II
Madame Amédée Fleurissorie, née Péterat, the youngest sister of Veronica Armand-Dubois and Marguerite de Baraglioul, answered to the outlandish name of Arnica. Philibert Péterat, a botanist, who had acquired some celebrity under the Second Empire on account of his conjugal misfortunes, had as a young man determined to give the names of flowers to any children he might happen to have. Some of his friends considered the name of Veronica which he gave to his first-born, somewhat peculiar; but when it was followed by the name of Marguerite and people insinuated that he had climbed down—given in to public opinion—conformed to the commonplace, he determined in a cantankerous moment to bestow upon his third product a name so resolutely botanical as to stop the mouths of all back-biters.
Shortly after Arnica’s birth, Philibert, whose temper had become soured, separated from his wife, left the capital and settled at Pau. His wife would linger on in Paris during the winter months, but every spring, at the beginning of the fine weather, she would return to Tarbes, her native town, and invite her two elder daughters to stay with her there in the old family mansion which she occupied.
Veronica and Marguerite divided the year between Tarbes and Pau. As for little Arnica, whom her mother and sisters looked down upon (it is true she was rather foolish and more pathetic than pretty), she spent the whole time, summer as well as winter, with her father.
The child’s greatest joy was to go botanising in the country; but the eccentric old man would often give way to his morose temper and leave her in the lurch; he would go off by himself on an inordinately long expedition, come home dog-tired and immediately after the evening meal take to his bed, without giving his daughter the charity of a word or a smile. When he was in a poetical mood he would play the flute and insatiably repeat the same tune over and over again. The rest of his time he spent drawing portraits of flowers in minute detail.
An old servant, nicknamed Réséda, who was both cook and housemaid, looked after the child and taught her what little she knew herself. With this education, Arnica reached the age of ten hardly knowing how to read. Fear of his neighbour’s tongues at last brought Philibert to a better sense of his duty. Arnica was sent to a school kept by a Madame Semène, a widow lady who instilled the rudiments of learning into a dozen or so little girls and a very few small boys.
Arnica Péterat—guileless and helpless creature—had never until that moment suspected that there might be anything laughable[E] in her name; on her first day at school its ridicule came upon her as a sudden revelation; she bowed her head, like some sluggish water-weed, to the stream of jeers that flowed over her; she turned red; she turned pale; she wept; and Madame Semène, by injudiciously punishing the whole class for its indecorous conduct, added a spice of animosity to what had before been a boisterous but not unkindly merriment.
Long, limp, anæmic and dull-eyed, Arnica stood with dangling arms, staring stupidly, in the middle of the little schoolroom, and when Madame Semène pointed out “the third bench on the left, Mademoiselle Péterat,” the whole class, in spite of reprimands, burst out again louder than ever.
Poor Arnica! Life seemed nothing but a dreary avenue stretching interminably before her and bordered on either side by sniggers and bullyings. Fortunately for her, Madame Semène was not impervious to the little girl’s misery, and she soon found a refuge in the widow’s charitable bosom.
When lessons were over, Arnica was glad enough to stay behind at school, rather than go home to find her father absent; Madame Semène had a daughter, a girl who was seven years older than Arnica and slightly hump-backed, but good-natured; in the hopes of catching a husband for her, Madame Semène used to have Sunday evening “at homes,” and on two Sundays a year she would even get up a little party with recitations and dancing; these parties were attended by some of her old pupils, who came out of gratitude, escorted by their parents, and by a few youths without either means or prospects, who came out of idleness. Arnica was always present—a flower that lacked lustre—so modest as to be almost indistinguishable—but yet destined not to go altogether unperceived.
When, at fourteen, Arnica lost her father, it was Madame Semène who took in the orphan. Her two sisters, who were considerably older than she was, visited her only rarely. It was in the course of one of these visits, however, that Marguerite first met the young man who was to become her husband. Julius de Baraglioul was then aged twenty-eight and was on a visit to his grandfather, who, as we have already said, had settled in the neighbourhood of Pau shortly after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma by France.
Marguerite’s brilliant marriage (as a matter of fact, the Misses Péterat were not absolutely without fortune) made her appear more distant than ever to Arnica’s dazzled eyes; she had a shrewd suspicion that no Count—no Julius—would ever stoop to breathe her perfume. She envied her sister for having at last succeeded in escaping from the ill-sounding name of Péterat. The name of Marguerite was charming. How well it went with de Baraglioul! Alas! Was there any name wedded to which Arnica would cease to seem ridiculous?
Repelled by the world of fact, her soul, in its soreness and immaturity, tried to take refuge in poetry. At sixteen, she wore two drooping ringlets on each side of her sallow face, and her dreamy blue eyes looked out their astonishment beside the blackness of her hair. Her toneless voice was not ungentle; she read verses and made strenuous efforts to write them. She considered everything that helped her to escape from life, poetical.
Two young men, who since their early childhood had been friends and partners in affection, used to frequent Madame Semène’s evening parties. One, weedy without being tall, scraggy rather than thin, with hair that was not so much fair as faded, with an aggressive nose and timid eyes, was Amédée Fleurissoire. The other was fat and stumpy, with stiff black hair growing low on his forehead, and the odd habit of holding his head on one side, his mouth open and his right hand stretched out in front of him: such is the portrait of Gaston Blafaphas. Amédée was the son of a stonecutter with a business in tombstones and funeral wreaths; Gaston’s father had an important chemist’s shop.
(However strange the name of Blafaphas may seem, it is very common in the villages of the lower slopes of the Pyrenees, though it is sometimes spelt in slightly different ways. Thus, for instance, in the single small town of Sta ..., where the writer of these lines was once called on some business connected with an examination, he saw a notary Blaphaphas, a hairdresser Blafafaz, and a pork-butcher Blaphaface, who, on being questioned, disclaimed any common origin, while each one of them expressed considerable contempt for the name of the other two and its inelegant orthography.—But these philological remarks will be of interest only to a somewhat restricted class of reader.)
What would Fleurissoire and Blafaphas have been without each other? It is hard to imagine such a thing. At school, during their recreation time they were continually together; constantly teased and tormented by the other boys, they gave each other patience, comfort and support. They were nicknamed the Blafafoires. To each of them their friendship seemed the ark of salvation—the single oasis in life’s pitiless desert. Neither of them tasted a joy that he did not immediately wish to share with the other—or, to speak more truly, there were no joys for either of them save those which could be tasted together.
Indifferent scholars—in spite of their disarming industry—and fundamentally refractory to any sort of culture, the Blafafoires would always have been at the bottom of their form if it had not been for the assistance of Eudoxe Lévichon, who, in return for a small consideration, corrected and even wrote their exercises for them. This Lévichon was the son of one of the chief jewellers of the town. (Albert Lévy, shortly after his marriage twenty years earlier with the only daughter of the jeweller Cohen, had found his business so prosperous that he had quitted the lower quarters of the town in order to establish himself not far from the Casino, and at the same time he had judged it a favourable opportunity to unite and agglutinate the two names as he had united the two businesses.)
Blafaphas had a wiry constitution, but Fleurissoire was delicate. At the approach of puberty Gaston’s superficies had turned dusky—one would have thought that the sap was going to burst forth into hair over the whole of his body; while Amédée’s more sensitive epidermis resisted, grew fiery—grew pimply, as if the hair were bashful at making its appearance. Old Monsieur Blafaphas advised the use of detergents and every Monday Gaston used to bring over in his bag a bottle of anti-scorbutic mixture, which he surreptitiously handed to his friend. They used ointments as well.
About this time Amédée caught his first cold—a cold which, notwithstanding the salubrious climate of Pau, lasted all the winter and left behind an unfortunate bronchial delicacy. This gave Gaston the opportunity for renewed attentions; he overwhelmed his friend with liquorice, with jujubes, with cough mixtures and with eucalyptus pectoral lozenges, specially prepared by Monsieur Blafaphas père from a receipt which had been given him by an old curé. Amédée became subject to constant catarrh and had to resign himself to never going out without a comforter.
The highest flight of Amédée’s ambition was to succeed to his father’s business. Gaston, however, notwithstanding his indolent appearance, was not without initiative; even at school he amused himself with devising small inventions, chiefly, it must be confessed, of a somewhat trifling nature—a fly-trap, a weighing-machine for marbles, a safety lock for his desk—which, for that matter, had no more secrets in it than his heart. Innocent as these first applications of his industry were, they nevertheless led him on to the more serious labours which afterwards engaged him, and the first result of which was the invention of a “hygienic, fumivorous [or smoke-consuming] pipe for weak-chested and other smokers,” which for a long time occupied a prominent place in the chemist’s shop window.
Amédée Fleurissoire and Gaston Blafaphas both fell in love with Arnica at the same moment—it was as inevitable as fate. The admirable thing was that this budding passion, which each hastened to confess to the other, instead of dividing them, only welded them together more closely than ever. And, indeed, Arnica did not at first give either of them any great cause for jealousy. Neither the one nor the other, moreover, had declared himself; and it would never have occurred to Arnica to imagine their flame, notwithstanding their trembling voices when, at Madame Semène’s Sunday evenings, she offered them raspberry vinegar, or camomile ... or cowslip tea. And both of them, as they went home in the evening, praised her grace, and the modesty of her behaviour—grew concerned for her paleness—gathered boldness.
They agreed to propose together on the same evening and then submit to her choice. Arnica, young to love, thanked Heaven in the surprise and simplicity of her heart. She begged her two admirers to give her time to reflect.
Truth to tell, she was not more attracted by the one than the other, and was interested in them only because they were interested in her, at a time when she had given up all hopes of interesting anyone. During six whole weeks, growing the while more and more perplexed, Arnica relished with a mild intoxication her two suitors’ parallel wooing. And while, during their midnight walks, the Blafafoires calculated together the rate of their respective progress, describing to each other lengthily and undisguisedly every word, look and smile she had bestowed on them, Arnica, in the seclusion of her bedroom, spent the time writing on bits of paper (which she afterwards carefully burnt in the flame of the candle) or else in repeating indefatigably, turn and turn about: Arnica Blafaphas?... Arnica Fleurissoire?—incapable of deciding between the equal horror of these two atrocious names.
Then, suddenly, on the evening of a little dance, she had chosen Fleurissoire; had not Amédée just called her Arnica, putting the accent on the penultimate in a way that seemed to her Italian? (As a matter of fact, he had done it without reflection, carried away, no doubt, by Mademoiselle Semène’s piano, with whose rhythm the atmosphere was throbbing.) And this name of Arnica—her own name—had there and then seemed to her fraught with unexpected music—as capable as any other of expressing poetry and love.... They were alone together in a little sitting-room next-door to the drawing-room, and so close to each other that when Arnica, almost swooning with emotion and gratitude, let fall her drooping head, it touched Amédée’s shoulder; and then, very gravely, he had taken Arnica’s hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.
When, during their walk home that night, Amédée had announced his happiness to his friend, Gaston, contrary to his custom, had said nothing, and as they were passing a street lamp, Fleurissoire thought he saw him crying. Could Amédée really have been simple enough to suppose that his friend would share his happiness to this last degree? Abashed and remorseful, he took Blafaphas in his arms (the street was empty) and swore that however great his love might be, his friendship was greater still, that he had no intention of letting his marriage interfere with it, and, finally, that rather than feel that Blafaphas was suffering from jealousy, he was ready to promise on his honour never to claim his conjugal rights.
Neither Blafaphas nor Fleurissoire possessed a very ardent temperament; Gaston, however, whose manhood troubled him a little more, kept silence and allowed Amédée to promise.
Shortly after Amédée’s marriage, Gaston, who, in order to console himself, had plunged over head and ears into work, discovered his Plastic Plaster. The first consequence of this invention, which, to begin with, had seemed of very little importance, was that it brought about the revival of Lévichon’s friendship for the Blafafoires—a friendship which for some time past had been allowed to lapse. Eudoxe Lévichon immediately divined the services which this composition would render to religious statuary. With a remarkable eye to contingencies, he at once christened it Roman Plaster.[F] The firm of Blafaphas, Fleurissoire and Lévichon was founded.
The undertaking was launched with a capital of sixty thousand francs, of which the Blafafoires modestly subscribed ten thousand. Lévichon, unwilling that his two friends should be pressed, generously provided the other fifty thousand. It is true that of these fifty thousand, forty were advanced by Fleurissoire out of Arnica’s marriage portion; the sum was repayable in ten years with compound interest at 4½ per cent—which was more than Arnica had ever hoped for—and Amédée’s small fortune was thus guaranteed from the risks which such an undertaking must necessarily incur. The Blafafoires, on their side, brought as an asset their family connexions and those of the Baragliouls, which meant, when once Roman Plaster had proved its reliability, the patronage of several influential members of the clergy; these latter (besides giving one or two important orders themselves) persuaded several small parishes to supply the growing needs of the faithful from the firm of B., F. & L., the increasing improvement of artistic education having created a demand for works of more exquisite finish than those which satisfied the ruder faith of our ancestors. To supply this demand a few artists of acknowledged value in the Church’s eyes, were enlisted by the firm of Roman Plaster, and were at last placed in the position of seeing their works accepted by the jury of the Salon. Leaving the Blafafoires at Pau, Lévichon established himself in Paris, where, with his social facility, the business soon developed considerably.
What could be more natural than that the Countess Valentine de Saint-Prix should endeavour, through Arnica, to interest the firm of Blafaphas & Co. in the secret cause of the Pope’s deliverance, and that she should confidently hope that the Fleurissoires’ extreme piety would reimburse her a portion of what she had subscribed? Unfortunately, the Blafafoires, owing to the minuteness of the amount which they had originally invested in the business, got very little out of it—two-twelfths of the disclosed profits and none at all of the others. The Countess could not be aware of this, for Arnica, like Amédée, was modestly shy of talking about their money matters.