleaner around a working mine . He flatters himself that after a lucky harvest, a kind chance will provide him with the opportunity to strike up a deal with M. Grangé or M. d’Ennery. With this generous thought, he wishes the play that is being performed a death wish: make way for the young, damn it! He would whistle with all his heart, but he limits himself to murmuring and shrugging his shoulders, because the author, who knows him without knowing where from, has given him a ticket without knowing why. His neighbor, another aspirant, aims more directly at the solid. He is a young man capable of everything, like all street drummers. Give him a job as secretary general in coal, rags, or frying; appoint the director of a subsidized theater, or prefect in the suburbs, or receiver general on a major railway line , he is ready for anything and even capable of everything. It is the fear of undermining his universal aptitude that keeps him away from work and specialization . If he were particularly capable of something, one would believe that he was only good for that, and the field open to his ambition would no longer be unlimited. But what opportunities does he hope to encounter at the theater of the fantastic Cockchafers? All of them! Or at least a hundred times more than he could find in salons or antechambers. To approach a financier or a statesman in his office is to take the bull by the horns. He is on the defensive, armed from head to toe against the kindnesses of the solicitor. To attack him in society, in the middle of a grand ball or an official reception! That’s a hundred times worse. Go and coax a man who is yawning inwardly away from his mistress, near his wife, in the middle of a syrupy ocean of compliments, banalities and nonsense! On such occasions, the rich financier or the great statesman does not show his horns: he is too well-bred! But at the first word that smacks of petition, he bristles with imperceptible little spikes, and whoever rubs against them is pricked. Better, then, to take advantage of the decree of Providence which has permitted that all these people of all types of body, gentlemen, be doubled by so many pretty girls: they are obtained through their friends, who are the ornament of all Paris. Now, while the pretty aspirants are spouting blandness and candied chestnuts, in the semi-official boxes, an equal number of pretty aspirants, seated in the balcony and gallery, are brooding over five or six heads from the orchestra, as bald as ostrich eggs. These children still have their teeth and their hair; but the eight-spring carriage and the diamonds have not yet come to them. Each of them puts her candor on display and smiles innocently at the future, but if one could put one’s ear to the door of these young hearts, one would hear a loud voice crying: Where is the senator, the Vice Admiral, the stockbroker who will change me from chrysalis into a butterfly? Am I not worth that old pastel X…, or that big fishwife Z…, or the famous Y… , who has completed her third set of teeth for more than twenty years? How unfair! We only arrive by rank of seniority, in this Paris hovel!… My friend Cob, the person of all types of sportsman bodies, compares this corner of the world to a weighing enclosure, where one meets pell-mell jockeys in fresh jackets on eager colts in a hurry to run, and the muddy, dismounted, exhausted, broken-in riders. The downgraded young or old, some of them thirty years old, make up a good quarter in the crowd. Playwrights who have been in vogue, journalists who have had wit, financiers who have had credit, women who have been fashionable, artists who have been successful, directors who have had a theater, gentlemen riders who have had horses, in a word, all those whom the wheel of fortune has deposited on land after having raised them, rarely end their days in the river. They prefer to plunge back into this joyful and benevolent whirlpool that is called Tout Paris. They find there a renewal of gratuitous distractions, mechanical handshakes , modest but tolerable good fortunes; they even discover from time to time a few louis to borrow. It is as if this rabble, which feels itself living from day to day, likes to attach itself to the past by a few fragile ties. Men have a certain consideration and women a certain good will for those who have been something. They are given love and friendship at preferential prices, as with old clients with whom one does not want to break; because after all, they have contributed more or less to the prosperity of the house. This favor is so obvious that more than one clever person has exploited it for his own benefit: we have seen false declassed people, who had never belonged to any class, and who recommended themselves very usefully, my goodness! of imaginary disgraces. That scoundrel V. robbed me shamefully, said Miss SS. He had himself presented to me as a dismissed sub-prefect, and he has never been anything but a notary’s clerk in the provinces! As much as this world is envious, pitiless, atrocious with people who dominate it from too high and lend nothing to bite, it is just as tolerant and kind to those who have let it take hold in some place. Birth, beauty, fortune, even talent, that unforgivable crime that only death excuses, you will be forgiven everything, as soon as anyone has the right to pity you or to lightly despise you. Redeem your superiority with some shame or some misery; all of Paris will acquit you. It is not demanding, it does not ask the impossible; it only wants the right to say when speaking of you: that poor so-and-so! Be deceived by your wife, or spend your nights gambling, or drink enough brandy to get a red nose, or lose the habit of washing your hands, or simply steal a hundred-franc note in such a way that no one is unaware of it: at this price, the indulgence of Paris is yours; you have paid the price. No one will contest your merit any longer, no one will be asked to put you in the Pantheon while still alive, because everyone will know precisely what advantage they have over you. This is how I explain the special favor enjoyed by the declassed. Everyone wishes them well, because they no longer cast a shadow on anyone. Their wit is praised, all their words are quoted, because the Parisian declassed pays his dues in the theaters by making words against the author. They are applauded in the foyer, they are surrounded, they are offered services; it is a question of who will lend them a hand to raise them up, because it is almost certain that they will never rise again. Sometimes, however, one of these declassed people mounts his beast again and takes off at a gallop, to the great astonishment of the gallery. He finds a place or makes a new fortune under the noses of all Paris. On these occasions, which are quite rare, everyone applauds, no one is jealous. We console ourselves for seeing a man pass by in a carriage, when we can say to the neighbors: I knew him without shoes. The third series is made up of people who are having fun. A few gentlemen of great houses, one of whom, a young man of great wit and courage, has made himself almost as popular as the Duke of Beaufort. These people hardly do anything but cross the Paris of the first. Around the age of thirty-five, they marry an heiress or an embassy and slip away in the French manner, without taking leave of the company. If by misfortune they miss the boat, we can predict with certainty that they will ruin themselves and that they will end up around sixty in a second-class consulate. A few young officers of the guard, much loved and almost as feared by these ladies. They love perfection and throw money out the window, but they take the trifles of sentiment too seriously and do not tolerate competition well. Besides, we know them; At the first roll of the drum, they will flee like thieves to Italy or Poland: no funds to be made on these fellows. It’s a pity! A few young magistrates, two or three at most, to whom ambition has not yet come; a few old councilors who no longer have any ambition… but I think we have just buried the last one. A few doctors rich enough and young enough to demand their fees in kind; a few young specialist lawyers, the dread of the furniture dealer and the terror of the coachbuilder. A few young tradesmen who are launching out, but cautiously; besides, we will take care to marry them young. Many former actors who had thought of retiring to the country, but whom nostalgia for gas has brought back in spite of themselves. Seven or eight old men with young hearts, lively eyes, and too dark sideburns: the executors of the will of the late Baron Hulot. A legion, a myriad, a dusting of very ugly, very stupid, very pomaded, very ridiculous little gentlemen: false lovers, false gentlemen, false spendthrifts: the counterfeit money of the Duke of GC A very witty former hosier, who retired from business with 6000 francs a year, and who enjoys himself like no one else, without denting his capital. A few households restocked without the intervention of Mr. Mayor: Mr. A. and Mrs. B., Mr. C. and Mrs. D., Mr. E., Mrs. F. and their children. A few young bluestockings in search of a mustachioed novel. A certain number of hairdressers, the commissioner on duty, and Mr. A., a banned priest, author of a bad novel in three volumes. Two hundred foreigners, generally quite rich, but more economical with their money than the two hundred men of the Bourse who are part of all Paris. Eighty women arrived, or arrived, if you prefer, with livery, horses and sometimes even wit. They are not all pretty, and more than one dined under the Restoration; but the most mediocre certainly has some merit, apparent or hidden. One can say as a general thesis that a woman does not earn five hundred thousand francs without being worth something. This Paris, so seemingly light, is a false starling that gives nothing for nothing, not even its money. I only cite for the record the fourth series, composed of real journalists, real draughtsmen, all those who mingle with Paris to study and paint it. We are in the assembly without being part of it, like the stenographers in the Legislative Body. Nothing is more curious for a disinterested spectator than the interior of a theater on the day of a first performance, five minutes before the curtain rises. Everyone knows each other, loves each other, hates each other, leers at each other, greets each other. There is a little woman of twenty there who carries in her heart a proud album of photographs! There you also meet a man of pleasure who has the right to address four out of five boxes and two-thirds of the gallery informally. But you have to be in the know and have a thorough knowledge of Parisian news to be interested in the game of spyglasses and fans, to know where the kiss is going when a pretty blonde casually presses the tip of her finger to his lips. You wouldn’t see that fire, Madame, with all your wit, and you would lose the best part of the comedy. She made an adorable little pout and replied: There my curiosity is cured. I don’t even understand, between us, how serious men would stray into such a world under the pretext of studying what they know so well. Feuerstein punched me in the ribs, shouting: You ‘ve cheated us of the end, my lad! I’m sure the observers are having fun like everyone else! This man is odious. And unpunished, unfortunately. THE GUEST ROOM Chapter 11. The Guest Room. There isn’t a soul in the city of Rennes who doesn’t remember a little of my uncle, Councilor Boblé. He was a small man, quite a nobody of all body types and completely bald; his forehead clean and shiny like a lump of butter, but his eyes were lively, his feet nimble, his tongue well hung, his words cheerful; a turn of mind that recalled the President of Brosses and the magistrates of the good old days. The smell of tobacco was odious to him, but he drank hard and did not disdain to sing after drinking. He was vice-president of the Casino of Rennes, a great piquet player, and the best man in the world. I addressed him informally like a comrade, although he was twenty-five or thirty years my senior and had served as my correspondent at college, under the reign of his first wife, the dry one. When I left the naval school, I came to say goodbye to him. His Majesty King Charles X was sending me to the South Seas and we did not know if yellow fever would ever allow me to return to France. The uncle was then a simple judge at the court, but he was already in mourning for Madame Boblé the first. My dear Renaud, he said to me at the end of an excellent dinner, I am your only uncle and you are my only nephew. My fortune, which is not to be despised, will belong to you one day or another; as late as possible, eh! boy? All this comes from your maternal grandfather, except for some hundred thousand francs left by the deceased and which I, by Jove, earned well!… The deceased was truly a person one could not kiss without getting bruises. Your poor father ruined you by wanting to make you too rich; rest assured, I will not speculate, and you will find after me a good twenty-five thousand pounds of income. Take care, have fun if you can, do not risk your skin unnecessarily, and if you happen to relax in some pretty vineyard, send me a quartaut of the best. When the king has given you a pair of epaulettes, come spend a quarter with me: we will toast to the glory of the French flag and the demolition of England. I embraced him, weeping, and I did not see him again for seven long years. We wrote to each other sometimes, not too often, but I never forgot him, neither him nor his cellar. The naval officer saves in spite of himself; most of my savings were spent on sherry, Marsala, Cyprus, Madeira, and even Constance wines. For I traveled around the world before seeing Rennes Cathedral again. Finally, I disembarked in 1835, and without taking the time to amuse myself in Brest, I took the post and ran to embrace my dear uncle. It had been two years since I had seen his handwriting, but the newspapers had informed me of his promotion: he was a councilor, and I was an ensign. A little note of advice announced my arrival. I fully expected to see him at the carriage; this sweet hope was not disappointed. O the happy face and the kind embrace! Florent, his old Florent, took charge of my trunks, and I went on foot through the city, arm in arm, with my only relative and my best friend. On the way, he seemed changed to me; not cold, but less cordial and as if ill at ease. After inquiring if I had learned anything new about his civil status, he came by long detours to the story of his second marriage. I did not know a single word about it, although the thing was two years old, and my face perhaps lengthened a little; I would not want to swear to the contrary. He doubtless guessed where the shoe pinched me, for he poured out reassuring explanations. His wife, born d’Estouville, was as noble in heart as in name. Poor, she had learned in the Gospel to despise riches. She was a person of the most rigid piety and the most elevated character. The contract, drawn up by herself, left her almost naked at the death of my uncle; she took in all a sum of one thousand crowns to pay her dowry to the Ursulines; the good uncle’s fortune was left to me en bloc, both the usufruct and the bare ownership. Such disinterestedness touched me to the depths of my soul and my emotion was at its height when Mr. Boblé added: To disinherit you would need a second cousin, that is to say a great miracle. I am fifty-five years old, I studied law in Paris; I was happier in my examinations than in my distractions; The doctor’s judgment, two years’ experience, all combine to prove that I am made of the stuff that only uncles are made of. At this word, I almost kissed him in the street: it is not in the royal navy that one learns dissimulation. As we arrived at the house, the uncle took my forearm with paternal familiarity, and said to me: Ah! there, sailor, no words with double meanings! No light stories in front of your aunt! Although she will soon be thirty, she is a little girl when it comes to naivety; she does not suspect the existence of evil. You are not lacking in topics of conversation, for heaven’s sake! You have seen enough. One does not die from holding back for an hour or two. I will take you to the Casino, and there, in a little room of ours, you will spill the bag of nonsense. We have not yet turned into a Capuchin, rest assured. Between Paucher, Loriage, and me, over a nice bowl of punch, you’ll find someone to talk to! But at home, with her, take my example: I stand. I can’t say why, but this warning dampened my spirits a little. My gaze fell on the old sculpted house where I had played so much and sometimes laughed so well. The facade had left a charming image in my heart, which seemed flattering to me at that moment. It seemed to me that the porch columns were twisting in colic, that the gargoyles hung lamentably over the street, and that the mascarons were grimacing in pain. The knocker, of an ambiguous and joyful shape, had disappeared, leaving a void. Uncle Boblé pulled a small iron chain, we heard the sound of a shrill bell, the door opened with the dull rumble of a mastiff being woken. But how little it takes to bring our thoughts back to a cheerful flow! especially when we are at that happy age of twenty-five! The open door unmasked a little girl, dark-haired, short, stocky like a double pony, and lively, mischievous, and pleasingly pretty. Uncle Boblé took her chin, by a reminiscence of the old man; as for me, I gave her one of those powerful, concentrated looks, charged with atoms, which sum up in a spark three months of navigation. The rascal did not seem thunderstruck; she remained upright on her tiny feet, her eyes fixed on me, and with an air that said: A pretty girl is worth a handsome man.
    This meeting took less time than it takes me to recount it. I was still quite dazzled, and already the uncle was introducing me to my new aunt, in the middle of the large living room. Assuredly my aunt could pass for a beautiful person. She had beautiful blue eyes which she veiled like a true Madonna. And eyelashes of surprising length and a straight nose, modeled as if by a drawing master, and a white and pink mouth that seemed made expressly for nibbling litanies and chewing tiny prayers! The very idea of ​​stuffing beefsteak into it would have seemed sacrilegious to you. Her hair, a cold blond, fell along her cheeks in perfectly cylindrical rolls, like those waffles you get at Tortoni with ice cream. She seemed to have a slender and well-built figure, but was it my fault if the sight of her bodice rising to her ears did not give me than ideas of busk, whalebone, and articulated breastplate? She stood on the carpet, a red book in her hand, like a family portrait. Around her, along the walls, she had lined up ancestors, her own; I haven’t counted them, but I’ll bet on a dozen. In my time, this salon was hung with less honorary paintings, but much more comfortable to the eye. Eclipsed, the de Troys, the Nattiers, the Vanloos, the Natoires! Eclipsed the suave bather of Prud’hon! And by what stars, great gods! By a few cheap gentlemen, daubed at the same price and in the same style as the Swan of the Cross and the White Horse of the cabarets! The idea did not occur to me to throw my aunt’s arms around her neck, but even if I had wanted to, her gaze would have stopped me halfway. She threw cold from her eyes, as the dragons of mythology throw fire from their nostrils. Perhaps she was finally thinking of offering me a chair, when the pretty brunette from downstairs came to tell her that they had served. I asked for three minutes to wash my hands, the uncle led me to my room, I nimbly capsized my trunks that had just been brought up, and I appeared within the prescribed time, with all my advantages. If you absolutely insist on knowing for whom I had put on my finest uniform, I confess, even if you had to laugh and even despise me, that it was not addressed to my superb aunt. There was only one woman in the house to my eyes: this little girl with close-set eyebrows, a faded lip, a low forehead, a turned-up nose, a bodice… two green apples under half an ell of calico; that was the bodice she wore. I was then, let it be said without retrospective vanity, one of the handsomest men in the navy, of which there are so many. I had a waist like a reed, hair to spare, and teeth to bite iron. My long, light brown whiskers were softer than silk; and thanks to the regulation that forbade me mustaches, I was forced to reveal a fine, sensual mouth, yet marked with the stamp of the strongest will. I have never been what one calls a person of all body types, but in my brilliant years, the habit of being noticed by women had taught me to claim their attention as my due. I was almost offended by my aunt’s conduct ; her barricaded eyes were in rebellion against the common law; it seemed to me that simple politeness made it her duty to admire me a little. In the space of a quarter of an hour, my annoyance rose to intolerance and suddenly fell back to the most flat indifference. I saw nothing in the universe but that pretty Margot, who changed our plates, opening her eyes wide as if to swallow me whole. She absorbed me so well, the rascal, that I made no one of any body type that evening without realizing it. I learned this eight days later, from a comment from Aglaé… Pardon! from Madame Boblé, my aunt. Marriage must have sadly rejuvenated the dear uncle, for in his wife’s presence he looked like a little boy. His beautiful sparkling eyes faded before her; the ribaldry died on his lips; he only opened that wide beak to eat and drink, or to risk a furtive compliment, which she did not always take well. He said amen to the grace, amen to the graces, amen to everything. I thought to myself that nobility, devotion, principles and virtues are inestimable treasures, but that these ladies could sell them to us a little less without ruining themselves . The uncle put me on a chapter that could not scandalize anyone; he asked for the story of our last landing on the coast of Zanzibar. I did not need to be told twice; the opportunity was too good; not only did I recall my personal memories, but I adorned my story with a thousand heroic fictions, borrowed from all the novelists of the sea. My cousin listened with an indolent air, checking my story by the archives of the Catholic missions, which she seemed to know thoroughly. Hardly, twice, at the detail of some shooting, I know not what, her dull eye grew warm with a flash. But Margot! Ah! Margot! What an admirable audience she composed for me all by herself! She listened with her eyes, her mouth, her hands, her arms; her little person was all ears, like that statue in the Louvre, “To hell with pagan names!” which is all breasts. My famous wines flowed freely; my uncle and I did honor to the cellar, saluting its august water drinker with a timid gesture , while I peered at Margot through the topazes of the Cape. Dessert found us, I won’t say in the vines, but in the clouds. This dear Boblé chattered brazenly under the cooling eye of Madame; as for me, I was between two fires: a veritable wine grog blazed in my head, and Margot’s smile bombarded me outside! In the good old days, we used to drink coffee at the table, our elbows on the tablecloth, and this quarter of an hour, the most charming part of the meal, often lasted until morning. Alas! always alas! Madame had no sooner emptied her mouthwash than she stood up, fully grown, and I arrived just in time to offer her my arm. My legs had not weakened; I can even say that my head was not yet upside down, and yet on the threshold of the large drawing-room lined with ancestors, I experienced a kind of hallucination. It seemed to me that my too noble aunt was clasping my arm energetically in her hand, and don’t even laugh, that she was pressing it against her chest. I looked at her with a sort of terror; her face was impassive, and her two large blue eyes seemed like two stars in their icy serenity. I had dreamed while standing, a phenomenon quite rare, but not without precedent. Anything happens, anything is possible, there is no improbable miracle following a good dinner. The coffee, more than mediocre, was served in three thimbles. Sad, sad, and all the sadder because the liqueur cellar seems decidedly exiled from the living room. Luckily, my cousin was ordered to serve in some parish I don’t know: she asked for her shawl and hat. Uncle Boblé kissed her hand on the glove and led me to the club. Rennes is perhaps the city in France and Europe where the best punch is brewed. Uncle was proud of my epaulette, my new cross , and my good looks; he introduced me, not without emphasis, to all his old friends.
    The picket was forgotten for the first time in many years; it was replaced by stories, table and ship songs, and above all by shots enough to drown a sperm whale. Midnight had barely struck, and already I had made eight or nine close friends. I was on first-name terms with a president, a spinner, a prefectural councilor, two notaries, two attorneys, a wine merchant, and even, God forgive me, a bailiff. All these people brought us home with a thousand cordial demonstrations. The provinces are like that, and I don’t suppose they will reform for a long time; take it or leave it. The respectable president of the second chamber absolutely wanted to cut a bell-rope to give me as a souvenir. The main fault of these old houses is that all the rooms are led off from them. To get to mine, we had to go through another where we saw an uncovered bed, a pretty certain sign for me that it was not uninhabited. My dear uncle then made sure that nothing was missing, neither sugar, nor water, nor orange blossom water, nor Fumade’s phosphoric lighter, nor the dishes. Having finished his examination, he kissed me, opened a curtained door, pushed the bolt, glided lightly past my aunt’s bed and reached his apartment, which was at the end of the floor, beyond the large and small living rooms. He had two entrances at his service, my aunt had three, I had only one and a most inconvenient one, since it meant passing over the body of a neighbor. Chapter 12. But what neighbor had my aunt and divine providence given me? Perhaps old Florent, perhaps the divine Margot; between the two, there was room. This doubt troubled me. My mind was full of Margot; my three months of sailing, my four hours of punch awakened in my brain the wildest fantasies. I ended up persuading myself that my neighbor could only be a neighbor and that this neighbor, thanks to the kindness of my uncle and the candor of my aunt, could only be Margot. That Margot was in love with me was too obvious to be doubted without blasphemy. I began to dance around the room; my stay in this pleasant city began under charming auspices! When I think of that night, it seems to me that I came home perfectly drunk. But a man who knows how to drink can lose his mind without losing his reason. I opened my neighbor’s door and subtly closed it ninety-nine hundredths of the way: it seemed closed without being so; it was enough to push it. I extinguished my candle, slipped between my sheets and played dead. The wait that followed was not long. The sounding latch of the pantry was opened; a sound of voices and laughter rose to my ears and grew noticeably closer. Four or five people stopped on the landing, they exchanged goodnights; a light footstep was heard in the room while people of all body types and feet went higher. It was Margot who was my neighbor! Definitely, the dear uncle had said it well: his wife is unaware of the existence of evil. Margot trotted past and back in front of my door. She hadn’t closed it, that was a good sign. She undressed, she hummed a tune, she washed a little. For whom, if not for me? The one who would come and say she didn’t love me after all these glances and these teasings!… She extinguished her candle: it was because she didn’t want to waste another moment. There she is in her bed, but she is not asleep, for I hear her coughing affectedly, perhaps even impatiently. What must she think of me? A young man of twenty-five, an officer in the royal navy, sleeping like a log on such a fine occasion! But what if I had been mistaken? What if the advances that encouraged me were only innocent coquetry, childish banter? She is sixteen at most, this little girl. This figure of sixteen suddenly threw me into another order of ideas. My memory began to repeat fabliaux, tales, old Gallic nonsense; I felt a myriad of ten-foot verses swarming in my head, all of which without exception spoke of bachelorettes, nonnains, shepherdesses, and other young ladies, the most mature of whom are sixteen years and a few months old. O respectable poetry of our fathers! Yes, but this age of sixteen is most conducive to silliness. Let the little girl be afraid; let her scream, just one scream! The whole town is in revolution. What a scandal, good God! Just four steps away from the chaste, the imposing, the almost saintly Madame Boblé! In the very house of a councilor at Court! There are in this world an infinite number of peccadilloes which are nothing, less than nothing, when you recount them at table, and which suddenly grow to terrible proportions if a magistrate’s robe happens to be on the way. Yes, but what would they say of me on board the Algiers, in the officers’ mess, if they learned that I had missed out on such a valuable opportunity through stupidity, hesitation, or cowardice? I would be disgraced, they would call me Joseph, and I would have to fight it out with all my comrades! This tossing and turning lasted perhaps an hour. I thought I understood then that Margot had lost patience: she was no longer coughing. I took my great courage; I began to cough in my turn and gradually came to make such a racket that the house shook to its foundations. Nothing moved in the next room; Margot held it against me: perhaps she simply wanted to see me coming. In the end, I took a clerical step which would have been inexcusable if I had been as cold-blooded as today. I lit my candle, and I pushed open the door which creaked horribly. The young lady who was sleeping, even snoring, the wretch! woke up with loud screams. All my illusions fell at once when I heard this girl moaning and complaining flatly, in vulgar language: It’s a horror, an atrocity, something that is not done! A gentleman from a good family! An officer! I would never have believed that of a gentleman! What does a gentleman take me for? I am not one of those creatures! My mother was madame’s wet nurse; I have an uncle who is a rector at Saint Trigonnec; I am an honest girl; I will tell madame! I will spare you three or four leathers that writing could not adequately convey. But it was above all the vulgarity of this hoarse and shrill voice that made my stomach ache . Oh! the ugly and foolish creature! She cured in an instant the inexplicable whim she had inspired in me. I explained to her as best I could my entry into her house at such an hour: she had been dreaming, I had feared she was ill; it had seemed to me that she was calling me for help;… in short, everything one can invent in such a ridiculous circumstance. The fear of a scandal had sobered me up completely. After all my reasons, the hussy invariably replied: I am an honest girl; I will tell my lady! As if it were not a hundred times more honest to keep the secret! At the slightest gesture with which I supported my speech, the hussy went on the defensive. It was impossible to make her understand that I no longer wished either good or harm to her imposing virtue. At every moment her cries of frightened guinea fowl started up again in full force. Do you understand why people would travel the world to find a sixteen-year-old shrew in Rennes? Rennes! the second city in France for the ease of women, if I believe the statistics of my friend Léopold H., artilleryman. I was forced to retreat and return to my bed without having obtained or bought the silence of this abominable Margot. She closed her bolt, and I spent a sleepless night, I who sleep so well on punch. Do you see me locked between two unpleasant women, in this cursed guest room that I was almost sure I would not inhabit for long? My mind tossed around until daybreak in a sort of waking nightmare. I pictured my aunt’s noble indignation, my uncle’s grief, the astonishment of the circle, the frantic chatter of the town, and the foolish figure I would cut tomorrow, with my trunks, leaving this house where I had just settled for three months. When Margot was up and dressed, I knocked gently on her door and begged her to open the door. She deigned. On my sailor’s word, that girl was hideous. For the last time I tried to soften this base soul: Understand, I told her; your reports will add nothing to the esteem my aunt may have for you, and you want to do me irreparable harm . I have not offended you; my intentions, I repeat, were perfectly innocent. If you persist in complaining about me, I will leave this house at once, and I do not see what you can gain by it. Keep it a secret from me, I will stay and pay for your silence at the price you yourself will set. The devil be with the prude! She began to squawk even louder, so much so that I finally turned my back on her. Night brings counsel, if the proverb is to be believed, but this stormy, unjust and vexatious night had not advised me at all. I left the house before my uncle woke up and went to take a bath. There is nothing more honest and comfortable than a provincial bath where one finds delighted faces, eager servants, and white linen at will. So I still wonder why provincials don’t bathe more often. Well washed, well rested, and even a little calmed, I took a walk around the city to kill time until lunch. But the weather was holding back; it seemed to me that I would never make it to ten o’clock. I wrung the neck of a cold chicken, escorted by six chops. The chops are so small and so tender in this blessed Brittany! Coffee, cognac, and cigars shortened this long day a little . I was hidden in the small salon of the best cabaret in town. A waiter brought me the Impartial of Ille et Vilaine, and I shuddered to see that it was the day’s issue. It seemed to me that my adventure should be posted in the public papers, and I was already thinking of denouncing the unfortunate Kérangal, the hired journalist of the prefecture. Three or four individuals successively entered my retreat. I probed the gaze of the newcomers, to make sure that they had not heard about this unfortunate affair. Thank God, I did not notice any alarming signs. Around three o’clock, I saw two infantry officers pass by, one of whom had been at college with me. We renewed our acquaintance, these gentlemen led me to their cafe; beer and billiards took us until five o’clock. I offered them absinthe and was about to follow them to their boarding house when my uncle Boblé, out of breath and his hat thrown back, invaded the billiard room: Finally! he said, taking me by the collar, I’ve got you, rascal. I’ve been pounding the streets of Rennes for a good seven hours after you . Take leave of these gentlemen and come with me: your aunt has missed two services; she absolutely wants to speak to you. I understood that the infamous Margot had carried out her threats. But the anger of the dear uncle was less great than I had thought: I followed him. When he had me alone in the street, his brow darkened a little: My dear Renaud, he said to me, I have no right to scold you in my name. When I was your age!… but it’s not about me. You have caused your aunt a lot of pain. She’s a woman who doesn’t listen to reason about principles. I warned you, but youth, punch, the opportunity… Don’t answer! I know everything that can be said in your favor, and I’ve said it. That girl is a fool to have spoken; I think she did it to boost her faltering credit. My wife suspects her of arranging meetings with our butcher’s boy. Do you understand now why you found her so fierce? Your greatest fault was to have deserted the house without taking leave of my wife. She would have ruined you, that’s certain, but you wouldn’t have died from it. We all have our little faults, my boy: you are for the fair sex, Aglaé is for morality. She preaches with delight: why would you refuse to listen to her a little? You haven’t often seen a sermon flow from such a pretty mouth. No fuss, damn it! Come to dinner. We have four friends; you are sure that we won’t insult you in front of the world. After coffee, we are going to the Casino without you; Aglaé is keeping you in the drawing room, she is getting on her high horse; let her talk! You won’t see Margot again unless you run after her. Her clothes were taken to a room in the attic, and Florent is the one serving us at table. Forward, march, you naughty fellow! I let myself be persuaded and I came back with him. But how can I tell you the rest? The dinner was excellent, as always. The guests were old friends of my uncle; we chatted as much as we could, and I would have enjoyed myself like a mentally ill person, if my aunt’s eyes hadn’t been throwing four or five showers at me. They finally left me alone with her, and a healthy trembling seized me. She invited me to follow her to her room, no doubt fearing to scandalize her twelve ancestors by the tale of my misdeeds. I followed her, my ear lowered. Her room seemed very severe to me, but in exquisite taste: mauve satin and guipure. She herself, in order to preach, had dressed herself in a half-high dress that symbolized quite well the reconciliation of heaven with earth. Her hands were beautiful and her feet charming; that is justice to be done to her. I believe I have told you that she had a noble and rich figure, and the most beautiful face one could dream of; all this spoiled from time to time by an expression too severe. Nothing was more seductive than her fresh voice, well-toned, and at times deep. She preached first on the wrath of God and the eternal punishments reserved for pretty boys who commit themselves with ignoble servants. She indicated with a turn of phrase that was both severe and graceful that man must aim high sursum corda! and not seek unworthy satisfactions at her feet. The third point revolved entirely around the ineffable mercy of the saints and angels who take the repentant sinner in their arms and carry him to seventh heaven. Aglaé! you were an angel, and seventh heaven was not far away. From this sermon, I lived three good months in the house of the dear uncle, and my heart was filled with pious sentiments that will only leave it with life. My aunt seemed truly happy; as for dear Mr. Boblé, he told his friends in the circle every evening that my stay with him rejuvenated even the stones of the house. But an order from the minister directed me to Vera Cruz and I stayed there for two years. In my absence, the beautiful aunt gave birth to a boy, a superb boy, by Jove! who, without thinking about it, snatched twenty-five thousand pounds a year from me. With a hundred francs that I had left for the servants, that’s all the guest room cost me. Chapter 13. German Hunt. For a long time I believed that one had to be at least a millionaire and a baron to hunt in a pack and kill a hundred hares in a day. My imagination, aided by reading, pictured a people of vassals striking the plain with cudgels and pushing the victims right under the lord’s lead. I would have been greatly astonished, and perhaps you too, to be told that the simple villeins of the country of Baden, in the year of grace 1864, sometimes feasted on a feudal hecatomb, and even… made money from it. Yet this is what I saw yesterday, and I begin by declaring that I came back almost empty-handed, so that it may be demonstrated to you that I speak as a tourist and not as a hunter. The meeting was in Strasbourg, Place Gutenberg, at seven o’clock in the morning. I boarded, sixth in line, an all-you-can-eat omnibus, which set off briskly, crossed the old Rhine laden with ice, and brought us in less than two hours to the little town of . In summer, in the Baden season, this wide valley of the Rhine presents the spectacle of a dulling fertility. The soft, damp, blackish earth, without a single stone, has always given me the impression of a dish of boneless and too succulent meat. There come large, bountiful and stupid harvests, which seem sickened by growing without effort, and plunge their roots into the manger with visible disgust. But in January, with that lovely north wind that seals your beard to your mustache, the valley floor tightens, stiffens, and perks up. The furrows draw a nervous ridge under the snow, the chocolate streams hide under crystals of sparkling ice; the big, simpleton children with their pants too short and too high, stumble with a certain nonchalance and break their noses with an almost malicious air. The pole-carts, drawn by a single horse under a rod, transport mysterious things under their silver tarpaulin; the mud houses, painted green or pink, open little witty eyes on the passer-by. What more can I tell you? The cabbage cigar and the porcelain pipe exude a kind of perfume at this time of year. An enormous flour soup awaited us on the table at the inn of the worthy Papa Knoblauch. These German inns are quite graceful in January . The long, columnar cast-iron stove is stuffed like a cannon. Blonde Gretchen’s distaff is decorated with a new ribbon. The large music box by the door has been enriched with a few new tunes for its New Year’s gift. The thrush and the goldfinch, imprisoned in a corner of the room, attempt a half-cluck from time to time: perhaps, seeing the clouds from the pipes, these exiles think again of the clouds in the sky. O the gentle warmth and the fine emanations of salty cheese! The gun barrels are covered with mist and the men’s hearts expand. A few native hunters had arrived before us. Good and honest faces, where the malice of hell will never draw a single wrinkle. I know nothing like a clear conscience and twelve mugs of beer every evening, to clarify a man’s physiognomy. Here are others, I mean other tests of the same model: many arrive; enough arrive, almost too many arrive, because the inn is full. Impossible to get the respectable mayor, the pride of the commune, to enter. It is he who is shown to the strangers, with the brigadier of the gendarmerie, because they weigh 310 kilos, between them. But the soup is eaten and the chops too, and likewise the potato mush. Ten o’clock strikes: on the hunt! We leave quietly, in good order, German style; we file past one by one, along the cemetery wall and we go to line up on the neighboring road. Already forty beaters appear on the horizon. The road is lined with marksmen, their flanks well guarded; are we there? Yes! A blast of the horn gives the signal, and the trackers set off. German hares are quite large in any season, but in the snow they appear immense. When they rush at you, their ears erect, outlining their slender bodies against a white background, they look like hare ghosts. Poor beasts! It only takes one well-aimed blow to make them perfect ghosts. Homer had studied all the ways of dying customary among the warriors of his time. Demalion is struck in the temple; his skull is ruptured and his brains crushed; Polydorus, pierced in the middle of the back, falls to his knees and receives his entrails in his outstretched hands; Deucalion is decapitated with a single blow by Achilles’ sword: the marrow escapes from the vertebrae and the trunk rolls in the dust. You have to have hunted hares in a drive to know how varied this unfortunate animal is in its ways of dying. Sometimes it jumps in the air, sometimes it spins five or six times around itself, sometimes it rolls into a muff. If its back is broken, it crawls on its forequarters, uttering heart-rending cries. Sometimes it carries off the shot with such deliberateness that you accuse yourself of clumsiness. But after a hundred paces it stops as if to consult itself: What is the matter with me? Am I wounded? Mercy! It is much worse: I am dead. In fact, it beats the snow with all four feet and does not get up again. Sometimes it stays there, waits for someone to come and get it, and runs off into the neighboring woods. Sometimes it sits down, looks at you, shakes its head two or three times and falls backward. This slaughter would be rather sad, really, if one had the time to think about it; but the hunter never thinks about it. He kills naively with sincere joy, like the divine Achilles when Demalion, Deucalion and Polydorus, sons of Priam, fell one after the other under his blows. I have seen gentle, cultivated, educated, even learned men, break the butt of their rifle on the head of a roe deer while letting out fierce cries. Yet they felt no intolerance against this innocent four-legged animal; they were not unaware that their blows with the butt of their rifles caused pain to a nervous system quite similar to ours. But hunting is the image of battle. Like battle, it cracks the thin layer of varnish with which civilization has coated us, and the wild man reappears. The commune of , extends over an area of ​​3000 hectares including woods, plowed plains and some of those marshy lands, which are rather improperly called the islands of the Rhine. The tenants of the hunting ground have there deer, hare, pheasant, partridge and all kinds of waterfowl; but yesterday they only shot hare. At four o’clock in the evening, a cart came to take away one hundred and twenty-three large corpses, the smallest of which weighed four kilograms. The guards will return today to the battlefield and will doubtless collect about fifteen bodies. We have therefore killed, in five hours, five to six hundred kilograms of meat. I deduct a hour lost around a keg of beer and a cauldron of garlic sausages.
    When you think that there are cantons in Provence, and even in Champagne, where the hare has become a fabulous animal! The great landowners chase it on horseback, when they are lucky enough to turn one away; they bring English hounds faster than lightning. A forced hare is stuffed and preserved under glass; the curious come from six leagues away to see it. I asked the hunters what they spend, year in, year out, on these Pantagruelian tragic events. But nothing at all, they told me. Everything we shoot now is net profit. The first, that is to say the opening, has covered all the costs: we are betting on velvet. Three Frenchmen from Strasbourg and seven natives from have joined forces to take over the commune’s hunt. They pay 300 florins a year, a little over 600 francs, or twenty centimes per hectare. All the game killed during the season is sold in advance to a merchant. Six hundred partridges, or two hundred hares, or one hundred and twenty pheasants, or twenty-five roe deer are enough to pay the fee. There are still the guarding costs to cover and the beaters’ wages; after that, you make money. In bad years, you don’t make a profit, but you make ends meet and have had fun for nothing. –You are very lucky! –You think so? Then tell me how it is that the French, who have so much wit, do not follow our example? Why don’t the landowners in your country join forces to sell hunting rights for the benefit of the commune? An income of 600 francs is not to be despised: it is free primary school. Why don’t the hunters agree in turn to lease the hunting , to pay the wages of one or two guards, and protect the game against poaching? Our hares don’t have a litter larger than yours; our partridges and pheasant hens don’t brood twice a year; our goats have never been nesting mothers. If we have ten times more game than you, it’s because we take measures against waste and destruction. Foresight, sir, foresight! I didn’t want to hear any more and I turned my back on this imbecile. What the devil is he asking? If we were far-sighted, we would no longer be French. THE GENERAL INSPECTORATE. TO THE COUNTESS OF V., AT THE MANOR OF K., COMMUNE OF PONT L’ABBÉ FINISTÈRE. Chapter 14. Loutreville, July 20, 1864. Ah! my dear Amélie! What a beautiful thing battle is! And what a charming man General Ségart is! I have been mad about him for two days, mad as a rod. I declared it to my husband, who laughed at me, according to his detestable habit. This skeptical person of all body types, Adolphe, claims that this is my sixth infatuation of the year: he lists them one after the other; it is revolting! First of all, I do not allow anyone to call my enthusiasm for Octave Feuillet, whom I have never seen, a infatuation! nor my idolatry for M. Pasteur, for I have seen him! nor my almost filial veneration for that dear Abbé Grimblot, of Notre Dame, who has such adorable hands! nor my fanaticism for this sublime Mr. Harris, the god of homeopathy, who cured me of fourteen or fifteen tonsillitises, each more scaly than the last, with which I was threatened! I adore the little pellets of the rue de la Michodière and the éclairs of the rue Castiglione; the memory of certain oyster pies sometimes makes me dream for half a day; there is such a shape of hat, such an arrangement of hairstyle, such a cut of coat which delights me, which intoxicates me, which transports me, which makes my heart leap out of its corset: where is the harm? Are not all women like me? Are we less faithful to our husbands, less devoted to our children, less fervent in our prayers to God? I would have myself chopped into a thousand pieces for the Princess of M., who does not know me and to whom I have no never been presented: we barely go six times a year to the same society. Adolphe calls me cocodette for that; he ridicules such a just and natural enthusiasm. Is it my fault, if I am neither blind nor stupid, and if it is impossible for me to contemplate without frenzy the most radiant incarnation of chic on earth? Chic! Amélie, my dear angel, you understand me; I continue. All our newspapers, the Vigie, the Conciliateur and the Messager had announced the arrival of the general inspector for the day before yesterday Monday. We knew that the maneuvers would take place at the gates of Loutreville, on the battlefield, and that the public would be able to attend. There are so few distractions at the castle until the opening of the hunt, that my dear Adolphe could not decently refuse me this spectacle. We are installed at the home of our old uncle, the Chevalier de Porpiquet, who has this famous cellar and this divine cook. What dinners, dear friend, and what luncheons! Nature created uncles and aunts like hens and capons, to deliciously feed our pretty little mouths! The general was expected by the eight o’clock train: from five o’clock in the morning, there was a crowd around the station; the colonel of the 104th arrived at seven o’clock with the senior officers, the accountants, the staff, and all the officers of the regiment. They were brought into the station, and so were we: Adolphe is administrator of the company. The wife of the second in command offered us a love of a window from which we can see and hear everything we want. Colonel Briquet walked before our eyes, smoking; his officers smoked too; he chatted with them familiarly, like a comrade. My children, you all know General Ségart, a brave man, but a chatterbox, a vain man, a big drummer. He showed himself quite well in Africa and Italy; but as a theoretician, he is highly regarded. With all that, it is not a question of taking him by surprise, since he represents the Minister of Battle. We know what is needed to soften him up: it is a kind of deference, of… how shall I put it? of respect, manifested in the most engaging form. Do you hear well? You are free to judge him and even to joke with him if that amuses you, but as long as he is there, as he is a little on the eye, let us know how to conform to the circumstances. And go then! This speech was applauded with a joyous burst of laughter. But at the whistle which announced the arrival of the train, the colonel resumed his air of authority, threw down his cigar ten paces away, and cried out in a tone of command: Gentlemen! Remember the instructions I gave you; place yourselves in order of precedence to my right and left, and follow me! The train stopped; The general, followed by a single aide-de-camp, opened the door and jumped nimbly onto the platform. He is tall, slender, and powerful like a medieval knight; with black eyes, a mustache, and iron-gray hair; a little too much color in his nose and cheekbones. But the noble physiognomy and the magnificent presence! His little aide-de- camp looked like a grasshopper at the foot of an oak. The colonel rushed toward him, leaving his subordinates three steps behind. Poor Colonel Briquet! I will never forget the suave, sentimental, ideal intonation with which he accentuated his first word: my General! I will always see him half-prostrate, the shako under his arm, expressing by every fold of his face the intention to be agreeable; manifesting the suppleness of his mind in every articulation of his body. I noticed that day a rather bizarre contrast; you will explain it if you can. In the presence of a great leader, who holds promotion in his hand, soldiers of all ranks all feel a strong desire to please, but they do not express it in the same way. A colonel bows, a simple captain brings his heels together and remains silent. Both say to the general: you are a great man and I admire you passionately; but one translates his thoughts by undulations full of grace, the other by a stiffness of the most austere taste. The lord of the regiment wriggles, babbles and takes all the pains; the vassals allow themselves no other movement than immobility, no other language than silence. Why? The general listened to his little harangue; he extended his hand to him with sublime cordiality. Colonel, he said to him, you are very kind! You are too kind! I am very sensitive! You should not have been disturbed. I believe, however, that if we had not been disturbed we would have seen some gray ones. Then, casting a glance at the group of officers: Just seeing you here, my inspection is half done. I know what awaits me, and all the good I must say to the Emperor about your brave regiment! As he finished the sentence, he raised his head, saw me at the window, and expressed with an unaffected but not ungraceful smile that my crumpled face had not frightened him. He has superb teeth. I am sure he does not smoke penny cigars, like that poor Colonel Briquet. Colonel! he continued in a loud and clear voice, I have chosen the Hotel d’Europe for my residence. Will you do me the honor of showing me the way? The Hotel d’Europe is on the Promenade des Ormes, a stone’s throw from our uncle’s house . Since yesterday morning, the military authorities have had two sentry boxes placed in front of the carriage entrance. On our way home, we followed the general’s procession from a little distance, without affectation. The officers put him in the hotel, and, to be sure that no one would come and take him from them, they wanted to have him guarded by a detachment of 50 elite men, commanded by a captain, a lieutenant, and two drummers. But he didn’t want to disturb so many people. He told the captain to send the picket back, leaving a few spare sentries in the neighboring post. He is as polite as a prince. Along his way, whenever a bourgeois or a man of the people saluted his large epaulettes, he half turned around, arched his arm, and returned an imperial salute. Before going up to his apartment, he exchanged more than ten tips of the hat with the population of Loutreville. The colonel came to ask him in a low voice what time he would deign to receive the corps of officers? “Colonel,” he replied, “I don’t want to move these gentlemen a second time: we will see each other in the bright sunlight, in full maneuver. You will present them to me on the Battlefield!” He added, in a voice that filled the town: “My inspection plan is all made; in the twelve years that I have fulfilled the functions of inspector general, I have acquired the handling of men and things.” You all know, gentlemen, that nothing escapes me, neither the whole nor the detail. In the military part, I have proven myself. As for the administrative part, it is different: I have proven that I fear no one there. See you later! I heard the colonel saying to his officers, passing under my uncle’s windows: He will begin with his general review, at one thirty, after the inhabitants’ dinner. From today, he is the one who commands all the forces of land and sea; you have been able to judge him, he is an old leather breeches without head or arms, but let us not forget that he has the right to all our respect and all our obedience! Chapter 15. The general graciously allowed the entire population to attend his maneuvers. Not to be outdone, the mayor had all the chairs from the Promenade des Ormes and even the red benches of the municipal palace transported to the battlefield . The first four rows are expressly reserved for the ladies; Adolphe sulks a little, but too bad! I’m with Julie, with Anna, and Aunt Séraphine, and the three little savages from Port Neuf, drowned in muslin like flies in milk. I have my incredible English piqué dress, ash-colored with roses, trimmed with black wool braid; five rows of braid at the bottom, black buffalo buttons; tight sleeves with turn-ups, belt of perfect contentment. For a tie, a flow of muslin; I have omitted the lying kerchief which would seem a bit like a costume to the eyes of the provincials. Conventional hat, pulled down on the forehead, surrounded by a tulle scarf tied at the back; Louis XVI shoes with high heels and puffs on the instep; needless to add that I always amaze Loutreville with the length of my buttonless Swedish gloves. Adolphe has not yet decided to allow me the little cane with the gold head, but he will come to it: I am counting on the sea baths to make him see reason. By a quarter to one, there was not a single vacant chair left; the whole town had dined in two courses, even us, to the great despair of Marton and the good uncle. The regiment, with the colonel at the head, arrived at a quarter past one, everyone waited patiently for the general until three o’clock. It is noteworthy that the military waits willingly. Thus, yesterday morning, I saw groups of ten to twelve officers stationed heroically for two hours at a time on the Place des Ormes, while another group, ushered into the hotel, listened to the general’s speeches and stories. I would not have that virtue, nor would you, and that is probably why women are excluded from the army. The general mounted his horse at a quarter to three. They had recruited, not without difficulty, a brilliant general staff: the city has always lacked cavalry. It was necessary to summon, at extraordinary cost, all the officers and mounted soldiers in the garrison: artillery commander, artillery captain, commander of engineers, mounted gendarmes, etc., etc. The chasseurs of the orderly picket arrived from the other side of the world; they traveled twenty-five leagues to come and escort the general. I must admit, moreover, that all these mixed uniforms made a very pretty sight; the only thing missing was a hundred guards. But you can’t have it all. It is said that the procession made a small detour to have to cross the Place Condé. The general nobly saluted the statue, shouting to his escort: Hats off, gentlemen! The present does not deviate from paying homage to the past! I understand that such a man wanted to say a little hello to the victor of Rocroi. There is still a good deal of camaraderie in our army. M. de Bontoux, the artillery commander, claims that the general seemed to be saying to Condé: Hold on tight! But M. de Bontoux is a bad tongue; he will not be promoted again. The regiment was in battle formation. The crowd had not been pushed aside. Only a few scouts extended from distance to distance to separate the line of troops from the line formed by the public. Suddenly , a bugler posted 300 meters in front of the square announced the arrival of the procession. Immediately the colonel, the battalion commanders, the captains ran from right to left, shouting: Still! Still! The procession appeared in the distance: the colonel leaped onto his horse. To your places, gentlemen, to your places! He spurred on, ran to meet the general, stopped at a respectful distance, saluted with his sword, saluted with his horse, saluted with all the undulations of his body. At the same moment the mounted officers of the regiment left the escort at full gallop and came to take their battle positions. The drums called again, the troops carried their weapons, the general slowed his pace and stopped, just in front of us, to the right of the regiment. He leaned on his right leg and his horse pawed the ground with his left foot. God! my dear, how handsome he was, his elbows higher than his hands, holding the reins with his fingertips, and smiling amiably at your very humble servant! To occupy the attention of a man who makes two thousand others march, and who treats the lieutenants, our fine waltzers from last summer, like schoolboys in class! Don’t make fun of him too much; it’s a nice success. He put the reins in his left hand, his horse pawed the ground with his right foot. He came to salute the flag; the flag bowed before him. You know if I love my husband, dear Amélie, and I know your feelings for M. de V…; we are too religious not to adore them to the death and to allow ourselves a thought that is not addressed to them; but after all, our husbands could well bow to the ground before the flag of France without even thinking of returning their salute! The general took a little riding gallop and passed proudly in front of the front of the troops. The music was playing the national air; all these ladies had tears in their eyes. He retraced his steps, still at the same pace, saluting the crowd. His eagle gaze seemed to plunge into the people of Loutreville, and yet I did not feel the slightest anxiety. I was sure that in all this assembly no one would please him as much as me. Indeed, it was in front of me that he dismounted, with angelic nonchalance. He informed the colonel that he was ready for the presentation of the officers. These gentlemen formed a circle, in full dress uniform, motionless, sabers in hand, and yet, allow me this blasphemy! they looked like little boys around him. He turned to me, raised his beautiful mustache, and said to them in a voice that crossed the circle and seemed to be addressing us: Gentlemen, every year you receive the visit of an inspector general. This year, I dare say, without fear of being contradicted, that the Emperor has sent you an exceptional inspector. The inspection that I have just begun is not an inspection in the air; it is a serious, definitive inspection, which has already allowed me to judge you thoroughly. Just by seeing you in your ranks, under arms, I understood all that France had the right to hope from you. Yes, gentlemen, the country, the Emperor, Europe contemplates and appreciates through my eyes your beautiful and brave regiment. Long live the Emperor! Not only did the officers and soldiers repeat this patriotic cry, but… what do you want? It seemed to be addressed to me; I was electrified! I forgot that poor Adolphe is or believes himself to be a Legitimist, and my neighbors, without taking the time to be surprised, threw their handkerchiefs in the air and joined in with me. Adolphe is not too happy. His election to the general council failed this year due to the influence of the prefect; they will say that he disarms, that he turns, that he asks for mercy, but too bad! I would not be a woman if I resisted a first impulse. My general was sensitive to my little concession. He rewarded me with a delicacy and spontaneity of which I leave you to judge. The time had come to examine in detail I don’t know what categories of men: volunteers, young soldiers, newly promoted corporals, disgraced non-commissioned officers, soldiers who were asking to re-enlist, others who wanted to leave the corps. Instead of going to fetch all these people, he had them appear before him, and before us, without leaving his place. Thanks to him, I didn’t miss a single detail. After an hour or two, he thought he noticed that I was stifling a yawn: quickly, he summoned Colonel Briquet, who was standing aside. Colonel! he cried, what are you thinking? What is happening to French gallantry? Can’t you guess that these ladies are bored? Come on! Bring on your music and treat us to some lovely pieces! The music of the 104th had never been so good. I understand that one must surpass oneself to deserve the praise of this man! After the inspection of the categories, he did, still in front of me, what is called the detailed review. They came to present to him successively the effects of each man, with the booklet indicating the mass. How sure of himself he is! What in-depth knowledge of the profession of arms! Captain! he said to a company commander, what is this man’s name? The astonished captain, stunned, stammered and did not answer. Hey captain! I’ve only just arrived, and I know your men by their first and last names, better than you! I hope you won’t forget the name Pacot Pierre François now that you heard it from my mouth! It’s Caesar, nothing more, nothing less. M. de Bontoux claims that he had read the name written in large bastard letters on the man’s record book; but these artillerymen don’t believe in anything. Will the Polytechnic School never be burned down? The day ended with a sublime parade. He remounted; his escort reformed a few paces behind and all the companies of all the battalions passed in front of him, one after the other, in the most imposing order. The officers saluted him with their swords, he saluted the officers; the flag saluted him, he saluted the flag, and when all the salutes were over, he saluted us with the noblest grace and left at a furious gallop followed by his escort. The tiles of the city trembled; hearts too. Chapter 16. Yesterday, my dear child, I understood glory. The meeting was at the same place, we had reserved our same seats. The only difference was that I didn’t eat dinner at all, despite the entreaties of Adolphe and the poor uncle. My stomach was tight, as happens to children who are about to be taken to the show. His first glance was for me: he seemed to thank me for my punctuality. He reviewed the troops and walked for a long time along the battlefront. Four mounted chasseurs marched in front of him, pistols in hand, ready to blow out the brains of the first insolent person who would disrespect my dear great man. But soon he came back to me, had the officers, non-commissioned officers, and corporals assemble before us , and said to them, eyeing my white greatcoat: It is today, gentlemen, that I must observe your practical training. An inspector by the dozen, of which France unfortunately has too many, wasted a day questioning you one after the other: I am not from that school, thank God! I know that the theory is familiar to you; you all have it down to the last detail, I was sure of that at a glance. What you lack a little is the application on the ground, in front of the enemy: that is what I want to instill in you. You could not learn it at a better school; I have proven myself, I have worked on the spot; all the enemies of France know General Ségart’s moustache. That is why I will not amuse myself by making you execute elementary maneuvers, weapons handling known to your youngest soldiers. I want, with the permission of these pretty ladies, that you make the powder speak, according to the picturesque expression of the Arabs. It is a question of giving to the flower of the population of Loutrevillaise the spectacle of the battle! Do your men have cartridges, colonel? At these words, my neighbors were frightened, and I thought that the first rows of armchairs were shamefully disbanding before the battle. But I had courage for a thousand and I distributed it all around me. I don’t remember word for word what I said, but these gentlemen heard me, and it seems that I was superb. Double success, my darling, because I must tell you that my attire had already provoked a cry of admiration. Imagine a dress of white foulard, turned up in front over a sky-blue taffeta underside, and lengthened into a tail at the back; the whole trimmed with a small frill surmounted by a blond entredeux placed on a blue ribbon. The same blouse, very short, very fitted and sleeveless, with blond and ribbon shoulder pads; the high boots of blue taffeta with blond tufts. The crowning glory of the edifice was a tiny hood of white tulle, with a myriad of vergiss mein nicht strewn across the bottom. Not a shadow of a bavolet, but a blue net emerging from the hat. The blue umbrella, covered with Alençon stitch, apple in turquoise. What do you think? My general began by having small platoons parade in front of us , who carried out fireworks to invigorate us to the tumult. The fact is that after half an hour I no longer thought of covering my ears; nor my neighbors either. When he saw that we were ready for anything, he ordered the entire regiment and led his two thousand men to attack a strong position, guarded by an imaginary enemy. Do you know that old windmill tower that overlooks the battlefield, in the direction of Piqueville? We rested there together two years ago, on our way from the Château d’Anna. The general took the trouble to explain to us himself that this tower was supposedly defended by four thousand Austrians, and that he was confident he could flush them out in less than an hour. As the terrain is open, we were able to see everything without moving from our seats: we only had to turn our chairs around . He took the head of his army, the columns emerged, the artillery thundered on the sides, the small platoons deployed as skirmishers to cover the columns. We heard the firing of files regularly counted like rosaries, the firing of platoons gathered in a single burst like a mine explosion. How beautiful it is, my God! How beautiful it is! After Gounod’s Faust and the solemn benediction of the Holy Father, I have seen nothing more sublime, more grand, more ideal! A single incident, but not serious, almost disturbed the celebration. The 1st battalion, which had taken the left, along the road to the slaughterhouses, found itself face to face with a herd of oxen who were running at full speed . The general was there, he had the bayonet fixed. But it seems that the oxen also have some notions of military art: they formed what we call the square battalion. The general judged in his wisdom that this position was too well guarded, he cast his eyes on his line of retreat, and ordered a turning maneuver which made victory easy and without danger. The success of the day assured, he let the men do their thing and he returned to us. Ah! If you had seen him, spyglass in hand, supervising the operations, sending dispatch riders in all directions, and animating this great body of fire with his beautiful soul! All his gestures were translated by the intelligent undulations of his fine horse, which seemed to associate itself with the victory. Our troops were now only 500 paces from the enemy position; we saw them deploy on an extended front and launch platoon fires that made the earth tremble. Suddenly, the lines break, the firing stops, new columns form and go forward, bayonets crossed; the drums beat the charge; victory! Finally, our offensive movement has been crowned with complete success; the general points out the fleeing enemies, and we thought we saw them, my dear, this man speaks so well! He calls the artillery commander and orders a few cannon shots fired into this disorganized mass. That’s it, ladies, he said, addressing me. There is no enemy that can resist the French soldiers when I lead them, and especially when we have on our side the most powerful element of success: your presence! At the same time, he made a sign and stopped motionless, sword raised. The troops also stopped, as if an unknown power had paralyzed them in the middle of the action. A minute passed, and the trick was done: the general’s photographer had captured the actors, the spectators, and the hero of this beautiful day on the fly! The agitation of the battle was replaced by calm and silence. The victorious troops returned to line up in front of us. The general congratulated some, scolded others. It was said that he would propose two captains for the cross. He sharply reprimanded the commander of the 1st battalion, who had compromised the success of the day in the ox-path. Commander! he said to him, but still addressing us, you have committed a tactical error. My practiced eye recognized it at first glance, and you are very fortunate that I happened to be here to repair such a blunder. You understand nothing about battle; you will never learn it; in a few hours, I am sure, I have made pupils here who could replace you in your command to the great advantage of the army! The best part of all, my dear Amélie, is that the commander didn’t reply. It wasn’t he who had made the mistake, but no one has the right to reply to an inspector general, since he can’t be wrong. What power! Night was falling, and the soldiers could take no more. The regimental band bade us farewell with a pretty waltz that was literally danced, and in time, by the great leader’s horse. After which, the troop marched again and crossed the town, band at the head, flag flying, between two rows of lit torches. It was magical. Alas! dear Amélie! my noble general left this morning with his little aide-de-camp, that pocket officer who has to pay half a quarter of a fare, as an officer and as a child. We will take leave of the good old uncle and return to the castle after dinner. But I can live a hundred years, I will never forget this general inspection where the proudest and bravest of warriors inspected hardly anything but your friend JACQUELINE DE BEAUVENIR. Chapter 17. The Five Pearls. TO MADAME TOINON GLAVOT, TO DELIVER. Château de Bonnefont, September 15. Here I am, far from you, my beloved Clarisse. I keep telling myself that this departure is dictated by your prudence and that by separating from you for a whole month I am strengthening the bond that unites us; I miss you cruelly. The railway could have made a mistake, put me in the baggage; I was a body without a soul, a parcel with a human face. Dear, dear Clarisse! The best part of me has remained around you; it wanders every night in the great corridors of Vicarville; it slips into your apartment through the keyholes ; it flutters until morning in the muslin of your curtains. It is only a shadow, alas! but you, the woman of all religions, you would not want to offend this weak and sacred thing that is called a shadow! Preserve my property for me, dear Clarisse; protect it against everyone and especially against the one who still believes in his impudence to have retained some rights over you. Thank God, the little daughter of the Marshal of Senlis has all the pride she needs to defend herself; your heart is too whole to understand sharing; I am sure of your attachment to duties all the more sacred because nothing sanctions them on earth. As for me, I will have no merit in remaining faithful. Except for you, nothing is more to me. Even if I had not disposed of my life by a commitment that our world has recorded and approved, I would be materially incapable of saying I love you to a woman who is not you. There is, have no doubt, a grace of state for spouses of our kind. Why do the creatures of the Bois de Boulogne, who fascinate husbands and ruin them, inspire in us only profound disgust? I am not speaking of myself alone, but of Améric, Robert, Astolphe, Charley, of all those who have freely given their hearts to unrecognized and outraged angels like you. It seems, in truth, that the first marriage, the one that throws an ignorant child into the arms of a worn-out reveler, is only the sad school and painful apprenticeship of life. The woman then unites, with full knowledge of the facts, with a man of her choice, and this second contract, pure of all the calculations that dishonored the other, inaugurates an unmixed happiness and an inviolable fidelity. If the master of the house, my dear cousin Auguste de Brescia, were to read this theory over my shoulder, he would be the man to pick a quarrel with me in his own library, at the risk of bloodying his Elzevirs. He is the king of the jealous, as the corncrake is the king of the quail. I do not want to push the comparison further, and for good reason. Between the quail and my cousin Ottilie, I see physical and moral resemblances on which it would be unseemly to insist. And yet… ! Nothing, nothing, nothing! On my word as a gentleman and a lover, Augustus is still not today what he deserved if well-being. Why? How? It’s quite a story, or rather a study of characters, in the plural. The dear cousin is not handsome, he has remained too young; he loves his wife brutally, like a glutton, as one must love to be hated. Moreover , he has his mother-in-law, and what a mother-in-law! against him. My cousin is pretty, delicate, flirtatious, ill-bred to perfection; she has wit, reading, imagination, vagueness, a certain audacity, in short, everything necessary to make a second husband happy. Well, no! She’s too scared. She knows she would be killed without saying a word. This animal has learned by heart The Physiology of Marriage; he would recite forty pages of Balzac to you at the first summons. All the wiles of woman are more familiar to him than to the most gifted woman: he has engineered his house like a theater, he has designed his park from the point of view of surveillance. Brazenly jealous, he follows his wife step by step, without hiding; he confesses her every day, at all times: he has opened windows onto this unfortunate little soul. Through obsessions, threats, intimidation, I even believe he goes so far as to squeeze her wrists from time to time, this torturer has ended up dominating her. Ottilie rebels sometimes, when he is not there; she opens her heart to a friend. That same evening, she confesses to her master that she has spoken ill of him, and Auguste sets her at odds with the confidante. In society, in winter, she has twenty temptations to throw her bonnet over the windmills. The crowd emboldens her; she believes herself protected by all these men.
    She waltzes with abandon, she listens with a smile to the chatter of a dancer, she braves the terrible eyes of her husband sitting in a corner, and as she passes in front of him she drowns him in her eighteen skirts. An hour later, in the car, she is subjected to the ordinary and extraordinary questioning, she confesses everything, she begs for mercy, she makes revelations. When I see her so well-housed in her servitude, I sometimes come to wonder if she doesn’t love her husband! Singular little woman! As for him, his game is quite simple: keep an eye on things until she is past the age of crisis. He impatiently waits for her to have wrinkles and white hair. Then he will sleep soundly, happy and proud to have spent his whole life preventing himself from being Dandin. His rogue air, his fierce gaze, his menacing bearing, everything that makes him a spectacle in a world as smooth as ours, comes from the same sentiment. He is a man who does not flee before the Minotaur, but who waits for him on his hip, sword in hand, like a matador. The company is quite large at Bonnefont; about twenty people. Not a single young man! Not even a young man, except me, who is above suspicion. The castle is populated only by old relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins ​​on crutches, and two or three kids, the oldest of whom is not yet twelve. The fair sex is represented by Ottilie, her sister Madame de Saintive, Madame de Gambey, their respectable mother, and two old fairies in flea-covered silk sheaths. I, who promised you a description of all the attire, will, in spite of myself, save some paper. On this solemn day, you will understand why in five minutes, my cousin wore a dress of embroidered muslin with Valenciennes entredeux; pleated bodice, ponceau belt tied at the back, to the child. On the entredeux, around the neck passes a ponceau ribbon which holds a Byzantine cross in front and which falls back to the bottom of the dress, like a pair of reins slipped from the coachman’s hands. Her hair was styled with a taste and coquetry that should be recommended in newspapers and preached in churches: an enormous knotted bun, but not tight, in the shape of an 8, and crossed with a pin. It is true that the gold pin was that Roman eagle that we admired together at Castellani’s. Eagle aside, the hairstyle is adorable because it frees the nape of the neck and reveals those pretty little curly hairs, lovely down, a feast for the eyes, the finest and most mysterious beauty of the clothed woman. I assure you, Clarisse, that if two or three great ladies, young and beautiful like you, were to use their authority to revive this fashion, the face of the earth would brighten up in no time. Madame de Saintive never wears jewelry during the day: it is a luxury I understand, but not everyone has, like her, a million diamonds to show off at a ball. Madame de Gambey wears too many bracelets and too many rings, under the pretext of remembrance. The fact is that if all those who loved her had left her only a twenty-louis ring, she would have spent a fortune. Unfortunately, all these jewels are from the same period as her, and they bear their date. What a porter’s jewelry store they made for us between Louis XVI and Cavaignac! And then, I don’t know if jewelry, even perfect, is suitable for women of a certain age. They draw attention to points that would be better hidden, they underline details that would be better left unseen. Ottilie strikes a balance between her mother’s flaunting and her sister’s somewhat affected simplicity . She doesn’t have her ears pierced; I like that. We must put an end to these stupid mutilations we have taken from the savages. Pierce the pretty cartilage of the ear! And why not the septum of the nose? I know that my cousin has expensive rings; she only wears two, the simplest ones, and because her jealous husband forbids her to take them off. They are the wedding ring and the engagement ring, one completely plain, the other enriched with five small pearls. Auguste had them enlarged when they became too tight on the finger. For she has not wasted away, the poor child, in the midst of her tortures; she is a fat victim . You can guess, dear Clarisse, that this morning’s toilets were neither for old uncles, nor for husbands, nor for me. The cousin decided that his wife would take a day in the country as in Paris: it’s the way to keep an eye on all enemies at once, besides these gentlemen keeping an eye on each other. Ottilie chose Thursday; it’s well known, and the whole neighborhood, after having grumbled a little against a new custom in the country, has taken the habit. So on Thursday morning, from two o’clock onwards, the prettiest gentlemen in the province descend on Bonnefont, some on horseback, others in station wagons, dog carts, phaetons, American cars, and even Christian wagons, according to each person’s abilities . Legend has it that all our irresistibles became discouraged one after the other, not because my beautiful cousin seemed impregnable to them in herself, but because the approaches to the square were too well guarded. I have been shown very well-born men, of the best tone and gifted with a certain charm, who have done almost base things to become intimately attached to the husband. Useless trouble! This man is more bristly than a porcupine; one does not know where to find him. He likes neither hunting, nor fishing, nor the table, nor gambling, nor horses; he loves his wife. He has been tested for honors; the influential men of our party have offered him a candidacy: useless! He has no other ambition than to keep his wife for himself. I do not know if he did well to so violently rebuff all those who attacked him with courteous weapons: he has made enemies for himself. His stiffness has wounded important people and people of intelligence. It could cost him dearly one day or another. He who has disarmed before the ferocity of the monster, retains a leaven of resentment deep in his heart. You know that in general an ousted suitor consoles himself by seeing the defeat of others: it is not the same around Bonnefont. The vanquished would pile up, if necessary, in the moats of the castle to make a ladder. And if ever a daring young man enters the place, the department will be illuminated. I am too new in the country to know exactly the state of affairs; but I observe, I guess, and here, dear Clarisse, is what I thought I saw today. You are eminently a woman; you will therefore clarify in less than five minutes this mystery which has me astounded and perplexed since four o’clock in the evening. Yesterday at dinner, Auguste told us, rubbing his hands, that he finally had the Moreau woods. It’s an enclave that exasperates him. Just think! A nasty copse of six acres, five hundred meters from the castle, right in the middle of a thousand-hectare property! Old Moreau didn’t want to sell at any price. He’s rich: former steward of the Saintré family, who have six hundred thousand livres a year! Item, he’s a hunter, and this clump of woods, in the heart of an admirable hunting ground in the plains, becomes, from the moment it opens, a real game park. By what inspiration from above does the good man, point-blank, decide to sell? His eyesight is failing, says Auguste, he has rheumatism, he won’t hunt anymore. An old uncle points out that Moreau has nevertheless taken out a permit as usual. Be that as it may, his visit was announced for today, and he arrived punctually at two o’clock, with the Saintré’s notary. Around the same time, Madame de Gambey introduced me, not without emphasis, to M. Louis de Saintré, one of our best friends. This young man seemed fine to me; perhaps a little too pale. He is one of the good Saintré; we have nothing purer in France. You have met the dowager in society: a woman of fifty, still fresh, who has made a name for herself; she has taken high devotion since the death of Rear Admiral Toupart; her salon is the meeting place of all our politicians. It was she who let slip that famous impertinence to the Keeper of the Seals in I don’t know which mixed salon, at the Hôtel Lambert, I believe. Finally, my beautiful friend, you only know her, although she no longer has a hotel in Paris and has been coming here very little since 1948. She is a Briancourt, one of the Briancourts of Lorraine; there you are, aren’t you? So let’s not talk about it anymore. This young man, who is almost twenty-three, is destined for almost royal destinies. The influence of the family is enormous in the department: remember that the leases of their farmers have not been increased by a penny since 1816! It is madness in administration; in politics it is genius. They will have two million a year whenever they please; they prefer to have two or three hundred people who would be killed for them at the slightest sign. M. de Saintré has been engaged for seven years to Princess Wilhelmine, only daughter of Prince Grossenstein, a minor sovereign mediatized by Prussia: they are waiting for her to be sixteen and for him himself to be converted to matrimonial ideas. The education of the Good Fathers, so admirable from every point of view, produced, it is said, a singular effect on his heart. When he returned to Saintré, laden with his last crowns, the whole province praised his good looks, his grand air, his profound education, his beautiful and well-disciplined voice, his talents, his skill in all bodily exercises; but his mood and habits seemed strange. He spoke little, sought solitude, and showed an insurmountable aversion to the prettiest and best-born women. Things went so far that the family council was called and Uncle Briancourt, the one who campaigned with Pimodan against the Hungarian insurgents, washed his head with plenty of water. His parents sent him by authority to Paris; this old reiter of Briancourt had him admitted to the youngest and least prim circle, but it is said that he returned as he had left. It’s only for the last six months that he’s dared to look women in the face; not all of them, they say, but at least Madame de Brescia. I think he loves her; I’m almost sure of it; but has he declared it? Has he written? Has he spoken through an ambassador? Or through an ambassadress? What does the lady think of his thoughts? All this is still a sealed letter to me. The only point demonstrated is that he has obtained nothing, except perhaps a handshake, a favor without gravity but not without consequences. Nothing is without consequences for a woman in custody, who concentrates everything in her heart. The explosion of a repressed feeling is more sudden and more terrible than steam, gas, and powder. Remember, dear Clarisse! You had been refusing to come to the Rue de Sèze for a year, when you were suddenly persuaded to do so, forbidding you to receive me! I had exchanged a few banal phrases with the last offspring of the Saintré family, and I was walking alone in the park, dreaming of you and picking hazelnuts. It is an exquisite pleasure; I regret that it has been spoiled, or at least discredited, by tavern jokes. I know of no recreation that is better suited to the melancholy of an isolated man. When I am far from you, in this pleasant month of September, I spend entire days in a park, looking for hazel trees that a yellowing reflection already distinguishes from the other trees. I stop in front of a clump of long stems, a little bare at the top, I bend without much effort the beautiful elastic branches and I glean here and there a bouquet of fruits which have forgotten to fall. Sometimes I come across a tree less precocious than the others; the hazelnuts are still all there, but very ripe, very golden and ready to fall into my hands. I fall upon them and fill my pockets with childish joy. But it is a pleasure so light, so superficial, so external to man, that it does not divert my thoughts for a moment from its favorite dream. It is not like hunting which tires, which absorbs and which brings vanity into play. I would rather compare this distraction to fishing. It is still said that certain anglers forget their wives or their mistresses for whole days . Climbing a wooded slope, I turned around by chance and saw a charming spectacle. The park was much livelier than usual: visitors of both sexes, almost all dressed in light-colored fabrics, were gathered there capriciously, sitting, standing, lying on the marijuana: it looked like a larger, brighter, and above all, higher- ceilinged living room than our winter apartments. Madame de Saintive was organizing a kind of Blind Man’s Buff on the large lawn; her mother was offering ice creams to twenty people gathered at the foot of the old tulip tree. My cousin Ottilie was fishing in the pond. A handsome footman in full livery stood respectfully four paces behind her, tying up worms or untying fish. I was at first a little surprised to see her alone and as if abandoned, but then she moved and I saw Monsieur de Saintré. He was recognizable by his dazzling white clothing and by a certain Panama hat, as large as a parasol and whose miraculous finesse had struck me. This handsome young man is definitely not too numb anymore; he was full of gestures and seemed very animated. By what chance or what plot did these two people find themselves isolated? The aunts, who seem like two dragons attached to Ottilie’s person, were held back more than five hundred paces. The respectable guests of the castle seemed to be monopolized in person, of all types of bodies or in detail, by the Thursday visitors: if I were not afraid of making you shrug the most beautiful shoulders in the world, I would say that a hundred individuals had agreed to procure, prolong, and protect a simple tête-à-tête. I was meditating on this mystery and forgetting the nuts, when my cousin Auguste descended, or rather leaped, down the magnificent steps of his castle. A wild boar does not rush out more resolutely or more quickly. He ran to his wife through the clumps, the baskets, the groups of companions, like a man to whom all roads are good if they lead to the goal. A great disturbance appeared in the crowd; I saw, or I thought I saw, my cousin vigorously push away M. de Saintré who was holding her hand. The two men greeted each other; Madame de Gambey ran up; a group formed around my characters, and I could no longer distinguish anything but a mixture of hat-tips, handshakes and curtsies. All this intrigued me a little; I went down, cutting short by a three-year-old pruning which borders the Pheasantry. But I had not taken into account the brambles and all the undergrowth which makes the delights of rabbit. It took me a good quarter of an hour to recover from this mess. When I finally regained control of myself, I came across Auguste and his wife who were going up towards the Pheasantry, exchanging the sweetest glances. Meanwhile, my cousin was moved; something warned me that she was not walking for pleasure. When she saw me, she began to laugh, but in a tone that could have been more natural. How you look! she said to me, leaving her husband’s arm . This hazelnut fury will ruin you: you are all sewn with cobwebs. She pretended to dust something off the brim of my hat, and hissed three words in my ear: My ring… in the water… look for it! I glanced at her left hand; the little pearls were no longer there. This encounter did not last a second in all. I answered I don’t know what and ran to the pond. Obviously the poor little girl had given her hand to M. de Saintré. The sudden arrival of the husband, a movement of fright, perhaps also the clumsiness of the young man will have caused this engagement ring to fall, too widened by the goldsmith of Mareuil. She trembles lest this accident exasperate Auguste’s jealousy, and I, who know the parishioner, admit that she is right. It is absolutely necessary that this ring be found before dinner. Thank God, the pond is not deep, but there is mud at the bottom; the park is full of people; besides, I am hot, the water is cold, I do not belong to myself. And what the devil, it is not up to me to pay the costs of the battle. If anyone must take a bath, it is M. de Saintré. I look for him and I find him, wandering around the castle like a lost soul. The groups have reformed as best they can; some visitors have left, the others are chatting actively. I take the young man by the arm and say to him without hesitation: It’s a great pity: you’ll dirty your white trousers and lose a hundred-louis hat; but let’s get to the pond and drop in right away. He looks at me and thinks I’m mentally ill. I continue: Where were you standing with her? Her ring slipped there; we must find it. “Good,” he says calmly, “the water is clear; the pond isn’t deep at the edges; it’s only a cold to catch; let’s pretend we’re talking . This young man has cold blood. At his age, I would have provoked the husband, kidnapped the wife, or done some other stupid thing. The trampled marijuana and three unfortunate fish that are still wriggling show us the place where the accident happened. I lean over the edge, I see the ring and I show it to him: it is under a meter of water at most. But twenty-five or thirty people are watching us; we walk at our heels; neither Auguste’s friends nor those of the poor child lose sight of us, and the husband could arrive at any moment. What the devil can he be doing at the Faisanderie? M.
    de Saintré picks up a small carp, says a word of pity to it, throws it into the water with a superb gesture and throws himself in with it. A cry rises from the whole park; people run from all sides. The young man has slipped in the mud at the bottom, he falls on both hands, fumbles for a single moment, gets up, holds out his fist to me and jumps lightly onto the bank. He is soiled enough to make you laugh and wet enough to make you sad; his teeth are chattering; he runs shivering towards the courtyard of the sheds and throws himself into the first departing car. He’ll cough tomorrow, but never mind! The pearl ring is in my pocket. Ottilie can come back down. Where has she taken her husband? Where? Her mother told me, my dear Clarisse, but I won’t tell you , for your honest and proud heart would never consent to believe it. Women! women! women! Here is one who is adored by a charming young man, who is doubtless beginning to love her; who cannot in conscience prefer this fierce old Brescia to this young and gallant Saintré: and to find a ring, to gain half an hour, to keep her husband away from the pond… Clarisse, my beloved, write to me that despite time, distance, and circumstances, you will always be mine, only mine! I kiss your hands… No! I kiss your little feet. They have never worn rings. RAOUL. At the end of this journey through the intrigues of Turco, Edmond About leaves us with unanswered questions, prompting us to reflect on human nature and the choices that shape our lives. This tale, both profound and mysterious, reminds us that the most intimate truths are often hidden beneath layers of complexity. Thank you for listening to this story, and don’t forget to subscribe to discover more captivating tales on our channel.

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